“This [raw milk] debate has reached the point where the opposing sides are irrevocably dug in and equally unmovable in their convictions. Neither side will back down, and neither side is willing to look for compromise. While one has to respect the passion and the conviction of the opposing forces one also has to recognize that this situation has all the makings of continued anguish and wasted energy.”
A pretty good assessment of where things stand, I’d say. What’s intriguing about this analysis is that it comes from a former high-ranking official of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the Bush Administration for six years. Even more intriguing is that the former official, David Acheson, uses that introduction to come out in favor of not only an end to the hostilities on raw milk, but of FDA involvement in helping develop “agreed standards for raw milk production.”
The statement actually came out three weeks ago as a posting on the blog of Leavitt Partners, a health care and food safety consulting firm launched by the former Secretary of Health and Human Services. It hasn’t received any attention that I’m aware of, until a tweet began making the rounds earlier today.
Acheson further stated in the posting: “Let us accept that raw milk consumption is here to stay–legislating against it will drive it underground and thus magnify any dangers associated with consuming that commodity. Instead, I advocate devoting the energy that abounds in this argument to setting agreed standards for raw milk production. There is copious science to indicate how to minimize the likelihood of microbial contamination of milk (note I say minimize and not eliminate). Appropriate management of the farm, the dairy cattle, the procedures, the containers, the storage and the shelf life of the product can all be effective controls and should all be used in conjunction with each other. Dare I even suggest that FDA could actually be a knowledgeable contributor to this process?”
Thems is radical words coming from someone so recently high ranking at FDA, and on top of everything else is a physician. Dr. Acheson arrived at the FDA in 2002 as the Chief Medical Officer in its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). In January 2004, he was named Director of CFSAN’s Food Safety and Security Staff. In May 2007, Dr Acheson was appointed as the Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection to work directly with the commissioner on food safety. In January 2008, he was named Associate Commissioner of Foods, which provided him an agency-wide role for all food and feed issues, including health promotion and nutrition.
The post is well worth reading, in part for its argument that the raw milk conflict will have no winners until the government begins to accept the reality of raw dairy’s presence. “The battle over raw milk will continue to result in a public health stale mate until the intellectual capital of those involved in the argument move to a different level and look for collaborative solutions not confrontational ones. Confrontation will never succeed in this argument, but collaboration could not only be constructive but actually make the product less of a public health hazard–which after all is my goal as a public health professional.”
It can be argued that Acheson lacks authority to implement change. But knowing how these things work, I have to think he wouldn’t have gone public on such a controversial matter without at least some grudging approval from former cronies still at the FDA. Because his consulting firm likely depends for its business at least in some measure on its ongoing connections at the FDA, I doubt the firm would have allowed the post had there been huge resistance. It could be that this is a trial balloon. Or even a first effort at reconciliation. Of course, it’s always possible it’s just the statement of a lone wolf, but I highly doubt it.
What’s encouraging is that Dr. Acheson seems oriented toward focusing on the kind of safety standards any number of people on this blog, like Tim Wightman, Mark McAfee, Bill Marler, Concerned Person, Lykee, Steve Bemis, WI Raw Milk Consumer, and Scott Trautman, have been advocating. Moreover, the discussion seems to be encouraging reasonable safety standards as opposed to limited access, and some degree of collaboration as opposed to ongoing battle.
In the same spirit, I hope Mary Martin and Mark McAfee are able to make further headway in their discussions on a common approach to raw milk safety.
***
Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger cut the yellow crime-scene tape and undid the seals covering his fridges and coolers, and announced himself open for business today. Dozens of consumers and a handful of area dairy farmers raced to his farm in Loganville, about an hour west of Madison, Thursday morning to show support in the event agents from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection showed up. They didn’t.
All this a day after regulators spent more than five hours conducting an inventory of food at the farm, all in connection with the dairy’s practice of distributing raw milk to more than 100 regular customers.
It’s what happens next that is very important. Consumers and farmers need to be prepared to show ongoing support to Hershberger, perhaps on quick notice. Other farmers may need to take the same action should the agents show up at their farms. DATCP may need to decide if it’s going to use force against rebellious farmers, and whether it can handle growing numbers of brush fires. Consumers may need to decide whether they are willing to risk arrest standing up for dairy farmers. Decisions, decisions. That’s what civil disobedience is about.
***
The Minnesota Department of Health appears to have closed the loop in its case against Michael Hartmann’s raw dairy in Minnesota. The agency announced today that its inspection of the dairy last week yielded the same E.coli 0157:H7 that sickened five people.
I’m not sure what happens next. If Hartmann was being treated the way other farmers are treated when foodborne illness is discovered in their products, he’d presumably need to demonstrate that his product was free of pathogens before being allowed to distribute his product again. But as we know, raw milk tends not to get the same treatment.
As lawyer Bill Marler put it on his blog yesterday, in a post headed “Is Raw Milk Treated Unfairly?”: “But the problem here is that I do believe there’s a double standard. Why is raw milk emphatically criticized when it causes illness while some lettuce producers are allowed by public health officials to escape public scrutiny when their contaminated product has caused illness?”
But almost as if to contradict that reasonable question, Marler headlined his posting about the Hartmann dairy findings: “E.coli test match on Hartmann Dairy Farm–the nail in the coffin of raw milk?” I highly doubt it. The fact is that it’s a very unfortunate situation, for all concerned. I hope the sickened individuals recover well, and I hope Michael Hartmann figures out exactly what led to the presence of E.coli 0157:H7 in his milk after many years without a problem–whether, as Violet Willis suggests following my previous post, it was a problem from introducing a new animal to the herd, or something else.
Might this (GASP!!!!!) involve keeping the animals on pasture, rather than in confinement?
Might this mean (GASP!!!!!) admitting that feeding grains to ruminants leads to unhealthy animals and unhealthy foods.
Might this mean (GASP!!!!!!) that our entire paradigm of food safety in the United States is fundamentally flawed?
No, no, no, that couldn’t be possible…..
Hey David, let’s not forget about Organic Valley and their misdeeds. You know like their factory farm in Texas and their failure to stand behind stregnethened organic standards.
George Sieman is just playing games. He really is not an ally of raw milk. He falsely accused Mark Zinniker of leaking the email between OV staff Rachel Turgason and DATCP’s Jackie Owens. Zinniker is now on the rocks (same as Trautman and Hershberger) because of Sieman.
2. Raw milk should not be sold in grocery stores or across state lines–the risks of mass production and transportation are too great; the risk of a casual purchase by someone misunderstanding the risks is too great, as well;
3. Farms should be required to have insurance coverage sufficient to cover reasonable damages to their customers;
4. Practices such as outsourcing (buying raw milk from farms not licensed for raw milk production) should be illegal;
5. Colostrum should be regulated as a dairy product, not a nutritional supplement;
6. Warning signs on the bottles and at point-of-purchase should be mandatory. An example: "WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria (not limited to E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Listeria and Salmonella). Pregnant women, infants, children, the elderly and persons with lowered resistance to disease (immune compromised) have the highest risk of harm, which includes Diarrhea, Vomiting, Fever, Dehydration, Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Reactive Arthritis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Miscarriage, or Death, from use of this product."
