Every Portion of Swiss Cheese is Infected with Listeria

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NOTMILK - 100 Percent of Swiss Cheese is Infected with

Listeria

 

Greetings Members:

 

Be sure to follow the links here for additional documentation.

 

Taken from the daily news letter of " Notmilk.com "

 

In yesterday's notmilk column, I reported the

case of a current cheese recall due to Listeria

contamination.

 

<http://health.notmilk/message/1498>

 

In that column, you read that Listeria monocytogenes

can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in

young children, frail or elderly people, pregnant women,

and individuals with weakened immune systems. Listeria

infections can also cause miscarriages

 

A few readers of the column were angry. One dairy

farmer suggested that the incidence of Listeria is

so small as to be almost nonexistant. He suggested

that one out of every one million packages of dairy

products contain live Listeria. In order to check

out this claim, a bit of research was necessary.

 

One of the many tasks I assign myself each day is

to spend some time (sometimes a few hours) searching

and reading Medline abstracts. There is no way any

one person can read every study published in every

scientific journal. I located the revealing summary

of a recently published study in a French journal,

referenced as Rev Epidemiol Sante Publique. 2003,

Oct;51(5):493-503.

 

A group of scientists (Schaffner, et. al.) measured

the level of exisiting Listeria bacteria in Swiss

cheese samples and came up with astonishing results.

Every sample tested contained traces of live Listeria.

 

These researchers discovered that the processing of

Swiss cheese leads to a probability of contamination.

In their words:

 

" Elevated bacterial concentrations are mainly due to

cases of mastitis involving Listeria monocytogenes. "

 

Depending upon the level of heat treatment, various

samples tested resulted in anywhere from one to ten Listeria

monocytogenes per portion of cheese. The authors conclude:

 

" Based on the presented data and estimations, it is concluded

that the consumption of traditionally/artisanal manufactured

Swiss Emmental hard cheese presents an extremely low, but

existent risk, especially for people with a deficient or

diminished immune system. "

 

What this all means is that all Swiss cheese contains detectable

levels of live Listeria. Depending upon storage (loading dock,

truck, warehouse, supermarket, your home), those bacteria

have the opportunity to multiply. What are the odds of

you being infected with Listeria? Russian Roulette, anybody?

 

Robert Cohen

http://www.notmilk.com