FDA and Nestle May Not Be Agreeing on Transparency – Cookie Dough Update

We live in a world today where transparency rules and by not working together creates issues such as this story seems to relate.

Cookie Dough – Don’t eat even if you bake the FDA Says

I still say we need automated reporting on this through the FDA and have written about it many, many times on this blog. It won’t cure all but will keep everyone on the same path with achieving safety goals with food and drug processing to send an inspection report automated to the FDA. We still seem to be so wrapped up in calling Cheerios a drug though, a distraction perhaps. There’s a widget on this page showing the peanut butter recalls and contamination that was created to warn consumers, so maybe some pro-active instead of reactive technology could come to the rescue here and allow FDA inspectors the ability to better organize their priorities too on what could be deemed urgent inspection situations, business intelligence for safe food and drugs. Having a bank of servers collecting company audit information on safety before batches are released and packaged could save both time and lives. BD

FDA May Need Major Restructuring – Catch up with Technology

Inspection reports from a Nestle USA cookie dough factory released Friday show the company refused several times to provide Food and Drug Administration inspectors with complaint logs, pest-control records and other information.
The records, which date back to 2004, were made public after Nestlé's Toll House refrigerated, prepackaged cookie dough was discovered to be the likely culprit in an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 69 people in 29 states, according to the latest estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control. The CDC is investigating the outbreak along with the FDA.

The FDA conducted two inspections in 2007. The first in February detailed six minor issues, including tools and equipment being stored in a hand washing sink in the Toll House preparation area, a water leak from the same sink and a hole in a steam line.
In November, the FDA returned to the facility to check to see if those issues had been corrected. During that inspection, the company refused to allow inspectors to photograph anything and also did not allow any review of production records or complaint files as per the company's policy.

Nestle refused FDA information, reports show - Los Angeles Times

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