How, Exactly, Did E. coli Get In Nestle's Cookie Dough?
The recent discovery of E. coli O157 bacteria in Nestlé refrigerated cookie dough and subsequent recall of 30,000 tubs of said dough raises an urgent scientific question: Uh, how did that much cow poop end up in cookie dough?
After all, E. coli is a bacterium normally found in cow intestines. That's why contamination cases generally occur either in beef products, or fruits and vegetables fertilized with manure (or otherwise cross-contaminated.) So how did it get there? Nestlé doesn't know. Neither do the FDA or the CDC.
Health officials still do not know how E. coli 0157, a bacterium that lives in cattle intestines, ended up in a product that seems so unlikely to contain it. The risk usually associated with cookie dough is salmonella, a bacterium that can be found in raw eggs. None of the ingredients in the dough — eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter — is known to host E. coli 0157.
Federal investigators spent more than a week at the Danville plant and did not detect contamination in the equipment or among workers, Acheson said. "It raises the likelihood that it was an ingredient," he said. "And it really means that industry has to be constantly vigilant, because foods we think of as low risk could be contaminated with a deadly pathogen."
So be sure to eye your flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and chocolate chips suspiciously until this situation is resolved.
Incidentally, this paragraph in the Post story caught our eye:
Nearly all the victims, most of whom are female and younger than 19, reported eating raw cookie dough in the days before the onset of symptoms.
Because the ladies love raw cookie dough! Reports did not indicate whether any of the victims had recently been through a rough breakup, but we can infer.
In all seriousness, some of the victims are now severely ill, and we wish them a full recovery and for authorities to figure out what caused this.
E. Coli Confirmed In Nestlé Samples [Washington Post]
Cookie dough at Nestlé plant tests positive for E. coli [Consumer Reports]
(Photos: pyntofmyld)
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Comments:
New cologne scent idea: chocolate chip cookie dough.
What kind of chips are these, exactly?
Meh, Chips are Chips.
(puts on Microbiologist hat)
E. coli (the species name stays lowercase) is found in the guts of many, many mammals, and humans are no exception. The idea that it's mostly found in cow poop is erroneous; it's an important commensal enteric species, since it makes vitamins for the host (us included).
Most likely, a human pooped, didn't wash hands, and continued to work the industrial dough mixer or flour-bagger or sugar dispenser, etc.
(takes off Microbiologist hat)
Haw! You said cow poop.
Someone pooped in the cookie dough?
Gross man...
I have to agree that one of the employees is a slob that didn't wash his/her hands & is really bad at wiping too!
Otherwise it might have been a deliberate sabotage by a disgruntled worker there.
Either way, it's an employee problem that can only be solved by putting the sinks where supervisors can watch them wash up.
@tinyrobot: My Microbiologist hat was stolen and replaced with a small rock of roughly the same weight.
Does the 0157 strain of E. coli live in all mammals or just cows?
@tinyrobot: I'm totally grossed out...Just thinking that someone didn't wash their hands after taking a dump and went back to working with a food product, whether wearing gloves (or not--I pray they wore gloves at least..)
Husband recently was eating Nestle's cookie dough. I told him about this, he just shrugged and kept on eating it. Needless to say I was kind of grossed out.
(I'll be making my own cookie dough to eat from now on, thankyouverymuch...)
I also found it interesting that a huge percentage of the people getting sick were female. Had no idea that girls/women were more likely to eat cookie dough than men...
Screw that. I'm a man and I love raw chocolate chip cookie dough. It's my deep dark secret.
Someone must have been confused, thinking they were supposed to be making cow chip cookie dough instead of chocolate chip cookie dough.
Years later a cleaner, and more scientific, style of wiping ones bottom will come in the form of 3 sea shells. E Coli will subsequently become a thing of the past.
On a side note, In a futuristic jam swearing like a sailor will dispense to you the correct amount of paper to wipe. (You will have to wash your hands afterwards though)
@trujunglist: Is it wrong that I already own cookie dough perfume, and attribute my cute boyfriend to it? EASIEST WAY to get a guy: smell like delicious food.
either way, someone was stirring in some brown.
@Applekid:
I do too. Especially those little premade squares. Eating 2 or 3 of those at 1 am while the wife sleeps is the definition of bliss.
Well lets say there's this employee that becomes grossly overweight from sampeling the cookie dough over the years. And this employee decides to start taking Alli in a fruitless attempt to lose weight. Said employee prepares for the side effects by wearing prescription underware and double knit Farrah slacks. During one particulary violent explosive oily wet fart the protective clothing can't quite contain the emission and the greasy discharge is atomized as it passes through the triple barrier. This invisible but deadly cloud passes over the production line and the fallout contaminates the cookie dough.
Hey it's possible!
Hmmn, since Nestle's chocolate contains MILK FAT and salmonella lives in the guts of cows, hard to believe the FDA & CDC are just stumped.
Nestle's Semi-Sweet Morsels contain:
INGREDIENTS: SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, MILKFAT, SOY LECITHIN, VANILLIN - AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, NATURAL FLAVOR).
