BUSINESS BRIEFING / FOOD SAFETY

Inspection reports from a Nestle USA cookie dough factory show the company refused several times in the last five years to give Food and Drug Administration inspectors complaint logs, pest-control records and other information.

The records were made public after Nestle’s Toll House refrigerated, prepackaged cookie dough was discovered to be the likely culprit in an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 69 people in 29 states, according to the latest estimates.

Nestle voluntarily recalled all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products made at the Danville, Va., factory last week after the FDA told Nestle it suspected consumers might have been exposed to E. coli after eating the dough raw.