Public health officials are allowing Blue Bell to resume the production and sale of ice cream manufactured at its Alabama plant. Its ice cream was linked to 10 listeria illnesses in four states, including three deaths in Kansas.
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Jim McVay, director of health promotion and chronic disease for the Alabama Department of Public Health, said Blue Bell is free to produce anything they like from the Sylacauga plant as no contamination has been found there after rigorous checks. The Brenham-based company announced on its Facebook page on August. 5: “We’re busy at our Sylacauga, Ala., facility crankin’ out ice cream and building inventory”. The recall prompted Blue Bell to lay off a third of its workforce. Contaminated products were found at Blue Bell’s Texas and Oklahoma plants.
The company said it began evaluating enhanced production processes and testing ice cream production at the plant at the end of July.
Blue Bell, the iconic Texas ice cream gone from store shelves since April, has no sales restrictions in Alabama now that tests after a major plant cleanup there show no signs of listeria. That triggered a crippling April recall that resulted in the May furlough of about 1,400 workers and layoffs of about 750 full-time and 700 part-time workers.
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“We are making good progress at our facilities in Broken Arrow and Brenham, but do not have a date for when production will resume”, the company said Thursday.
