Blue Bell listeria found in random test; employees note unsanitary conditions

During the outbreak, 10 people became sick and three died.

Speaking out against Blue Bell in Brenham isn’t easy.

This plant was linked to a deadly outbreak of listeria.

CBS sat down with former employees, who told them the factory had a number of violations including condensation dripping into the ice cream, dirty equipment and paint chipping from the ceiling directly above an ice cream mixer.

Stopping to clean the ice cream would slow down production, Schultz explained, so workers left it on the floor, where bacteria could grow and flourish.

He used to operate a fruit feeder that would go into the ice cream, and noticed that oil from the fruit feeder would leak right into barrels of ice cream.

In a statement, Blue Bell officials said, “While we do not usually comment on matters involving current or former company employees, the isolated views expressed by two former Blue Bell employees on CBS News do not reflect the experience of the vast majority of our employees, who know we take the cleanliness of our facilities and the quality of our products very seriously”.

For now the flagship plant in Brenham is still closed, and Bland has started a new job just up the road, but he hopes his words spark real change inside Blue Bell. Blue Bell told CBS News that pending litigation prevented them from addressing the report.

Flags flutter in the breeze outside of the Blue Bell Creameries on Thursday, April 23, 2015, in Brenham, TX.

While there is always a risk of contracting a foodborne illness from any product, Doyle says you shouldn’t stress out about eating Blue Bell ice cream once it’s back on the market.

The network’s investigative team has produced a multi-part report detailing conditions inside the Brenham plant, including the first on-camera interviews with production workers in the facility at the time of the recall.

Accounts from Schultz and Bland do line up with what’s been reported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “Blue Bell is going to do anything and everything they can to make sure this doesn’t happen again”.

In the years leading to the outbreak, the state inspected the Brenham factory about every six weeks and the Army, which had a $4.8 million contract with Blue Bell, inspected it four times a year. According to him, procedures inside the plant didn’t change until about two weeks before the recall was announced.

For Davis, the finding really hit home – she actually had Blue Bell products in her freezer that she had handed out at a kid’s birthday party. “A lot of things were over looked and passed on in favor of volume and expansion and I think that’s the part that people aren’t seeing”.

“We are committed to ensuring that we are producing a safe product through our enhanced manufacturing procedures, including increased focus on sanitation and cleaning, ongoing evaluation from independent microbiologists, voluntary agreements with our state regulators, and finally, a test and hold procedure”.

People in Brenham are eager for their plant to reopen.