Food Safety Outbreak: Cookie Dough
In the summer of 2009, E. Coli in Nestle’s cookie dough sickened 72 people in 30 states, putting 34 in the hospital.
For at least three years before the outbreak, the Danville VA plant where the dough was manufactured had repeatedly refused to cooperate with FDA food safety inspectors.
Plant managers would not show customer complaints to inspectors, told them they could not take photographs, and declined to give them access to information such as pest control measures or procedures to prevent food contamination.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, an FDA official acknowledged that “many food companies do not open their records to inspectors,” since the agency “doesn't have explicit authority to access any records during regular food-safety inspections, with the exception of infant formula, seafood, juices and low-acid canned food.”
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Sources
Zhang, J. 2009. Nestlé Unit Denied FDA Requests. The Wall Street Journal. June 26, accessed July 23, 2010
Questions and Answers About the Nestlé Cookie Dough Recall, FDA website June 22, 2009
Peppler, K. 2009. Testimony before the House Agriculture Committee (pdf). July 16.
