Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the United States, released its most recent summary data for food-borne illness in people. The report summarized the results from 2006. When the CDC looks at outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, they try to determine the source. When they report their statistics, they list sources by category. Consumers have become accustomed to hearing that meat products are the source of sickness in our food. But in this report, the three most common source-foods for outbreaks in 2006 were poultry (21% of illnesses), leafy vegetables (17%) and fruits and nuts (16%). Poultry producers argued that poultry was so high solely as the result of one outbreak.

In this report, food contaminated with viruses, especially norovirus, were more commonly associated with outbreaks than food contaminated with bacteria. With leafy vegetables being such a common source for food-borne illnesses, it highlights how important it is to clean off all food before eating it.

Dairy products are not a common source of food-borne illness but the report noted, "Although the dairy commodity accounted for only 3% of single commodity outbreak-related cases (16 outbreaks and 193 cases), 71% of dairy outbreak cases were attributed to unpasteurized (raw) milk (10 outbreaks and 137 cases). A wide range of bacterial pathogens were associated with unpasteurized milk outbreaks, including Campylobacter (six outbreaks), STEC O157 (two outbreaks), Salmonella (one outbreak), and Listeria (one outbreak), resulting in 11 hospitalizations and one death." This emphasizes that eating unpasteurized milk is not as innocuous as some would suggest.

In January, the CDC published a report on a an outbreak of Campy-lobacter food poisoning that occurred in a group of people who ate fresh cheese produced from unpasteurized milk. Campylobacter is a bacterium that causes diarrhea or vomiting with diarrhea. In all, 101 people had eaten the cheese and 67 became sick. Fortunately nobody died, but two people, one a pregnant woman, needed to be hospitalized.

It is impossible to pinpoint the exact source of the Campylobacter in these cases.

Campylobacter is a bacterium that is commonly found in cow manure. The milk may have been contaminated because of incomplete teat preparation during milking or manure may have contaminated the milk after it was harvested.

The CDC noted that there have been six other outbreaks of Campy-lobacter food poisoning was linked to eating unpasteurized milk or dairy products produced using unpasteurized milk in 2006. In one outbreak, 86 preschoolers and adults visiting a dairy farm drank unpasteurized milk then developed diarrhea. People in the same group who did not drink the raw milk didn’t get diarrhea.

These statistics and case reports show once again that drinking raw milk or eating some dairy products made from raw milk is not safe.