On July 14, 2025, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration stood on the steps of USDA headquarters scooping ice cream. The occasion was an industry pledge to strip seven certified artificial colors out of American ice cream. Blue Bell Creameries was among the companies signed on, and a week later said so on its own account. For a privately held creamery that reports no federal lobbying and whose corporate political action committee has not raised a dollar in years, that appearance is most of the federal footprint. The rest is two small checks from the PAC and under $2,000 in employee giving.
- Delaware just held its first-ever corporate oversight trial. It is about ice cream.
- Two cabinet secretaries and the FDA commissioner scooped ice cream at USDA headquarters.
- Its political action committee has not raised a dollar since at least 2017.
- Employee donations went mostly Republican. The largest single check went to Kamala Harris. ($591)
- Its PAC's biggest recent check went to the trade association, not a candidate.
Quick Take
Blue Bell is difficult to read through political money, because there is very little of it. The company has operated a federal corporate PAC since April 29, 1983, but that committee reported $0 in receipts in both the 2018 and the 2022 election cycles, after taking in $74,350 during the 2006 cycle. For the 2024 cycle, OpenSecrets recorded $1,832 associated with Blue Bell, all of it individual giving rather than company PAC money, alongside $0 in federal lobbying and $0 in outside spending. What the company does attach its name to points elsewhere: in July 2025 it joined an industry commitment that the Agriculture Secretary publicly described as advancing the administration's Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The Pledge on the USDA Steps
The International Dairy Foods Association announced on July 14, 2025 that dozens of American ice cream makers, together representing more than 90 percent of United States ice cream volume, would eliminate Red 3, Red 40, Green 3, Blue 1, Blue 2, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 from ice cream and frozen dairy desserts made with real milk by December 31, 2027. The commitment excludes non-dairy products and small in-house producers.[1]
The announcement was staged at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary present. Rollins credited the participating companies with finding ways to "promote President Trump's Make America Healthy Again agenda."[2] Kennedy issued his own statement of support the same day.[3]
The industry's stated reasoning was narrower than the political framing. IDFA said the certified colors are safe and that ice cream makers were acting in part to avoid sales disruption as states move to phase artificial colors out of school food, and after West Virginia enacted a dye ban.[4]
Blue Bell confirmed its own participation on July 21, 2025, posting that it was "proud to be a part of the @dairyidfa commitment" and noting that many of its flavors already carried no certified artificial colors.[5]
Two things are worth separating here. The pledge is a documented company action taken alongside a federal policy push. The characterization of that pledge as advancing a presidential agenda came from a cabinet secretary, not from Blue Bell.
A PAC That Stopped Raising Money
Blue Bell Creameries USA, Inc. PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission on April 29, 1983 and remains listed as an active, qualified corporate committee filing on a quarterly basis. It filed a fresh statement of organization on March 19, 2025 and reports a new treasurer.[6]
Its fundraising has stopped. OpenSecrets records $74,350 in PAC receipts during the 2005-2006 election cycle. By the 2017-2018 cycle the committee reported $0 in receipts, though it still distributed $2,000 to federal candidates from money already on hand. The 2021-2022 cycle again showed $0 raised, as did the 2023-2024 cycle, which also recorded $0 to federal candidates while the balance drifted from $60,193 down to $54,320 on bank fees.[7][8]
Stopping fundraising is not the same as going dormant. Through June 30, 2026 the committee still held $50,982.11, and it wrote two checks during the current cycle, both in 2025. On June 2 it gave $1,000 to Dan Newhouse for Congress, the campaign of the Republican who represents Washington's fourth district; the filing describes the payment as a June 10, 2025 dairy industry dinner. On December 5 it gave $2,500 to the International Dairy Foods Association, described as an annual contribution. A $2,688 figure that appears on the receipts line was a bank correction of an erroneous credit rather than money raised.[6]
That second check runs back to the pledge on the USDA steps. IDFA is the trade association that organized the artificial colors commitment, and Blue Bell's political action committee funds it directly.[6]
For the 2024 election cycle, which under the OpenSecrets two-year binning covers January 1, 2023 through December 2024, the organization total attributed to Blue Bell was $1,832. OpenSecrets attaches its standard note to that figure: the company itself did not donate, and the money came from individual employees, owners and their immediate family members giving $200 or more. No corporate PAC contribution is reflected in it, and OpenSecrets records the source of funds as 100 percent individual.[9]
Small as it is, that money has a direction, and it runs both ways. The single largest recipient was Kamala Harris's presidential campaign at $591. Every other name in the top ten was a Republican candidate or a Republican party committee, led by $400 to Matt Gaetz, $361 to the Republican National Committee and $350 to the Republican Party of Texas. Across the cycle OpenSecrets splits the total $1,066 to candidates, $761 to party committees and $5 to a leadership PAC. These are the choices of individual employees and owners, not the company.[9]
On lobbying, which is filed by calendar year under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than by election cycle, OpenSecrets shows that Blue Bell did not report lobbying the federal government during the 2024 cycle, and reported $0 in both 2023 and 2024. It also recorded no outside spending in that cycle.[9] That is a statement about filings made by Blue Bell itself. It says nothing about what the trade associations the company funds do with their own money.
