I had the good fortune to spend last week in the Florida sunshine, far from the igloo that is New England. It was an opportunity not just to luxuriate in the warmth of 80-degree sunshine, but also to do some catching up on recent food-related news developments.
I could swear I saw some beach scenes like the one accompanying this post. Im not sure why, but I continue to be amazed by the ongoing refusal by some in positions of power and responsibility in our food system to resist change, even as the change is hitting at their back sides, their front sides, even their own corporate pocketbooks.
First, I read through Pete Kennedys assessment from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund of state legislative progress on raw milk, where he reviews legislation in 18 states, and concludes, This has the potential to be the best legislative session for raw milk since FTCLDF has been in existence (since 2007). Wyoming has already enacted a Food Freedom Act that allows the private sale of raw milk from farmer to consumer, and West Virginias legislature has lifted that states ban on the sale of raw milk .if the governor follows through and signs it into law.
This is all in line with trends around the country that point to expanding raw milk consumption, and declining interest by law enforcement to support regulatory crackdowns on consumption. We have seen the trend express itself in Minnesota, Illinois, and California, among other places. State and local politicians are beginning to appreciate as well that supporting food integrity and rights attracts votes.
We are also seeing signs that raw dairy producers appreciate the importance of taking responsibility for producing the safest possible products. We see this via expanding interest in dairy farmer education on raw milk safety, including continuing education efforts in Pennsylvania, California, Maine, and possibly New York. Most recently, a small group of farmers with herd shares in California have organized something called the California Herd Share Association, which encourages small providers of raw milk to commit to safety standards and education.
Addressing food safety concerns in a proactive and science-based manner takes the teeth out of the anti-raw milk arguments that would threaten our freedom to produce and consume the foods of our choice, the organization states. When raw milk producers admit that risk exists and articulate and execute a well-defined plan to manage that risk, the fight over raw milk freedom largely goes away.
These shifts on raw milk foretell huge changes about consumer tastes and preferences that we see all around us, ranging from moves away from traditional fast food and toward local food of all types, including even locally-produced beers.
To the forces of Big Ag and Big Food, these trends toward safe locally-produced food are huge threats. They much prefer to keep their heads in the sand than to think about ways of adjusting their reasons for being. A perfect example came in a report by NPR last week on raw milk legislation in Illinois, Robert Tauxe, a high-ranking scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, got lots of air time to pronounce that no matter how raw milk is distributed, None of it is safe. Yes, its all tainted. People are dropping like flies. Not a word of encouragement to those working hard, and successfully, to produce safe raw milk, and how the CDC might help in education efforts. Just the same old fear mongering, apparently assuming that if he says it louder, people will react differently than they have for the last decade.
The same mentality of simply continuing on with the worn out models can also be seen at the Big Food companies, many of which are oligopolies. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Coca Colas CEO argued that the way for his company to reverse several years of downward sales of its fizzy sugar water is to market and sell harder. The WSJs headlines say it all: What Is Coke CEOs Solution for Lost Fizz? More Soda Despite changing consumer tastes, Muhtar Kent pushes strategy to sell more soda.
Theres an amazing shift in food tastes, regulation, and acquisition going on at the local level around the U.S. It will continue to unpleasantly surprise the bungling centrally-oriented cheap-food guys. Even as their world practically crumbles around them, dont expect to see many heads come out of the sand.
I don’t see it going away any time soon. The cafos cannot make safe raw milk, therefore they will continue to fight against it.
The food fight has taken a very natural turn…a turn that truth has predicted long ago.
Facts are the facts,pasteurization became its own very worst enemy and it can not free itself from its self. The PMO, the FDA, all of the CAFO ‘s, are now presiding over a somewhat dramatic market decline for its sacred fluid milk.
Regardless of how much money is spent or how brilliant the marketing campaign….pasteurized fluid milk is highly allergenic and non digestible. The milk marketing people can try their best ( and they have tried their best and failed ) , but there is no avoiding the consumer dollar voting. Consumers simply do not reproduce bad experiences and bad outcomes, especially when it is as personal as gas cramps, and sitting on the toilet for hours….or stimulating or triggering an allergy attack or worse.
With the establishment of the CA Herd Share Association, RAWMI, other raw milk food safety orgs, the raw milk producers are quickly getting their act together. If there are no food safety issues….then there are no issues with raw milk. I have said this for years…more than 12 years. Freedom by itself may work in the short term is certain areas like Wyoming. But even in Wyoming…if someone gets sick, guaranteed, the health department types will be all over it. Even though…pasteurized ice cream just killed three. It is as if deaths just do not matter even if deaths are occurring on a regular basis. It is an unspoken undercurrent of bad outcomes….fatal outcomes. In the last three years….there have been multiple deaths each of these years all from FDA guaranteed safe pasteurized dairy products.
We will have all of our freedom…when we get our food safety systems well established. Our greatest triumph is success. Success is measured by dollar voting and not hearing about raw milk recalls or illnesses. It is the all in the hands of the farmers at his point.
