🦠 Foodborne infections

Foodborne infections are illnesses caused by harmful germs in food and water. Their signs are diarrhoea, stomach pain, vomiting and sometimes fever. Milk is a great place for germs to grow: it has water, sugar and protein. So without treatment and cooling it can become dangerous.

According to the FDA and CDC (USA), raw, unpasteurized milk can carry salmonella, E. coli, listeria, campylobacter, brucella and other dangerous germs. Even on a good farm, nobody can guarantee that raw milk is clean. In rare cases, these infections badly damage the kidneys, especially in children. Those most at risk are children under 5, pregnant women, older people and people with weak immunity.

The main protection is pasteurization. This means heating milk to the right temperature for a set time. It kills dangerous germs and hardly changes the nutritional value. The CDC says that since the early 20th century, pasteurization has greatly cut the number of illnesses from milk. At home, boiling raw milk helps. It is also important to keep milk cold — no warmer than 4–5 °C — and not to leave it in the heat for more than two hours.