A little over a year ago, California Sen. Dean Florez showed himself to be an astute student of the controversy over raw milk when he single-handedly directed a six-hour hearing to consider approaches to altering AB 1735’s coliform standard. The hearing, during which he personally questioned both proponents and opponents of raw milk, led him to propose replacement legislation in the form of SB 201, which overwhelmingly passed both houses of the legislature, before being vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last September.
In the meantime, Florez has become the Senate majority leader and an expected Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in the next election. But despite his fast political rise, he hasn’t forgotten about raw milk, and he’s now quite upset about a survey the California Department of Public Health is conducting in Del Norte County, which I reported on a couple weeks back.
Last week, he sent off an angry letter to the director of California’s Department of Public Health questioning that “survey regarding consumer attitudes towards raw milk and raw milk products, which raises concerns about a potential bias towards these products. As you are undoubtedly aware, the consumption of raw milk is legal in the state of California.”
Florez’s concerns come just as evidence is accumulating that the survey is indeed heavily biased against raw milk. The Daily Triplicate reports on the survey, noting, “A number of (raw milk drinkers)…have already received phone calls from researchers. The questions, they say, are general and tend to revolve around whether people know the various dangers associated with consuming unpasteurized milk.” One raw milk drinker is quoted, “They just want to tell you a list of all the things that could be a problem with raw milk, and asked if I would still drink it…I told them, ‘Yes I would.’”
As he did in the hearing in April 2008, Sen. Florez gets to the heart of the matter in his letter. Referring to a Department of Public Health report on an outbreak of campylobacter from raw milk distributed by a cow share in Del Norte county nearly a year ago, which recommended the state “continue public education efforts regarding health risks associated with consuming unpasteurized milk and milk products,” Florez inquires why raw milk is singled out.
“Please provide me a detailed description of the ‘public education efforts’ that occurred with the following items that were subject to recent recalls due to food-borne illness: (1) Spinach; (2) Lettuce; (3) Beef; (4) Peanuts; and (5) Pistachios.”
Florez also demands documentation in connection with the research study now being carried out on raw milk in Del Norte County, to be delivered to his office by next Wednesday. “This information should include the individuals involved with creating the research proposal, as well as all individuals involved in the approval process.” It should be noted that, just because he is demanding information and cooperation from a state agency doesn’t mean he will get it; last year, the California Department of Food and Agriculture refused Sen. Florez’s demands that it send representatives to testify at the raw milk hearing in April 2008; the CDFA eventually went on to work behind the scenes to convince Gov. Schwarzenegger to veto SB 201.)
As I said in my original report on the Del Norte County raw milk survey, I don’t like to see political interference with legitimate scientific research. Unfortunately, government agencies, beginning with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have no such concerns, and repeatedly twist scientific data for political advantage, as I pointed out in my previous two posts. And given the refusal of those involved in the survey to disclose information about it, I have to admire Florez’s efforts to shine a light on the project. Government secrecy seem to invariably work against nutritional freedom. Unfortunately, the kind of openness Florez is advocating with regard to government approaches to raw milk is exceedingly rare. Kudos to the California Senate majority leader.
many have been asking/stating this on this blog.
Do you think Senator Florez will get his request for "detailed description of the public education efforts that occurred with the following items that were subject to recent recalls due to food-borne illness: (1) Spinach; (2) Lettuce; (3) Beef; (4) Peanuts; and (5) Pistachios."?
Mark
So…drink your raw milk and eat your spinach, lettuce, beef, peanuts, and pistachios with their complement of environmental immunity building bacteria in it.
This is another reason why regulations are bad for raw milk, spinach, lettuce, beef, peanuts, and pistachios….retail products may be too clean ( thankfully many do not pass every test – indeed, recently Salmonella-laden product was sold to help boost immunity in the population) . Maybe the next best step is to provide a vial of good organic soil with each bottle of raw milk and package of spinach, lettuce, beef, peanuts, and pistachios so it can be added back in by the consumer.
