E. coli scare brings no layoffs

Management of Nestle USA’s Danville plant met with employees Monday to brainstorm ways to keep them working as the Food and Drug Administration conducted their investigation into an E. coli outbreak that led to the recall of Toll House cookie dough.

“Those that want to work, we think we can accommodate them,” said Roz O’Hearn, a spokeswoman for the com-pany. “They might not be a full 40-hour schedule.”

About 550 employees work at the Danville plant, which produces Buitoni refrigerated pasta and Toll House cookie dough. Half of the employees work on the cookie dough line. O’Hearn said some of the employees will take paid vacations. Some workers on both sides of the plant will take temporary leaves of absence. Others may be called in to work on the Buitoni side, but they may not get full 40-hour weeks.

O’Hearn said the company has yet to lay anyone off.

Nestle voluntarily recalled its Toll House cookie dough Thursday after an investigation found a link between an E. coli outbreak and eating the cookie dough raw. The Danville plant makes the majority of Nestle Toll House cookie dough, and company officials halted pro-duction and shipment of the product until the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finish their investigations.

The CDC interviewed pa-tients with the illness and found that a majority had eaten the cookie dough raw a few days before becoming sick.

State health departments gave the CDC samples of the cookie dough, which are being tested to determine if the same strain of E. coli that has infected patients is in the product. So far, investigators have not found a match.

The CDC also is investigating new cases of the illness and added five more cases of E. coli Monday, according to a news release. The total stands at 70 cases in 30 states. Forty-one cases have been confirmed as the outbreak strain through DNA testing, and 30 people have been hospitalized.

The FDA took environmental samples from the plant over the weekend and Monday. They will be testing the samples for same strain of E. coli that patients are suffering from.

“They are able to actually fingerprint the bacteria,” said Renee Boyer, an assistant professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech. “It’s really quite phenomenal.”

Investigators will run the bacteria through a gel and separate its DNA, Boyer said. As the E. coli separates, a unique pattern emerges. The pattern can be tested against samples taken from infected patients and the Danville plant. The cases can be linked if the samples, or fingerprints, match.

Investigators still aren’t sure what caused the contami-nation.

“This is sort of a strange outbreak,” Boyer said. “Nor-mally, you think of cookie dough: You think of eggs; you think of salmonella.”

E. coli O157:H7 is linked commonly to beef. Cows and other domestic animals carry the bacteria in their digestive tract.

“It can be spread,” Boyer said. “A cow defecates in the field, and a deer comes and runs through it.”

The deer may get into some farmland, leaving the bacteria on crops. If the produce isn’t cleaned or cooked properly, E. coli poses a threat to anyone that eats the contaminated food. The bacteria produce a toxin that gets into the intestine and causes bloody diarrhea, a common symptom. Other symptoms include abdominal cramps and hemolytic uremic syndrome, a potentially fatal type of kidney failure.

The last major E. coli outbreak was in 2006 when spinach was contaminated.

“It took all the spinach off the shelves,” Boyer said.

Investigators found that baby spinach made by Dole was contaminated, according to an FDA news release from March 2007. Three people died from the illness, and officials confirmed 205 cases of the specific strain of E. coli. The investigation focused on the plant in San Juan Bautista, Calif., that processed and packaged the spinach. But investigators did not find the source at that plant and turned the investigation elsewhere.

Environmental samples from a field where the spinach grew matched the DNA fingerprint collected from patients. The FDA found different risk factors, including the presence of wild pigs and the exposure of surface waterways to feces from cattle and wildlife.

But the bacteria’s spread to the spinach remained unknown.