Issue #51 | Listeria cover-up | Cleaning breakthrough | Results from our reader survey
2022-08-15
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Blue Bell Creameries: Dead consumers, Cover-ups and Food Safety Failings
Reader Survey Results
A Breakthrough in Cleaning Low-Moisture Environments
News and Resources Roundup (Now Bigger and Better!)
Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues
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Hi there!
Welcome to a new issue of The Rotten Apple, which now has more food safety and food fraud news and resources… expertly curated and free from fluff and filler, as always.
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In this issue, the horrible saga of Blue Bell Creameries Listeria scandal: food fraud, food safety failings, and dead consumers…. This week the ex-CEO is facing court for his alleged role in a conspiracy to cover up pathogen testing results.
Also this week, a possible breakthrough in Salmonella control in low-moisture environments (could this new cleaning method have prevented the huge Salmonella in chocolate and Salmonella in peanut butter outbreaks that occurred this year?)
Our food safety news and resources content has been boosted, big-time. You will now get more news in every issue. Don’t worry, I am still filtering out low-value, self-promotional media releases, to keep it laser-focused and to save you time. Access the news by clicking through from the in-line preview in this email.
As always, this issue ends with food fraud news, which includes both incidents and notifications about emerging issues, for paying subscribers.
Have a fabulous week.
Karen
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Analysis
Blue Bell Creameries: Dead consumers, Cover-ups and Food Safety Failings, ex-CEO faces court
Food fraud takes many forms. When a food company makes deceptive claims about its products to gain an economic advantage, that is food fraud. The American company Blue Bell Creameries created a deadly food fraud incident in 2015. Now its former CEO is facing a grand jury and potential jail time over his role in the affair.
At a glance:
Blue Bell and its former CEO have been accused of covering up food safety problems.
Two or three people died and at least ten more were sickened by dangerous bacteria after eating Blue Bell ice cream.
After authorities stepped in, the company had to shut down production, lay off a third of its workforce and risked liquidation.
The former CEO is facing a grand jury on fraud charges and, if found guilty, could be jailed.
The company has already paid fines and penalties totalling more than $19 million.
Blue Bell Creameries is one of America's largest ice cream manufacturers. Early in 2015, state authorities notified Blue Bell that some of its products contained a dangerous bacterium: Listeria monocytogenes, after they discovered the contamination during routine testing.
Listeria isn't your average run-of-the-mill food poisoning bacterium; it has a high mortality rate in vulnerable populations, affects pregnant mothers and older people severely, and causes miscarriages, stillbirths and deaths. The other scary thing about Listeria is that it survives - even thrives - in low temperatures. Like in ice cream.
For an ice cream company, finding Listeria in your product is a terrible thing. Your consumers are in danger and should be protected at all costs. All the affected product should be immediately recalled from the marketplace, customers should be informed of the problems, consumers should be told to discard the food, more testing should be done to see how many other products are affected and manufacturing should be halted until the source of the contamination has been found and eliminated. And yet, that is not what happened when Blue Bell found out there was Listeria in its products.
In February 2015, Blue Bell knew there was Listeria in its products. Yet it did not tell its customers. Instead, it's alleged that Blue Bell's CEO at the time, Paul Kruse, chose to cover up the Listeria problem.
News stories published in 2020, when the company was investigated and fined, reported that Kruse allegedly directed that the Listeria testing program be discontinued. He did not immediately initiate a recall, despite supposedly telling authorities that one was underway. He put consumers at risk.
Two or three people died and at least 10 became ill from the Blue Bell outbreak. Paul Kruse was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is appearing before a grand jury in Texas. If found guilty he could be jailed.
A recall did eventually get underway, in April 2015. Consumers were alerted, the company had to shut down production, resulting in mass layoffs and causing liquidity problems.
