Brenham-based Blue Bell Creameries agreed to pay $19.35 million after pleading guilty Friday to shipping contaminated products in a 2015 listeria outbreak, officials said.
In addition, Paul Kruse, who served as the company’s president and CEO, has been charged with seven felony charges over the deadly contamination.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in a plea agreement filed in federal court in Austin, Blue Bell pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of distributing adulterated ice cream products and will pay a criminal fine and forfeiture amount totaling $17.25 million. Blue Bell also agreed to pay an additional $2.1 million to resolve civil False Claims Act allegations. The payments constitute the second largest-ever amount paid in resolution of a food safety matter.
“American consumers rely on food manufacturers to take necessary steps to provide products that are safe to eat,” said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. “The Department of Justice will take appropriate action where food manufacturers ignore poor factory conditions or fail to abide by required recall procedures when problems are discovered.”
In March 2015, tests conducted by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked the strain of listeria in one of the Blue Bell ice cream products to a strain that sickened five patients at a Kansas hospital with listeriosis, the severe illness caused by ingestion of listeria-contaminated food. The FDA, CDC and Blue Bell all issued public recall notifications on March 13, 2015. Subsequent tests confirmed listeria contamination in a product made at another Blue Bell facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, which led to a second recall announcement on March 23, 2015.
According to the plea agreement, FDA inspections in March and April 2015 revealed sanitation issues at the Brenham and Broken Arrow facilities, including problems with the hot water supply needed to properly clean equipment and deteriorating factory conditions that could lead to unsanitary circumstances. Blue Bell temporarily closed all of its plants in late April 2015 to clean and update the facilities. Since reopening its facilities in late 2015, Blue Bell has taken significant steps to enhance sanitation processes and enact a program to test products for listeria prior to shipment.
According to the allegations filed against Kruse, he is accused of orchestrating a scheme to deceive certain Blue Bell customers after he learned that products from the company’s Texas factory tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. According to an indictment, Kruse directed another Blue Bell quality employee to destroy hard copy and electronic records of two presumptive positive product test results. Blue Bell then shipped the products that tested positive without further testing, the indictment states.
Kruse is charged with one count of conspiracy and six counts of wire fraud or attempted wire fraud.
Kruse specifically is accused of directing other Blue Bell employees to remove potentially contaminated products from store freezers without notifying retailers or consumers about the real reason for the withdrawal. He is also alleged to have directed employees to tell customers who asked why products were removed that there had been an unspecified issue with a manufacturing machine instead of that samples of the products had tested positive for listeria.
The civil False Claims Act settlement with the company resolves allegations that Blue Bell shipped ice cream products manufactured in unsanitary conditions to facilities, and later failed to abide by recall procedures when its employees removed products from distributors’ freezers without properly disclosing details about the potentially contaminated ice cream to the appropriate federal officials.
“Today we are a new, different and better Blue Bell,” the company said in a statement released Friday. “Our agreement with the government involves events that took place five years ago before we shut down and revamped our production facilities and procedures. Since resuming production in the summer of 2015, we test our ice cream and deliver it to stores only after independent tests confirm it is safe.
“We learned hard lessons and turned them into determination to make the safest, most delicious ice cream available,” the statement continues. “We believe we are a leader in ice cream safety, with upgraded production facilities, training, safety procedures, and environmental and product testing programs. We have worked closely with federal and state regulators as we implemented comprehensive food safety measures. We brought in independent food safety experts and consultants to ensure transparency and accountability. Food safety is our highest priority, and we know we must continue to be vigilant every day.”
Ordered to pay 19.35m to whom?
WHO was the victim and WHY is someone else getting paid the feast while the victim is left the crumbs?
Because WE have a joo-dicial system, and NOT a common law system for the everyman.
” WE have a joo-dicial system” Perfectly true Martist.