I’d like to make a few further comments in regard to the discussion following my previous post giving credence to the Minnesota Department of Health’s conclusions about illnesses from the Hartmann farm’s raw milk.
What’s fundamentally being debated, it seems, is pragmatism vs some sort of scientific purity. I am encouraging pragmatism.
There are some misunderstandings about the safety investigation that’s been happening in Minnesota. It’s the kind that regularly happens at farms and food producers every day when there are reports of illness associated with particular foods. Just look at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s alerts (in the little box midway down the page) about recalls and investigations, or read any of the many lawyer blogs and web sites out there.
A few points:
— Just because there’s an investigation by public health officials doesn’t necessarily mean there is a legal action against the farm and food producer. The nature and outcome of such investigations vary from state to state. In California in 2006, the California Department of Food and Agriculture shut down Organic Pastures Dairy Co. after illnesses of the sort reported at the Hartmann farm in Minnesota. Yet Minnesota hasn’t done anything to try to shut the Hartmann dairy down. In some states, if pathogens are found in a producer’s food, there is a shutdown of the farm till the tests come out okay. There may also be a fine levied. But there usually isn’t a court action, unless…
— The more serious the illnesses, the more likely there is to be legal action. The product liability lawyers tend not to become involved unless someone becomes very ill, since those are the cases that lead to large judgments or settlements. For example, if someone has serious kidney damage, or some kind of disability, like partial paralysis. My understanding is that there hasn’t been any legal action growing out of some dozens of illnesses attributed to raw milk this year. (One exception is in Pennsylvania, where a man who may have been paralyzed from complications of campylobacter from raw milk is suing.)
— Pushing a legal action against public health officials over epidemiological studies or PFGE would be a long shot, at best. You’d have at least two strikes against you: lower court judges hate to rule against public officials, especially those charged with public safety. It’s very difficult to sue police, for example, since judges are sympathetic to police as law enforcers, putting their lives on the line. For public health, judges invariably respond to the argument that people’s lives could be endangered. A judge’s eyes would glaze over before Miguel could get far into his arguments. Also, lower court judges hate to rule on constitutional issues. They nearly always rule on the facts of the case (as they understand them, with bias toward the regulators), and leave the constitutional issues for appeals court judges.
As I said in my comment following the previous post, we live under a system that respects epidemiological findings almost as much as it respects the fact that drivers must stop at red lights and go at green lights. You may argue that your town has very little traffic and therefore you shouldn’t have to stop at red lights, but you’ll have little luck finding a judge to side with you. Now, there’s the added layer of PFGE fingerprinting, which essentially serve as confirmation of the epidemiological findings.
In most of the cases of illnesses, what Miguel, Pete, Ken Conrad, Samantha Stevens, and I think doesn’t matter much. As Jeremy Johnson suggests, the gold standard may not be very golden, but at this point in the history of food safety, PFGE studies are the standard in confirming sources of illness.
If you accept that, then the next step, as Milky Way suggests, is figuring out what went wrong at a dairy like the Hartmanns. He/she suggests the farmer try to figure it out. I’d prefer that–hence my call for a raw dairy association–to Ken Conrad’s preference for having the regulators nosing further into farm operations.
For those who want the broadest possible access to raw dairy products, two things are at stake: First, there is the safety of customers. Miguel and others can argue all they want that people who became ill had out-of-synch digestive systems or immune problems or whatever, and that raw milk couldn’t have been responsible in any event. Good luck to you in a court of law, or the court of public opinion.
Second, and related, there is the matter of picking our battles. Essentially, you can choose to challenge the regulators on whether raw milk should be treated like any other food as a matter of right, or their application of epidemiological evidence and PFGE fingerprinting. I don’t think you can fight both battles at once because of availability of resources and also, in a sense, they are contradictory battles. You want raw milk to be treated like any other food but, by the way, epidemiological evidence and PFGE studies are fraudulent because people don’t get sick from raw milk. Huh?
Ron Klein states it well: “Miguel you have raised many excellent questions, raised my level of awareness on many issues, and I have looked at the references you have cited. But in this specific case, and I base this on almost three decades as a wet bench molecular biologist-Milky Way’s correct. The argument against the validity of PFGE for the specific application used here-whether in a scientific seminar (even at MIT) or in a courtroom is a loser.”
