"Multiple Bacteria Suspected in Tainted Cookie Dough"

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 10, 2009



FEDERAL AND STATE INVESTIGATORS found two different strains of E. coli
bacteria in samples of recalled Nestlé Toll House cookie dough, and
neither matches the type that has caused a national outbreak of
illness, suggesting that the product may have been contaminated by
multiple kinds of bacteria.

The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that laboratory
analysis of E. coli O157 found in a sample of cookie dough at Nestlé's
Danville, Va., plant did not match the strain that is believed to have
sickened 72 people in Maryland, Virginia and 28 other states.

The state of Minnesota reported that preliminary tests of a package of
Nestlé cookie dough taken from a household where two people were
sickened by E. coli O157 showed the product was contaminated with a
third deadly strain of bacterium, E. coli O124.

Meanwhile, federal officials said yesterday that they were finishing
their probe of Nestlé's Danville plant, which involved more than 1,000
microbiological tests. They remained stumped. "I think it probably is
going to remain a mystery," said David Acheson, assistant commissioner
for food safety at the FDA.

Of those sickened, 34 have been hospitalized. None has died.

Investigators did not find E. coli inside the Danville plant, on
equipment, in raw ingredients or in additional samples of cookie
dough, Acheson said.

E. coli O157 lives in the intestines of cows, sheep and other animals
and is most often associated with ground beef. None of the ingredients
in cookie dough -- eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter -- is known to
host the bacterium.

Nestlé voluntarily recalled 30,000 cases of its refrigerated cookie
dough on June 19 after officials at the FDA and the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention suspected that dozens of cases of
E. coli-related illness were linked to the product.

Nestlé, which temporarily shut down its plant and dismantled its
equipment, tentatively began producing cookie dough on Tuesday, after
finding new suppliers for flour, eggs and margarine, a spokeswoman
said.

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