Good biodiverse carbon earthworm filled composted rich organic soils are pathogen free and do not include salmonella and ecoli 0157H7, but instead these soils are filled with the gift of beneficial bacteria that control pathogens.
What do you not get about soil science?
If you do not get soil science there is no way you will ever get intestinal biology. They are practically the same. Failure to nurture the soil is the greatest failing of our modern industrial agriculture and that failing is directly associated with our malnutrition in america. Sterilize the soil and you sterilize the food and the gut. Result compounded immube depression especially when combined with junk food and antibiotics.
The germ haters will regret every thing in the germ theory just you wait and see!!
The "fad of pasteurization" is nearing its end.
Mark
I grow produce in good soil amended with properly composted manure (and other organic material including earthworm) for personal use. I am careful, and don’t want to make my family or friends sick. On a large or small scale, the concern about pathogens and prevention of foodborne illness is NOT in conflict with good agricultural practices, sustainable agriculture, or food safety. Anyone who suggests that pathogens are a "beneficial" part of producing food (raw or pasteurized milk, spinach, lettuce, beef, peanuts pistachios, and sprouts) and subsequently causes foodborne illness should get dragged into a congressional hearings to explain their failure to protect the public health.
"Anyone who suggests that pathogens are a "beneficial" part of producing food (raw or pasteurized milk, spinach, lettuce, beef, peanuts pistachios, and sprouts) and subsequently causes foodborne illness should get dragged into a congressional hearings to explain their failure to protect the public health".
I have never ever suggested this….
In response to your comment….Drag the Mega Commercial Antibiotic abusing and GMO using CAFO operators before the legislature for hearings. They are creating the pathogens….you will not find organic agriculture that is devoid of GMO’s and antibiotics creating pathogens.
Pathogens are not beneficial and I never said they were especially in the context of the Americans weak immune systems. However we know that immunity to pathogens is very common as humans develope immunity after repeated low level exposure. That is exactly what a vaccination does.
However….consumption of biodivere foods is highly beneficial. Monocultures are simply not effective to deal with a broad range of ecosystem antagonists.
We know this from organic agriculture and back ground flora in gut immunity.
I agree 100% with you that these commercial operations should be called before congress to answer for what they are creating and doing….it is criminal. I was there when the commercial operators attended hearings on just this subject. It was 60 days ago during the antibiotic abuse hearings in SAC. Guess what….the FDA flew out a high level representative to testify for the CAFO operators and support continued abuse of non therapeutic antibiotics in animals. This is beyond humanity. It is sick and it is the origin of antibiotic resistant baceteria….and the FDA is encouraging it. Check the legislative record. It is official record.
Mark
That’s exactly what I suggest. Introduce pathogens IN COMBINATION with other beneficial e. coli etc and you won’t have illness. It will take a while to balance but that’s what we need. Poison yourselves, challenge your gut, and drink a kefir smoothie every day.
God bless Senator Florez! He has good roots.
-Blair
David,I would like to believe this battle for our rights won’t drag on much longer. I have doubts, and our freedoms will continue to be sliced away. In just the last 20 or years, tptb have stepped in and forced or tried to force people to do things that went against thier beliefs. NJ makes vaccinations mandatory, some states have no opt out, the Terri Schivo (sp) fiasco, those who opt for non-mainstream medicine are persecuted, Yet tptb allows for chemically ladened processed foods to be shoved down the publics throats, it allows big pharm to shove drugs at consumers, alluding that if they take this drug they can be dancing in the streets or sking the zugspitze. Does modern medicine "cure" or does it "treat" , those 2 words have very different meanings.
Where has tptb said it is your lifestyle,environment and nutrition that is causing your illness? Where is the true educating of the public? http://generationrescue.org/pdf/substances.pdf
Many ingredients are harmful, especially after repeated assult on the body. Is this disclosed to people? No one told me that vaccination "may" be harmful when my kids were young. Alzheimers/dementia is so prevalent now that it is the "norm". There is something grossly wrong with that picture. (and that is just one example)
If you would like to poison yourself and your family, it is quite easy. Buy industrial raised chicken and hamburger at the grocery store. Take the chicken and hamburger and smear it all over your cutting board. Then make some carrot and celery sticks on the cutting board. Make sure to really get the meat juices mixed in. Feed the carrots and celery to your family and see what happens.
