(Neither the FDA nor state regulators insisted on disclosure, reasoning that the only two products then known to contain listeria were single-serving items. Three days later the company began retrieving 10 different products made on the same factory line-without any public announcement that it had sold a tainted product. Experts believe there are many more illnesses where the connection will never get made.īlue Bell executives first learned about the listeria finding in South Carolina on Feb. Further testing would link the company to 10 listeriosis cases dating back to 2010. Investigators later confirmed that four drank milkshakes made with Blue Bell ice cream. Using a nationwide bacterial registry, the CDC matched the Blue Bell bug to listeria strains blamed for an unsolved 2014 outbreak at a Wichita hospital: Five patients, already hospitalized with serious illnesses, had been infected three died. Listeriosis is the third-leading cause of food-borne death in the U.S.) ( Listeria monocytogenes is the bacteria that causes listeriosis, blamed for 1,600 serious infections a year, including 260 fatalities. 28, when tests by South Carolina state inspectors revealed Listeria monocytogenes in two products made in Blue Bell’s flagship Brenham plant. Blue Bell promoted its products as coming from “the Little Creamery in Brenham,” even as production expanded to four factories and annual sales, according to Euromonitor International, grew to some $880 million. “We eat all we can, and sell the rest,” went one longtime slogan. “If it’s there and you don’t, it’s pretty clear you’ve failed to do your duty to your customers.”īlue Bell is beloved in the South-in part because it has masterfully marketed itself as a small-town family business whose ice cream is a labor of love. 31.) “If you have listeria persisting in a plant, one of the mandates is to root it out,” says Craig Hedberg, a food-safety expert with the University of Minnesota’s school of public health.

(The company resumed limited sales on Aug. It’s the opposite of Johnson & Johnson’s actions in the 1982 Tylenol-tampering episode, when the brand famously saved its reputation by swiftly recalling every bottle of the medication.Ĭiting pending litigation, Blue Bell declined requests for interviews.

Experts say Blue Bell’s responses this year were an example of “recall creep.” That occurs when executives hope that taking limited action-as the company did five times when informed of findings of listeria-will solve the problem and minimize commercial damage, only to find themselves forced to expand the recall repeatedly. The episode reveals not only how difficult it is to trace the source of food-borne illness but also what happens when a company is slow to tackle the causes-and doesn’t come clean with its customers.

Blue bell ice cream recall 2016