Food safety regulations nationwide need to be tightened, says the Nevada family that lost a loved one after she was poisoned by raw cookie dough, The Daily News reported on Friday.
Ricky Simpson's mother died after a horrific battle with E.coli after eating "a couple bites" of uncooked cookie dough at home in Las Vegas in 2009. He testified in front of a panel of FDA representatives in Maryland on Thursday.
"She was cuddled up on the ground and we rushed her to the hospital ... we found out that they had to do surgery right away," he said, referring to how his father found his mother, Linda Rivera, after she suddenly fell ill.
Simpson added that his mother suffered liver and kidney failure, her heart stopped three times and they had to put her on adrenaline to get it pumping again. The battle stretched on for several years.
Rivera, 58, had contracted the deadly E.Coli strain called E. Coli O157:H7 that was discovered in Nestle Toll House cookies in 2009, leading to a massive recall after Rivera filed a lawsuit before her death.
Even after the bacterium was removed from her body, side effects landed her in the hospital and operating table countless more times until she died last year, according to Simpson.
"It was fight after fight after fight after surgery after surgery after fight," Simpson said.
Before she died, Rivera decided he was going to think of ways he could warn others about food safety.
"We'd sit down at the table and talk like, 'what if we could prevent just one person from going through this?'" Simpson said. "It was almost like a hope ... as we talked about it more and more it became ... a dream of ours to prevent others from going through this."
Rivera's lawsuit against Nestle is ongoing. The case was brought back into the public eye with Simpson's testimony in front of the FDA, according to the Inquisitr.