The pattern is a company that built federal political machinery in the 1980s, used it through the 2000s, and now runs it on maintenance: no fundraising, a small standing balance, and occasional checks tied to the dairy business rather than to campaigns.
Who Owns the Little Creamery
Blue Bell opened in 1907 as the Brenham Creamery Company, making butter from surplus cream bought off nearby farms. It began producing small quantities of ice cream in 1911, hired 23-year-old former schoolteacher E.F. Kruse to run it in 1919, and took the Blue Bell name in 1930 after a native Texas wildflower. The Kruse family has held the company since Kruse's arrival.[10]
Ownership shifted during the 2015 crisis. Unable to raise enough capital from existing shareholders, the board turned to a single outside source. Fort Worth investor Sid Bass agreed to lend the company up to $125 million, under terms that gave the Bass family warrants to acquire roughly one third of the company before the loan matured in 2018. Blue Bell announced the investment publicly on July 14, 2015 without disclosing terms, and a company spokesman declined to discuss ownership interests, citing the company's private status.[11][12]
Blue Bell is not a public company. It files no annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, publishes no revenue figures, and discloses no executive compensation. Nearly everything verifiable about its finances comes from litigation, from regulators, or from what it chooses to announce.
Leadership sits with the family at the board level and with career employees in operations. Ricky Dickson, who joined in 1981 and became CEO and president in 2019, announced his retirement in September 2023 after 43 years and left in March 2024.[13] Jimmy Lawhorn, a 26-year company veteran and former vice president of sales and marketing, was named president in January 2024. Jim Kruse serves as chairman of the board.[14]
The Recall That Nearly Ended It
In early 2015, state health officials notified Blue Bell that samples from its production had tested positive for listeria monocytogenes. The company pulled products in March and issued a full recall of everything it made in April, shutting down plants in Brenham, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and Sylacauga, Alabama. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traced listeriosis cases to Blue Bell products; three people died. In May 2015 the company laid off about 37 percent of its workforce, roughly 1,400 people.[11][12]
The legal consequences have run for more than a decade, and one strand is still running. Blue Bell Creameries L.P. pleaded guilty on May 13, 2020 before U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to charges of shipping listeria-contaminated products, and was sentenced on September 17, 2020 to pay $17.25 million in criminal fine and forfeiture. The company separately paid $2.1 million to resolve civil False Claims Act allegations over ice cream made under insanitary conditions and sold to federal military facilities. The Justice Department called the combined $19.35 million the second largest amount ever paid to resolve a food safety matter.[15]
Paul Kruse, the company's president at the time of the outbreak, was indicted separately on October 20, 2020 on a seven count indictment charging six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with prosecutors alleging he concealed what the company knew from customers including hospitals, school districts and military installations, and delayed the recall.[16] His August 2022 trial ended in a mistrial when jurors deadlocked, reportedly ten to two in favor of acquittal.[16] In March 2023 the felony counts were dropped under a plea agreement in which Kruse pleaded to a single misdemeanor violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and paid a $100,000 fine, with no prison time.[17]
Blue Bell has since said the criminal matter is closed for the business and points to upgraded facilities, expanded employee training and independent testing programs. The company says it earned BRCGS global food safety certification at all three plants under Dickson, has held it since 2021, and took the highest possible score in each of the two years before January 2025, when the International Dairy Foods Association gave Blue Bell its Food Safety Leadership Award.[13]
The shareholder case has outlasted the criminal one. Marchand v. Barnhill, a derivative suit filed in Delaware in 2017 by investor Jack L. Marchand II, was dismissed by the Court of Chancery and then revived in June 2019 by the Delaware Supreme Court in a ruling now widely cited for what it requires of boards monitoring risks central to the business. Marchand died in 2022 and his estate took over the case. In December 2025 Vice Chancellor Nathan A. Cook ruled that a $60 million settlement in a related suit did not extinguish the claims, and the matter went to a five-day trial beginning February 24, 2026, reported as the first Chancery trial ever held on this kind of oversight claim. Paul Kruse testified about how food safety reports reached the board. Evidence at trial included the U.S. Army, a Blue Bell customer, repeatedly flagging high coliform readings, and the company beginning to test finished product for pathogens in 2014 in response to Army audits. Blue Bell did not settle, and court records indicate its leaders sought defense coverage under general liability policies rather than the directors and officers insurance most companies carry, an argument the Fifth Circuit rejected. Seven current and former Blue Bell officials testified in February. Cook heard closing arguments on July 28, 2026 and has not yet issued the post-trial opinion, which would be the first of its kind from the Chancery Court.[18]
