It's never a good idea to eat raw cookie dough.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Toss your cookies, says the U.s. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has asked Nestlé USA to recall its Nestlé Toll House brand refrigerated cookie dough products, including cookie-dough tubes, tubs, and Ultimates Cookie Dough Bars, because of potential E. coli contamination.

THE DETAILS: The recall was triggered by a number of reports to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), dating back to March of this year, from people suffering from illness and hospitalizations that the CDC suspects were linked to raw cookie dough products. In total, only 66 people have been sickened in 28 states, 25 of them hospitalized. There haven’t been any reported deaths, but 7 people have contracted Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, a severe kidney infection that destroys red blood cells and that occurs after E. coli exposure.

Nestlé Toll House products haven’t been directly implicated in these infections, but the brand is voluntarily recalling the products “out of an abundance of caution,” according to a press release from Nestlé. The raw eggs used in the cookie dough could be a possible source of contamination, although Nestlé claims to pasteurize the eggs used in raw dough to eliminate any pathogens. However, as other E. coli product recalls have revealed, other non-egg ingredients are just as likely to harbor bacteria.

WHAT IT MEANS: It’s never a good idea to eat raw cookie dough, but many people with kids find that it can be impossible to keep them from doing so. However, young children are most vulnerable to E. coli infections, so it’s important to get these products out of your home for the time being. Don’t assume that baking the raw cookie dough will kill the bacteria either. U.S. Department of Agriculure studies have found that E. coli can develop heat tolerance when food is slowly heated to kill pathogens, the way that many minimally processed refrigerated foods are. If, for instance, eggs are heated during a pasteurization process to a temperature that’s not high enough to kill the bacteria entirely, the surviving bacteria grow stronger and are able to survive longer when you cook it, even if you’re cooking the food at temperatures that would normally kill the bugs.

For a complete list of recalled products, visit www.verybestbaking.com. Good news, for lovers of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream: Neither the FDA nor Nestlé feel it’s necessary to recall Dreyer's and Edy's ice cream products with Nestlé Toll House cookie dough ingredients.