March 14, 2010 | Bill Marler
1) For commercial sales, I agree with you. However, if a person is a friend/family of the farmer, or an employee of the farm, do you really think you can stop them from getting raw milk from that farm? DATCP does.
2) Raw milk is widely available in grocery stores and even vending machines throughout much of Europe, and of course California. Do you really think that English, Italian, French, Slovanian, etc… consumers would tolerate rules which greatly restrict their access to microbiologically tested farm-fresh milk? I don’t think American consumers will either.
3) So? If raw milk were not a black/grey market, this would not be a problem.
4) It is not uncommon for traditional producers of raw milk cheese to outsource their raw milk from multiple farms who produce high-quality milk. Granted, the pH changes which accompany the cheese making process have a selective affect against pathogens, but this does not change the fact that the milk in question is destined for raw milk cheese, and not PASTUERIZATION, and so requires an entireley different set of microbiological standards than PMO milk.
5) I disagree. Colustrom does have culinary uses (you can make a sweet fresh custard by gelling it with rennet, or a fresh pershiable cottage cheese by acidifying it) but these are rather limited in scope. It is primarily a nutritional supplement, if it is to be consumed by humans.
6) You can put whatever legal disclaimer you want on it. Here’s a suggestion: make it short. The longer and more elaborate you make the disclaimer, the more consumers will become interested in the product.
CP is simply copying Bill Marler verbatim.
Bob, I guess you were wrong about that one.
http://www.channel3000.com/localvideo/index.html?v=29116
Although in the past i’ve compared these to Bill’s Six Points, I won’t do that again here since I continue (natch) to believe that these cover much of the same territory (and we do agree on many aspects), but are more comprehensive and now, with the possibility of FDA’s opposition cracking, even more pertinent for a more thoroughgoing discussion:
1) Mark McAfee’s Citizens Petition to FDA on interstate raw milk shipments is modeled on Ron Paul’s HR 778, which is still buried in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. HR 778 is intended to get FDA totally out of regulating interstate commerce in raw milk simply based on its lack of pasteurization. [Now add the FTCLDF lawsuit against FDA pending in Idaho]
2) There should be some kind of consistent identification of raw milk and raw milk products coupled with standard warning language, whether basic such as current restaurant-style warnings, or more elaborate such as current California warnings.
3) Claims for health benefits may be made by any customer in the producer’s advertising or sales forum only if in the form of personal testimonials or peer-reviewed scientific papers; or by the producer in the producer’s advertising or sales forum only if in the form of a statistically accurate summary of unsolicited customer testimonials or peer-reviewed scientific papers.
4) Sales at retail, where the consumer is likely not to know the producer, should have increased testing under state law.
5) Transactions (whether sales, cow shares or otherwise depending on state law) direct from farmer to consumer whether on the farm or otherwise, or from farmers with herds smaller than a yearly-average [100] milking cows, should not be regulated other than by individual agreement.
[precedent for a similar exemption of raw milk, is the federal Egg Products Inspection Act (Pub. L. 91-597, 84 Stat.1620 et seq.) which exempts eggs direct farm-to-consumer or any sales from flocks of less than 3000 birds. At the state level, some states permit sales to various degrees and at the other extreme, some few prohibit all kinds of raw milk transactions; these issues will have to be dealt with at the state level.]
6) Parents are free to feed their children whatever foods they choose.
7) Farmers and individuals who provide raw milk or raw milk products to "others" should have legal protection in litigation (absent reckless behavior or actual knowledge of pathogens or other significant risk factors) so long as the proper identification and warnings (as in, #2) were provided and, in the case of "others" who are minors, so long as the identification and warnings were effectively communicated to the minor’s parent or guardian prior to consumption.
8) Educational materials (directed to both producers and consumers) for the safe production, handling and processing of raw milk and raw milk products should be developed and widely distributed generally and in the producer’s advertising and sales media.
9) An open, collaborative, transparent and scientifically rigorous and neutral approach should be taken by producers, consumers and public health officials in all instances of disease outbreak with a common commitment both to protect public health and to protect continued viability of responsible producers. Public health warnings which are not connected to outbreaks of illness or warnings which prove to have been unfounded, shall be followed by public health advisory followups which are communicated with the same level and extent of publicity as the initial warning, including exoneration of producers as appropriate.
10) Independent research (including analyses of testimonials and other real-life evidence as well as traditional reductionist studies) should be publicly funded to examine the nutritional value, environmental impacts of production, and the acute and chronic impacts on human health from raw and traditional foods and from industrially-produced foods.
11) Broader insurance availability for producers and other risk-sharing approaches should be developed as a counterweight to regulation-by-litigation.
[Farmers might consider voluntary production standards such as various kinds of testing protocols or simply rely on many years of problem-free operation, so as to induce insurers to write policies, otherwise the insurers will want to "go automatic" and insist on compliance with various regulations which is their current typical mode. Similarly, a litigation defense which is founded in compliance with the testing protocols of a voluntary standard or in decades of trouble-free operation by simply "looking at the animals and watching what’s in the filter," should help to defend against litigation, and ultimately, to reduce litigation.]
http://www.ftcldf.org/press/press-22feb2010.html
While I feel the disscussions that could take place by interested parites to the safety of raw milk are warrented,we must remember all percpetions of the product in order to understand raw milk production must be left at the door.
The two key points being…
All raw milk is inherently unsafe…
Grass will remove all possible problems with raw milk.
To begin this conversation we must understand this will take us wide and far to considerations that have never been disscussed on this blog, or any symposium on the subject sponsored by either side.
Given the back and forth this blog usually has, I do not relish the thought of years of conversations like it trying to understand the product, its ramifactions and production practices better.
However how will we ever come to an agreement of its true nature and potential.
Nobody on this blog to my knowlege has ever offered the fact that what we are drinking now is substandard for what raw milk could be related to its properties and potential.
Truth is the animals and soil we depend on for this product is so screwed up in almost all cases, farmers understanding of these proccess have been so dumbed down to a very low denominator it leads to believe both sides of the argument are correct.
Why we are both correct is the basis for disscussion, but both sides need better understanding to create the food we all think we are getting now.
I’m open to talk formally about it, but face to face is the only way to do it.
But oh I have to travel and intrupt my life to do that….yes we do.
Tim Wightman
cp does genuinely want change…you and I and lots of others disagree with her, but she does want change, and her posting of Marler’s points shows that.
Marler, OTOH, does NOT want change…indeed, change, in either direction would put him out of business…and his points are little more than lip service to "dialogue".
Real change, in either direction, would put Marler on the 3AM tv commercials using cutsie sayings like "One call, that’s all!" to entice folks who have had an automobile accident to call him.
Think about it…
If, on the one hand, regulatory types got what they have stated is their goal…a total regulatory ban on raw dairy everywhere…the Marlers of the world have no cases. A totally underground raw dairy supply would suck Marler dry. There is no money in suing a farmer with 10 cows here and another farmer with 8 goats there and whose small customer base consists of folks who are as much friends as customers.