On the rights issue, it’s been an uphill battle in many places. Remember, one of the key reasons the Ontario judge ruled in favor of Michael Schmidt earlier this year is that his dairy had no history illnesses in more than 15 years. To the extent there are illnesses, they come into play when legislation or legal cases play out.
This isn’t a matter of me pre-judging people, like the Hartmann family, since I have no authority. It’s a matter of cleaning up our act, as it were, so that as the legislative and legal battles unfold, raw milk has a commendable safety record. Otherwise, to repeat, the public health people who want to do away with raw milk will have a much easier time. You can be shouting about the injustice of using epidemiological evidence as the DATCPs of the world are shutting things down.
I don’t know enough about much of the information that is posted in regards to the cellular/bacteria testing issues. At times my head spins on the vast information that is posted.
I may have missed it, did Miguel or someone else state " that raw milk couldn’t have been responsible in any event." ? (in reference to illness). Or were they suggesting/implying that there is an underlying cause as to why those certain people became ill and not others?
Sorta like smokers, many smoke for many years with no ill effects, some have not been around smoke of any kind and have respiratory problems and yet there are those who smoke less than 5 yrs and end up with cancer or COPD. Why is there such a difference in people who are affected? Why do some children have adverse reactions to vaccinations? Are there any studies into any of these anomalies?
"The science behind these epidemiological investigations must be explained clearly in words that we can all understand."
If people cannot understand they how can they trust? How do you trust an entity that has repeatedly and continues to lie/mislead the public?
http://whatsonmyfood.com/ Do I have any choices of what’s in my drinking water? I do have a choice of what I grow in the backyard, unfortunately I cannot grow everything, I also do not have the needed knowledge to raise and milk a cow, I depend on the farmer to have the knowledge and skill needed.
Is the govt assisting with teaching and sharing information to ensure peoples safety? Are they assisting and teaching the farmers to ensure that they do have the knowledge and skills for healthy safe products? Or are they attempting to force their beliefs/toxins onto me?
I am disappointed…thought you would use your extensive review of the literature to suggest a better method to distinguish isolates than PFGE.
Your response is that we all need to look at our sleep patterns. Are you serious? The public and the media want to know.
I do think that part of the thrust of the raw milk movement is to challenge scientific thinking.
The current American scientific establishment is totally reductionist, determinist, and mechnical. Not much unlike the chess board you show…… I enjoy playing chess, and usually win at it, but I do not think we will win the raw milk battle by thinking "inside the box."
Philosophers as divergent as Ayn Rand, Peter Singer, and Richard Dawkins (to name a few) have espoused a reductionist, hyper-scientific philosophy. Though I am basically an athiest, I cannot agree with this worldview.
These types of reductionist philosophers adhere to the unspoken "universe as machine" hypothesis. In other words, everything can be reduced to certain axioms, or unmovable "laws of the universe", which determine our behavior beyond our control.
There is far more that we do NOT understand, than that which DO understand, regardless of how "advanced" our society is. I don’t care how many enzymes the PFGE analaysists say they have, or what percentage of the population will be relievied of lactose interance because of raw milk consumption……. the point is that science is not the end-all-be-all.
Science is a religion, not much unlike christianity, islam, anthroposophism, or even paganism. Science just so happens to be the dominant religion of our modern, industrialized corporate controlled society. And Science (surprise, surprise) is the religion which is proselytizing intensly against raw milk right now.
We do need to challenge science, and its sponsers. This is part of the game.
Call me a radical. I will not deny that label. Think outside the box. Miguel has certianly challenged me to do so. I do not deny the benefits of science, but I recognize its shortcomings. Science needs to be challened. It is just too bad how many human lives (and other non-human lives!) are being sacrified in the war between nature and science!
WRMC, well-spoken! When regulators embrace science that acknowledges the benefits of clean raw milk, and accept it as a nutritious option, in addition to understanding how it can be produced safely, then I’ll stop being so skeptical of government’s authority.