This link will give you a sneak preview as to what happens next.
http://www.safetables.org/victim_wall/index.cfm
After this experiment, I wonder if your perspective on the need for pathogen exposure will be different.
P.S. I would make sure you have a good childrens hospital in the area before you begin the experiment. Maybe you can make reservations.
cp
"EMPTY THE CITIES FILL THE COUNTRYSIDE" WOW would that work?
Watch the 3.5 minute video The Greenhorn trailer
Perhaps the only way that would work would be to send in the guns and badges on the parasitic paper shufflers that produce nothing and force them to grow their own food if they want to eat. Maybe even eliminate the street gangs by making them dig in the ground for their food also. Crime would drop dramatically. Just a pipe dream I guess.
Why Unfettered Capitalism Is Bad for your Diet
by Paula Crossfield
Interesting article relating to our current discussions.
Its not capitalism thats the problem but unfettered GREED and just plain EVIL and how long shall we as a nation survive what Big Ag. and their handlers DISH out to us? Last figure I heard was 17% of the GDP is swallowed up by the Industrial Medical Complex! And we are around 40th on the worlds life expentancy list. Something is gravely wrong with this picture. Maybe we need more laws, more hearings, more inspectors or perhaps just some COMMON SENSE and REAL CONCERN for our fellow man but there is not much of that around these days. IMHO
I disagree….what the good senator is demanding is called "legislative oversight". It is not micromanagement. Legislative oversight assures us all of some degree of democracy and a modicum of transparency through the public hearing process. If that is "micromanagement" then we need one hell of a lot more of it. Those are our tax dollars working and I do not want them working against us…. for Monsanto GMOs or some other unethical immoral hidden agenda.
Dean Florez is a breath of fresh air and is the face of a new generation of democratic leadership that is dedciated to a Green and Clean California. A vision of a Green and Clean California will take lots of work from everyone and is a huge job.
Lykke…do you believe that: illness, immune depression, highly processed sterile foods, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, antibiotics and irradiation are the vision of a better America? In my heart I know you feel like I do….if you have a garden you believe in a vibrant America as you run your hands through the compost and feel the earthworms. If you eat food from your garden then you share our vision.
Please join with us…and stop resisting the 90% of you that is made up of bacteria. We are "bacteriosapiens" and there is nothing we can or should do about it. To attempt to sterilize ourselves is suicidal. Thats what Raw Milk is all about. What is really quite telling is the fact that governement agencies refuse to answer to congressional oversight wheh it comes to raw milk. Perhaps they have no good answers to the obvious car wreck they have lead us all into. Perhaps they can not stand before the people and defend pasteurization and its effects or the prices that conventional dairies now get for hghly processed foods.
Raw Milk has been ridiculed and it has been violently apposed….now the next step is its goodness and value being accepted as self evident. Thats what happens with changes of paradigm.
Mark
On the other hand, where the "science" is itself in question, as in the widely reported biases which appear to be infecting the Del Norte survey, then it is very much in the public realm (e.g., politician inquiring after the expenditure of taxpayer money, so as to examine its basic integrity or lack thereof) to make sure just what is going on. This doesn’t mean that science is being driven by politics. It means that politics is checking up to see whether what is going on is really science.
I think it is fine if a politician or anyone else wants background on the purpose and methods of a study. But, there are legitimate reasons not to release all details until the final report (bias, confidentiality, and even competition between research groups). Once the data is released, anyone can judge it. – good or bad. For example, we examined the BSK study on this blog and found issues with that data and the conclusions. If I was powerful, would I have stopped the BSK study? Never. I’m glad it was done, and think it is healthy to discuss the BSK data and what it means.
