The listeria outbreak linked with Blue Bell Ice Cream could have been prevented if management responded to employee complaints about problems, according to two former workers at the company's Texas factory.
The outbreak earlier this year made 10 people sick and killed three others, and the toll could have been higher if random testing by South Carolina health officials did not discover listeria at Blue Bell's facility in that state, CBS News reported.
Following a nationwide recall, Blue Bell Ice Cream returned to store shelves in August.
Terry Schultz worked at the Texas Blue Bell factory for seven months before it was shut down due to listeria contamination. He said machines in the plant were old and would often malfunction, and also noted unsanitary conditions in the plant.
But when he approached supervisors about the problems, nothing was done because the company valued production over cleanliness, according to Schultz
"The response I got at one point was, is that all you're going to do is come here and b**** every afternoon?" he told CBS News.
Gerald Bland, who worked at the Texas plant for five years, also cited problems in the facility and said management did little to correct them.
It was "all about the money," he told CBS News.
"While we do not usually comment on matters involving current or former company employees, the isolated views expressed by two former Blue Bell employees on CBS News do not reflect the experience of the vast majority of our employees, who know we take the cleanliness of our facilities and the quality of our products very seriously," Blue Bell said in a statement to CBS News.
