Health Law

Epidemiological Data On Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough Overwhelming Linked to E. coli O157:H7 Illnesses

By Marler Clark LLP

I am starting to get Epidemiological outbreak responses from states. I found the below page in the Arizona State Health Department records. It is a CDC generated document that was sent to participating states in an outbreak conference call.

The page above shows data obtained from the case-control study conducted as part of the outbreak investigation. The ONLY food item that was statistically associated with illness was Nestle Toll House cookie dough. These data show that: Raw cookie dough was the ONLY food item that sick persons were more likely to eat than no sick persons. This holds true for the matched analysis result (42.8) and the unmatched analysis result (55.6).

Ill cases were 50 times more likely to eat raw cookie dough than non-cases. Furthermore, with a p-value of <0.0001, these results are extremely significant and can be interpreted that there is less than a 1 in 10,000 chance that the association between eating raw cookie dough and illness is not a true association. These are exceptional odds ratios and p-values in a foodborne illness outbreak.

Furthermore, sick people were no more likely to eat ground beef than non-sick people. 

Given both FDA's and CDC's work on this outbreak, Nestle needs to deal with the reality that its product poisoned over 70 people, sending dozens to the hospital - many with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome.

Full post as published by e.Coli Blog on August 07, 2009 (boomark / email).