Similarly, if there are weaknesses in this Del Norte study, they can be criticized when the data comes out. I have a problem with the idea that a politician or activist group would accuse scientists of wasting public dollars in order to manipulate or coerce them into only conducting studies "approved" by politicians and their special interest groups. Or worse, the letter has a tone that suggested -to my maybe paranoid brain – that the ultimate goal was to intimidate scientists away from doing any studies that might not make raw milk look good, or else…face the wrath of a powerful politician. That is not scientific freedom.
Senator Florez has some legitimate questions in his letter. For example, is raw milk "singled out." What studies are being done on other foods. Those are easy to answer. For example, the link below is one example showing that it is not unusual for public health officials to study consumer attitudes toward multiple foods deemed "risky." and use the information for health education. I am sure similar work is underway on raw sprout consumption, a recent source of large outbreaks. The egg, oyster, beef and sprout industries don’t welcome this type of research any more than raw milk fans, but that is because it hurts business (which is not a reason to stop studying the issue and informing consumers).
http://tiny.cc/7W1cM
A multi-state survey of consumer food-handling and food-consumption practices
"Risky food-handling and food-consumption practices were not uncommon. Overall, 19% of respondents did not adequately wash hands or cutting boards after contact with raw meat or chicken. During the previous year, 20% ate pink hamburgers, 50% ate undercooked eggs, 8% ate raw oysters, and 1% drank raw milk. Men were more likely to report risky practices than women. The prevalence of most risky behaviors increased with increasing socioeconomic status. CONCLUSION: Targeted education efforts may reduce the frequency of these behaviors. Periodic surveillance can be used to assess effectiveness. In addition to consumer education, prevention efforts are needed throughout the food chain including on the farm, in processing, distribution, and at retail."
What may be risky behavior to you is biodiversity and wholefood nutrition to others.
This stinks of the government being used by the processed food industry and their lackys at the FDA to direct the choices of a free people. An attempt to retrain the sheepeople using tax dollars and agencies of the government.
In CA I am free to consumer raw milk and that is not a risky behavior. Thousands of consumers in CA consider consumption of pasteurized milk highly risky ( definitely risky ) because it definitely causes lactose intolerance, triggers asthma, depletes bone density and has been linked directly to the onset of diabetes through autoammune protein responses and arthritis. All of those conditions are made better quickly by raw milk consumption. The measurement of risk must be redefined…politically this is treason to the FDA and the industries that follow the sterile dogma mantra.
Consumption of pasteurized milk from factory farms is far beyond risky…it is a food pushed by false and misleading advertising on top of being fake and highly processed.
Labels including "Risky behavior" is a part of Germ Theory dogma and it is dead theory for those with robust immune systems and solid whole food diets.
Taking antibiotics and consuming GMO food is a risky behavior….it is killing Americans like never before…Lykke why are you not concerned about these tens of thousands of deaths per year!!????
50,000 people people per week are choosing not to participate in the sterilized antibiotic and GMO rat experiment conducted by the FDA, medical industry and commercial agricultural systems.
Thats an awakening not risky behavior. What you call "risky behavior" is an awakening of the sheepeople and the risk of loosing their following. There is a reason that the higher socioeconomic levels in society become involved in socalled risky food behaviors….Lykke, would it impress you to know that the level of education for a raw milk drinker is much higher than the average. It is because they are smarter and far more conscious. They are a definite threat to drug industry profits and the FDA.
Risky behavior….rest in peace. Bad label stupid science. Why not study immune system enhancement…good science because it prevents disease. Anything that is prevention oriented appears to be Risky Behavior.
Mark
I think one of the first things that would happen to a time traveler, that is, if he were to make a significant trip, is that he would get sick. His immune system would be entirely unfamiliar with the environment, over-reacting and under-reacting by turns. And if his immune system was already in the deplorable condition of our sheepocracy – which has steadily degenerated for so many years on the standard American diet, I dont think that he would live to tell about his visit.
You choose a formidable opponent. It is not only the ignorance of the masses that have had their critical faculties dumbed down for so many years (Bloom) which need to be re-educated about a health paradigm that lies far beyond their expectations (Price, Fallon, et al), but you are also coming up against a particularly virulent, corrupt political system, which has a direct, vested interest in their dumbness and their dependence and their dilapidated health.