A Brand the Legislature Keeps Honoring
Blue Bell occupies an unusual place in Texas state politics: not as a donor, but as a subject. In 2003 the Texas House of Representatives adopted a resolution congratulating the company by name, listing its officers and describing it as a truly Texan enterprise.[19] In the 2025 legislative session, Senator Lois Kolkhorst filed a concurrent resolution designating Brenham the official Ice Cream Capital of Texas for a ten-year period ending in 2035, with the accompanying analysis crediting the Blue Bell facility as a major employer and regional tourist attraction.[20]
These are honorifics rather than policy, and they run to both the company and the town. They are also the clearest documented interaction between Blue Bell and elected officials in the public record.
What Blue Bell Sells and Where
Blue Bell makes ice cream, frozen snacks and novelties at three plants: the original Little Creamery in Brenham, Texas, plus facilities in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and Sylacauga, Alabama. It markets in 23 states, concentrated across Texas and the South, and is among the nation's top-selling ice cream manufacturers by volume.[20]
The brand leans on continuity and fan input. In 2024 it ran a bracket-style tournament asking customers to vote among 16 discontinued flavors; Groom's Cake won and returned to shelves on May 1, 2025, with runner-up Cookie Cake following.[21] Products reach shoppers through grocery and mass retailers including Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Dollar General and Walgreens, and directly from the creamery.[21]
Recent News
The artificial color commitment carries a deadline of December 31, 2027.[1][5] Blue Bell has published a running list of flavors already free of certified artificial colors, including Cookies 'n Cream, Dutch Chocolate and Moo-llennium Crunch.[5]
Where to Find Them
Blue Bell products are sold in grocery and mass retailers across 23 states and directly from the company at bluebell.com. Corporate headquarters and the original plant are at the Little Creamery in Brenham, Texas, about 70 miles northwest of Houston, where the visitor center draws tourists to the town.[10][20]
Footnotes
[1] International Dairy Foods Association, "Dozens of U.S. Ice Cream Makers Pledge to Eliminate Certified Artificial Colors from Ice Cream Products by End of 2027," July 14, 2025. https://www.idfa.org/news/dozens-of-u-s-ice-cream-makers-pledge-to-eliminate-certified-artificial-colors-from-ice-cream-products-by-end-of-2027
[2] U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Secretary Rollins Applauds Voluntary Removal of Artificial Dyes from Ice Cream," July 14, 2025. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/07/14/secretary-rollins-applauds-voluntary-removal-artificial-dyes-ice-cream
[3] The Hill, "Ice cream makers pledge to remove artificial food dyes by 2028," July 14, 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5400765-ice-cream-artificial-dyes-fda/
[4] CNBC, "Many U.S. ice cream producers to phase out artificial food dyes by 2028," July 14, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/14/many-us-ice-cream-producers-to-phase-out-artificial-food-dyes-by-2028.html
[5] Blue Bell Ice Cream official account statement of July 21, 2025, as reported in "Your Favorite Blue Bell Ice Cream Flavors Are About To Get A Little Bit Cleaner," July 2025. https://www.aol.com/favorite-blue-bell-ice-cream-160500094.html
[6] Federal Election Commission, "Blue Bell Creameries USA, Inc PAC," committee ID C00166892, accessed August 5, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00166892/. Itemized disbursements from Form 3X filings FEC-1900630 (July Quarterly, covering April 1 to June 30, 2025) https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00166892/1900630/sb/ALL and FEC-1945452 (Year-End, covering October 1 to December 31, 2025) https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00166892/1945452/sb/ALL
[7] OpenSecrets, "PAC Profile: Blue Bell Creameries," committee C00166892, 2006 cycle, accessed August 4, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/blue-bell-creameries/C00166892/summary/2006
[8] OpenSecrets, "Blue Bell Creameries PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates," 2018 cycle, accessed August 4, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/blue-bell-creameries/C00166892/candidate-recipients/2018
[9] OpenSecrets, "Blue Bell Creameries Profile: Summary," organization ID D000024383, accessed August 4, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/blue-bell-creameries/summary?id=D000024383
[10] Handbook of Texas and company history as summarized in the Texas Legislature record; see also footnote 20.