On the other hand, real dialog, with real, constitutional results (which I believe to be impossible without wholesale change in regulatory management personnel)also puts Marler to work at 3AM. Sure…there would still be an occasional illness, just like now there are auto accident injuries, but when/if raw dairy becomes totally acceptable and normal, without the government testifying for Marler by constantly screaming "bad, bad, bad!!!" about raw dairy, and without regulators supplying Marler with 75% of his case prep in that they do all his studies, all his research for him (on the taxpayer’s dime, no less), leaving him with little to do besides making tearjerker videos…without that, with raw milk treated as "normal", whatever that means, Marler is again out of business except for the business generated by ambulance chasing middle of the night infomercials.
Either way, totally underground or accepted as a normal product like cars, asprin, and canned corn, turns Marler and his kind totally nocturnal, relying on the ambulance chasing middle of the night commercials, with a smattering of business thrown his way by the local bail bondsman he slips a twenty to every now and then.
Marler doesn’t want change. The way things are is his sweet spot, its how he puts food on the table. He doesn’t want that screwed with.
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
Stop and think about it. Thanks mostly to lawyers, a person is a fool if, after making a mistake, they simply say, "I’m sorry." Thanks to the Marlers of th world a simple apology has become evidence of culpability in the inevitable lawsuit.
Well…fine. Lawyers have done a good job of destroying civility, so I refuse to treat them civilly.
Bob Hayles
No. I’ve never been sued or threatened with a suit, and no one close to me has either. I am observant though, andmy points about the legal profession are valid.
Are all lawyers scum? No…but even the good ones are at least partially culpable in the sliming of the profession. Lawyers are entrusted to police their own profession, and I don’t see many of the good ones doing anything to reign in the bad ones. Bar associations tend to circle the wagons and protect their own garbage.
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt_and_politics/blog/vmix_c0902928-6fe9-11df-ae6a-001cc4c002e0.html
http://www.juicymaters.com/foodpolitics/
…has gotten back to me, and says Marler declined. Too bad…I enjoy it when a dumb, drunk, redneck boiled peanut (its a southern thang) salesman with a roadside stand kicks, rhetorically, of course, a hotshot lawyer’s legal ass.
Marler, a line from "A Few Good Men" comes to mind: "The truth? You want the truth? You can’t HANDLE the truth!"
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
Its not just the whole legal system I’m against. Nor is it just capitalism (or socialism…. they are both really just different approaches to the same thing — industrialism) and the anti-social anti-democratic behaviors which they encourage, especially amongst the powerful.
Nay… it is this entire system of empire civilization which I am opposed to, and all the baggage it carries — standing armies, imperial conquest, subjugation of women and other races, the development of bureaucracy and written law, boom and bust cycles of population, etc.. It predates the industrial revolution by about 5,000+ years.
Why?
Do you think # 10 would ever be done? Imagine-independent studies that are accepted….
There should be basic standards. The cows should eat only what nature intended them to eat, as they should also be in a healthy environment. If you are to sell to people outside your family, I would expect the farmer to have the knowledge about the bovines from gestation through old age, basic sanitary knowledge etc.
Education is the key
Writing standards should be done with all parties at the table…will that happen? The farmers are the most important people at the table, they have knowledge and hands on experience.
True safety and healthy food will only be achieved on the small scale with a farmer having a relationship with his customers. Federal and state regulator actions are keyed toward protecting market share, not food safety. And consumers are figuring this out and taking action for themselves. It is the consumers who are rejecting sick pasteurized milk for safely produced raw milk, pesticide laced and GMO contaminated food for organic food, and antibiotic laced feedlot meats for pastured meats.
The siren song of state regulation is being rejected. It is those regulations which have driven small dairies and butchers out of business while the true problem causers continue unabated. The biggest strides being made for food safety right now are on the consumer side despite state opposition. State actions thus far and pending federal food regs make it clear the state cannot and will not truly act for safe, healthy food.
Can you address the other part of the equation? If there were no clients there would be no lawyers. Is saying "I’m sorry" to someone paralyzed or suffering permanent kidney damage from a contamined food enough? BP would probably agree with your vision.
Sheri — its not because of victims that there are lawyers. Its because of laws that there are lawyers — the need of the rich and powerful to advance their interests at the expense of common people. I think that local communities are more than capable of holding reckless businesses accountable for injuries they cause to people, if we lived in a truly democratic society, but alas we do not. Democracy is nothing but a word that the powerful use to justify imperialist wars of conquest in third world countries, it is not an actual practice or philosophy of governance and social organization.
1. Raw milk should be sold only on farms that are certified by the state and inspected and tested regularly. Make ambiguous black market milk/cheese sales and "pet food sales" meant for human consumption clearly illegal;
Add: As a certifying agent, the state and its employees (as agents of the state) shall become qualified to regulate fresh milk by acquiring the necessary knowledge and training about fresh milk and small farms in order to effectively and fairly regulate fresh milk as well as non-fresh milk. The cost of certification (both financial and paperwork demand) shall not place an undue burden on the producer and shall be scaled to the size of the operation. Any state unwilling to allow the legal sale of raw milk must have a right-to-farm provision.
The goal is to obviate the need for black market products.
2. Raw milk should not be sold in grocery stores or across state lines–the risks of mass production and transportation are too great; the risk of a casual purchase by someone misunderstanding the risks is too great, as well;
Strike this demand. The grocery store restriction does not make sense, is overly restrictive, and could be perceived as meanness. At $9/gallon, a casual purchase is unlikely. States should be able to enter into commerce with other states or farms from other states as they decide. In fact, states already have that right. How about a transportation protocol that makes sense, not one designed to favor one segment of the business over another?
3. Farms should be required to have insurance coverage sufficient to cover reasonable damages to their customers;
Add: Insurance companies shall be prevented from gouging fresh milk farmers who are in compliance with item #1 (as amended).
4. Practices such as outsourcing (buying raw milk from farms not licensed for raw milk production) should be illegal;
Outsourcing is buying from someone else, regardless of their licensing status. Do you mean no outsourcing or do you mean no buying from unlicensed producers? Is this licensing the same as the certification in #1 or do you intend for it to be an additional credential to be obtained?
5. Colostrum should be regulated as a dairy product, not a nutritional supplement;
6. Warning signs on the bottles and at point-of-purchase should be mandatory. An example: "WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria (not limited to E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Listeria and Salmonella). Pregnant women, infants, children, the elderly and persons with lowered resistance to disease (immune compromised) have the highest risk of harm, which includes Diarrhea, Vomiting, Fever, Dehydration, Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Reactive Arthritis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Miscarriage, or Death, from use of this product."
There are warning labels on raw milk. The one in my fridge says, "Raw milk is not pasteurized. Pasteurization destroys organisms that may be harmful to humans. Store below 40 degrees."
It’s a sufficient warning. I would like to see a warning on pasteurized milk, "This product is dead. We have cooked out its inherent nutrients and added our own laboratory-created supplements because we are smarter than God."
