I can see where the organization Safe Tables Our Priority (which, by the way, is at www.safetables.org) would make Mary McGonigle-Martin feel good (see her comment following my previous post). It’s a relief when you’ve been dealing with trauma seemingly alone and in isolation, to find others who can share your upset.
But beyond that benefit of uniting victims, I come away from that organization’s site with a feeling that these are well meaning people who in their zealousness are sadly misguided.
As just one example, two of the organization’s “achievements” over the last decade have been around the issue of unpasteurized juice.
In the period 1997 to 1998, the organization “wins mandatory consumer health warning labels for unpasteurized juice.” Okay, I have no problem with warning people that they could become ill from unpasteurized juice, just as I have no problem warning people they can become ill from drinking unpasteurized milk.
But like zealots of all types, they can’t stop with warning me. They need to deny me my freedom (actually, deny all Americans their freedom) to purchases unpasteurized juice, and in 2001-2002, the organization “wins mandatory pasteurization of all bulk juices.”
My experience is that unpasteurized juices, especially vegetable-based juices, have similar benefits to raw milk. They contain all kinds of wonderful enzymes that help restore energy and build immunity. I wouldn’t necessarily trust Heinz and other behemoths to make the kind of unpasteurized juice that provide the benefits I’m talking about, but I’m sure smaller outfits could come up with some great products.
Anyway, this organization can crow that it’s saved a few people from becoming ill from E.coli O157:H7, but what it doesn’t say, and likely its leaders can’t or won’t acknowledge, is that in the process it’s deprived millions of the option for gaining the huge benefits of unpasteurized juices.
Once again, I think it all comes back to mindset. If your mindset is that our food system’s biggest problem is the presence of germs, you’re going to try to solve the problem one way. If your mindset is that one of the food system’s biggest problems is that our food is overly processed and thus devoid of essential nutrients, you’re going to come at the problem another way.
What I learned about juicing (in the reading I did) is that most of the vitamins are gone within a few hours of juicing. Some even believe you need to drink the fresh squeezed juice within a half hour to get all the benefits.
I found this information on the internet:
Enthusiasts recommend drinking juice as soon as it’s made, since raw, unpreserved juice is highly perishable..Any contact with light, heat, or air starts an oxidation process that will eventually break down many of the nutrients. Nevertheless, you can store juice for up to two days if you keep it as cold as possible–35 to 38 degrees Fahrenheit without freezing it. Juice therapists also recommend using a dark, sterile, pre-chilled bottle to store any juice that contains riboflavin (vitamin B2).
Mass producing raw juice may be misleading because the health benefits are not there. You will probably get the same level of nutrients from drinking pasteurized juice and raw juice that is a week old. Just something to think about.maybe some foods were not meant to be mass produced.
The great thing about juicing is anyone can do it in the privacy of their own home. Buy a juicer and juice to your hearts content. You can also purchase fresh squeezed juice at any health food store that has a juice bar. Its not illegal to juice.
I have no issue with the pasteurization of all mass produced juices because it does not prevent me from drinking fresh raw juice. It will prevent e-coli contamination. This trade off is worth it to me. (The moms whose children died from Odwallas raw apple juice were the driving force behind this legislation).
Did you know before this organization existed it was only voluntary to have a meat recall when meat was contaminated with E-coli 0157:H7? This organization made it mandatory. Their main focus has been the improving heath safety within the meat industry. Who knows, maybe someday we will only have meat sold in the U. S. that is free range, antibiotic free and grass fed. You never know where a movement can lead (Im forever the optimist).
For a movement to begin, it does take fanatics! This is also true of the raw milk movement, the holistic health movement, the eat only local foods movement, etcAll movements need fanatics. Its not a bad thing.
– George Bernard Shaw
The orchard a few miles away sells unpasteurized apple cider in the fall. It makes some really good hard cider when put into a carboy with an airlock. I sure would miss it if it were bought up by one of the "behemoths" and given over to a pasteurized product.
The key here is local and known. When people are hired to do boring labor at low wages to make a profit for someone else, they never will take pride in what they do.
Mass-produced foods are always a mistake.
The fact is there is no assurance that can be given, regulated, mandate that will make these events vanish. I agree that consumers should be educated as to what they are getting into. I do however disagree that we should take away someones rights. If I would like to consume raw cider, I want the right to do so; I dont want to be made a criminal for it. The same as you have the right to or not to buy certain products for what ever reason you choose; be it pasteurized, not pasteurized, made in China, or whatever. It is your choice; I wont mandate my choice on you so please dont mandate yours on me.
But to my friend Mary, I must say that you are wrong in your response to them.
