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FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

arstechnica.com

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Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#51

Post by ctoa »

vjulian wrote: post #32
jmclnx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to be aware of, pasteurization adds costs to dairy products. So it is being done for a real reason, not just "because". Companies will never pay to do anything unless not doing it will open them up to a law suit. So, raw milk does have some risks just based upon the the fact it costs to pasteurize milk.

Presumably, you’re American? In many parts of the world we regularly consume cheese made with raw milk. For many cheeses, raw milk is preferable.

European cheese producers have their own costly methods of managing raw milk cheese safety. They have much more surveillance of the entire process, like rapid testing of milk for STEC (the microbe involved in this outbreak) and adding bioprotective cultures during milk production. In France there is an extensive monitoring/alert system. They aren't just YOLO-ing it.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#52

Post by roryirvine »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #43
roryirvine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't most good cheese unpasteurised? Comte, Roquefort, Gruyere, Epoisses, Parmesan, even many (most?) small-producer Cheddars.

Yeah sorry I was a little careless there. For the cheeses we were sourcing it didn't matter, and for most of the raw milk cheeses they are done that way out of tradition and because the process is reliably safe enough. For some unwashed aged cheeses it does truly seem to matter but those the production is so closely tied up with the local agriculture, aging in specific natural conditions etc it's really not a process…

Oh, yeah, agreed. That dairy sounds like a death-trap!

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#53

Post by legitster »

> Pasteurization is a simple process of briefly heating milk and other products to a temperature that can kill disease-causing germs. The FDA has highlighted studies finding that pasteurization does not negatively affect the nutritional value of milk. Still, advocates of raw milk continue to claim, without evidence, that raw dairy has benefits.

This is a bit disingenuous of the reporter to include this. The appeal of raw milk is that it tastes better. Whether or not it's 'healthier' is kind of ephemeral and not really for the FDA to decide.

Personally, I'll stick with pasteurized milk. But if people knowingly want to take risks I don't see why we can't just slap a warning label on these products.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#54

Post by jckt »

carabiner wrote: post #14
pingou wrote: post #3

"The FDA has highlighted studies finding that pasteurization does not negatively affect the nutritional value of milk. Still, advocates of raw milk continue to claim, without evidence, that raw dairy has benefits." Well, perhaps it has taste benefits?

That would get in the way of Arstechnica's hyper liberal bias. I eat raw cheese because it tastes good. It's common in France, like in reblochon and Brie de meaux. There aren't mass deaths in France because of this.

There aren’t mass deaths in the US either (no deaths reported per the article). But there are definitely cases of listeriosis due to raw cheese in France. A recent outbreak was in 2025 and led to 2 deaths.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250813-deadly-listeria-outbre...

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#55

Post by legitster »

juancn wrote: post #48

I love how the makers can "just disagree". I'm Argentinian and if ANMAT (our FDA) recalls something, it's gone, no involvement from the manufacturer really needed. They could revoke your license to make and sell food wholesale.

> Raw Farm, is rejecting the regulator’s findings and refusing to voluntarily recall its cheese.

The FDA has mandatory and "voluntary" recalls. The FDA could require Raw Farms to recall their products if they had a strong enough case.

This is mostly a non-story.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#56

Post by autoexec »

legitster wrote: post #55
juancn wrote: post #48

I love how the makers can "just disagree". I'm Argentinian and if ANMAT (our FDA) recalls something, it's gone, no involvement from the manufacturer really needed. They could revoke your license to make and sell food wholesale.

> Raw Farm, is rejecting the regulator’s findings and refusing to voluntarily recall its cheese. The FDA has mandatory and "voluntary" recalls. The FDA could require Raw Farms to recall their products if they had a strong enough case. This is mostly a non-story.

It's a great story for informing any suckers out there who bought this cheese that they should probably throw it out and avoid buying from the company in the future since they've got a long history of poisoning people and clearly don't care much about the safety of their customers.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#57

Post by legitster »

jhawk28 wrote: post #46
pingou wrote: post #3

"The FDA has highlighted studies finding that pasteurization does not negatively affect the nutritional value of milk. Still, advocates of raw milk continue to claim, without evidence, that raw dairy has benefits." Well, perhaps it has taste benefits?

There is no taste difference between raw and pasteurized milk. The taste comes from the container. If you have both in glass, there is no discernible difference. My father is a dairy farmer and bet his professor (many years ago) that he could taste the difference. The professor setup a blind taste test where he gave my father pasteurized and raw milk in glass cups. There was no difference. "Nutritional value" is a ve…

I find this hard to believe because there is a massive difference in tastes just between two dairies. You can also get low-pasteurization milk from the same dairy and the taste difference is also remarkable.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#58

Post by mrguyorama »

pingou wrote: post #3

"The FDA has highlighted studies finding that pasteurization does not negatively affect the nutritional value of milk. Still, advocates of raw milk continue to claim, without evidence, that raw dairy has benefits." Well, perhaps it has taste benefits?

Most of what people like about "Raw milk" is that it is not homogenized. The cream has not been emulsified thoroughly, so the mouth feel can be different.

You can sometimes find pasteurized milk that hasn't been homogenized in order to get the good mouth feel without drinking absurdly unsafe bacteria culture.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#59

Post by autoexec »

abeppu wrote: post #22

I get that the norms lean conservative and that's a good thing. But if someone says you should do a recall and the actual lab tests saying whether your product actually has toxin-producing bacteria haven't finished running yet, I can understand the desire to wait until the evidence is in.

They've got some evidence, 7 known cases over three states all linked to the same product. The history of problems from this producer makes it seem more likely to be true. A lot of companies would rather have their customers throw away their product and buy it again from a different batch than risk having their customers get violently sick or dead from their food because the people who get sick and survive can end up with a very strong aversion to the brand and/or product going forward, and voluntarily recalling the product just to be safe is good from a PR stance since it looks like you actually care about your customers.

Re: FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

#60

Post by harshreality »

comrade1234 wrote: post #19

I make cheese (ricotta and paneer) from raw milk all of the time at home. Raw milk is easy to buy here in Switzerland. I get a noticeably better result with raw milk than pasteurized, and terrible terrible results from ultra-pasteurized milk. By 'better' I mean quantity per liter but also the size of the curds. The thing that I find amusing is that I think people in the USA actually just chug raw milk like it's regul…

Ricotta and paneer appear to be high-heat cheeses, where pasteurization is implicit in the first step even if the milk wasn't pasteurized to begin with.

Cheddar, the kind of cheese allegedly at issue in this outbreak, appears to be a low-heat cheese, so you wouldn't start by heating the milk to pasteurization temps. If the milk isn't already pasteurized, the resulting cheese might be contaminated.

European soft cheese makers allegedly follow protocols to ensure that there's not substantial bacterial contamination in the beginning; they carefully handle the milk through the beginning of the cheesemaking process, after which the culture and salt and acidification stall any further bacterial growth; then aging cuts down any bacterial population to safe levels, and it's never reached a level where it could produce dangerous levels of toxins.

Competent American raw-cheese makers would do the same thing, but in the interest of supplying "raw milk product" fanatics, unscrupulous businesses will cut corners for profit. High contamination levels of the initial raw milk, or substantial cross-contamination after aging, is probably what led to this and the company's previous cheese contamination problems.

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