If we implement your warning, then every food and every product sold as food should carry a warning about every possible thing that can happen if you consume that item. This includes Twinkies, soda, factory-farmed meat, dairy, and vegetables, high-sodium products, and so on.
Note: I do not make ANY money from raw milk. I am simply a consumer.
I would like to clarify that these are not my 6 points for raw milk safety standards, although I must say I do agree with all of them. They are Bill Marlers . WRMC asked, I’m wondering what suggestions Bill Marler has for making raw milk safe? Bill posted them here a few months back. I simply copy and pasted them.
I would also like to point out a great post by Amanda Rose. I copied and pasted it here because many of you may have missed it.
Hey guys. Long time. I read Violet’s comments about Odwalla with interest because she blames the victims for the apple juice regulations rather than the apple producer. The Odwalla apples are actually the stuff of local lore. My understanding is that they were sprayed with manure not long before harvest. It’s not clear why — perhaps the grower was experimenting with getting the sugar content up. Perhaps Mark can tell us more.
It’s too bad that the apple grower couldn’t just produce safe apples then, heck, we might still be able to get raw apple juice commercially and people wouldn’t have gotten sick and died. it’s just hard for me to blame mothers for that one.
In the spirit of improvement, I know you all feel like all I do is beat this outsourcing dead horse, but I read words very carefully. Mark said here that he hasn’t outsourced for *years* and yet in October on this blog he admitted to outsourcing in 2009.
I asked that he make his records available so that we can verify his claim that he has stopped. (If you all remember he led you to believe in April of 2008 that he had stopped and yet he had not.) Given that he has outsourced in the past, that his colostrum line continues to be unregulated, that his market is growing, and that in his last inspection report (posted online at fresnohealthinspections.org) he reported milking only 250 cows, we need to give this a look. This herd size number is less than the number he told us he was milking in 2006 according to his press reports — a time when he was definitely outsourcing. I saw thousands of gallons brought in during the fall of 2007. There was not just a little bit of outsourcing. OPDC got some new heifers recently, but I still don’t see how the math works out. In the video Mark linked "Grass to Glass," he shows a truck that he fills with 22,000# of milk — that’s about 2500 gallons. His inspection report says he produces 1,000 a day. That truck used to be on the road six days a week. I realize it may not always be full and there are other alternative explanations, but the numbers don’t add up and given the past outsourcing, this issue needs to be cleared up.
Let’s look at milk pool records and get this all settled.
All of this is to say that practices like outsourcing can very well lead to deaths as in the Odwalla case that can very well lead to the end of raw milk availability. If OPDC is outsourcing and someone dies as a result, bye bye raw milk.
Bye bye.
This is an important issue for consumer access to raw milk.
It’s time to take a step back and realize why I’m making this an issue. California’s raw milk availability would be gone in an instance. The rest would follow.
Bye bye Colorado raw milk. Bye bye.
Amanda
June 4, 2010 | Amanda Rose
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/team-d-minnesota-model-for-foodborne-illness-investigations/
‘Team D’ is Model for Outbreak Investigations
by Michelle Greenhalgh | Jun 03, 2010
The University of Minnesota’s "Team Diarrhea" or "Team D" may soon serve as a model for other food safety centers around the country.
A number of similar centers proposed in legislation introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) last year would investigate suspected food safety issues, such as Salmonella and E. coli outbreaks, with an approach similar to that of Team D, which is a collaborative effort between the Minnesota Departments of Health and Agriculture and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
In Minnesota, doctors are required to report all suspected cases of foodborne illness to the Department of Health. Upon receiving the report, each case is investigated by a team of University of Minnesota graduate students with Team D. Students contact patients and ask a series of questions about their symptoms and what foods they consumed before becoming ill.
What factors contribute to Minnesota’s excellent track record in successful food illness outbreak investigations? According to Carlota Medus a principal epidemiologist with the Foodborne, Vectorborne, and Zoonotic Diseases branch in the Acute Disease Investigation & Control Unit of the Minnesota Department of Health, a number of things come into play.
"Multiple factors contribute to Minnesota’s successful investigations," Medus told Food Safety News. "Centralized reporting of illnesses to the state; test results sent straight to Team D; epidemiologists assigned specifically to foodborne illness investigation, and interviewing all cases in real time."
In addition to the aforementioned steps Medus explained, once Team D finds a pattern in interview data, new surveys are created by using the information that patients disclose in interviews, then all of the patients are re-interviewed with the pointed survey.
"We’re talking to someone fairly quickly after their illness so they’ll have better recall," said epidemiologist and co-leader of Team D, Stephanie Meyer. "We’re also getting the details that we need to do the best kind of follow-up," she said.
Last year, Team D’s investigations helped determine the source of the Salmonella outbreak eventually linked to peanut butter by asking patients a series of questions. Investigators noted that peanut butter was the one commonly consumed food amongst the patients.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s investigation led officials to suspect that the Salmonella came from King Nut peanut butter produced by the Peanut Corporation of America in Georgia. The team of investigators tested a large tub of the product and found the potentially deadly bacteria.
"We call it the smoking tub," Heidi Kassenborg, director of dairy and food inspections at the Department of Agriculture, said. "It was contaminated, so we really needed to pull the product at that time." The outbreak resulted in nine deaths across the U.S., including three from Minnesota. Over 700 people became ill with Salmonella during the outbreak.
Minnesota health officials were also responsible for determining that jalapeo peppers, rather than first-suspected tomatoes, were the source of another Salmonella outbreak in 2008. That incident was one of the largest Salmonella outbreaks in recent years, with hundreds of people across the country falling ill.
In an interview about the legislation she introduced to create more centers like Team D, Knobluchar told a local Minnesota television station, "We’re proud of what our team does, it seems ridiculous that people have to die in Minnesota before it gets solved. What’s unique about Minnesota is they work like a team and really treat it as a mystery and try to solve it right away."
In the majority of other states, local health departments are charged with looking into probable causes of foodborne illness, but a lack of time and resources sometimes prevents the incidents from being investigated quickly.
Medus told Food Safety News that the creation of food safety centers like Team D around the country could work, but the model would have to change to fit each state’s reporting system along with making sure the center was following other state health codes and regulations.
"The model can be applied in other states, you would just have to modify the fit to how each state is set up. For example, currently many states only have a handful of epidemiologists at the state and local level, which makes it very difficult to coordinate what’s going on in the state, so it would be something that would have to change over time," she said.
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, S. 510, proposes numerous changes to make the domestic food system safer by requiring more inspections and give the FDA greater authority to enforce mandatory recalls. The Senate is expected to work on this legislation anytime now.
"Hey guys. Long time. I read Violet’s comments about Odwalla with interest because she blames the victims for the apple juice regulations rather than the apple producer. The Odwalla apples are actually the stuff of local lore. My understanding is that they were sprayed with manure not long before harvest. It’s not clear why — perhaps the grower was experimenting with getting the sugar content up. Perhaps Mark can tell us more."
