Just weeks after reopening, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Ohio has once again shuttered its production facility and retail locations after finding a potentially lethal food-borne bacteria in its factory.
Jeni’s, a regional ice cream maker, closed its plant in Columbus this week after finding listeria during a “routine swabbing,” according to a statement from its chief executive, John Lowe, on the company’s website.
Jeni’s has been closely monitoring and testing its equipment after detecting the bacteria in its ice cream in April, a finding that prompted the company to recall all of its products and close its 20 retail locations and the production facility.
Listeria is a persistent bacteria that has crippled multiple ice cream makers, including Blue Bell Creameries, in the last year. Listeria can enter a factory on the bottom of a shoe, for example, and linger for years.
Blue Bell, a top national ice cream brand that is especially popular in the Southwest, has been trying to determine how listeria could have contaminated products at its plants in Texas and Oklahoma. The company first began recalling products in March and eventually removed all of its products from stores in April. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have linked 10 illnesses, including three deaths, to tainted Blue Bell Products.
No illnesses linked to Jeni’s have been reported so far.
Jeni’s resumed production May 13 and reopened its stores nine days later. The company has been testing each batch of ice cream for listeria before sending it out for sale.
“So it is with complete confidence that I can say all of the ice cream that has been served in our shops since reopening on May 22 has been safe and is 100 percent listeria-free,” Mr. Lowe said in the statement. Retail stores will remain closed because the company does not have enough ice cream to stock them, the statement said.
Mr. Lowe’s statement did not disclose where in its facility listeria was found. The company is investigating where and how it got inside.
“We have a theory and are testing that theory,” he said. A spokeswoman for Jeni’s, Liz Pierson, said the company would not comment further.
Jeni’s thought it had found the problem last month: a machine that loads ice cream into pint-size containers. At the time, Mr. Lowe said that the machine, and others, would be disassembled, cleaned and tested every day.
Blue Bell was aware that listeria was present in one of its facilities as early as 2013, according to documents released by the Food and Drug Administration in May. The company acknowledged that it had not taken strong enough action to correct the contamination problem, and responded last month to violations found by the agency, according to letters posted on the agency’s website.
Blue Bell also said it had hired consultants to help overhaul its safety procedures, according to the letters. Blue Bell did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
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