After a deadly Listeria outbreak triggered a shutdown of its ice cream manufacturing facilities, Blue Bell Creameries is restarting production on a limited basis. During a test period, production will resume at the company’s plant in Sylacauga, Ala. where changes to the facility, the process and employee training have been put in place. A firm date … Read more
Three months have passed since Via Christi St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kansas, stopped serving all types of Blue Bell ice cream at the direction of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). The step coincided with a major breakthrough in a festering outbreak of listeriosis that Kansas tied to Blue Bell creameries in … Read more
The nation’s first lawsuit filed in the Blue Bell ice cream Listeria outbreak has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin, Texas. The case centers on the near-fatal illness in Houston suffered by the associate executive director of a 462-apartment continuing care retirement community who regularly ate the type of Blue … Read more
Alabama and Blue Bell Creameries have reached an agreement on rules that will surround the reopening of the company’s ice cream plant in the state. Operations in Sylacauga, Alabama, were interupted April 20 when the company recalled all of its products while investigators tried to pinpoint the causes linking Blue Bell ice cream with a … Read more
The former Texas resident who is the first person to sue Blue Bell ice cream in connection with a deadly Listeria outbreak endured well over a year of intensive neurological treatment, therapy and rehabilitation, according to the formal complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas. The plaintiff, 32-year-old D. Philip Shockley, fell … Read more
D. Philip Shockley was in such pain and physical distress that he collapsed inside his Houston area apartment, where he was later found unconscious by a co-worker who was concerned about his unexplained absence from work. The 32-year-old retirement center director had gone to the emergency room for care, but had been sent home with … Read more
The nation’s first Blue Bell ice cream Listeria lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Texas includes details of similarity between a retirement home director in Houston who nearly died of Listeria meningitis and a cluster of five people in Wichita who were striken by listeriosis after eating Blue Bell ice cream while at Via … Read more
Listeria patients who were treated at Via Christi St. Francis Hospital in Wichita as part of the Blue Bell ice cream outbreak, and hospital officials themselves, may be interested to hear that Blue Bell will be prohibited from distributing future products until sampling tests indicate that the ice cream is safe. The so-called “test-and-hold” method … Read more
The Listeria monocytogenes outbreak linked to Blue Bell ice cream has sickened 10 people and killed three of those patients. The FDA has issued a report on each of Blue Bell’s facilities after extensive inspections and investigations. We told you about the Brenham, Texas facility inspection report last week. Now here are details on the … Read more
The FDA has released three inspection reports of the Blue Bell ice cream facilities: one in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, one in Brenham, Texas, and the third in Sylacauga, Alabama. We thought it would be a good idea to cover each inspection report, since they highlight problems at the company that may have led to the … Read more