Unpasteurized milk, touted as the ultimate health food by some, is 150 times more likely to cause food-borne illness outbreaks than pasteurized milk, and such outbreaks had a hospitalization rate 13 times higher than those involving pasteurized dairy products, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds.
The survey found 121 outbreaks linked to dairy products in which it was known whether the milk was pasteurized or unpasteurized (also called "raw"). Of those, 60% were caused by raw milk and 39% by pasteurized milk.
"When you consider that no more than 1% of the milk consumed in the United States is raw, it's pretty startling to see that more of the outbreaks were caused by raw milk than pasteurized," says Barbara Mahon, senior author on the paper and deputy director of enteric diseases at the CDC.
The 13-year review, published in this month's edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, is one of the largest done to date.
Pennsylvania is in the midst of a campylobacter outbreak linked to raw milk from a Chambersburg, Pa., dairy that had sickened 77 people as of Tuesday.
Raw milk proponents are in a struggle with state public health agencies, many that are concerned about increasing illnesses.
People who got sick from raw milk outbreaks were also younger. About 60% were younger than 20, whereas in pasteurized milk outbreaks, 23% were younger than 20. "It's just tragic when, for example, a parent gives a child raw milk because they're trying to do something for them and they end up making them sick," Mahon says.
Pasteurization is the process of heating milk to kill microorganisms. Typically milk is held at 161 degrees for 15 seconds, a process called flash pasteurization. Under federal law, products made from unpasteurized milk may not be sold or traded across state borders. Thirty states allow the sale of such products within their state and 10 allow people who buy "shares" in a cow to legally get the unpasteurized milk from those cows, says Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
The foundation fights for the legal sale of unpasteurized milk and a ban on soy-based formulas for infants, based on the theories of Weston Price, a 20th-century Cleveland dentist, believing that pasteurizing milk destroys vitamins and damages health-giving enzymes in milk.
Fallon said she believes that more than just 1% of Americans consume raw dairy products, citing a 2007 survey "that showed that 3% of the population had consumed raw milk within the last seven days."
The Price website is host to testimonials by raw milk drinkers that unpasteurized dairy products have reversed "allergies, asthma and behavior problems in children; and digestive disorders, arthritis, osteoporosis and even cancer in adults."
Mahon disagrees. "It is very clear that raw milk is a risk to human health."
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
Copyright 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.