Doh! Nestle’s Trouble with Cookie Dough

Food safety scares cross my radar on a fairly regular basis, partly because I’m so immersed in foodservice news. For a restaurant operator, it is imperative to know about these things the moment they become public. Today, though, news broke that a product near and dear to many Americans’ hearts is potentially contaminated: Nestle cookie dough.

While only dangerous in its raw form, anyone with raw Nestle cookie dough is being advised to toss it, rather than risk cross contamination in the handling of the raw dough prior to baking. The trouble? This childhood favorite may be harboring E. coli, a dangerous bacterium.

As a kid, I definitely ate my share of raw cookie dough, and I never fell ill because of it. These days, the risk crosses my mind before ingesting a finger-full of cookie dough, but I accept the risk and happily enjoy the indulgence. Somehow, though, I deluded myself into believing that packaged cookie dough was immune to the threat of E. coli. How wrong I was.

If you’re looking for more info on the product recall (implemented quickly and voluntarily, to the credit of Nestle), check it out over at Yahoo News.

Do you eat raw cookie dough? (Be honest!)
(polls)

Restaurants Tackle Allergens

A major issue in any restaurant is the possibility of a customer accidentally ingesting something they are allergic to. This is why restaurants post warnings listing possible allergens that food may come into contact with and why servers are trained on what is in each dish so that they can accurately answer when someone asks.

This article details the way that Milwaukee restaurants are handling this issue. Check it out to see if they have any new ideas you may not have thought of.

What do you do at your business to address this problem? Any tips for other business owners? Let us know in the comments.