Can You Eat Droëwors When Pregnant? The Careful, Sourced Answer
PublishedCan you eat droëwors when pregnant? Official guidance says not as it comes. The CDC lists fermented and dry sausages among the foods to avoid in pregnancy unless they are heated to 165°F or steaming hot, and droëwors is an air-dried sausage that is never cooked. The concern is listeria: rare, but far more serious during pregnancy.
You will notice that is not a sales pitch. Droëwors is on our launch list and I would love to tell you it is fine. This page exists because a pregnant woman searching this at 11pm with a craving deserves the answer a cautious doctor would give, not the one that moves product.
Is droëwors safe to eat during pregnancy?
No official body names droëwors, or biltong for that matter. It falls into two categories they do name: dry sausage and cured meat. Here is what each source says about those.
- CDC. Its listeria prevention guidance puts unheated deli meat, cold cuts, hot dogs and fermented or dry sausages on the riskier list, and says they become the safer choice once reheated to 165°F or until steaming hot. The CDC also says pregnant women are 10 times more likely to get a listeria infection.
- USDA. The Food Safety and Inspection Service says that because dry sausages are not cooked, people at higher risk, pregnant women included, might want to avoid them.
- FoodSafety.gov. Its page for pregnant women gives the same instruction for fermented or dry sausage: reheat to steaming hot or 165°F.
- NHS (UK). Its foods to avoid in pregnancy list says cold cured meats such as salami, pepperoni, chorizo and prosciutto should be cooked until steaming hot, and notes a small risk of toxoplasmosis from raw, undercooked or cured meat.
Four sources, one message. Uncooked dried sausage is on the careful list for the nine months.
Why does dried sausage get flagged in pregnancy?
Droëwors is made by mincing beef and fat, seasoning it with salt, vinegar and spice, stuffing it into a thin casing and hanging it in moving air for days. At no point does it meet an oven. For most adults that is the whole appeal. In pregnancy it is the whole problem, for three reasons.
- Listeria. Listeriosis is rare. It is also the infection pregnancy guidance worries about most, because it can cause miscarriage, stillbirth or serious illness in a newborn even when the mother feels only mildly unwell.
- Toxoplasmosis. The parasite can be carried in raw, undercooked and cured meat. In healthy adults it often passes unnoticed. In pregnancy it is treated far more seriously.
- It is minced. With a whole cut, bacteria sit on the surface. Mince mixes the surface all the way through, and there is no cooking step afterwards to deal with it. The same logic is why a rare steak and a rare burger are not the same food-safety question.
Is the absolute risk from one stick of droëwors high? No. Is the consequence if you are unlucky severe enough that mainstream guidance says skip it? Yes. I am not going to argue with obstetricians to sell a sausage.
Can you eat droëwors if you heat it first?
Heating to 165°F (74°C), or until steaming hot all the way through, is the fix the CDC and FoodSafety.gov both give for dry sausage. It kills listeria.
It also turns droëwors into something else. A few minutes in a hot oven or a pan and you have a crisp, hot, slightly greasy stick that tastes fine and is no longer the snack you were craving. Some pregnant South Africans do exactly this and call it a compromise. If you go that route, run it past your own doctor or midwife first. They know your pregnancy. I know dried beef.
Is droëwors any different from biltong when you are pregnant?
Same category, same guidance. Both are air-dried, uncooked meat. If anything droëwors sits a notch further into the caution zone, because it is minced and because the CDC names dry sausage outright. Chilli bites, snap sticks and every other air-dried South African meat snack follow the same rule.
The biltong version of this page, including jerky and beef sticks, is here: can you eat biltong while pregnant.
What if you already ate droëwors before you knew?
Do not panic. The risk from any single serving is low, and plenty of women have eaten a stick at a braai in week five without knowing. Mention it at your next appointment. If you develop a fever, chills, muscle aches or flu-like symptoms, contact your provider promptly and tell them what you ate. Symptoms can take days or weeks to show up, so it is worth mentioning even if the droëwors was a while ago.
What about breastfeeding?
Different situation. The CDC says that women generally do not need to limit or avoid specific foods while breastfeeding, and the NHS lists no foods to avoid. If you have spent nine months walking past the droëwors, that first stick afterwards is a small and well-earned pleasure. Check with your own clinician if you are unsure.
What can you snack on instead?
If the craving is salt, protein and chew rather than droëwors specifically, a few things get you close without the caution flags: hard-boiled eggs, pasteurized hard cheese, roasted chickpeas, nuts, or well-cooked beef in any form you like. None of them is droëwors. All of them are fine. The droëwors will still be here afterwards. It keeps better than a pregnancy does.
Frequently asked questions
Is dried sausage safe during pregnancy?
Official guidance says to avoid uncooked dry sausage in pregnancy unless it is heated to 165°F or steaming hot. Dry sausages are not cooked during production, so they carry a small risk of listeria.
Is biltong OK to eat during pregnancy?
Most guidance treats biltong the same way as other uncooked cured meat: avoid it, or heat it until steaming hot first. Ask your own doctor or midwife.
Can you eat droëwors in the first trimester?
The guidance does not change by trimester. The listeria risk applies throughout pregnancy, so the avoid-or-heat rule applies from the first week to the last.
How much droëwors is safe when pregnant?
No official source gives a safe amount of uncooked dry sausage in pregnancy. The guidance is to avoid it or heat it thoroughly, not to eat it in moderation.
Are chilli bites safe during pregnancy?
Chilli bites are air-dried, uncooked beef, so they fall under the same guidance as biltong and droëwors: avoid during pregnancy, or heat until steaming hot.
Can you eat droëwors while breastfeeding?
Generally yes. The CDC says women usually do not need to avoid specific foods while breastfeeding. The listeria advice for dry sausage is specific to pregnancy.
Written by Calvern Tong, founder of Billi Tong's Biltong, Austin TX. We sell dried beef, so treat us as an interested party and weigh this against your own clinician's advice. This article is general information, not medical advice.
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