That's the best chart I've seen yet. three million Americans drink raw milk but there have only been 66 cases of illness caused by raw milk in about thirty years. That's actual a pretty good safety track record. Were any of them even fatal or did it just end up with diarrhea for a few weeks?
What about spinach and deli meats? Your chart only talks about diary products...
shane - that's number of outbreaks, not number of people sickened. Presumably multiple people were sickened in many of the outbreaks. From the article:
WAPF and public health officials generally estimate that only 1% of the population drinks raw milk (Headrick et al, 1997). If the risk from raw and pasteurized dairy products was equal, or if raw dairy products were actually safer as WAPF states in their documents, we would expect that raw dairy-related outbreaks would be 1% or less of the total number of outbreaks. Instead, raw dairy products (excluding queso fresco) caused 75 (56%) outbreaks compared with 47 (35%) outbreaks associated with pasteurized milk products (Figure 4). In other words, there should have been only 1-2 raw dairy-related outbreaks among the 134 reported during that time period given the small estimated number of raw milk drinkers.
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Thanks for clarifying. I thought I might have scanned through that too fast.
Check this out, raw milk should be the least of your worries:
To better quantify the impact of foodborne diseases on health in the United States, we compiled and analyzed information from multiple surveillance systems and other sources. We estimate that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Known pathogens account for an estimated 14 million illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations, and 1,800 deaths. Three pathogens, Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma, are responsible for 1,500 deaths each year, more than 75% of those caused by known pathogens, while unknown agents account for the remaining 62 million illnesses, 265,000 hospitalizations, and 3,200 deaths. Overall, foodborne diseases appear to cause more illnesses but fewer deaths than previously estimated.
And this...
Raw foods are the most common source of foodborne illnesses because they are not sterile; examples include raw meat and poultry that may have become contaminated during slaughter. Seafood may become contaminated during harvest or through processing. One in 10,000 eggs may be contaminated with Salmonella inside the egg shell. Produce such as spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts, and melons can become contaminated with Salmonella, Shigella, or Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7. Contamination can occur during growing, harvesting, processing, storing, shipping, or final preparation. Sources of produce contamination are varied as these foods are grown in soil and can become contaminated during growth or through processing and distribution. Contamination may also occur during food preparation in a restaurant or a home kitchen. The most common form of contamination from handled foods is the calcivirus, also called the Norwalk-like virus.
Indeed, and that's with pasteurization and irradiation, both of which drastically cut down on the number of pathogens that make it into the milk supply. Imagine how much worse it would be if such practices were abandoned.
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