The Little Creamery in Prison
I used to be an enormous fan of Blue Bell Ice Cream. Until I found out that they knew they were likely to kill me and did nothing to correct it.
So, we are going to get to see a Texas corporation be held liable for depraved indifference and generally mean behavior.
Blue Bell Creameries is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for its handling of the ice cream contamination linked to 10 reported cases of listeriosis, a U.S. official has confirmed to CNN. Three of those believed to be sickened by Blue Bell frozen treats died.
Prosecutors are examining whether company executives committed wrongdoing in their handling of the outbreak.
The Little Creamery in Brenham might well become The Little Creamery in Prison.
I have to tell you that there were people in Texas with yard signs saying they supported Blue Bell. Of course, these are the same people who think Obama is trying to invade Texas and that being covered in tin foil ain’t just for turkeys anymore.
There was even one group trying to raise money to help Blue Bell clean up their filthy factories.
Listen. They tried to kill you. They might as well been drunk holding a pistol to your head. They knew their ice cream would probably kill you but they took your money and gave you a scoop of live germs.
It’s ice cream with nice commercials that don’t include a slogan like, “It’s just like Russian Roulette except with cones.”
Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.
So sad. Because they really did make the best ice cream in the world.
1So agree with you. There is absolutely no excuse for filthy factories. I’ve been to many, many candy, snack and ice cream factories. Most take pride in their cleanliness and health and safety concerns and understand that people’s lives can depend on how well they adhere to their standards and policies. I won’t be eating Blue Bell again either. Pathetic that they just couldn’t be bothered to be truly proud of their product.
2“… that being covered in tin foil ain’t just for turkeys anymore.”
Ha! Ain’t it the truth. Ain’t it the truth!
3Even though they’ve kinda sold out, I’m still going with Ben & Jerry. And Breyers, because if you check the labels I think they still sell ice cream with about five ingredients that we all know what they are, none of which seem to be lethal. Not sure Blue Bell is sold in Maryland.
I can’t always follow the advice of the food guy who said that if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize the ingredients, don’t eat it. And don’t eat cereal that makes the milk change color. (I figure if some of the cinnamon washes off it’s still okay, but I do like Shredded Wheat which has one ingredient: wheat.) …I just made up the market list and I think I’d better go eat lunch and stop babbling about food, but JJ started it.
Yes, food makers who kill people should probably go to jail. Definitely if they knew they were selling dirty food and figured nobody would notice.
4“I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them.”
5Ralph, you are so right!!
6The Kruze family let these conditions go unchecked for years. They lost my trust and won’t get it back.
7Well, the whistleblower and the documentary totally turned me off of Blue Bell. Ice cream slop all over the floor, the machinery and so forth and the higher ups knew and did nothing about it until they got caught! Blue Bell,meet Lady Karma!
8Blue Bell has second amendment rights to conceal deadly weapons from public scrutiny. dumbass dubya and buddies went out of their way to make the USDA’s job of food inspection nearly useless. Resultant deaths and injuries were the surest sign that dubya’s deregulating everything was working for the korporate masses,not we-the people.
9Eat Tillamook Ice Cream. It tastes better, and the only hazard is weight gain.
10Rhea- I know this is way past due… but I got a 3 gallon container of Blue Bell ice cream from the Outback in Perry Hall on ebenzer rd for 30 bucks yesterday…. I Had a “funnel cake ice cream party” last night with my friends and wanted only the best… They cant sell any other quantities… but i fit in in my freezer by moving the shelves and emptying it out… It was so worth it 🙂
Another person from this site confirmed “Outback” stores carry Blue Bell ice cream-only in three gallon containers. Idon’t have a clue what Outback is.
11ps I am not the person in the story as I live and breathe in iowa.
12Outback is Outback Steakhouse. I looked it up and it is on Ebenezer Road in Perry Hall,Md.
13I wish this kind of corporate greed and disregard of human life was an aberation. Wanna bet those execs are the pro-life types? I guess since they were endangering the lives of non-fetuses it doesn’t count against them.