And here is what I said about Odwalla:
"First of all the raw apple juice that sickened many in 1996 was caused from the harvesting of "Dropped" Red Delicious and McIntosh apples (Low acid with high sugar content apple varieties) where cows had been pastured recently. These apples were contaminated with bovine feces – which was the vector of the particular the raw apple juice (cider) outbreak.
This practice IMHO was a no-no to begin with. As a child, I was raised on unpasteurized cider. The dropped apples were NEVER taken to the press and only apples with a high acid content such as "Northern Spry" were used."
I think I am owed an apology, Amanda.
Kind regards,
Violet
" 9) An open, collaborative, transparent and scientifically rigorous and neutral approach should be taken by producers, consumers and public health officials in all instances of disease outbreak with a common commitment both to protect public health and to protect continued viability of responsible producers. Public health warnings which are not connected to outbreaks of illness or warnings which prove to have been unfounded, shall be followed by public health advisory followups which are communicated with the same level and extent of publicity as the initial warning, including exoneration of producers as appropriate."
We don’t have an open, collaborative, transparent and scientifically rigorous and neutral approach to epidemiological investigations now.The whole process is subjective.In the hands of a team that accepts that raw milk is "inherently dangerous" the evidence will obviously point to the milk.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/05vol31/dr3112a-eng.php
"In July 2004 an unusually high number of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections were reported in British Columbia (B.C.), many of which were in the Interior of the province. By early August, regional health authorities and the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) were actively investigating several clusters of E. coli O157:H7. One cluster was linked to a nationally distributed beef product and involved cases identified by a unique pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern.
One case in a separate cluster of E. coli O157:H7 infections with a similar PFGE pattern had a strong epidemiologic link to the contaminated beef product. On careful review, we felt that the PFGE patterns associated with these two clusters were identical. On 9 August, we performed a second round of PFGE testing using a different enzyme to confirm that there was only one cluster – not two – of E. coli O157:H7 in the province related to the contaminated beef product.
However, this second round of PFGE testing reclassified isolates into two new clusters with different PFGE patterns. One cluster was connected to the nationally distributed beef product. The second cluster was determined to have a different PFGE pattern, and the majority of infections occurred in the Interior of the province.
In this article, we describe the laboratory findings leading to the identification of this second cluster and discuss the role of PFGE testing with more than one enzyme in the identification of outbreaks. We also describe the results of our outbreak investigation to determine the source of E. coli O157:H7 in this second cluster, and we make recommendations to prevent such outbreaks in the future."
If the investgation involved raw milk,Would the second round of PFGE testing ever have been done?
http://www.biotech.univ.gda.pl/odl/doc/pfge.pdf
http://www.mayomedicallaboratories.com/test-catalog/print.php?unit_code=80349
"Cautions Discusses conditions that may cause diagnostic confusion, including improper specimen collection and handling, inappropriate test selection, and interfering substances
The fact that 2 strains share the same pattern does not prove
that they are epidemiologically related. Establishment of an
epidemiologic relationship depends on: the frequency with which
the "indistinguishable" pattern is seen among epidemiologically
unrelated isolates and correlation with clinical and epidemiological
information
Obviously, if common contact between 2 patients with strains
with the same PFGE type can be established, the chances are
greater that an epidemiologic link can be ascribed. Thus, the
greatest power of PFGE typing is in showing strain dissimilarity,
not in proving similarity or relatedness."
It appears that Violet is correct. You falsely accused her of blaming the victim in the raw apple cider ban.
I do support your efforts at more transparency and safety checks in the production of raw milk. Unfortunately, the reactionary knee-jerk approach of FDA, DATCP, etc… makes it very difficult if not impossible for raw milk producers to be transparent, particularly in states like WI and MN where the agricultural authorities consider the distribution of raw milk directly to consumers to be illegal.
When we are accused of causing injury to another because of some mysterious test result,we have to understand the science behind that test in order to understand if we really are responsible for the illnesses we are accused of causing.
Here is some basic background about PFGE and DNA "fingerprinting"
http://www.5min.com/Video/Electrophoresis-Separating-DNA-151426125
http://www.5min.com/Video/DNA-Fingerprinting-151426157
Now we have enough information to ask some reasonable questions about the DNA fingerprints that "indicate" that the health department has found a match.
How many enzymes were used?
How common are the DNA fragments that were matched?
How many different "strains" of ecoli 0157:H7 exist?
What is the probability that we really do have a match?
I suspect(maybe I am wrong) that when someone has consumed unpasteurized milk that the health department considers the epidemiological evidence of a link so strong that even the smallest chance of a DNA match would be considered adequate evidence to "prove" the link.Every time that it finds this match based on inadequate tests,the epidemiological evidence becomes even stronger.It is similar to what is done with "case law" in our legal system.Every time an unconstitutional law is upheld in the lower courts it becomes part of the case law that gives support to the law when it’s constitutionality is finally ruled on.
In any case, I am not intending to make this about you or your opinions, but I simply found it interesting that the Odwalla example came up because I have a crystal ball right here and I see the outsourcing taking raw milk in the same direction. Based on your post, I have no doubt that you agree with my assessment, Violet.
I appreciate, WI raw milk consumer, that producers in other states have different ways that they need to be transparent with their customers (I think we would all agree that they need to be transparent in some way, but probably not on the Internet for example).
I live in California and raw dairy products have been outsourced here from dairies not licensed to produce raw products. The original dairies did not even know about the outsourcing so they had no way to make sure the product was safe — they surely have assumed that the broker was taking it for pasteurization. The circumstances in Wisconsin do not reduce the need of Californians to know where their products are produced. This is not Costco Kirkland milk where people just buy by price. This is a credence good that people pay more for because of the production and processing assurances.
In any case, I pop in here every couple of months to beat this horse a bit more to no end in the transparency department. If the outsourcing actually stopped and I were OPDC, I would be interested in proving that. Some of you are new here so I’ll also add that I used to spend a lot of time on this issue but it appears fruitless, so I just pop in and leave, in a troll-like fashion to keep the tiny little flicker of a flame burning for transparency. The powers-that-be know where to find me should we ever examine that milk pool data. Personally, I have the means to produce all of my own food, so whichever way the winds blow, I’ll be free to make my own path.
Amanda
I think an important clarification required about outsourcing, is whether the outsourced milk is being used for butter, cheese, yogurt, etc… or simply for fluid milk.
The acidification process (and removal of moisture and addition of salt) which accompany producing the above mentioned products has a strong selective effect against pathogenic bacteria which may be present in fluid raw milk.
Imagine Mary’s surprise when she ended up in an outbreak and it would later be revealed that some of the product line was outsourced, the state could not test all the cows involved because they didn’t know about the outsourcing, product on the shelf that the state tested had obscene levels of shit in them (one had 140 million fecal coliform per ml). (It’s in the state report.) Imagine her surprise to learn that the stuff of legends — the BSK report that showed the decline in e coli in milk over 24 hours — actually showed that the pathogen stayed the same. Imagine her surprise when she thought all the milk was tested only to learn that one batch was tested weekly with an e coli test approved for apple juice. Imagine her surprise to learn that the dairy was just about to be degraded for a summer’s worth of high bacteria counts when it was shut down for an outbreak instead.
