Starting in July, raw milk cheese sold by Sierra Nevada Graziers caused nine hospitalizations due to E. coli O26:H11. Outbreaks were reported across 10 states.
The Centers for Disease Control has declared that the outbreak is now over.
Raw milk is incredibly risky, a foodborne illness likelihood so ridiculous - 700X normal milk - that it is a shock that anyone consumes it after 160 years of pasteurization saving a billion lives. In 1949, when the rule for cheese aging was set at 60 days, strains like E. coli O157:H7 and others were not known to exist. When they were discovered as distinct in the 1990s, the Clinton administration - which also saddled Americans with supplements being exempt from FDA oversight, drug advertising on TV, and forced USDA to create a government Organic™ seal - refused to update the guidelines.
E. coli is not disappearing after 60 days and the top source of E. coli you can buy are raw milk products. And just like with former Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Robert F. Kennedy and California Governor Newsom when California had raw dairy farms leading to chickens dying en masse,the problem won't be solved until people are forced to show their product can't put people in the hospital.
The company will now have to answer to customers why they state their cheese has been aged at least 60 days - the government-mandated minimum - yet is still putting people in the hospital.
Because their process is as unhygienic as not washing your hands after you use the bathroom, that's why.
Every ill person ate the same raw milk cheese produced by the same company and samples collected by the California Department of Public Health - a state that is incredibly sympathetic to beliefs opposing science - tested positive for E. coli and whole genome sequencing matched the samples to the outbreak strain. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also showed the company's raw milk cheese tested positive, but for a different strain of E. coli.
Both products have been recalled but they have a long shelf life so if you have it, regardless of it reading 60 days on the package or being 120 days in your refrigerator, take it back for a full refund. Then don't buy it any more. There is no health benefit to raw milk, that is manufactured nonsense by the same demographic who claimed since 1998 that measles vaccines were not needed, measles parties they advertised in Whole Foods made them "inoculated." Don't believe economic predators selling anti-science nonsense in this case either.