14Debbo wants to have a sledding party. All in favor meet me at Debbo’s. Bring your own sleds and boubon keg-toting Saint Barnyards. 🙂
15@epo: funnel cake AND ice cream? Dang. Perry Hall’s about an hour from Greenbelt, so even if I wanted Blue Bell there wouldn’t be much still frozen by the time I got it home. And I don’t think I want to eat 3 gallons in the car, even without the Listeria.
16@epo: What are you sledding on? There’s no snow in Maryland. But if I drink enough bourbon I won’t care and can sled on dead leaves or a bare driveway.
17Deadly germs – it’s not just Chipotle any more.
18Back when I lived in TX for a few years, a long time ago, one of my friends and I would buy the entire town’s stock of Blue Bell vanilla bean whenever it went on sale. Yikes. I guess I’m lucky to be alive – playing vanilla bean roulette for 6 years!
Even better, though – Marianne’s in Santa Cruz, CA. Started going there as a little kid, a very long time ago indeed, and just stopped by Monday and found the burgundy cherry still is the best ever. And the place is spotlessly clean.
Days when we can’t make it 3 hours to Santa Cruz, we second the recommendation from Charles up-thread of Tillamook.
I will be shocked – with delight – if any of the murderous managerial maggot-infested mopes at Blue Bell actually wind up with anything more than a dainty hand-slap from what passes for regulators in Abbott-istan.
19New Blue Bell flavor: Rocky Rodent.
20@LynnN To go with their current favorite: Luscious Listeria
21Blue Bell taking the ice out of ice cream, best served at an internal temperature above 450 degrees.
22Rhea-here in iowa we have about 10 inches of snow on the ground. Where Debbo is might be more or less. Come on up and we can take the hood off your car. They make decent toboggans and can hold several smaller people.
You may have to settle for Blue Bunny ice cream. The self proclaimed Ice Cream Capital of the World(LeMars Iowa) is about foty miles away. Blue Bunny headquarters. I’m partial to the Blue Bunny Vanilla,especially in single serve cups.
23Best ice cream ever is found at land grant agriculture colleges that have their own dairy herds and make their own ice cream. Apparently eating in college cafeterias has an inspirational effect on producing great ice cream.
BTW Stanford rolled over Iowa yesterday. Take that Ivanakuturnutzov and Snarly Panderina!
24e platypus onion, you kids need to join Jane and I to play in the snow. 10″ is what the snacilbupeR plow driver leaves at the end of our road, when it hasn’t snowed. We’ve been taking a much needed hammering this year. Not up to the Donner Party standards, but decent accumulations.
25FYI, Listeriosis attacks those with weak immune systems: the elderly, the young, those with chronic illnesses, cancer, etc., and pregnant women. Learned this when my dad contracted it in 2011 by eating contaminated cantaloupe; that was and is the deadliest foodborne outbreak in the US. Dad survived, spent two months in hospitals and care facilities before being able to go home, but never regained the level of health he’d had before, He was in and out of the hospital several times and died in the summer of 2013. The farmers who ran the storage facility claimed not to have known and used an independent food safety testing company which gave the farm a 96 out of 100 just prior to the outbreak, which was completely bogus as the FDA discovered when they came in and found the bacteria everywhere. At an FDA hearing I heard testimony by others who’d been infected with E coli – one young woman of 15 had almost died after eating contaminated spinach at age 9 and now has diabetes and faces a kidney transplant before she is 30. Food producers need to be held accountable.
26I quit eating Blue Bell years ago and never going back. Corporate greed at its worst and at the expense of the customer. Deplorable.
27I have found Walmart’s Great Value All Natural Vanilla Bean ice cream to be quite good with only 7 ingredients in it.
28@Paul
29Billions of listeria agree with you!
Good for the DOJ for going after a TX corporation for depraved indifference and generally mean behavior.
Real progress would be if the state of TX went after a TX corporation for depraved indifference and generally mean behavior.
I more wish Texans who don’t read JJ’s blog were advocating for that.
