Can I eat blue cheese while pregnant?

The verdict

Cold blue cheese is the one soft cheese where reading the word pasteurised on the label does not settle the question. The NHS puts pasteurised or unpasteurised soft blue-veined cheeses, such as Danish blue, gorgonzola and roquefort, in its foods to be careful with, and says these must be thoroughly cooked.

Ireland goes further. The HSE's foods to avoid in pregnancy names blue cheeses such as Danish blue, gorgonzola and roquefort in the same breath as mould-ripened brie and camembert, with no cooking route offered on the page.

Australia and New Zealand group blue with the rest of the soft, semi-soft and surface-ripened cheeses in the FSANZ higher-risk table, and offer baked soft cheeses cooked to an internal 75C as the safer alternative.

US advice is framed around pasteurisation rather than blue specifically: ACOG says soft cheeses made with pasteurised milk are safe, and the FDA's exception list names queso fresco-type cheeses and raw-milk cheeses. Pasteurised blue is therefore treated more leniently in the US than in the UK or Ireland.

Why pasteurisation does not clear blue cheese in the UK

The mould is the point. Blue cheese is deliberately inoculated with a penicillium mould and then pierced with needles so that air reaches the interior and the veining can develop. Those piercings create channels, and the ripening process raises the pH of the cheese from the sharply acidic curd it started as towards something much closer to neutral.

Listeria does not grow well in acid. It grows perfectly well in a moist, low-salt, near-neutral cheese, and it grows at fridge temperature, which is what makes it different from most food poisoning bacteria. The FSA's listeria guidance lists soft mould-ripened cheeses, such as camembert, brie and blue-veined cheeses, among the ready-to-eat foods where the bacterium is more commonly found.

Pasteurising the milk kills listeria that was in the milk. It does nothing about contamination picked up afterwards, during ripening, cutting, wrapping or at a deli counter, and a ripened blue cheese then gives any survivor weeks of cold storage in which to multiply. That is why the UK rule attaches to the type of cheese rather than to the milk it was made from.

Hard and semi-hard blues

The NHS wording is specific: soft blue-veined cheeses. It separately lists pasteurised or unpasteurised hard cheeses, such as cheddar, gruyere and parmesan, as safe. Firmer, drier, saltier blues sit somewhere between those two descriptions, and the NHS does not name them individually.

Because the guidance does not resolve it, the honest answer is that it is not resolved. If you want certainty with a firm blue, cook it, or ask your midwife. Do not read the hard-cheese exemption as covering every blue cheese that is not runny.

What cooked actually means

Thoroughly cooked, in the NHS phrasing, and steaming hot right through in the FSA's, is a higher bar than melted. FSANZ gives a number for it: an internal temperature of 75C, and separately advises reheating food until it is steaming hot at 75C.

Dishes that clear that bar include a blue cheese sauce that has been simmered, a blue cheese and broccoli soup, a tart or quiche baked through, gorgonzola stirred into hot pasta and returned to the heat, and blue cheese on a pizza that comes out of a hot oven. Dishes that do not include a cheeseboard, blue cheese crumbled over a steak at the table, blue cheese dressing on a cold salad or with wings, and blue cheese stirred into something merely warm.

Blue cheese dressing deserves its own mention because it is one of the most searched versions of this question. Commercial bottled dressing is a different product from a wedge of roquefort: it is typically made with pasteurised dairy and stabilised, but it is still an uncooked chilled ready-to-eat food, and UK advice about soft blue cheese was not written with it in mind. If you want to stay inside the guidance as written, treat any dressing containing visible blue cheese as blue cheese.

Stilton, gorgonzola, roquefort and the rest

The named examples differ mainly in moisture and salt. Roquefort is a sheep's milk blue ripened in caves, gorgonzola comes in a firmer piccante and a much softer dolce version, and Danish blue is a cow's milk blue sold widely in supermarkets. Gorgonzola dolce is the softest and wettest of the common blues and the one most obviously covered by the UK instruction to cook.

None of these is riskier because it is imported or artisanal in itself. What matters is moisture, acidity and how long it has been sitting cut on a counter. A vacuum-packed wedge from a supermarket chiller, cooked, is a safer route than a hand-cut piece from an unrefrigerated cheeseboard, uncooked.

If you have already eaten some

A single portion of cold blue cheese is a low risk, not a high one. Listeriosis is rare, and the NHS's general line on foods that should have been avoided is that a small amount, if you did not become ill, is unlikely to affect your baby.

The reason to know about it is that the incubation period is long and the early illness is unremarkable. The FSA notes listeria can cause few or no symptoms in healthy adults, and ACOG warns symptoms may appear as late as two months after eating contaminated food. Fever, chills, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance or an upset stomach in the weeks after eating cold blue cheese are all worth a same-day call to your midwife or GP. Tell them what you ate; listeriosis is diagnosed on a blood culture that nobody orders unless they are thinking about it, and it is treatable with antibiotics.

Where guidance genuinely differs

The UK offers cooking as the route back in and says so explicitly. Ireland's published list simply says avoid, with no cooking exemption written on the page. Australia and New Zealand fold blue into a broader higher-risk category and put a number, 75C, on the cooked alternative. The US frames the whole question around pasteurised versus raw milk, so pasteurised blue is not on the FDA or ACOG avoid lists at all.

The practical effect is that a pregnant woman in Chicago may reasonably eat a pasteurised blue cheese cold on ACOG's advice, while the same cheese in Manchester comes with an instruction to cook it and in Dublin with an instruction to skip it. Cooking satisfies all four at once, which is why it is the recommendation this page leads with.