Blue Bell Hits the Restart Button on Its Operations After Listeria Outbreak

[LiberalElite]

Source: ABC News

After a listeria outbreak that shut down Blue Bell Ice Cream operations and left three consumers dead, the company has announced a reboot.

Starting April 27, Blue Bell will "embark on an intensive cleaning program," the company said, and retrain employees at all four of its ice cream plants for the next week or so. The reboot will involve enhancing existing preventive measures, teaching hundreds of plant employees new cleaning techniques and making design changes to equipment. All ice cream made during that time will not be for sale to consumers.

"We just needed to set a reset button and get it right," Blue Bell spokesman Joe Robertson told ABC News, adding that they have not yet decided when to resume normal ice cream production.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-bell-hits-restart-button-operations-listeria-outbreak/story?id=30555651

[liberal N proud]

1. You gona try it?

I'm not gona try it...

Who going to try it?

[LiberalElite]

2. They're not manufacturing it for sale yet and

I don't eat ice cream anymore anyway.

[underpants]

5. This could be devastating to them

Tylenol made a come back but that was mainly because their wasn't a real alternative at the time of the poisonings.

Food Lion lost a lot of market share after that one report on 20/20 even though it turned out that that report in 1992 was false.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Let's get Mikey to try it!!!!!!

(outing myself as a boomer here)

[Sunlei]

3. retrain employees how to clean/ "embark on an intensive cleaning program," it was the random

test, the second test after the deaths that shut them totally down.

We consumers need the Gov. to send more 'random sample' foods right to the lab from the grocery store shelves.

[In_The_Wind]

4. That's really good news.

I remember a time (back in '95) when Carvel was having problems at a corporate owned ice cream cake making location. The problem was traced back to human error. Machines were being reassembled after cleaning without allowing all of the parts to fully dry.

[gvstn]

7. That is what it sounds like is happening here.

It doesn't look like they are trying to trace anything back to their suppliers. More of an internal cleaning or food handling problem.

[In_The_Wind]

10. Routine testing by Carvel found the problem before anyone became ill.

Before that: each machine in every store was cleaned and reassembled before we turned out the lights.


I do love good ice cream.

[TexasTowelie]

8. Someone was offering to sell pre-scare $50 half-gallons of Blue Bell on eBay.

Of course, nobody knows whether that ice cream was contaminated either.

[sendero]

9. I am perplexed...

.... by all the brouhaha surrounding the closing of the Blue Bell plants. Some folks seem to genuinely think this is really good ice cream. To them I offer only two words:

Haagen Daz

Try some, BB is chopped liver

[Ilsa]

11. BB Summer Berries is about as heavenly

a berried ice cream can get! Yummy! Sure HD and the others have great flavors, too.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. And their yummy new flavor.........

[gvstn]

12. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but

Haagen daz is now owned by Edy's/Dreyer's. Previous new owners of that brand kept the same quality but I think Edy's is changing things.

It seems to have a different mouth-feel than it did before making it a bit closer to plain old Edy's.

It is still my favorite of the supermarket brands because it tends to be less sweet than the others. I think their Butter Pecan is still the best one out their but they have "ruined" their Strawberry. HD strawberry used to be practically vanilla ice cream with whole strawberries. Now it pretty much like everyone else's, a pink mess with little bits of strawberries. (I still buy it every once in a while but never have the desire to go back the next day for some more).

[sendero]

14. You are correct...

... that some flavors are not as good. But the worst Haagen Daz beats the best BB by a country mile. they have a long way to go down to get that mediocre.

[gvstn]

16. We don't have Blue Bell here so I can't say.

The one ice cream I really miss is Starbucks Mocha Almond Fudge. I think it was made by Edy's but I loved that until the last year of production when again they changed it and made it sweeter and added too much fudge and less mocha flavor.

I guess the average ice cream buyer likes sweet ice cream because most brands keep making them sweeter. Ben and Jerry's is way too sweet for my taste. I haven't really liked any of their flavors since Dastardly Mash.

[Gothmog]

15. This is great news