Do you honestly think the FDA, CDC, PMO, etc. will ever admit when they’re wrong, even if the answers are staring them right in the face?
I know I will always be against the grain here (it’s YOUR choice on what you want to do–I’m not going to try to change your mind), but my home pasteurized milk doesn’t cause me any problems, nor has done anything to those I’ve let try it, even after they said they can’t drink milk. They were willing to be my guinea pigs, so take my comment however you want, I just wanted to point it out. You also have to realize that my milk doesn’t go through the same processes that store fluid milk does. That said, you can raise your glass of milk, and I will raise mine, then we can toast to the continued success of food freedom, because that is our common ground.
OPDC learned of this recall earlier today. We will be assisting with the supply that is missing that would normally flow to Claravales customers and distributors.
OPDC has new labels on all fluid products going out this week. Please look for the Triple Tested “Test & Hold” logo on the front of the label. After more than a year of testing and research, OPDC has initiated the first ever Milk Filter Based pathogen test system that only releases product for sale after a local lab has confirmed that pathogens are not detected in the milk filters. Filters are 10 times more sensitive to pathogen detection!! . This takes just 14 hours and is done every day in addition to other testing like coliforms etc.
OPDC reached out to Claravale and offered assistance with pathogen testing and RAMP systems. We are all in this together.
They may never admit an error….but new thinkers that replace the old milk stones…will change policy after the old guard retires. The FDA follows after markets and industry leads the way. They lag by about 5-10 years….make a note. This happened with beef in the 1980s. No secret.
You should be proud…it was your passion that drove me to initiate change and innovation that now includes ultra sensitive rapid Test & Hold programs for raw milk. Also…RAWMI would never have happened if not in part because of you and the kick you gave me ten years ago.
Yes….time has flown by, but we have been very busy innovating and pioneering.
Proud Mary… Workin’ for the man ev’ry night and day worryin’ ’bout the way things might have been big wheel keep on turnin’
What do these have in common? Lip syncing, domestic washerwoman and stew cook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iE2UOvKVT0
Aside: Pride not pity http://www.proudmary.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AJUj-qxHI
No illnesses have been definitively attributed to the products at this time. However, CDPH is continuing its epidemiological investigation of reported clusters of Campylobacter illness where consumption of raw milk products may have occurred.” [end quote]
Key words: MAY HAVE. They have nothing conclusive and will most likely find another culprit, which is the usual way these things go. But screaming headlines do have an impact, don’t they?
Regional organizations such as California Herdshare, Oregon Raw Milk Producers Association, BC Herdshare, and others have sprung up to align with those standards put forth by RAWMI and to educate producers at the local level. Its a grass-roots, farmer-led movement. And Mark has been the lead-farmer. He has talked to no doubt hundreds of producers in these past years, coaching them in improved safety and freely giving away the knowledge that he has worked extremely hard to gain. Its a labor of love. Believe or not, when farmers call him, he stops whatever hes doing, answers his phone and helps them, whether the farmer with 2 goats or the farmer with 500 cows. Over, and over, and over again.
Im encouraged now to see regional organizations step up to do their part. Im encouraged to see more farmer-to-farmer mentorship, in-the-barn trainings and mindset improvements based on good information. The seed of safety that has been planted is taking root.
The language of food safety is boring. Its profoundly unsensational. No one is going to make a documentary about how to chill milk properly or create farm conditions that are less hospitable to pathogens. Farm raids are much more interesting. Food safety = BOR-ING. But for those of us interested in less drama and food wars, and more actual freedom to access nutritious real food, its the way to go.
I was being sarcastic in my comment. As for what happened with beef in the ’80s, I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t involved in dairy/ag until the 90s. Anything prior to that, I have no memory of.
I saw this comment on Food Safety News site:
“I grew up drinking raw cows milk and am perfectly fine.. I am one that is tired of people not handling the product correctly and their poor habits are blamed on the producer.. Not that the producer is always innocent but the consumer here has some sort of responsibility in this.. You can not buy milk and then leave it in the car for hours and not expect an issue.. Who is going to produce the milk when all the milk producers are bankrupt.. The consumer has to be responsible for their actions.. the producers consumers are groceries stores and they store and handle it before the consumer (you) gets it… I do believe this is a personal attack on users of raw milk..”
I had seen it plenty of times, being that I used to work in a grocery store. Refrigerated, or frozen food setting on the dock for hours before being put away, even when it was hot outside (air conditioning wasn’t effective in that area, or in the hallway). No one seemed to be in any big hurry to put things in the coolers, or freezer. Not only that, but I saw returned product that I KNEW didn’t get properly handled by the customer, only for them to bring it back for a refund. One woman with a mixed bag of different meats and such, that *somehow* spoiled. Yeah, right, it was summertime, and the smell left no doubt in my mind she left it in her vehicle. it was too obvious.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Organic-Pastures-Dairy-RAW-DAIRY-PRODUCTS/171911861180
Introducing Test & Hold testing at OPDC. It took a year to develop and test this milk filter program and now all products are held for 14 hours until a test of milk filters comes back from a local lab confirming that ecoli pathogens are not detected. Milk filters are up to 10 times more sensitive to detection of pathogens than finished product testing. We also test products daily for other indicators…like coliform and SPC. Underlying this program is our RAWMI RAMP system and lots of hard working, team aligned people. Other listed farmers are getting fantastic results as well !!