Seeing a perfectly legitimate, purely democratic request for information from a minor, dark horse political entity like Florez from a major, establishment political power like the CDFA (especially where there is probable cause for corruption) as a *meddling* in the scientific process is simply ludicrous. But only if youve got a little education and just a little common sense.
Your thesis is sound: if you take small doses of snake venom, you will eventually develop a significant immunity. However, the governments gambit to maintain power is also sound. It once could be said that it was just an ignorant lust for power. And thats what it was – ignorance. But now it clearly cannot be maintained that it is ignorance. It is willful complicity – and as you say – criminal. The government gambit is to so sterilize our food and our initiative that fear and ignorance will prevent people from taking the necessary, but statistically lower tactical risks to rebuild their immunity against the statistically higher strategic risks of continuing to live in the toxic and pathogenic environment for which our current government agencies have become consciously complicit.
Our democracy is as run down as our immune system. Far from the Jeffersonian vision of an educated electorate, it is now a manipulated democracy of dumbness that will quite consciously content itself to repeat a fallacious argument till the cows dont come home.
Paul Hubbard
Virginia Peninsula
http://www.agroforestry.net/overstory/overstory81.html
http://www.agroforestry.net/overstory/overstory28.html
http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/Ecology/faairExecSum_6-02.html
After you perform the experiment suggested by cp, don’t forget to sue the beef and chicken producers – and hey, why not the vegetable producers as well?
http://tiny.cc/8HYWF
"Mari works very hard at therapy but it is a slow, painful process. Peter has found it so upsetting that he no longer can watch. Every improvement is celebrated, but he knows how much discomfort and frustration goes into each minute, regained movement. Mari may never walk again. She lost her job, she lost her dreams and plans that she held dear. The illness has been a long, arduous journey for Mari, her family and friends, and while she has made progress, there remains a long way to go."
Lykke,
My friend that took the flu shot and ended up with GBS cannot walk without 2 canes, and not for more than 20-30 feet. She was healthy up until after the flu shot. She hasn’t been able to work,her dreams are long gone, etc. It’s been almost 5 yrs.
Do you think they’ll ban flu shots? I think they should, if it harms one person, that is one person too many. Are more people harmed by the flu shot than raw milk from a clean, pasture fed dairy?
Theyre just wanting to get the information about the attitudes of people in Del Norte County about raw milk, Martinelli said. I think theyre just trying to get a little idea of the psyche of people who would put themselves in the position of drinking raw milk when there are obvious dangers.
http://www.triplicate.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=106001&Itemid=199
What kind of "science" is involved in "trying to get a little idea of the psyche of people…"??? Is this a new branch of Armchair Psychiatry, or perhaps Study of the Motivations of Free Choice in Food?
If on the other hand, Dr. Martinelli is uninformed about the survey, as a scientist and public health official, shouldn’t he be more careful not to characterize it, both because he shouldn’t speak without knowing what he’s talking about and/or because he should think twice before potentially biasing results with his comments? Given all this, why can the good Doctor speak, while the Senator must sit mute on the sidelines?
Goodness gracious, let’s not bias the results. Let’s all be objective about this "science." Er, that would seem to mean Everybody.
Seems like a few questions about the science and its conduct are in order.
On 5/22/09 The Tenn. Cow-Share bill became law.
"Contract Law and Private Property Rights, as outlined in our Constitution will be UPHELD in our state" How many really understand the magnitude of that statement very very few I would guess.
Lykke, be real; stop using the word research to describe this survey. It is obviously a tool invented to promote the industrial food agenda (to which our public health system is, inextricably, thematically, tied).
I must wonder… Clean, bacteria-laden soils are key to your own personal food production. If its necessary for you, why not for us? Or let me put it this way: If America must endure an over-reaching hypermama of a food regulatory system, at a minimum that system ought not be blind to the noxious practices of industrial ag.