Considering my child drank the milk too and I was exposed to all of the same level of misinformation as Mary, I have a great deal of compassion and sympathy for her case. I also know what sort of animosity there was towards the families of the sick children. I didn’t actively participate in that but I do regret that I didn’t have the vision enough to do things differently and to reach out. if raw milk consumers could do that in future outbreaks, there would be fewer Marys on the hunt for improved consumer information.
In any case, it’s easy to see this all as black-and-white. It’s not.
Amanda
An important clarification regarding outsoucing —
Is outsourced milk being used for butter, cheese, yogurt, etc… or for fluid raw milk?
A very important distinction here. The acidification, removal of moisture, addition of salt, and aging of these products each have strong selective effects against pathogens. If raw milk is to be used for those products, it still needs to be clean, but not as squeeky clean as fluid raw milk for direct consumption.
I can understand why Mark would be defensive about outsourcing if you fail to acknowledge the critical distinction between outsourcing raw milk for such value-added products, vs. outsourcing raw milk for fluid consumption.
It’s also not simply a safety issue (though that is the most important factor). These are high priced goods that come with label claims. Those claims were not met in past outsourcing instances. (e.g. the grass part)
In any case, we can talk about all of the details all day long. I just want to see data.
Amanda
What Max Kane has done for the consumers, Vernon Hershberger is doing right now for the farmers.
Finally we have a farmer who openly challenges Government bureaucrats with courage and determination. It will be of utmost importance that those who truly believe in individual rights and fundamental freedom to rise up and join Vernon Hershberger.
His act of open resistance will become a milestone in this battle for food rights and fundamental freedom.
Everyone is called upon to stand behind the Hershberg Family in anyway possible.
The next weeks will be extremely crucial: this will of defiance will spread like wildfire.
It is not about you and me this is about our children and our future.
Thanks Max Kane and Vernon Hershberger
I see Marler and Amanda Rose and Lykke and many others get completely of track what the real issues are.
I respect that Marler makes money on these things and I also respect that Amanda Rose grabbed the opportunity to appear as an expert in raw milk issues. I simply feel tired following the indulgence in expertise and pretense.
We appear to have the luxury to passionately argue about issues in our backyard like life and death. The rest of the world is falling apart and Marler keeps pretending he is crying for every child poisoned by food.
I wish Marler or Amanda would have health issues as bad as some who depend on raw milk just to understand that some of these discussions here on the blog are simply a waste of time and energy.
The obsession and the naive expectation that experts are running all our life’s or that lawyers will solve our problems is a result of’ that we had it too good for too long.
Let those who love "safe fast food" continue as they wish. Please let those who make an informed choice about raw milk continue as well.
Buyer beware.
Farmers and consumers lets jointly and voluntarily develop basic standards for the production of reasonable safe food.
Lets keep experts and lawyers away from raw milk otherwise they live too long
Mark McAfee appears to be your new brother in the cause. You are right about rights and responsibilities. You may want to have a little talk with your brother about responsibilities.
Michael, health issues can be solved by other avenues. People will not live or die based on the availability of raw milk. Fermented foods, along with the use of a high potency probiotic, will give a person all the good bacteria they need. Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Sherrie Rogers and Dr. Natasha McBride are healing people everyday without using raw milk.
Ive been following your case for sometime. Ive actually admired the things you have said and the way youve handled yourself. It is all changed now. After your last post, youre arrogant and insulting like some (not all) of the raw milk group that posts here; very disappointing that you had to stoop to their immature and belittling level. I had higher expectations of you.
Id be curious on your thoughts about the latest E.coli outbreak in Minnesota? Does this bother you that kids became ill from raw milk.
cp
I’m going to tell a story for the benefit of Michael Schmidt because I don’t think he’s done proper background on me.
In October of 2007 I sat in Mark McAfee’s office helping with the AB1735 campaign (because,yes, I do actually have a Ph.D. in political science) when I saw thousands of gallons of milk brought in for butter two days of the four I was there. I suggested he get pictures of the dairy and put them on his website. I offered to help write the webpage in a way that was informative and not scandalous. I suggested he label the outsourced line as such. Over the following months I urged him to be more public about it. I finally outed him when I made no headway otherwise. I could go into why I did it when I did but that would be a long and not very interesting story. In any case, he was buying from Vander Eyk and then Clover. Neither met the label claims. When I outed Mark, he accused me of blindsiding him and told some other tall tales here and on my blog without realizing I eat at the same cowboy Mexican restaurant as Vander Eyk’s people. David raked me through the coals here without confirming any of what Mark told him. David blamed me for not fact checking and just took Mark’s word on the whole thing. Mark led the consumers here on this blog to believe that the outsourcing stopped. I got a huge amount of flack for being so hard on Mark. That was April of 2008. Mark confirmed via email in June of 09 that he had continued to outsource. David was on that email. That tidbit made this blog in October I believe.
That’s the short-story of the outsourcing, starting with me trying to make positive, consumer-friendly changes on the inside, to getting raked through the coals a number of times here for being a whistle-blower, including tonight, by Michael Schmidt.
I’m just old school over here. If you tell me you produced the product, I expect that to be true.
Mark knew that when he met me. The reason we got front page of the SF Chronicle for the AB 1735 campaign is that Michael Pollan hooked me up with a Chronicle reporter to do a story on Vander Eyk’s lack of pasture. We were going to fly over their holdings and do a "cow census." Mark was going to pilot us. That is how I got to know Mark — in the context of a Vander Eyk expose’. Who knew Mark was buying from them at the time in a strange twist of irony in the whole story.
Call my actions pretentious if you wish. Make it about me and not about consumer information.
I just wish we could look at that milk pool data and then we’d know for sure.
In any case, I promised to be in and out like a troll and I got an email that Michael Schmidt took a shot at me so I couldn’t really resist coming back here to read what he said. I’ve missed enough family time over this issue (that apparently no one cares about) so unless Jesus Christ comes again and posts under His real name or if I get access to that milk pool data, I’ll let the gurus like Michael Schmidt and Mark McAfee and David Gumpert (who all appear to be far more publicity seeking than I) work all of this out, surely with none of the pretense that I would have.
Amanda
cp, you are the essence of arrogance and pretension. Who but an extremely arrogant person would presume to tll me and others what we may and may not drink…especially when we are willing to let you put whatever foods you wish, good or bad, in your body.
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
"Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis Profile Changes Resulting from Spontaneous Chromosomal Deletions in Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7 during Passage in Cattle"
" Instability of the PFGE patterns of EHEC O157:H7 isolates has been reported. Changes in PFGE patterns were observed among strains after repeated subculturing and prolonged storage at room temperature (11). Loss of Shiga toxin genes and a large-scale inversion within the genome were identified as genetic events generating changes in PFGE patterns in vitro (10, 13). Shifts in the genotypes of EHEC O157:H7 clinical isolates from patients and cattle have been reported (3, 14). This phenomenon was also observed in EHEC O157:H7 experimental infections of cattle. Spontaneous curing of a 90-kb plasmid resulted in the loss of two restricted fragments from the PFGE profiles of EHEC O157:H7 isolates obtained from experimentally infected cattle (2). The purpose of the present study was to identify the genetic events affecting the PFGE patterns of EHEC O157:H7 after passage through the intestinal tract of cattle, especially for restriction fragments that are >90 kb long."