Please (please!) do not presume me callous for pointing this out, but the world is full of agonies. At some level, in some context, probably all are preventable. But prevention is always and inextricably tied to other realities–prevention carries costs. We can and do make terrible errors in our rush to solve problems by not understanding those costs. We MUST, for the sake of compassion, make our decisions carefully and soberly. Focusing narrowly on the anguished stories of mothers with ill children does not, however natural it may feel, induce sobriety. Of course those stories are important–I and everyone needs to hear them–but we must always keep in mind that they never, ever, exist in a vacuum.
There are many and myriad illustrations of unintended negative consequences from well-intentioned actions. Everyone can recite one or another. Heres one possible example indirectly related to our current discussion: Swimming pool chlorination. It’s a great idea, right? Chlorine pool disinfection is a virtually universal practice, and undoubtedly prevents some disease transmission. But chlorine is a xenoestrogen, and has been implicated as a cause of endometriosis, ectopic pregnancies, and early first menstruation (which in turn increases the risk of breast cancer). Breathing chlorine is apparently particularly risky, and since vaporized chlorine is most concentrated at the waters surface (along with swimmers noses) and can increase with splashing, well, you get the idea. The point is that we simply do not know, and often never even suspect, the damage we cause with our solutions. (By the way, despite widespread chlorine use there have been several episodes of pool-associated O157:H7 infection in the United States.)
There are so many complex and interrelated factors to consider when we attempt to prevent food-borne illness–far more than are expressed by equating the availability of raw cider with prevention of HUS. That is one of those false comparisons that ignores real complexities.
Many on this website (me included) believe that the food-borne illness solution of hyper-sanitization (including both pastuerization and artificially limiting natural exposures) has caused more ill health and related suffering than we can ever calculate. If that suffering has resulted from actions taken to assuage tattered emotions, it is even more the sadder.
Heart-breakingly, Hazel says she …now live[s] in fear of feeding my children contaminated foods, and that Shopping carts are breeding grounds for bacteria, causing far too many childhood illnesses. This is clearly off-the-edge thinking. God help us if we turn that sort of torment into a blindly swinging club.
I’m on vacation until August 14th, so I’ve been doing tons of research on this topic. I will share more in my next post. For now, I have to drive to three different stores for healthy food.
Those stories are so sad. As I read them, I can feel exactly what those parents were feeling. As I know you feel it too. It just opens up those wounds of what we went through. No one here is going to understand that like you and I. 🙂 KISSES TO CHRIS.
I think your blog is missing the actual data on who is harmed by E. coli O157:H7. For the most part, the adults with comments posted here aren’t the people affected by diseases that have occurred in raw juice. Those most harmed are children, the elderly, the immune impaired, and pregnant women. I’ve always found it striking that people can be so forthright about saying that their freedoms are impaired by a "sacrifice" that aids those less able in society. How many of these at-risk people would die before someone was willing to give up his/her "freedom" to drink unpasteurized juice? the freedom to drive on any side of the road they choose? the freedom to light fires whereever they choose? Should we make accommodations for the impaired? No, let’s just let them tough it out. Deciding how many and who should suffer… some people just feel more comfortable with ignoring the suffering of others.
Another datum: scientists do not believe there is anything "natural" about E. coli O157:H7. They believe it is a byproduct of the excessive use of antibiotics in cattle. It is native to the guts of cattle, deer, elk and other ruminants. And your body will not develop sufficient antibodies to it to protect you from the creation of a toxin that shreds your blood. And antibiotics only exacerbate the disease. Those supporting the "immune system" theory need to be comfortable with the idea that if their body does not produce any antibodies to a this disease, they are susceptible to death, not improved health.
Before you label Safe Tables zealots, you should do more research. Go through the dozen or so public comments and review the data. The organization proposed that unpasteurized juice could be made an "adult drink." We argued for labels to inform at-risk groups. Then, even with all the apple growers aware that another outbreak was akin to admitting they couldn’t produce safe juice, labeled apple juice caused another outbreak. We watched industry argue you could just steam the outside of oranges and still make juice that was uncontaminated, until the company doing so caused the largest juice outbreak in U.S. history.
Yes, people have been deprived of the option of buying bulk-produced, unpasteurized juice. In point of fact, you can still, throughout most of the U.S., purchase juice at the point at which it’s squeezed, so you are wrong about the millions that have been deprived of unpasteurized juice. IF there are substantial benefits to drinking unpasteurized juice, which was not supported in any scientific data presented in the late 1990’s, no one has been kept from those benefits. They merely can’t buy the quart size and let it sit in their refrigerator. Regulations also keep people from making unpasteurized juice in their bathtubs and putting it in empty wine bottles. Undoubtedly, there are people lamenting their loss of freedom to make juice in their bathtub.
