Ah…yes… the hard data on illnesses from raw milk, as posted yesterday on the Complete Patient by blogmaster David E. Gumpert. According to his post, a request filed last year with the CDC under the Freedom of Information Act, for data on illnesses associated with raw milk and pasteurized milk, revealed that approximately 59 people are sickened each and every year, which can be further reduced to 54 if you exclude those who became sick from imported Mexican cheese.
 
To any health guru, I would think that 54 illnesses are 54 too many. Especially, when I’m guessing that at least 50 per cent of those sickened are children (see the table we manage on suspected and confirmed raw milk-related outbreaks). While David points out that the CDC figures may be inflated because, “Food vehicles identified are not necessarily confirmed with statistical or epidemiological evidence,” the vast majority of foodborne illnesses go unreported to start with. And I can’t help but think that for black-market food items like raw milk, underreporting is even higher than for a staple food item because so few people want to be known as a sellout. For a product with such a long list of supposed healing powers no one should be getting sick — right?