E. Coli Investigation Expanded to Nestle Flour Supplier

Danville Register & Bee (VA)

July 1, 2009

The Food and Drug Administration continued its investigation into an E. coli outbreak linked to the Nestle USA plant in Danville, VA, by announcing that it found the bacteria in a sample of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough.

An inspection of the plant last week, however, turned up no traces of E. coli in the equipment or from any workers, which has lead the FDA to expand its investigation to individual ingredients.

“We took samples of all ingredients, and they all came back negative,” said FDA spokesperson Stephanie Kwisnek. “But there is always a chance of a false negative. We are expanding our investigation and doing a joint inspection (with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services) at the flour supplier. We are determined to find the source and will go back (through all the ingredients) as far as necessary.”

Roz O’Hearn, a spokesperson for Nestle USA, said the FDA inspection at the Danville plant was intensive. “The inspectors were there all last week. They dismantled all equipment and tested it; it was an incredibly thorough inspection,” she said, adding that everything has been cleaned and sanitized, and workers are now reassembling the equipment, which will then be sanitized again.

The process was not unusual, she noted, because the plant shuts down once a year to do the same type of deep cleaning, including tearing down the equipment to make sure every inch gets scrubbed and sanitized.

She did admit, “This was the biggest deep clean and teardown ever. We just don’t know. Our commitment is (that) as soon as we know, we’ll be in touch with our employees. Now we wait to hear what the next steps are. There’s a whole rhythm to the way these things unfold.”

There have been no worker layoffs since the investigation began, O’Hearn said, citing “flexible work arrangements” as the reason, noting that some employees were put to work in another area of the plant, while others are taking vacation of unpaid leave days. Nestle voluntarily recalled 300,000 cases—3.6 million packages—of the cookie dough shortly after being informed of the investigation.

O’Hearn said Nestle joins the FDA in being committed to finding the source of the contamination and is running its own tests even as the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention run their analyses.

According to an article posted on the CDC’s website, E. coli 0157 has not previously been associated with eating raw cookie dough, and further testing is under way to determine whether the E. coli strain in the cookie dough matches the strain causing the outbreak.

The CDC estimates there are 70,000 E. coli 0157 infections every year. They do not have exact figures because “we know that many infected people do not seek medical care,” the website notes. The FDA, Nestle and the CDC all note that consumers should follow the directions on the packages of cookie dough, which clearly say uncooked cookie dough should not be eaten.