Greggs cheese and onion bake

[DoNotLoseHope]

Ok so I was around 5 weeks pregnant and I really wanted a cheese and onion bake from Greggs. Ate it but also decided to email them to ask if the cheese and milk used is pasteurised. Turns out it isn’t!

they emailed back saying :

Our Technical Team have advised that our Cheese & Onion Bake contains different cheeses, please see below:
Full Fat Soft Cheese – made using non-pasteurised milk
Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese – made using non-pasteurised milk
Coloured Mature Cheddar Cheese – Made using pasteurised milk

im actually so surprised and now im worried about the listeria composure :(

This feels like a mistake, they’d surely have to label the products made with raw milk and it would be a very, very odd business decisions.

You’ve eaten it now and it was cooked so..

I would email them back and tell them they should be labelling them and ensuring they aren’t sold to vulnerable groups or they need to correct themselves.

If it’s cooked it’s ok isn’t it? Try not to worry too much about it, what’s done is done. I was eating cured meat and undercooked steak at 4 weeks not knowing I was pregnant, the same as many others have eaten/drank way worse. Baby is absolutely fine thank goodness 💕

The cooking would kill any bacteria in the non pasteurized milk anyway but I have to say it's a very odd decision from greggs to use cheese made from raw milk.

It's cooked so it doesn't really matter if the milk was pasteurised or not

I ate these all through pregnancy with my daughter, never even knew it would be an issue, and she’s totally fine so just try not to worry!

https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/keeping-well/foods-to-avoid/

NHS says it’s fine 🤷

Considering the contents are hot as lava when they're cooked, you can eat them safe in the knowledge that cooking unpasteurised cheese over a temp of 74°c kills any chance of listeria. Enjoy!

I very much doubt they will be using unpasteurised cheeses in their bakes so I'm not sure I believe their reply.

Regardless, it's cooked and that would kill any bacteria

I wonder if the person responding perhaps isn’t aware of - and mixed up the wording - the difference between pasteurised and unpasteurised.

Either way I wouldn’t be bothered by this - they are well cooked!

Unpasteurised hard cheeses are fine also, anyway, but I'd echo the others and say no issue at all to have unpasteurised cheese if it's hot! Tbh I've eaten cheese on holiday I'm not sure was pasteurised and not felt very bothered. The risk of listeria is super low anyway

I’m also not convinced they’ve got it right. I bet if you made a complaint about them not labelling the fact it contains raw milk they would immediately come back stating that it was a mistake and is in fact pasteurised…

Agree it won't be a problem as cooked, but you might also find it reassuring (or not!) to know that no listeria cases in the UK were actually attributed to non-pasteurised milk products in the 2024(although I suppose the sandwiches could be?)
Listeriosis in England and Wales: summary for 2024 - GOV.UK