[www.verybestbaking.com]
(Don't scold, in all caps on their website)
@tinyrobot:
@Applekid:
Strains of E. coli do live in many mammals, except this is the O157:H7 strain. This strain (the one the news means whenever they report any outbreak of E. coli) does not live in humans - it most often lives in cattle.
The cows are not harmed, while us humans get ill. So unless someone at the plant went to work infected with O157:H7 that was picked up elsewhere, there is another source of the contamination.
It says milk is one of the ingredients, and where does milk come from? That's right. Maybe the cow had some disease that caused the bacterium to spread.
@carolynkline: Considering how often I find a certain big-box retailer (with in-store bakery and deli) is lacking hot water, soap, and/or paper towels in the restrooms--and no, they generally do not have employee-only restrooms. it's amazing that these stories tend to show up roughly every month or two rather than daily.
@SkokieGuy: Well yes, cookie dough contains milk products, but the point here is that there is rarely cross contamination of cow poop and cow's milk. E. coli does not particularly like cow's milk to live in, it prefers the warm dark intestines with lots and lots of food coming through to digest, and if there was contamination of the milk, the E. coli would not be expected to survive and be carried to further contaminate other things.
Salmonella would be unsurprising, as eggs have a known risk. E. coli is quite surprising.
And the award for obscure movie reference of the day goes to...
@mmmsoap: Also, milk is pasteurized before use in just about every application in North America (you have to work pretty hard to find raw milk if you want it) which would kill any E. coli that did manage to contaminate it. Thus making the milk/milk protein source even more unlikely.
@tinyrobot: Except the article is pointing out that there is no evidence of human illness in the workers at the plant. For this strain of E. coli, there is no such thing as a "human carrier"...it causes illness in humans, and would cause illness in the person it supposedly came from.
Which means that if it's a human source, it came from signifcantly further up the supply chain.
@Skeetz:
... however, Taco Bell employees will still refrain from using any of the above methods of personal hygiene.
I bet it was one of those Chik-fil-a cows, they're always trying to get us to eat less cow products and "mor chikn" and everyone knows that cookies go well with milk. So yeah, either the cows or Col. Mustard in the Kitchen with the Meadow-muffin would be my guesses, I'll draft my report to the CDC in a few...
Yes but that employee would have been noticeably sick and they would have been identified during the investigation. The primary symptom of E. coli O157:H7 is bloody diarrhea.
I am guessing this came from some other ingredient.
@tinyrobot: As anyone that works in a microbiology lab knows, E. coli is a very diverse type of bacteria. There are hundreds of serotypes of E. coli, some of which you would be miserable without, some of which will kill you. This particular serotype (O157:H7, that's a letter "o" not a zero) commonly causes illness in humans and is generally associated with contaminated beef or cow products. As someone mentioned, if it was one of the types commonly found in human guts it wouldn't be making humans sick.
Just to be safe, I microwaved all my chocolate chips for 10 minutes.
I swear cook your food and get a meat thermometer people! Minimum Temps:
Eggs = 160
Ground beef = 165
Steak = 130
Chicken = 165
Turkey = 165
Most fish = 140
Tuna & other large fish = 125
Sushi!??!! = I want to meet the chef and I want to see the receipt indicating date of purchase.
You can not tell if something is done by the way it looks. It is very possible to char the outside of a burger and leave the inside still teaming with bacteria.
@Jacob Thornton: Your thermometer idea is a good one, but many of those temps--basically anything under 160°--cannot be trusted to kill off pathogens. And you can't really take a cookie's temperature.
130° for beef is Pittsburgh rare. It's about the temperature of a Phoenix springtime sidewalk. Medium steak is 160°.
The USDA has lightened up somewhat on its standards, which are here: [www.fsis.usda.gov] But they recommend eating almost no meat under 160°.
And where did this lukewarm fish idea come from anyway? Nasty.
@NenyaVilyaNenya: O157:H7 lives in the intestines of humans with bloody diarrhea and incipient kidney failure.
@trujunglist: I was guessing someone infected with the cow strain of E. coli pooped in the cookie dough?
Disgruntled worker? Joke gone bad?
Those are not chocolate chips in the dough. Ewwww.
Come on - get it right toll house
We got a call and a letter from Costco to inform us of the recall based on a past purchase. We had already eaten al of the cookie dough, but none of it raw!
I'm not leveling this against Nestle per se, but definitely the entire agribusiness/ processed food system: What do you think happens when you employ (often undocumented)low-wage, low-skilled, workers with no health benefits who desperately needs the jobs to care for their immediate families? Is it any surprise that a sick worker, yes, even one with bloody diarrhea , is going to show up to punch in no matter what might be best for the public health or your corporate bottom line?
When you treat human beings like so many cattle in a feed lot, it should not surprise you that they begin to suffer from the diseases of, well, cattle in a feedlot.
Don't forget that E.Coli can also be found in tofu (mostly from cross-contamination).
Why yes, I did find this out the hard way!