There are many dangerous things in the world, but ice cream should not be one of them. When my mom nestles a creamy scoop of vanilla Blue Bell ice cream next to a slice of my birthday cake, there should be little worry involved. Yet, when our trusted friends at Blue Bell Creameries recalled their products in the wake of a listeria outbreak, we started to think twice before consuming their frozen confections.

This past April, Lindsey Wise of The Seattle Times wrote, “Listeria monocytogenes is a germ that can contaminate food and cause a deadly infection, listeriosis, that’s characterized by high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea.”

Similar to the flu, these symptoms really don’t seem too unusual. However, Wise goes on to say, “Listeriosis has been known to cause miscarriage or stillbirth, a particular concern for expectant mothers craving ice cream.”

Imagine an expectant mother, who already has a million things in the world she is supposed to avoid, thinking one little Blue Bell fudge pop probably wouldn’t do any harm. This should be a completely reasonable thought. After all, her baby’s life should not be at risk simply because she wanted some ice cream.

It should be obvious that a food manufacturer’s top priority is to make food that won’t kill us. It is more important than making the food taste good. It is more important than the food looking nice. All we ask is these food manufacturers make food that does not kill us.

This is why the listeria outbreak in Blue Bell ice cream is not so much an issue that needs to be resolved by forcing us to fast from Blue Bell for a little while, but an issue that needs to be resolved with some serious trust rebuilding.

Please do not get me wrong. I absolutely love Blue Bell ice cream. “Is it Blue Bell?” my dad would ask every time I offered to scoop some ice cream up for us. And if I tried to pass off a different vanilla ice cream as Blue Bell, my dad could tell. Have you ever seen someone reject ice cream? It is a sad sight.

With that said, it is quite clear Blue Bell has a serious fan base — a fact the company is very aware of. They know we serve their little mini ice cream cups at birthday parties, share a box of their ice cream sandwiches on hot summer days and construct our ice cream sundaes around their huge tubs of frozen heaven.

Therefore, when the report from their U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspection last April started by noting Blue Bell’s “failure to perform microbial testing where necessary to identify possible food contamination,” I was shocked.

They weren’t testing the “food contact surfaces” for bacteria, they didn’t know they had been harboring three deadly strands of it and they sure as heck didn’t know their lack of information was about to cost people their lives. We trust them to make a quality product, and yet they didn’t seem to be taking that seriously.

On top of that, Blue Bell knew listeria is a common bacterial problem in ice cream because it thrives in cold, damp environments and on chilly, wet products. As Alexandra Sifferlin says in her Time Magazine article titled, “How Ice Cream Gets Contaminated — and Sometimes Kills,” there have been several recent cases of listeria contaminating other chilled dairy products, all resulting in at least one death.

So it is probable Blue Bell was very aware listeria is a real and deadly problem for manufacturers of dairy products. Yet, for such a well-established company, it did not seem to be taking appropriate precautions to prevent against a listeria outbreak.

In fact, the FDA even confirms this when, in Blue Bell’s inspection report, they note, “all reasonable precautions (were) not taken to ensure that production procedures do not contribute contamination from any source.”

Blue Bell was not even taking reasonable precautions to prevent a bacterial outbreak. The company we invite into our homes, our celebrations and our lives is not even doing the minimum of what is required to keep us safe. The report also goes on to add, “employees did not wash and sanitize hands thoroughly in an adequate hand-washing facility,” which is a basic requirement for any food handling operation. I can imagine that complaint on one of McDonald’s’ reports, but not in a report from our precious Blue Bell.

If you are wondering where the listeria originated, Sifferlin quotes a food safety lawyer in her aforementioned article that says, “Likely what happened is the piece of machinery (that processed the ice cream) was contaminated. The liquid form of the ice cream goes through the machine when it’s not yet frozen, but around 40 degrees, and it’s a great place for (listeria) to grow.” So, it makes a lot of sense the outbreak could have originated on the machines, especially when we see the FDA described some of Blue Bell Creameries’ equipment as “rusty” and with “peeling/flaking paint.”

So, even though my stomach growls every time I walk past our empty coolers, I am just not sure I trust Blue Bell the way I used to, and I am not sure how long it will be until I trust them again.

They have been working hurriedly to return to our lives, which makes me wonder if they have cut even more corners than before to get their product back on the shelves as soon as possible, all of which is troubling because this whole issue was never really about the listeria, it was the fact that Blue Bell was selling us a product that put our lives at risk and they didn’t really care enough to stop until they got caught.