I can’t wait for the food industry to gradually transition their technology; too many people are sick, infertile, and gasping for air. Raw milk is the perfect tipping point – our current demise is all about bacteria. Live in harmony with bacteria or perish.
Miguel’s admirable willingness as a farmer to understand how nature works shows curiosity without boundaries. I’d like to see a microbiologist make the same effort to understand how to produce wholesome food – then we’d all be healing and moving forward.
Milky Way’s mocking retort about sleep shows how little s/he understands harmony and balance. I had hope that we might get some answers and have a meaningful dialogue.
Miguel posed the question – isn’t it appropriate for someone in a regulatory capacity to take ownership and seek some answers? Unless you’re just here to cast dispersions on raw milk….Lord knows, we’ve had our share of those here….
-Blair
p.s. David, have you been reading Miguel’s posts? Can’t understand how you so readily dismissed his questions. We are all talking about milk safety, and small farm continuity.
I don’t think we will finance a national raw milk standards board with independent inspections, regulation and certification, pretty as the thought may be. Activism yes, year-round financing, no. And if you ask government to do it, bye bye sustainable farms. Power corrupts – leave it in the hands of farmers and consumers who look each other in the eye on a regular basis.
No ,my response was that I need to get some sleep or I will lose my balance.I will be gone all day.So If you ask any questions and I don’t respond immediately,it will be because I haven’t had time to read your question yet.
My point was, if health authorities cant figure it out how can they expect the farmer to. I can assure you the last thing I as a farmer want is for regulators nosing further into farming operations.
A while back I stated that, working with regulators is inherently problematic! It is either their way or the highway and communication is of little concern to them.
Establishing a raw dairy association is unlikely to make it less problematic considering their disdainful attitude and current agenda.
Galileo stated that, In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. I believe that WIRMC, Migel and others are on the right track in pointing out the authorities true motives and the inadequacies of their science.
In the end Francis Bacon’s words will ring true, Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
Ken Conrad
Before I leave for the day,I think you make a good point when you wonder how the pathogen arrived at the farm after so many years of trouble free milking.
Imagine that a child becomes ill and raw milk is suspected.PFGE is used to get a profile of the strain.Bacteria on the farm is found that have a profile that is indistinguishable from the child’s profile.The farm has had a closed herd for many years.We search our minds for some way that the farm had become contaminated.Ah yes, people can carry this bacteria just as well as cows can.We know that people who drink raw milk can carry this pathogen and infect others with it.There is this guy,Gumpert,that comes faithfully every week to pick up his milk.
So later that week at 4:00 in the morning Gumperts house is surrounded with police cars and while he stands in the front yard in his pajamas a mob of epidemiologist descends on his house and yard taking a hundred or so samples.Samples from the dog manure in the yard,the toilet,the trap under the kitchen sink,the garbage container,the dirty laundry basket,you get the idea.Back to the lab and what do you know we have a match!And the lawyers are overjoyed because now we have two lawsuits.The family of the sick child is suing the farm and the farm is suing Gumpert.Of course Gumpert is now busy trying to figure out what he did wrong to somehow get this deadly pathogen in his house.
The following is a perspective not meant to offend anybody.
Everyone, and I mean everyone from the small raw milk producer and its consumers to Lawyers on both sides, to genuine and mean spirited public health officials, policy makers ect ect are currently looking at a raw milk in its current form, which is substandard and highly inconsistant which in my opinion is going to give wild variations.
I can tell you from thousands of soil and forage samples taken and analyzed, 100,s of farms walked and disscussed we are dealing with products produced that are far from optimal. Defecient from animals and soil severly affected by years of neglect due to the the lack of knowlege and misleading information which the local food movement for the most part has yet to realize needs to be addressed for proper food production.
Coupled with the fact that if we just do the opposite we now have a nutritional product, ie. grass and do nothing organic.
Add compromised humans into the live food chain, all be it not as good as it could be, we see a severe intersection of the two and all this blog can do is talk about who is right.
We are all correct.
What is missing is the direction to changing the problem not quarrel about the symptoms.
If I have learned anything in the last year or so the very mindsets we are trying to change will not be changed with those very processes that have created them.