"Prior to drawing a conclusion, we need to consider the use of nalidixic acid, a potent inducer of bacteriophage induction (24), for selection of the isolates. In addition, most of the EHEC O157:H7 isolates obtained on day 8 postinoculation and later were isolated from enrichment cultures (Fig. 1). The possibility that the culturing process itself affected the deletion events affecting the PFGE profiles cannot be ruled out. Taken together, the results suggest that deletions can cause a single strain to mutate into several variants while it is passing through the gastrointestinal tract of a host, provided that the culture technique used does not contribute to this process. Hence, this study may explain why EHEC O157:H7 isolates with various PFGE profiles can be isolated from a single animal. What causes the deletion mutations and why the PFGE profiles show such patterns after passage through cattle are subjects for future studies."
Aren’t they saying that e. coli 0157:H7 can change PFGE profiles as a result of being cultured or if not , then it is changing PFGE profiles as a result of passing through the host’s digestive system(implying that this could happen whether the host is cow or human) ?
How can we rely on PFGE profiles to identify matching DNA fingerprints if they can change as the result of culturing(a necessary part of PFGE analysis) or if they can change as they pass through a host’s digestive system?Doesn’t this make you question the whole process of tracking 0157:H7 from the farm to the consumer of the milk?
If these testing procedures are questionable,what happens to all of the outbreaks that cp is so concerned about?Yes,people got terribly ill,but what do we really know about the cause of the illness?Do we really know that the children in Minnesota became ill from the milk?If the testing was done with an open, collaborative, transparent and scientifically rigorous and neutral approach ,then we might have more confidence in the results.
In the hands of unpasteurized milk opponents these mysterious testing procedures are just smoke and mirrors used to deceive us.
David, you have focused on abuse of power by the government towards raw milk farmers. What about focusing on possible consumer fraud by a raw milk farmer? If Mark isnt interested in sending you this information, how difficult would it be to find? Can any of us find out this information or would we need to contact our local assembly representative or state senator for some help with this issue?
Know your farmer!
cp
Obscene levels of shit? What evidence do you have as to how much cow manure would be required to raise the coloform count to 140 million fecal coliform per ml?
Are you suggesting that the milk was entering the cooler at this level of contamination?
Have you considered other factors other then the presence of cow manure that could have led to such a high count or is this a gross exaggeration in order to raise the level of anxiety?
Ive consumed and raised nine children on raw milk for over fifty years with no ill effect. Two of the children the twins who were born premature and came home from the hospital weighing between 4-5 lbs did so without their mother to feed them. I began immediately to feed them raw milk mixed with raw honey and fresh water from the well. As of October 3rd of this year they will be 23 years of age, have not ever seen a doctor and have not received over the counter medications of any kind.
Sylvia
You state, The cows should eat only what nature intended them to eat.
I totally agree with your statement however such an idea runs counter to the methods used by government in order to support their cheap food policies.
Human nature being what it is has capitalized albeit for selfish reasons on the fact that cattle demonstrate little moderation with respect to highly palatable foods. Have you ever tried to keep a herd of cattle despite lush pastures out of a field of grain or away from the feed cart? You want to make sure your fences are in good repair and the feed cart is well out of reach!!
We need moderation and balance in our approach to feeding and managing cattle which would in turn eliminate stress and result in a healthy product. The best way to achieve this is via small scale operations.
Ken Conrad
Thanks Amanda for clarifying your position. Very helpful indeed. In regards to Concerned Person I like to respond that I never felt like a Guru if you make your gurus than deal with the fallout yourself. By the way ,what prevents you to write under your real name like me????
The discussions here on this blog have clearly overstepped the constructive dialogue. In all fairness to all involved everyone has valid points to make including Marler, Lykke, Amanda, and those who "really are concerned".
Looking at the big picture I do not see any progress how this raw milk issue can be resolved this way by the experts ,lawyers and bureaucrats involved.
How about accepting and looking at death and illness as a natural part of evolution.
The expectation to be 100% safe when drinking raw milk is as foolish as the expectation to be 100% safe flying in an airplane or driving a car.
Mark is completely right by saying that the benefits of raw milk have a different value when putting them in the context of long term health and overall well being.
Any child dying and suffering is painful and heart wrenching.
Have we banned cars or planes yet.
My intention with my last blog was simply to express my sadness about the waste of energy to get at each others throat . By the time you are done farmers will be gone and corporate farming will successfully kill the rest of us with dead food.
Who by the way wants to live forever. Who by the way can eat money???
The real nourishment of the food will be the key for our survival.
I think the battle about GMO’s should be the real concern of Marler and Co
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5723a2.htm
Using purchase information supplied by the patients’ families, investigators determined that the patients consumed raw milk from lots produced at dairy A during September 3–13, 2006. Milk samples from these production dates were not available for testing. Fifty-six product samples from several lots with code dates of September 17, 2006, or later were retrieved from retails stores and dairy A and were tested for aerobic microflora, total coliform, fecal coliform, and E. coli O157:H7. The outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 was not found in any product samples. However, standard aerobic plate counts and coliform counts of collected samples with code dates of September 17 through October 9, 2006, were indicative of contamination (Table). Colostrum samples had high standard plate counts and total coliform counts, and fecal coliform counts of 210–46,000 MPN/g. California standards limit standard plate counts for raw and pasteurized milk to 15,000 CFU/mL and total coliform counts for pasteurized milk to 10 coliform bacteria/mL. At the time of this outbreak, California did not have a coliform standard for milk sold raw to consumers. California also classifies colostrum as a dietary supplement, for which it has no microbiologic standards, rather than a milk product.
Link to the table http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5723a2.htm#tab
Mark it is time to post your milk pool information.
Michael, if you notice, many here who are pro raw milk do not use their real names. Ask them the same question? What names we choose to post under is irrelevant to the discussion.
cp
There is an old saying if you shine the light on rats they are running. If all those who are really concerned be open and honest we might be further ahead than at the moment.
Who are you???? concerned person???
I always like to know with whom I am dealing
warm regards Michael( the never wanted to be a Guru guy)
As for my identity, if you dont like that Im anonymous, then skip over my posts.
cp
If it ever got completely shut down you would be facing many Wild Mama Lions as Mark says not to mention it just going very deep underground – is that what you want?
It kind of surprised me to see David describe me and my situation – "afraid", "fearful", and "nervous" when I treated my baby at home rather than take him to the hospital.