We now have very quick, very sensitive test data. Instead of feeling good about products….we now know. Stores that once rejected raw milk will now carry it. Corporate paranoia is now baseless.
We are taking the dogma out of old stories and soon….there will be no argument against raw milk.
Seriously though, I love hearing about the new innovations happening at OPDC. As people demand real food, farmers rise to the challenge. Edwin Schank led with on-farm coliform and SPC testing. I remember reading about his lab several years ago. At that time the technology was cost-prohibitive. Now, a micro-farm can be set to test coliform and SPC for about a $250 investment…less than a ton of hay on the West Coast! If Moore’s law proves true, on-farm real-time pathogen testing may be a reality for all farms one day.
It basically says: with time, investment and increased demand, the cost of technology drops ( along with speed and size etc ). We see this all the time with computers, TV technology and cell phones etc…
The beef guys kind of helped the raw milk guys in this evolution. When Burger King and Jack in the Box said NO! to ecoli in fresh hamburger in the 1980s….testing investment began to happen. 30 years later…voila, 10 hour cultured rapid PCR BAX milk filter testing for $37 bucks, with emailed results pronto.
Yes…it was Edwin that led the idea of Test & Hold for raw milk. He gave me the idea. Then Dr. Hovingh at Penn state sealed the deal with his investigation of campylobacter and looking at Milk Filters to help track the sneaky little vermin using a very sensitive detection point ( the filter ). Put it all together and add a little blessing that a world class food safety testing lab is down the street ( 18 min drive ) and you have the ability to “Test & Hold until released” with a known result. We are watching innovation happening right now. We are also watching as the benchmark is being set and reset higher and higher and with the recent FOX News piece on raw milk with Sprouts Stores own Nutritionist speaking highly of raw milk…we are watching paradigm shift and a new market being born!
http://www.fox10phoenix.com/clip/11256321/2015/03/19/the-pros-and-cons-of-consuming-raw-milk
By the way…this is Fond Du Lac Raw Milk Company in Arizona. They are an applicant to RAWMI and have filled out their first round of RAMP plans. Very proud of them.
We are also watching the FDA spill morning coffee on their newly pressed military uniforms as they experience indigestion, heart burn, left arm numbness and chest pain. My advice to our dear friends at the FDA…send out your young and brightest minds…so we can make real progress. Think 1987 and ecoli in beef….it took the FDA ten years to follow industry and make the changes to their standards. We can do better than 10 years….now is the time to move forward. If you want to meet with a non-profit instead of me,…..RAWMI is available and we can send PhD’s with Vet degrees, with piles of test data… if you want. Every year I send the FDA a kind letter of invitation to meet and talk about advances in raw milk technology and to look at hard data ….they never respond. The ball is in their court!
What is up with the FDA?
Great partners in our Test & Hold program.
Super professional and super responsive.
I sure hope so. The sensitivity certification test results required for AOAC cert showed 100 out of 100 tests validated the accuracy. I am sure there are false positives and also false negatives…but the AOAC tests are very compelling. The tests also have a threshold for positives as part of the validation studies
http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/Drinking%20Raw-milk-dramatically-increases-risk-for-foodborne-illness-analysis-finds.html
If it is old research, then why is it regurgitated?
This is an opinion letter by a PhD candidate not a PhD…and did not look at new data. Bla..bla…bla.
This is what the FDA looks like when they feel threatened. Maryland and the FDA are one in the same.
Would love to see the opinion letter on pasteurized dairy products regarding deaths!!!! There are 80 or more dead Americans on that list. The raw milk deaths stand at zero since 1972!!
Unless researchers can get beyond this focus on microbes and that a solution rests primarily with their elimination and/or manipulation then any research generated in this field will fail to address the complexity of the issue and therefore be grossly inadequate.
Ken
Oh and Mark, please ask the FDA how kind they think your letters of invitation are since you are challenging what they should stand for then listen and reconsider and ask them to do the same.
I can only assumed this is the FDA-blessed version of the report. It ignores the more compromising language of the report, which I wrote about three months ago, that actually raised the possibility of “compromise.”
Sorry about that…. you’ll find the correct item now at that link, and here.
http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/research/clf_publications/pub_rep_desc/Literature-Review-Risks-Benefits-Consuming-Raw-Pasteurized-Cow-Milk.html
http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/_pdf/research/clf_reports/RawMilkMDJohnsHopkinsReport2014_1208_.pdf
Surely someone here with some scientific training can take it apart?