Why Doesn’t Everyone Who Drinks Raw Milk Get Sick?
Over the years, Food Poisoning Bulletin has received many, many messages from people defending raw milk consumption. Every one of these messages has used the claim, “I have drunk raw milk for years and I have never gotten sick.”
The only way to ensure that milk is safe to drink is to pasteurize it. Pathogenic bacteria are not present in every drop of milk. Pathogens tend to stick together and cluster in tiny areas of milk, which is why taking a sample of milk and testing is is no guarantee that the rest of the milk is pathogen free. One drop of milk can contain enough pathogenic bacteria to kill someone. Can we test every drop of milk? Of course not.
So, why don’t more people get sick when they drink raw milk? One answer is that many DO get sick. Between 1993 and 2006 more than 1,500 people in this country got sick after drinking raw milk or eating raw milk cheese. In the last six years that I have been editing this site, there have been dozens of food poisoning outbreaks linked to raw milk and raw milk products, with dozens of people sickened. Some of those outbreaks have been deadly.
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