It is time we look at our situation with new paramitors, not judge it against what we already know.
To hold on to beliefs and habits for the very simple reason we may be wrong is not going to forward the food movement, Government policy or our species true place in earths ecology.
We get sick for a reason.
We are sick for a reason.
We are being removed by the natural processes we have enhanced and cheated over time.
Mother nature bats last, if we do not begin to understand we need to put back not just take, we are only seeing the begining of a very ugly period of our exisitance.
Yes it cost more to remineralize the soil, but for $170.00 an acre and 6 years on crops, more per acre for veggies, it will go a very long way to eliminating the need for these conversations.
Remineralization is your raw milk standards association, national health care plan, environmental movement and is the only viable stimulas package for rural and local economies rolled up into one.
I’m open to anybody who wants to help create this new paradigm.
The work has already begun to find out "what the good is" in our foods not just what the bad is.
Looking for the bad is never going to help us undertstand what needs to be there, neither is the conversation of what tests to use or their validity.
Tim Wightman
The long-term goal here is definitely to change scientific thinking. If you ignore this goal just to win a court battle, you have missed the forest for the trees. You have positioned your pieces to capture a knight, while leaving your king exposed.
The abuse of science in this country contributes significantly to many of the problems we face today, including these milk issues. It also contributes to environmental problems, educational deficiency, health care, and much more. We cannot ignore the bigger issue every time we are faced with these problems.
Do you think that "value added data" is only used in climate graphs? If people don’t stop to ask, "Hmm, could this corruption possibly be occurring in other fields of science?" then they deserve the world of hurt that is coming their way.
WI Raw Milk Consumer,
I agree with many of your statements. However, I think you were really describing "naturalism," not "science." Science is basically the study of how the universe works. It can be utilized by people of many different religions, without contradiction of beliefs, for great benefit. Naturalism is basically the belief system you described, where people believe that everything can be measured using natural processes. By definition, it presupposes that the *super*natural cannot exist.
People equivocate the word, "science," when they claim that people who believe in the supernatural are unscientific. Such claims are misleading. They assume that any study of how the universe works must exclude the supernatural. But if the supernatural does exist, it could possibly affect how the universe works, and therefore be a part of science – the study of how the universe works. Therefore, it is circular reasoning to presuppose that all science is naturalistic. It is more accurate to say that people who believe in the supernatural are not naturalistic.
It may sound like I’m being really picky here, but I believe that such equivocation has caused much damage in the scientific community. In fact, it’s part of the reason we’re having such problems with milk.
Jeremy Johnson
Instead we would be wise to consider the word "and".
The title of this post alone provokes us in a direction that is naturally mind-narrowing
rather than mind-expanding.
(Perhaps that was David’s intent. A good writer is often a provocateur.)
As Tim has pointed out, we need a much larger paradigm shift.
The answer is both: broaden access and change scientific thinking – for everyone.
The real dispute is when and where to focus on which aspect of the situation.
In actuality, both things – and more – are already happening all the time.
Arguing that it’s one "or" the other is a distraction from actuality, another way of dividing.
Everything is happening simultaneously. The question is: can we step back far enough
to expand our view and broaden our perspective to see everything all at once.
In order to broden access to raw milk, we must change scientific thinking. And I’m not speaking specifically to PFGE profiles, but to the entire attitude of the scientific and medical community.
Tim Wightman makes excellent points about the need to properly mineralize soils, but I would take this a step further. Mineralization of soil is only the begining. We must encourage bio-diversity on the farm. If the farmers allow themselves to only have one market — raw milk — they will eventually fail as they struggle to produce more and more for cheaper and cheaper.
Modelling our agricultural system after natural systems is key. Permaculture, biodynamics, agro-forestry, silvo-pastoralism…. choose your name. Point is we must heal mother nature and restore bio-diversity to the current monoculture landscape.
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound snitty. I’m on the west coast and didn’t think about the time (literally). Hope you got some rest!