Contrary to your speculation, no one at Safe Tables would argue against the idea that American food is overly processed. The American diet is woefully lacking in Omega-3’s, which are proven to play a role in the regulation of cell membranes. However, Safe Tables is the only organization in the country specifically focused on microbial safety. And organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which covers both the nutrition and microbial hazards, side with Safe Tables on most points regarding microbial safety. The issue is not about germs vs. overprocessing, as you stated. However, it IS about what you are willing to give up to protect children, the elderly, the immune impaired, pregnant women, and above all, the uninformed, about the risks they take when they drink and eat potentially microbially contaminated foods.
Laurie Girand
Safe Tables Our Priority
If most people who frequent this blog spent an hour or so reading articles on the STOP website, they would come away with a different perspective. Were all on the same page as to the cause of the e-coli 0157:H7 problem.
Melissa (the comment before yours) and I met at Loma Linda University Childrens Hospital in Southern California. We believe both of our children developed E-coli and then HUS after drinking contaminated raw milk. Our stories both have happy outcomesthe kids didnt die, but it was a hell of a ride back to health. Both the kids had dialysis, seizures, and my son was on a ventilator for 9 days. Im sure youre quite familiar with the whole HUS routine.
Thanks again for your comment on this blog and all the time and energy you have spent educating people about food borne illnesses. In my book, youre a hero!
Is your childs story posted on the STOP website? I didnt see a child with your last name?
Here’s a small quote from it…she gets the big picture.
And as a consumer, I will take a stand that might surprise you: uniform, mandatory pasteurization is not the solution. It fails to be a solution because it is a simpleminded, stop-gap measure that allows everyone to bury the contamination issue so that consumers won’t need to know that food borne illness is a significant problem in this country and that children and seniors are dying from it. It needlessly puts many small growers out of business when there is still adult demand for their products. It fails to take into account restaurants, hotels and juice bars. It ignores the issue of fresh produce. And, fundamentally, it denies everyone the right to informed choice.
I do want to point out that Lauries argument discussing wiretaps, crystal meththe freedom to drive on any side of the road they choose? the freedom to light fires wherever they choose?…:have nothing at all to do with this discussion. One can not argue that these examples have anything to do with the freedom of an informed consumer. We as a society do allow consumers to purchase tobacco, which causes far more deaths than any food born bacteria, with a Surgeons Generals Warning. Folks have the freedom to engage in all sorts of high-risk sports without the government stepping in. My point is that there is no place for the government squash the rights of an informed consumer to purchase and consume what foods they desire to obtain.
Mary, I do agree with your last post that mandatory pasteurization, and I would include irradiation, chemical sterilization, etc is not the solution. We fool ourselves to think we can be 100% safe from pathogens.
Rod
"Another datum: scientists do not believe there is anything "natural" about E. coli O157:H7. They believe it is a byproduct of the excessive use of antibiotics in cattle."
This is FALSE. There are are hundereds of E.coli forms that cause illness in humans, O157.H7 is but one form and has been around for decades and first identified in 1982. While antibios should be used with caution by the herdsman they are useful tools in keeping a health cattle.
The true is O157.H7 is so rare the study AND TESTING has a long way to go before scientists will begin to understand it.
There is a lot about the evolution of increased virulence in microbes that we don’t know, but it is happening in lots of them: VRE, C. difficile, MRSA and A. baumannii to name a few.
Therefore, simply banning raw products will never solve any food safety issues. These bans just hurt small producers and help vertically integrate our agricultural system.
Thanks to all who have shared their knowledge here.
Jean
The study consisted of 71 children younger than 10 years of age. 9 of the 71 children received antibiotics.
Of the 62 children who did not receive antibiotics, 5 developed HUS
Of the 9 children who did receive antibiotics, 5 developed HUS
This study provides strong evidence that sulfa containing antibiotics and B-lactam antibiotics are associated with an increased risk of HUS with e-coli 05157:H7. However, HUS can still develop on its own. The second round of antibiotics given to my son was from this category of antibiotics. Within 12 hours, he had HUS.
On a positive note, there is no way of knowing if he would have developed HUS anyway. The antibiotics put a quick end to my sons constant bowel movements (5 days straight every 15 minutes to 30 minutes) and may have saved his colon. I have a different perspective after reading all the stories on the STOP website.
The content of this comment, which quoted the story of an individual on the STOP web site, has been removed at the request of the individual’s family, to protect its privacy.
Comment removed at family request.
Comment removed at family’s request.
Comment removed at family’s request.