Blog Articles

The food and beverage industry is very competitive so normally it’s great to make the top of any list … except when it comes to the worst food recalls of all time.

That is one list to avoid, but the listeria outbreak at Sara Lee just over two decades ago, unfortunately holds the top spot in the “Eat This, Not That!” rundown published this year of “The 7 Worst Food Recalls of All Time”.

If you are a Texan, then you know that Blue Bell ice cream is high on the Lone Star State’s pantheon of beloved brands, sandwiched somewhere between Buc-ee’s and Whataburger.

You might also recall that Blue Bell was at the center of a high profile multi state listeriosis outbreak, a serious infection caused by eating food contaminated with one of the 20+ species of the listeria bacteria.

Grilling out over the Memorial Day Weekend is a holiday tradition but some Americans might have made the “mis-steak” of using meat products that have been recently recalled and could make their families sick.

When it comes to “Food Fiascos” you need to start with the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) where lax sanitary conditions and unethical actions led to a 2008-09 salmonella outbreak that not only led to illness and death but bankrupted a $25 million company in months and sent its CEO to prison for 28 years in the stiffest penalty ever in a food-borne illness case.

In a final report issued in April 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that a strain of Salmonella serotype Typhimurium, linked to peanut butter sourced back to PCA processing plants, had sickened 714 people across 46 states with nine deaths reported.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are currently investigating three E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks that have sickened more than 50 across 15 states, including one death in Michigan.