Is Nothing Safe Anymore?

As kids and most parents of school-age children have probably heard by now, Nestle has recalled its refrigerated Toll House cookie dough over fears of E. coli contamination. At least 65 people in 29 states have gotten sick, most of them from eating raw cookie dough. Health officials have stated that they are not certain that the dough is the source of the outbreak, but asked for the recall to be cautious.

The idea that something as "safe" as cookies might injure or even kill innocent children has parents in a tizzy. One worried mother was quoted in The Washington Post:

"When I heard about the recall, I thought, 'Is nothing safe anymore?' " said Carole Feld, a D.C. resident who has a 13-year-old child, pushing a shopping cart through a Glover Park Whole Foods Market yesterday. "If bacteria has gotten into Nestlé's Toll House cookie dough, then everything is suspect."

Feld's alarm is almost certainly unwarranted, unless she also allows her 13-year-old child to lick raw meat or drink toilet water. Raw cookie dough is like any other raw food, especially ones that contain animal products such as egg: it might have bacteria.

Toll House dough comes with a large, clear warning against eating uncooked cookie dough. It says right there on the package, in English, to bake before eating it. The directions call for baking the cookie dough at 375 degrees for about ten minutes. At that point, the cookies are done — as is any bacteria that might be in the raw dough.

I understand that some people like to eat raw cookie dough, and that's fine. But if you are going to ignore the printed warnings on the label, you have no one to blame but yourself (though already there is talk of lawsuits from consumers sickened by E. coli). Perhaps the responsibility lies with children and parents who choose to ignore food warnings, instead of with Nestle or its food processors.