Raw milk is a common source of infections. The bacterial are often carried by healthy cattle and by flies on farms. Non-chlorinated water may also be a source of infections. However, properly cooking chicken, pasteurising milk, and chlorinating drinking water will kill the bacteria.
Raw milk may become contaminated with C. jejuni in one of two ways. It may excreted directly by a mastitis udder or feces may contaminated the product. Contamination of milk from C. jejuni mastitis is thought to be rare, but direct milk excretion leading to human cases has been reported.
Milkborne campylobacteriossis outbreaks have even almost invariably associated with consumption of raw or inadequately pasteurised cow’s milk. However, a few cases of C. jejuni and C. coli enteritis have been trace to ingestion of raw goats milk in United States, Great Britain and Australia, with the epidemic strain identified in fecal samples from incriminated goats.
Raw milk associated with Campylobacter jejuni
