Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams has reopened its Columbus, OH, production kitchen after facing Listeria issues, but will only use it to make certain ingredients for its ice creams. After a random sample of Jeni’s ice cream tested positive for Listeria this past spring, the company recalled all of its frozen products on the market and shut down its production kitchen to clear out the problem. Before April, the kitchen had had a stellar food safety record. “Still, we had a blind spot: we had an insufficient Listeria control program,” wrote owner Jeni Britton Bauer in a blog post Monday. “For that, we take full responsibility and make no excuses.” Jeni’s resumed production in mid-May, but again found Listeria in the kitchen away from food contact surfaces in June and shut down a second time. The company’s Listeria control program developed in May involved almost 200 environmental swabs every day for two months in the 2,000-square-foot production kitchen and was what caught the Listeria in June. “I’m happy to report that all tests for Listeria in our kitchen have been negative now for two months,” Bauer wrote. Jeni’s scoop shops reopened in June and have been serving a limited menu of flavors produced at Smith Dairy in Orrville, OH. The Aug. 31 blog post detailed what Jeni’s has been through this year and announced the re-opening of its production kitchen, but not for freezing. Bauer wrote that the kitchen will be used “to prepare the highest priority ingredients for our most difficult ice creams—process work that, without the specialized equipment of our kitchen or the expertise of our kitchen team, is nearly impossible for others to do—and then we’ll freeze everything into ice cream at Smith’s rather than in our own kitchen.” Bauer couldn’t give an exact date for when her pints of ice cream will be back on shelves, but she said “it will be in time for the holidays, if not before.” (To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)