Raw milk was once a major health issue in the U.S. In 1938, before pasteurization was broadly introduced, milk was responsible for about 25% of all food- and drink-related disease outbreaks, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s 1990 guidance on milk safety.
Fastforward, health agencies are, again, warning about the dangers of consuming raw milk. Yet, despite these repeated warnings, sales of raw milk continue to rise, even amid the ongoing outbreak of bird flu among dairy cattle.
Raw milk is “kind of a wild card; there could be all types of bacteria,” says Alex O’Brien, quality coordinator at the Center for Dairy Research.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the most common pathogens found in milk are campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E. coli, listeria, brucella and salmonella.
The risk of bird flu to humans remains low, according to the CDC, thanks in part to pasteurization, which inactivates the virus in the commercial milk supply. But non-infectious fragments of the virus have been detected in even pasteurized milk, raising concerns that untreated milk could pose a greater potential risk to those drinking it. And, experts say, you shouldn’t be drinking raw milk to begin with.
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