Blue Bell Ice Cream Ex-CEO to Stand Trial Next Week
What Does a Food Safety Incident Cost?
Blue Bell Creameries pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of distributing adulterated ice cream products and paid $17.25 million in criminal penalties for a 2015 Listeria incident and $2.1 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations regarding ice cream products manufactured under unsanitary conditions and sold to federal facilities.
But the ex-CEO, Paul Krause, is still waiting for his trial to start next week in Austin. In 2020 after a five-year investigation, a Texas grand jury charged the former CEO of ice cream manufacturer Blue Bell Creameries L.P. with wire fraud and conspiracy in connection with an alleged scheme to cover up the company’s sales of Listeria-tainted ice cream in 2015.
What do you think? Could this food safety problem have been prevented?
Were there previous incidents or near-misses (precursor incidents) that should have been effectively investigated and corrective actions implemented to prevent this incident and the fines and criminal charges that resulted from it?
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