Nestle Returns to Making Cookie Dough
The following essay was written by Fred Pritzker, founder and president of national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys. Mr. Pritzker is representing victims of the Nestle cookie dough lawsuit.
By Fred Pritzker
Nestle USA’s food plant in Danville, Virginia, is back in business making refrigerated Toll House brand cookie dough following the Nestle E. coli outbreak associated with this popular and no doubt profitable product.
As of July 10, 2009, the CDC reported that 76 people from 31 states have been infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7. As of that date, 35 people had been hospitalized, including 11 with a serious complication called HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome. No one has died.
The decision to start making product again was made despite the fact that E. coli O157:H7 was found in an unopened package of Nestle cookie dough taken from the Danville plant by investigators. This was a different strain than the one cultured in stool samples from outbreak survivors. That means, most likely, Nestle cookie dough had at least two separate strains of the deadly pathogen.
Following the June 19, 2009, warning from the Food and Drug Administration not to eat these products, the Danville plant was shut down, tested and micro-cleaned. The FDA said this week that Nestle has switched suppliers for the main ingredients in Toll House cookie dough and consumers can recognize newly made products by looking for labels with shields that say “new batch” on them. These batches are not part of the current Nestle recall.
It is ironic that by switching suppliers and making a two-word label change. Nestle gets a “do-over” while the outbreak victims are stuck with a long recovery, medical bills, lost wages and a terrible memory of an illness they will never forget.
It would also have been nice if Nestle and the FDA at least paid lip service to the ordeal and suffering caused by this product and offered to pay, at a minimum, out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the victims.
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Contact the writer: 1-888-377-8900 (toll free), or by email, fhp@pritzkerlaw.com
