The Journal of Food Protection has released a study looking at an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Canada in 2013 that was linked to raw milk cheese. In that outbreak, 29 people in five provinces were sickened with the outbreak strain of bacteria.
Five people were hospitalized in that outbreak, and one person died. Officials interviewed patients and found that twenty-six of twenty-seven people, or 90%, ate Gouda raw milk cheese that came from a dairy plant in British Columbia. All of the 22 patients who provided details about the cheese said that the Gouda cheese was made with raw milk.
Most raw milk cheese that has been aged is likely to not contain enough pathogenic bacteria to make someone sick. But this cheese had been aged for a minimum of 60 days. Officials found the outbreak strain of bacteria from the cheese, including “one core sample obtained from an intact cheese wheel 83 days after production.”
FoodWorld 