The company has already pleaded guilty to distributing adulterated food products. It was sentenced to pay criminal penalties of $17.25 million. Separate civil claims have been paid out by Blue Bell after shareholders and customers, including the American military, alleged that the ice cream was manufactured in unsanitary conditions and that management paid little regard to food safety 'red flags'. The total monies paid in fines, forfeits and civil settlements amount to $19.35 million, the second largest amount paid for a food safety matter in the USA.
“Holding top executives personally accountable when their products poison their customers sends a powerful message about food safety.” Reuters coverage of the trial
Often, when people talk about food fraud, they focus on adulteration, like 'fake' honey made from sugar water. But food fraud takes many forms. In the case of the deadly Blue Bell listeriosis outbreak, it can come at a high cost to the perpetrators and an even higher cost to consumers.
Sources include:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1329726/download
Reader Survey Results
Thanks again to those who participated in the reader survey last week. Here’s a snapshot of our community and feedback on this newsletter.
Who we are
Most us work in the food industry (77%), or support services for the food industry (11%), but quite a few readers do not work in the food or related industries at all (12%).
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News coverage and “knowledge” boost topics are the most popular.
“your food fraud / food safety summary are brilliant”
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The Rotten Apple is entertaining 27%
“I like the focus on food fraud, [in mainstream food industry media] there are usually only reports of incidents- and wide and varied resourced which I do not have the time to go through. I also like the unique insight on these incidents”
What do paying subscribers say?
Paying subscribers say they pay because
“I get a lot of value out of the content” (52%)
“I want access to the food fraud incident reports and horizon scanning” (48%)
Live events
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What are our other favourite newsletters/email/groups/forums for work?
Digital industry magazines, the IFSQN forum and newsletters from standards owners like SQF, NSF, AIB were the most common responses.
What is the mainstream food industry media not doing well?
Respondents said mainstream industry media is terrible at covering international and global issues (couldn’t agree more!), the positives of our industry, the “whys” of recalls, food defence and food fraud issues - including business-to-business frauds - and that other media does not provide not enough expert insight/analysis, especially from a global perspective. The Rotten Apple is here to fill those gaps.
What do you want more of?
Most survey respondents were happy with this newsletter just as it is (yay! 😃). Other respondents want… more content from Middle East, Africa and China, food fraud mitigation activities, food testing technologies, cybersecurity threats in food manufacturing, root causes for outbreaks, and regulation updates. Stay tuned!
Cleaning in Low Moisture Environments - a Breakthrough?
I usually don’t waste your time by sharing new technologies that are not yet commercially available - after all, what’s the point of reading about a new technology that you cannot actually get your hands on - but this could be hugely helpful, and could perhaps be used in a DIY (do it yourself) implementation.
Low-water and no-water food facilities face big challenges with cleaning and sanitising. These facilities include places that manufacture or handle foods that are not compatible with water like powdered foods, deep-fried snackfoods, chocolate and peanut butter.
Even a small amount of residual water can cause headaches for these types of foods, which makes water-based cleaning more expensive and time-consuming. In addition, production lines that process high-fat, low-moisture foods like peanut butter are very difficult to clean using water-based cleaning methods.
Unfortunately, Salmonella control usually requires traditional water-based cleaning/sanitising regimes. And, as you might remember, Salmonella has been causing headaches for makers of low-moisture foods like peanut butter and chocolate this year.
New peer-reviewed research might have the answer. The researchers tried adding edible organic acids like acetic acid (the main component of vinegar) to edible oils to see if the oils could then be used to successfully sanitise a stainless steel surface. When combined with heat, the acidified oils performed better than oil alone and a reduction in Salmonella of greater than 4 log (99.99%) was achieved for one of the acid/oil combinations they tested.
Takeaway
If this new idea is proven to be commercially useful, cleaning and sanitising with oil instead of with water could help prevent future Salmonella outbreaks in low-moisture foods.
The research paper 🍏 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.00935-22 🍏
Read about Salmonella in peanut butter (Issue #41) and Salmonella in chocolate (Issue #45)
News and Resources
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What you missed last week
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus an 🎧 awesome audio version 🎧 (so you can catch up while on the go)
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