BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed the presence of E. coli 0157, a deadly strain of bacteria, in a cookie dough sample from Nestle Toll House plant in Danville, Va, according to media reports Tuesday.     

    Investigators did not find the bacterium inside the factory or on equipment but in a tub of chocolate cookie dough made at the site in February, said David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food safety at the FDA. The dough had a June 10 expiration date.

    Federal investigators spent more than a week at the Danville plant and did not detect contamination in the equipment or among workers, Acheson said. "It raises the likelihood that it was an ingredient," he said. "And it really means that industry has to be constantly vigilant, because foods we think of as low risk could be contaminated with a deadly pathogen."    

    Health officials still do not know how E. coli 0157, a bacterium that lives in cattle intestines, ended up in a product that seems so unlikely to contain it. None of the ingredients in the dough -- eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter -- is known to host E. coli 0157.

    Nestlé voluntarily recalled 30,000 cases of its refrigerated cookie dough on June 19 after officials at the FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspected that dozens of cases of E. coli-related illness were linked to the product.

    As of last week, CDC reported 69 cases of E. coli 0157 illness linked to cookie dough in 29 states -- including two in Maryland and two in Virginia. The agency said that 34 of the victims have been hospitalized and that nine developed a serious complication known as hemolytic-uremic syndrome. None has died.

   (Agencies)