Contaminated Food Illnesses In Cookie Dough!

FDA May Get More Power Over Food Safety

New concerns about contaminated cookie dough

By: Candy Sagon | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | January 22, 2010

Photo: Mascarucci/Corbis

Like hungry diners anxiously awaiting their meal, food safety advocates are growing increasingly impatient for Congress to act on legislation to protect millions of Americans from food-borne illnesses.

Although a groundbreaking bill to expand the powers of the Food and Drug Administration was passed by the House last summer, the Senate version remains stalled, pushed aside by the recent struggle to craft health care reform legislation.

To remind lawmakers of promises made a year ago when contaminated peanut products killed nine and sickened 700, a letter from 28 of the victims was delivered to the Senate last week, urging them to take up their version of the food safety reform bill.

New problems with cookie dough

The letter comes amid new reports that potentially deadly E. coli bacteria was discovered this month in two samples of Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough being manufactured at a Virginia factory. Last summer, 76 people in 31 states were sickened after eating small amounts of tainted raw dough, and the company recalled 3.6 million packages of its ready-to-bake product. After samples again tested positive for contamination recently, Nestlé has said it will begin using flour that has been heat-treated to kill dangerous bacteria.

An estimated 76 million Americans get sick from a food-related illness every year, including 70,000 who become ill from E. coli, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Tainted food sends some 325,000 Americans to the hospital each year, and more than 5,000 die from it, the CDC reports. Many food-borne illnesses go unreported because people don’t realize that food was the cause of their illness.

Older Americans at risk

Older Americans, in particular, are susceptible to food-related illness. For years, scientists believed that those most at risk for death from food poisoning were infants and young children, but the U.S. population is aging and older Americans now live with chronic illnesses that affect their immunity to disease. New data from the CDC clearly show that older consumers are the most likely to experience severe illness and death from contaminated food, says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington advocacy group. “The highest rates of hospitalization and death are in the over-50 age group.”

Public outcry grows

Public outcry over recent outbreaks of food-borne illness from popular foods like peanut butter and fresh spinach had prompted both the House and the Senate to propose new food safety legislation that would significantly expand the FDA’s powers for the first time in more than 70 years.

The House passed legislation in July; the Senate version, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., was passed unanimously out of committee in November but is still awaiting a floor vote. If approved by the Senate, the two bills will be combined into one and sent to President Obama, who has already indicated his support for stronger food safety regulations.