Drinking raw milk is risky business, new report suggests

Drinking raw milk is a risky idea, especially for children, suggests a new report published Wednesday.

About one in six people who tried raw milk in Minnesota over a 10-year period got sick, according to the study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. And many of them got seriously sick: Thirteen percent of the people who became ill needed to be hospitalized, for an average of three days. Most of those who got sick after drinking raw milk were children, and an 11-month-old infant, sickened with a toxic E. coli O157 infection, died.

The new report, led by Minnesota Department of Health epidemiologist Trisha Robinson, is a snapshot of the illness outbreaks linked to unpasteurized milk in that state, one of the 30 U.S. states in which raw milk is allowed to be sold in some capacity. Robinson writes that raw milk is frequently identified as the source of foodborne illness outbreaks, and while these cases are often reported in the media, they likely represent a small piece of the actual number of illnesses associated with raw milk.  http://www.nbcnews.com/health/drinking-raw-milk-risky-business-new-report-suggests-2D11724269