[11] Associated Press, "Blue Bell: $125M investment necessary to remain operational," July 2015. https://www.kxan.com/news/blue-bell-125m-investment-necessary-to-remain-operational/1049611530/
[12] Fortune, "Blue Bell Creameries Brings On Billionaire Investor Sid Bass," July 15, 2015. https://fortune.com/2015/07/15/billionaire-investor-blue-bell/
[13] Blue Bell Creameries, "Blue Bell Creameries CEO & President Ricky Dickson Retiring," September 20, 2023. https://www.bluebell.com/news/blue-bell-creameries-ceo-president-ricky-dickson-retiring/; and International Dairy Foods Association, "Blue Bell Creameries Recognized with 2025 IDFA Food Safety Leadership Award," January 28, 2025. https://www.idfa.org/news/blue-bell-creameries-recognized-with-2025-idfa-food-safety-leadership-award
[14] Blue Bell Creameries, "Blue Bell Creameries Announces Jimmy Lawhorn as President," January 2024. https://www.bluebell.com/news/blue-bell-creameries-announces-jimmy-lawhorn-as-president/
[15] U.S. Department of Justice, Consumer Protection Branch, "Blue Bell Creameries, Paul Kruse," case page, United States v. Blue Bell Creameries, 1:20-cr-123 (W.D. Tex.), accessed August 4, 2026. https://justice.gov/civil/consumer-protection-branch/cases/blue-bell-creameries
[16] Houston Public Media, "Federal conspiracy, fraud case against former Blue Bell executive ends in mistrial," August 18, 2022. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/arts-culture/food/2022/08/18/431135/federal-conspiracy-fraud-case-against-former-blue-bell-executive-ends-in-mistrial/
[17] KSAT, "Felony fraud charges related to deadly listeria outbreak dropped against former Blue Bell CEO," March 13, 2023. https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/03/13/felony-fraud-charges-related-to-deadly-listeria-outbreak-dropped-against-former-blue-bell-ceo/
[18] Bloomberg Law, "Blue Bell Set to Face Persistent Outbreak Claims in Delaware," December 10, 2025; "Blue Bell Trial Is Landmark Test for Corporate Oversight Claims," January 29, 2026; "Blue Bell Ex-CEO Deflects Blame for Deadly Listeria Outbreak," February 24, 2026; and "Blue Bell Judge Refocuses Lawsuit on Leaders, Not Listeria," February 27, 2026. Marchand v. Barnhill, Del. Ch. No. 2017-0586. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/blue-bell-trial-is-landmark-test-for-corporate-oversight-claims. Trial and insurance background also summarized in Ruth Kachatorian, Ropers Majeski, "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for D&O Insurance: An Analysis of the Blue Bell Creameries Litigation," April 30, 2026. https://insights.ropers.com/post/102mrdy/i-scream-you-scream-we-all-scream-for-do-insurance-an-analysis-of-the-blue-be
[19] Texas House of Representatives, H.R. 1712, 78th Legislature, 2003. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/78R/billtext/html/HR01712I.htm
[20] Texas Senate Research Center, Bill Analysis, S.C.R. 15, 89th Legislature, by Senator Kolkhorst, April 4, 2025. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/analysis/pdf/SC00015I.pdf
[21] "Blue Bell Brings Back Beloved Ice Cream Flavor After 7-Year Hiatus," May 2025. https://www.aol.com/blue-bell-brings-back-beloved-170212454.html
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