30PKM-my beloved Hawkeyes were given the wrong kickoff time and waited until the 2nd half to appear to look alive. I’m hurt,but it isn’t like I wasn’t expecting this result. Why I never bet on my Hawkeyes. Now I have to live out my remaining years with another blowout loss in another Rose Bowl. If the game had lasted a couple of extra weeks,my Hawks might well have won. Stanford would have been too tired to play anymore.
31Texas blog commenters remember-thanks to dumbass dubya and wingnuts,Blue Bell will have a hometown trial and hometown jury pool to work with. Any liability and damage awards will be severely limited by wingnut laws.
32There are about 6″ of snow on the ground in my neighborhood and a nice little sledding hill just a few blocks away.
The best ice cream, as PKM said, is at land grant universities. The agricultural part of the University of MN is about 7 miles away from the sledding hill.
C’mon to MN! We’ll go sledding with our Saint Barnyards (good one epo) and eat the best ice cream ever! Bourbon floats anyone?
33Some company president got 28 years in the slammer a few years ago for selling peanut butter that he knew damn well was contaminated with salmonella, but that was in Georgia.
34BTW, your Saint Barnyards can’t come in the house. They drool like aging teabaggers lusting for a return of their old favorites Barry Goldwater and Jim Crow.
35I quit eating Blue Bell when they started using HFCS.
For a REAL taste treat, try Julie’s Organic Blackberry Ice Cream.
36My housemate, who used to only eat vanilla ice cream, now only eats the Blackberry.
Debbo-there used to be a small consolidated iowa school district called Breda-St Bernard with the Bernard part pronounced burn urd. Course I don’t recall anyone who ever pronounced it properly. It was either present or past tense.
37A lot of people on the ice cream business learn how to do it well by taking the short course taught by the people who run the Berkey Creamery at the Pennsylyucky Snake Yewniversity. Some people think it’s more important than football. Their Death by Chocolate is, as they say “to die for”. They will ship product packed in dry ice. Give it a try.
38http://www.cbsnews.com/news/11-totally-disgusting-things-the-fda-allows-in-your-food/
39Blue Bell was my favorite guilty pleasure. And at first, I couldn’t wait until they were back in business. Then I found out they’d known all along and now it’s Sayonara Forever Blue Bell.
40That’s American CEO’s for you, thinking short term instead of long term. Sure, it may have cost a lot to correct the problems in the first place but now it is likely to cost them the whole damn business. How cost saving is that? It’s almost always cheaper to do the right thing, besides simply being the right thing to do. All that “do unto others” Jesus-y stuff.
I’m fortunate to live about 20 minutes from one of the best Amish dairies in NC. They have wonderful grass fed milk and ice cream. It’s very like what my grandmother and mom used to make. Yum!
41I love home made ice cream,but the stuff you get at dairies is really good. I guess it depends on personal tastes. I personally don’t taste good,but I know good ice cream when I eat it. Bourbon floats? Must be an acquired taste.
42Edy’s caramel with a drizzle of Baily’s Irish Creme. Beats bourbon!
43Edy’s vanilla bean with warm mincemeat. I haven’t eaten BlueBell since I left Texas 17 years ago and now wouldn’t eat it even if it appeared here in NW “Pennsylhio.”
44BlueBell isn’t the best ice cream in the world, or even very good ice cream. I haven’t bought any in several years, because of the politics and general dirt-bagginess of the family that owns it. I switched to Ben & Jerry’s, and haven’t looked back. Much less cold air mixed into it. When BlueBell melts, it foams from all the air. And you’re paying for that air, which takes up a lot of the space in the container.
45I stopped with the Blue Bell when they gave a bunch of money to Romney. What could I expect from a bunch of Aggies?
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why anybody would spend a dime on that product after the Chronicle ran the stories that they had known about it for years.
Kinda like Shipley family declaring they had no idea their supervisor was behaving so badly that the undocumented he hired had to file complaints with the EEOC. They won, too. Shipley had to forfeit over a million in houses they provided the workers.
46Nothing works like a boycott when the captains of industry are arrogant and ignorant.