CDC: Raw Milk, Cheese Cause Almost All Dairy Foodborne Illness
A new report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that raw milk and cheese products cause 96 percent of foodborne illnesses linked to contaminated dairy products. This means that these unpasteurized products cause 840 times more illnesses and 45 times more hospitalizations than pasteurized dairy products.
Researchers used publicly available outbreak data to look at the correlation between the consumption of raw milk and cheese and bacterial illnesses such as Shiga toxin–producing E. coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter spp. Most of the U.S. illnesses analyzed were linked to Salmonella spp. and Campylobacter spp.