Listeriosis is a life-threatening infection caused by eating foods contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Some major ice cream recalls in recent years reaffirm the ability of this food-borne pathogen to survive in diverse dairy processing environments and cause cross contamination. Inspection reports revealed lapses in implementing adequate hygienic practices for Listeria persistence in the processing environment leading to cross contamination of ice cream. The level of cross contamination can thus serve as a predictor to establish the overall Listeria risk, which is the aim of this study. To conduct the dose-response challenge studies, ice cream mixes of different total solid levels (36, 40, 42, and 45%) were spiked at 1, 2, 3, and 4 log cfu/g levels of Listeria innocua (an established surrogate). The dose levels were based on the potential risk of environmental cross contamination. The spiked samples were pasteurized at 80°C for 25 s, and the survivors, including injured cells, were enumerated using standard protocols. A binary logistic regression model was fitted for the severity of risk. The impact of total solids, water activity, and pH variability was also studied for Listeria survival. Based on direct plating on MOX and RLM, no survival was detected at any of the total solid levels for the dose levels tested. However, the enrichment protocol revealed the presence of injured cells at the highest dose level of 4 logs, indicating the risk from injured cells, which showed a non-significant trend with the level of total solids. This was also confirmed with the logistic model, which resulted in quasi-complete separation, indicating dose as a strong predictor of risk. The statistical modeling thus indicates it to be a case for further developing the risk model based on response surface using some additional inquiry points. On the other hand, recovery of injured cells in the actual ice cream mix during holding at 7°C for 72 h was found to be zero, even at 4 logs contamination, suggesting a much lower risk from injured cells during the normal handling of mix.