No one can accuse the fine public servants of California’s Department of Food and Agriculture of sitting on their hands, and letting raw milk coliforms threaten the health and safety of California consumers.
No, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. The junior he-men, working on behalf of the senior he-man-terminator, are out there…fighting the common enemy, raw milk coliforms. Okay, they may not be putting their lives on the line, or even their lunch hours, for that matter, but damn it, they care about us and, well, that’s all that matters, right?
Pretty much in tandem with the withdrawal of AB 1604 last week from consideration by the Calfironia Assembly, and its provision for a six-month repeal of AB 1735’s 10-coliform-per-milliliter standard, the CDFA swooped in and began testing the milk of the state’s two major raw-milk dairies–Organic Pastures Dairy Co. and Claravale Farm.
According to Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the bottle of his dairy’s milk CDFA took for testing had 28 coliforms per milliliter—18 more than allowed under the new standard. (He claims that a private lab’s test of the same milk had a coliform count at 12.) He says that Claravale passed its first test.
The Organic Pastures failure isn’t a huge deal—for now. The CDFA can come back every 30 days to test. If Organic Pastures fails three of five tests, it must discontinue bottling milk for at least a couple days, while CDFA takes additional samples over a period of a day or two. If Organic Pastures passes two such tests, then it is back on the market for at least four months. But if it continues to fail, “It will take milk off the market,” says Mark.
“It’s a stupid game,” he adds. “It’s destabilizing, a game of harassment.”
In the meantime, he says that the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund will be seeking a temporary restraining order of AB 1735, probably next week. Plus, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, a long-time raw milk advocate, is hoping to file a separate suit shortly. In addition, Mark expects the commission investigating raw milk to begin being organized over the next few weeks.
For now, I must say how impressed I am with the speed of CDFA’s enforcement activities. They just won’t take any chances with the public’s safety at stake.
They’ve certainly got federal and state officials in New York over a barrel. Last week, The New York Times published a front page article about how tuna sushi from five of twenty restaurants and food stores “had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.”
But there is no evidence the agency will take any action. In a followup article, The New York Times stated, “The federal Food and Drug Administration can move to have fish containing that much mercury taken off the market, though it rarely does so.” And no evidence since the report that the FDA has done anything to "protect" New Yorkers (or consumers anywhere, since it’s safe to assume tuna sushi around the country is similarly contaminated).
Interesting that the New York Times expressed no amazement, or concern, that the FDA was just hanging around as consumers go on poisoning themselves with mercury in tuna. Are coliforms more dangerous than mercury? Am I missing something here?
The CDFA servants seem very proud of themselves and can brag about this to their bed buddies at the FDA….but this sterilized dead food win will be short lived. The power resides with the people. By April new legislation will be introduced and the Blue Ribbon Commission will have made its recommendations. We will have earned far more than AB 1604 would have ever given us. Raw milk is here to stay and Big Dairy and Big Pharma better enjoy their little battle wins because the people always win the wars.
We will be selling "Raw Milk Militia" and "Pasteurization is Bioterrorism" Tee Shirts soon.They do not seem to have learned a thing about the raw revolution two weeks ago at the hearings when 650 people turned up on three days notice. Our people are united and committed. Big Dairy and Big Pharma have nothing to say about raw milk.
Raw milk is a peoples choice.
All the best,
Mark McAfee
Mommaofmany, OP co-op leader in the Tulare/Visalia area
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http://www.nj.com/living/times/index.ssf?/base/living-1/1201669545201460.xml&coll=5
Talking about raw milk
The controversial topic of the sale of raw milk, which is not legal in New Jersey but is allowed in Pennsylvania, will be addressed at forums on Feb. 6 and 20 at Rutgers University.
Mark McAfee, the owner of the largest raw milk dairy in the coun try, Organic Pastures in California, will speak on the subject "Raw Milk, Mother Nature’s Inconvenient Truth" at 2 p.m. in the Foran Hall room 138B of the Cook Campus in New Brunswick. He will speak again at 7 p.m. in the Cook Student Center multipurpose room. For directions, see (www.maps.rutgers.edu/directions.aspx?id=92).
A second seminar, "Raw Milk Wars, Government’s Attempt to Dictate What Foods We Can Consume," is scheduled for Feb. 20. The speaker is attorney David G. Cox, who will appear in the Marine Science Building on the Cook College Campus at 1 p.m.
Directions to the Feb. 20 lecture site can be found at (www.maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?168).
First of all, isn’t sushi tuna pretty much the same tuna that winds up in the little cans? Can’t we point out that we’ve known for ages about the high levels of mercury in tuna?
Coliforms are in every healthy person’s gut. They contribute a graet deal to immunity, nutrition and digestion. I guarantee you’d be very unhappy if they went away.
What happened to the idea of testing for the pathogens – the ones that can really hurt us?
Why are these people using our tax dollars?
It’s possible that the tainted Tuna sushi is supplied by True World, which is owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. It apparently supplies 6,000 lbs of fresh fish monthly to the NYC area, according to a 2007 article in Vanity Fair by Nick Tosches. The Chicago Tribune published a report in 2006, "Sushi and Rev. Moon", about Moon’s influence in creating the Tuna sushi craze.
I point this out as a potential reason for inaction in the case of the high mercury levels in Tuna sushi in NY. I assume everyone here is aware of Moon’s political connections?
There’s also this from Consortium News:
…"The latest example of a Moon-connected operation getting a legal break despite breaking the law was the exposure of a decade-long scheme led by a local pastor of Moons Unification Church that poached thousands of baby leopard sharks from San Francisco Bay." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/021707.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012903054_pf.html
Downer cows are prodded and shocked, to try to get them to stand long enough to pass USDA inspection, then sent to slaughter still covered in feces.
When you click on the link to the video, there are two consecutive videos. Wait for the second one to automatically load, after the first one ends. http://video.hsus.org/
Thanks Lacedo for the link to the Washington Post article. I think I know what the slaughterhouse in question will do to solve the problem: start inspecting workers for video cameras before they start work each day.