WI Raw Milk Sickens 35 With Campylobacter

Posted by Fred Pritzker in Food Safety

Wisconsin food safety officials are taking the opportunity of a Campylobacter raw milk outbreak to warn consumers once again that unpasteurized milk is inherently risky and shouldn’t be toyed with as an alternative to legal dairy milk. In Wisconsin and other states, sales of raw milk to consumers are outlawed because the product has the potential to kill.

The raw milk culprit this time in “America’s Dairyland” has been identified  by the state Food Safety Division in the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) as the Zinniker Family Farm in Elkhorn, located in southeastern Wisconsin. Zinniker sold raw milk under a “cow share” program to a defined customer list, which the Food Safety Division says is flatly illegal.

An investigation by DATCP and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services  found an outbreak of 35 confirmed cases of Campylobacter jejuni infection was caused by contaminated raw milk from the farm. The outbreak started in August and sickened 21 individuals under age 18. One person was hospitalized and all patients had consumed unpasteurized milk before falling ill. Thirty of the patients identified Zinniker as the source of their raw milk and testing found Campylobacter in manure samples of  milking cows on the farm. The identical molecular strain of the bacteria was found in 25 of the outbreak victims, state officials reported.

Victims of the outbreak  can protect and assert their legal rights by contacting an attorney. Our firm, PritzkerOlsen, P.A., has represented victims in Campylobacter outbreaks around the country and is one of the country’s foremost practitioners  in the area of  foodborne illness litigation.

In DATCP’s press release, Food Safety Division chief Steve Ingham was blunt about the dangerous of ingesting raw milk, which some people stubbornly swear is not only better tasting but more healthful than pasteurized milk.

“So far we’ve been fortunate that the infections have not been life-threatening,” Ingham said in the press release. He said raw milk is just as capable of transmitting diseases more dangerous than Campylobacter — which itself in extreme cases can lead to paralysis and respiratory failure.

One of the known risks of consuming raw milk is E. coli O157:H7 , which kills an estimated 60 people a year in the U.S. and can lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, the leading cause of kidney failure in children.

From a page out of the federal government’s new emphasis on food safety, here’s a list of facts to fight the fiction surrounding raw milk:

• Raw milk DOES NOT kill dangerous pathogens by itself.
• Pasteurizing milk DOES NOT cause lactose intolerance and allergic reactions. Both raw milk and pasteurized milk can cause alergic reactions in people sensitive to milk proteins.
• Pasteurization DOES NOT reduce milk’s nutritional value.
• Pasteurization DOES kill harmful bacteria.
• Pasteurization DOES save lives.