Did you read the package?

This week, CNN and ABC news (and the others, too, I presume) reported on an outbreak of E-Coli bacteria attributed to Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough.

The cookies themselves did not appear to cause any problems, particularly important since E-Coli bacteria are killed off at high temperatures. The cookie dough in question was consumed raw, though, so many of those who ate it this way became ill.

Several things come to mind here. First, either bake real cookies or buy them in a package. Don't pretend to be all Betty Crocker if your heart isn't in it. Save it for the open house when your property is on the market.

Second, if you are in such a dang-blasted hurry to consume baked goods that not only do you buy pre-made dough, but you buy the kind that is pre-sliced and laid out in a little tray, you do not deserve to own an oven, not even the EasyBake kind. Find something suitable for the microwave.

Next...Home Ec class. How clearly I remember my junior high home economics teacher lecturing us week after week about not eating things like meat and eggs before they were cooked. She told us we could become gravely ill, or at the very least, shit our brains out for days. Enough said.

The good folks at Nestle heard that lecture, too, and they took it to heart. More relevant, their lawyers heard the lecture and realized there would always be those who would whine, "But I was absent that day--I had no idea! Nobody told me!" Those people would then go on to chomp on blobs of uncooked, pre-fab dough, and upon falling ill would blame it all on the Nestle Corporation.

As if it were coming directly from a script, one of the first ersatz bakers to fall ill immediately lawyered up and is suing Nestle for her deeply traumatic two-day bout of diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Apparently, she missed the clearly printed language on the side of the package warning in no ambiguous words that it is a health risk to consume raw cookie dough or any other food containing uncooked eggs.

You read the warning, you embarked on the behavior anyway, and this is Nestle's fault because...?

Here's what I think should happen. I think that Nestle should sue everyone who ate raw, pre-packaged cookie dough and then spoke to the press (or a lawyer) about it. Forget torte law, chocolate chip cookie laws are different: Nestle has a good case for consumer negligence and defamation, not to mention a dope slap upside the head for consumers' lack of common sense.