What Can We Learn From the Cookie Dough Recall?
The recall of Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough last Friday underscored two important points regarding the safety of the nation’s food supply and the complexity of supply chain risk management. First, it appears that no one food is more, or less, risky than another. Second, consumers often don’t, or can’t, follow the food safety instructions found on the packaging label.
Nestle USA issued the recall late last week after health officials linked the cookie dough to a national outbreak of illness from the bacteria E.coli 0157. As many as 65 people in 29 states have been sickened. 25 have been hospitalized. But, what’s truly puzzling investigators here is that E.coli 0157 lives in the intestines of cattle –meaning that outbreaks are typically associated with contaminated meat. How could this particular bacteria, E.coli 0157, have ended up in refrigerated cookie dough?
To solve the mystery, federal microbiologists and food safety officials are now investigating a variety of factors, including not just the ingredients in the cookie dough, but also the equipment at the Danville, Va., plant that makes the dough, the health of workers there, and whether the facility is located near cattle.
“It’s a fascinating outbreak,” says Craig Hedberg, an expert on food-borne diseases at the University of Minnesota, in an article from the Washington Post. “By just looking at package labeling, there is no reason you would expect an event like this to occur.”
You see, the risk usually associated with cookie dough is salmonella. After all, salmonella can be found in raw eggs, and raw eggs are a component of the dough. That’s why cookie dough is typically packaged with labels that warn consumers not to eat it raw.
And, that brings me to my second point. Despite the warnings on the package label, we all know that lots of people consider raw cookie dough a snack. In fact, according to Consumer Reports, 39% of consumers admit to eating raw cookie dough. (Not to mention that the taste is so well-liked that it has been popularized as an ice cream flavor.) Health officials suspect that the sickened consumers exposed themselves to E.coli 0157 through the common behaviors of eating, or otherwise handling, tainted raw dough.
Nestle did the right thing last week by acting swiftly to recall its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough, and that’s in keeping with the company’s solid reputation for stringent quality control measures. (As an example of this rigorous risk management policy, the N. Y. Times reminds us that Nestle refused to buy from the Peanut Corporation of America, the source of a peanut butter scare last year, after it failed two Nestlé audits.) I applaud Nestle for their efforts, and I’m going to stay tuned into this story to find out how the mystery of the E. coi 0157 contamination is solved. Today, all we know for sure is that: a) the national food supply remains vulnerable to serious contamination problems, and b) here’s another case where it is not sufficient for corporations to shift supply chain risk mitigation to the consumer, particularly when we know that there are certain food safety warnings that consumers often disregard.
