Dive Brief:
- The Texas Department of State Health Services fined Blue Bell $850,000 last week for a 2015listeria contaminationthat sickened 10 people in four states and was linked to three deaths.
- However, Blue Bell may only pay a portion of that fine. If the company pays an initial $175,000 within 30 days, it can avoid paying the rest by following new state-issuedfood safeguards and reporting requirements for 18 months.
- Blue Bell must notify Texasof any possibly positive test results for listeria found on surfaces that contact food, instead of only the food itself. But the agreement could allow Blue Bell to only report confirmed positive test results in the future.
Dive Insight:
Blue Bell has been working with state health regulators in Texas, but also inAlabamaandOklahoma, wherethe creameries that the company shut downdue to thefull product recalllast year are located. This new fine and requirements only impacts Blue Bell's Brenham, TX, plant because the company had already come to agreements with regulators in the other two states to safely resume production there.
But even having settled with the three states' health regulators andresumed productionand销售的产品, Blue Bell's fight may not be over yet. In December,the Justice Department launched an investigationinto Blue Bell and the listeria outbreak to determine what exactly company executives knew about the listeria contamination and unsanitary conditions at company plants, when they knew about it, and what they did in response. DOJ hasn't pressed charges against Blue Bell executives, but it hasn't closed its investigation either.
Blue Bell also faces a civil suit from a consumer who claims he became severely ill after consuming a listeria-contaminated Blue Bell product.
So far, Blue Bell's punishment may not seem severe relative to other cases, though the company still awaits the DOJ's final verdict. In similar cases, companies havepaid fines as high as $11.2 millionplusrestitution for hundreds of victims. Executives accused ofprior knowledge of pathogen contaminationormislabeling of their food productshave received prison sentences ranging froma few monthstonearly three decades.
