In the past few weeks Blue Bell Ice Cream and Sabra has had to recall its products due to it being contaminated by Listeria monoctyogenes. Blue Bell, who is popular in the southern U.S., started having problems with Listeria back in March when some of its popsicle items began to test positive for the bacteria. Sabra just announced its recall this week with a number of its hummus products testing positive for Listeria as well.
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| Source via The Record |
At first Blue Bell only recalled the products that had been positively contaminated for Listeria, but didn't recall the numerous amounts of other products the ice cream giant produces. Retail stores began to take it upon themselves to remove all the Blue Bell products from its shelves. Kroger, Wal-Mart and SAMs club to name a few. First it began with the little things like popsicles and then grew to the small cups of ice cream, then when it hit the pints Blue Bell really had to start damage control and figure out what it was going to do. Blue Bell and the U.S. Food and Drug administration were able to trace the contaminated products to its plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and recalled all the products that had been made there, although not all of its products are made at that location. Blue Bell also has a plant in Bonham, Texas, which has not been tied to the Listeria outbreak, but retail stores are still removing all Blue Bell products no matter what.
Blue Bell handled the situation in good and bad ways. A good way being it offered consumers a way to tell if the ice cream products they had purchased had been made at the Broken Arrow plant. Another good call from Blue Bell was recalling all of its products. However, that could also be a bad way considering it waited until more and more of its products became contaminated, and even then Blue Bell only recalled from one of its plants. The thing about this situation is people have died from it. So now Blue Bell needs to be thinking about its consumers safety and not its profits. Blue Bell should have removed all of its products from the shelves after the first sign of Listeria in its plant. The company shouldn't have waited as long as it did, not with something as serious as Listeria. Blue Bell, is a popular company in the south. It has many followers, and many big companies use the product. One being the Texas Rangers who are not going to be having Blue Bell served at its Ice Cream Sunday promotion during Opening Weekend.
This situation has injured Blue Bell's brand, but it hasn't destroyed it. The company will probably face lawsuits from the family of the people who passed away, and might lose long time consumers. Blue Bell still has some loyal followers out there who will probably still eat its ice cream when it goes back on shelves, however, it's going to need to do serious damage control. Blue Bell will probably have to rebrand and regain the trust of its consumers, reassuring them that its products no longer run the risk of Listeria. So although this is a huge deal, I believe Blue Bell has been around too long for this to make them go under. A lot of other companies have been through situations like this one and all it took was time, trust, and a good PR/Marketing/Advertising team to get the company back on its feet.
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