Not exactly – here’s more like it – "I have NO USE for the GERM THEORY and anyone who feels they have to FORCE THAT PARADIGM ON THE REST OF US!!!!!" (and I did spend 1/2 an hour on the phone with my Naturopath who I trust very much because of his thoroughness in helping me understand how we can help the body heal it’s self)
We are divided not by wanting raw milk or not, or regulations or not, but by what theory we believe – The Germ Theory (it must be Not there at all or dead) or the Terrain Theory (we must nourish all forms of life and the pathogen will be nothing to worry about) All those on the "concerned" side are really just believers of the Germ. (including some of whom even drink raw milk)
Here’s a novel idea – maybe we should have raw dairy FARMERS and CONSUMERS get a "PERMIT" after they have taken an exam that shows they understand both paradigms AND know how to holistically support their bodies (soil,grass and animals for the farmers) through any "gaps" in a healthy system. There are a lot of long lost cures that need to be revived and on hand – Colloidal Silver only being one of them. When you get through an illness using a proactive way your body will be "immunized" vs weakened if you used antibiotics.
The scariest part of the raw milk movement is people excited about all it can do for you but not understanding the whole picture – running to the hospital when something goes wrong is a clash of the paradigms and it will always come out making raw milk look evil!
As for questioning Micheal Schmidts integrity??? If only the food industry had a 1/10 of it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation – what a Canada we would have if the government were made up of people like him!!!! Rather than some of you rubbing your hands in glee that the raw milk movement would be over when one person actually dies – you could put more effort into helping farmers learn to farm the way he does!!!
Our own farm is a work in progress but we have to start somewhere – I’m learning everything I can from people like him, Allan nation, Allan Savory, Joel Salatin and many more
Micheal, you’ve been a great inspiration to me – Raw Milk is alive and growing in my province!
When my kids are a bit older we are planning a trip out east to my husbands brother’s place, who lives near you – it would be really great to meet you and see your farm!
To reduce things down to germ theory vs. terrain theory is a gross oversimplification IMHO.
There is a very complex interaction between organisms and their environment. This is true from the microbial level all the way up to the planetary level.
Certain enviroments can encourage or discourage certain organisms, and likewise, certain organisms can alter their enviroment in such a way as to make it more hospitable to themselves or inhospitable to others. Even pathogens can do this if they are present in large enough numbers.
I agree with you that the ultra-sanitatary, hyper-sterile, germ-theory basis of our modern food safety system is deeply flawed, however it would be just as much a mistake for us to become knee-jerk extremists in the other direction. Do not let the foolishness of germ theory convince you of an equally foolish idea — that germs do not matter at all. They do.
Bacteria are a part of the enviroment, and can alter their enviroment. Just think of what happens to milk when you make yogurt or cheese — the amount and types of starter bacteria you add to the milk have considerable impact on the final product. Conversely, the composition and characteristics of the milk, in conjunction with the temperatue at which you culture it and the way in which you handle the milk and/or curd, will all influence what type of native bacteria (non-starter bacteria) as well as starter bacteria will grow vs. which ones will be prevented from growing.
Perhaps it is better to think about the issue more in ecological terms than in "germ vs. terrain." There is an equilibruim — a dynamic equilibrium — between organisms and their enviroment. It is a very complex interaction. It would be a grave mistake for us to think we can reduce this issue down to merely "terrain" anymore than we can reduce it down to the germ.
cp has inadvertently identified herself. Her real name is Chicken Little.
In all seriousness, regarding identifying ourselves in out comments, an "…ism" of my father’s comes to mind:
":Don’t say anything you wouldn’t be willing to have published, with your name on it, on the front page of the local newspaper."
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
Rehashing stuff from four years ago.
CP and Amanda have again coopted thei blog
I won’t pretend to know as much as you about bacteria – but to me and many others, we know what WORKS – how ever "anecdotal" is might be, it’s science to us
Wouldn’t you agree that a very tiny % of people ever seem to be affected by the Germ and it doesn’t seem to have any ill effects on most people? it’s not that the unaffected people didn’t have any of the bacteria in what they ate
What is "right" in their systems that isn’t in the others? Everyone does seem to agree that it affects the immune compromised which includes children,elderly, pregnant women.
When someone does contract a food-borne illness, they get hospitalized and then start pumping in the anti-biotics and or other drugs which may or may not work becasue of the bacteria resistance that happens so regularly now.
This is where I have the problem – there are so many other things that could BUILD UP the body to fight it off with out killing everything is it’s path and turning the illness into much a much more serious thing like HUS.
Why not have an arsenal of natural "immune protecting" cures on hand to simply and easily deal with these illnesses. It seems that so many people when push comes to shove, run to the hospital and they use the only tools that Big Pharms say work ( but increasingly aren’t)
Colloidall Silver WORKS – but has kind of a similar story as Raw Milk – it’s not studied because it’s not patentable – there’s no big money to be made so it’s not promoted. Same story for so many other cures!
I accept the fact that raw foods can’t be guarentee to never have pathogens but I also feel its my responsibility to nourish my body the best I can to have a high functioning immune system – I also have strong support solutions on hand for the times life isn’t perfect.
As I say this, I very much believe that the healthiest and safest milk is going to come from cows eating sweet healthy grass from mighly mineralized soils and is handled properly.
I also don’t feel we have to baby sit every farmer with 3 cows or 10 goats -direct sales of local food brings accountability to farmers and their food (commercial sales should follow different rules for sure)- we need consumers that know what to look for in a well managed farm and their farmer… and …also ones that know how to be proacttively ready for illness should their bodies not be in a defensive enough state. Benefits of raw dairy as SO WORTH the risks, especially when we are prepared.
That’s just my thoughts, however "layman/farmer/mama-lion" they might be!
Again, I mostly agree with you, but I do not think that even the strongest immune system and native gut flora would be unaffected by a huge number of pathogenic bacteria. Those of us who eat well and have strong immune systems can ingest low levels of certain pathogens and never have ill effects. But if we were to ingest a very large number, it would be a different story — we would get sick. (Of course, if that were to happen, we need to ask ourselves what environment bred such a large & concentrated population of pathogens to begin with?)
Our problem in American right now is that most people are immuno-comprimised because of our diet of dead foods, and this will inevitably include many raw milk drinkers as the movement grows. So we do need to take the issue of microbiological control of pathogens seriously.
But, of course, controlling pathogens is as much about the environment as anything.
Maybe……It depends how consumers react.If they fully accept the DOH testing protocol without thinking and blame the farmer,we will see each farmer in turn caught with"pathogens" matched to their milk.It is not denial to question the science behind the testing.Before we accuse someone falsely lets take some time to understand the science that leads the DOH to their conclusions.We need desperately to have people on our side of the struggle to have input into these DNA fingerprinting results.I see raw milk consumers distancing themselves from the farmers that they have sucked into providing them real food.
The departments of agriculture and public health are on a campaign to divide the farmers from the consumers and unfortunately they have been successful in a string of cases.I am not saying that raw milk can’t make someone sick.I am saying let us take a good hard look in detail at the evidence against these farmers before we accuse them of being sloppy and contaminating the milk.Let the health department open up it’s epidemiological investigation to our scrutiny.Have them justify their conclusions.If they won’t ,we should assume they have something to hide.Do you really think the dept of Ag and health departments are being honest in their investigations?If you do then you should learn how to get along without your raw milk.
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