Posts Tagged ‘ice cream’

Blue Bell Recalls ALL Products

Monday, April 20th, 2015

“Brenham-based Blue Bell Creameries is pulling all of its products from the shelves after more ice cream samples tested positive for a life-threatening bacterial infection.”

The voluntary decision, announced Monday, is the latest and most sweeping development to plague the Texas business icon since a recall last month, the first in the company’s 108-year history.

It came after an “enhanced sampling program” that found half-gallon containers of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream produced on March 17 and March 27 contained the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, company officials said.

Plus this:

“The latest tests mean the company had several positive tests for Listeria in different plants.”

Pretty hard to fathom a wide-spread outbreak in multiple plants. The only explanations I can think of:

  • A hardy new strain of Listeria is running wild in Texas cow herds
  • A mutant Listeria has evolved to survive pasteurization (a pretty scary thought)
  • There’s a problem somewhere in their additive supply chain
  • Sabotage/Eco-terrorism (PETA hates dairies).
  • Anyway, if you have any Blue Bell in your freezer, it’s probably safest to throw it out…

    Blue Bell Ice Cream Recall Notice

    Saturday, April 4th, 2015

    Well, this sucks if you were planning to buy or eat any Blue Bell ice cream today:

    Blue Bell Ice Cream has voluntarily suspended operations at an Oklahoma production facility that officials had previously connected to a foodborne illness linked to the deaths of three people, the company announced Friday.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people throw away any Blue Bell products made at the company’s plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, even if some has been eaten without becoming sick.

    Products made at the facility will have the letters “O,” “P,” “Q,” “R,” “S,” or “T” following the “code date” printed on the bottom of the package, according to the CDC.

    “We are taking this step out of an abundance of caution to ensure that we are doing everything possible to provide our consumers with safe products and to preserve the trust we have built with them and their families for more than a century,” the company said in a statement.

    Last month, the company and health officials said a 3-ounce cup of ice cream contaminated with listeriosis was traced to a plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The ice cream product — cups of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla — is not sold in retail locations and is shipped in bulk to “institutional accounts” such as hospitals in 23 states that comprise less than 5 percent of the company’s sales.

    Ten products recalled earlier in March were from a production line at a plant in Brenham, Texas, the company’s headquarters.

    The recall, the first in the company’s 108-year history, began when five patients at Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, Kansas, became ill with listeriosis while hospitalized at some point from December 2013 to January 2015. Officials determined at least four drank milkshakes that contained Blue Bell ice cream. Three of the patients later died.

    I hear that HEB has pulled all Blue Bell off their shelves.

    Check those labels…