Bathtub cheese, homemade cheese made in bathtubs is spreading a rare drug resistent strain of tuberculosis. The rare strain has been traced to illegally unpasteurized diary products including tainted queso fresco cheese. Hardest hit are the Hispanic immigrants in Southern California. Fearing a comeback of this rare strain that was almost completely irradicated in the US in the 1900s.

San Diego is being seen as the core center of the increase. Mycobacterium bovis TB can infect anyone who eats the unpasteurized dairy products mainly made in backyards. The problem is the cattle in Mexico where M. Bovis infect 17 percent of the herds.

At least this strain of TB isn’t easily spread from human to human contact and lands less often in the lungs. The bad news is the rare TB is drug resistant.

The problem originates in Mexican herds, but immigrants must be carrying their own supplies of milk across the border with them to be able to make it here or they must be making it in Mexico and smuggling it across the border with them as food supplies during the journey. The biggest problem is in San Diego where immigrants go back and forth across the border almost at will.

Bathtub cheese is causing an outbreak of drug resistant TB in the immigrant Hispanic communities in Southern California.