Nestlé Toll House recall: Your cookie dough could contain wood fragments

Another day. Another incident of foreign materials being found in food. Everyone’s favorite cookie company, Nestlé USA, just issued a voluntary recall of some of their chocolate chip cookie dough bars. Why? Because they may contain wood fragments.

The announcement came on Thursday and referred to two batches of “break and bake” cookie products. The easy-bake items were produced in April. The company explained that a “small number” of the goodies may contain wood fragments and said those who purchased the dough bars with batch codes 311457531K and 311557534K should return the product for a replacement or refund.

“We are working with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on this voluntary recall and will cooperate with them fully,” Nestlé said in the recall release. “We are confident that this is an isolated issue, and we have taken action to address it.” The company issued the voluntary recall after being notified by customers that the items had foreign materials, but no illnesses were reported as a result of consuming the products. Nestlé USA issued the recall “out of an abundance of caution.”

While one might imagine that recalls over incidents of foreign matter in food products would be going down, due to more sophisticated technology that can detect it, the opposite seems to be true. In 2022, the FDA reported a 700 percent increase in the number of recalls of foreign matter in food from the previous calendar year. In recent weeks, Trader Joe’s issued several recalls after rocks and insects were found in grocery items.

It’s not the first time in recent history that Nestlé USA has recalled items over foreign matter, either. In October, they issued a voluntary recall of their ready-to-bake Nestlé Toll House Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Fudge Filling. That time, it was due to the “potential presence of white plastic pieces.”