MW
I devote two full chapters of my book, "The Raw Milk Revolution" (chapters 5 and 9) to misconceptions and inconsistencies around food-related illnesses, and I highlight such problems as biased public health investigators, questionably administered tests, and scientific disagreements about the validity of various tests. I think Miguel, in particular, raises a number of important additional problems with various aspects of pathogen testing. Moreover, we know that many of our agricultural practices, like heavy use of antibiotics, likely promote the presence of pathogens.
Tim Wightman, in particular, provides a compelling viewpoint for how the public health and agriculture communities should re-orient their outlooks on the relationships between soil, animal health, and food-borne illness. His view is popular among a growing number of dairy farmers. And everyone who wants to promote a more favorable environment for sustainable farming should work toward further exploration of that view.
All the above being said, we live in a political and legal system that has certain standards and criteria for dealing with food-borne illness, as well as other problems associated with consumer products that cause illness or injury. What I’m arguing is that it’s counter-productive to say that because the scientific measurement tools around food-borne illness have weaknesses, there can’t be any laying of blame in the event of illness. Or to put it another way, raw dairies can’t be held responsible for anything till we get better tools and fix all the problems. I’m sorry, that dog just won’t hunt.
David
"Science just so happens to be the dominant religion of our modern, industrialized corporate controlled society."
Jeremy, I took science to mean the current science community.
It seems to me that years ago, science asked questions of nature, hoping to understand it but in our times, science thinks it knows all of the answers and is hell-bent on controlling nature. I don’t think science understands enough. And what little it does understand, it pimps to commerce. If science was right and honorable, we would have nutrient dense foods, little to no disease, and a healthy (or healthier) planet.
Like Tim said, "nature bats last." I suggest we go long.
"Raw milk is inherently dangerous and should be banned" is definitely NOT asking questions.
Bob BUBBABOZO Hayles
The department of Health would like us to have a zero tolerance for "pathogens" policy on the farm.But these micro organisms are really healers in the way that weeds are healing to bare soil.Bulls like to paw up big bowls in the pasture sometimes.Thistles and other weeds are quick to move into these bare patches and cover the bare soil to hold it against erosion and shade the bacteria in the soil from the sun.Similarly,the opportunistic bacteria are more independent and aggressive.they rely less on well developed communities in order to survive.When the more fragile communities of bacteria are destroyed the opportunistic bacteria are what you see returning first.They begin the work of reestablishing the infrastructure for the community of commensal bacteria.They clean up the debris and as conditions improve you will see that they begin to adapt to the more stable conditions by dumping their DNA that produce toxins ,as the environment continues to improve,amazingly enough the "pathogens" will have become "commensal" bacteria.Actually in the world of bacteria,since they can change their DNA so easily from one strain to another,A bacteria like e.coli can become the aggressive toxin producing o157:H7 when those characteristics are of benefit and then it can revert back to the commensal form of e.coli when the catastrophe has passed.
miguel, Im not downplaying the importance of soil mineralization. Healthy soil produces healthy crops. But I dont think the outbreak at the Hartmann dairy is as simple as the soil is off kilter. Whatever happened at the Hartman dairy is a big problem because of the number of locations they found pathogens. Exemplary sanitation practices are not being followed.
cp
On the heels of what couldn’t be a better example (Miguel’s post), allow me to clarify…
I don’t want my previous post interpreted as taking a position or having an answer to
your initial question.
I don’t disagree with your point or your question; I simply want to offer an alternate context.
You wrote from the ground level point of view: How do we act, what do we do, what is appropriate and most beneficial at this moment in this situation?
I hear you taking the following position: "we must play according to the rules of the game as they are currently written. When the rules of the game change, which they should, then we can play a better game according to rules that more closely reflect reality."
I have no disagreement. Opinions, yes, but no disagreement.
Any point of view is perfectly valid. Things look the way they do based on where you’re standing, what kind of eyesight you have, what the lighting is like, etc.
That’s why I propose the word ‘and’. I’m not stuck on the science, and I’m not stuck on the politics. I’m interested in expanding my view so that I can see all of it unfolding as a whole, integrated process of evolution. Perhaps it’s a broader perspective – more esoteric – than you intend for your blog, yet it’s still useful. Miguel’s post illuminates how an esoteric understanding of life is quite real in the day-to-day.
How we can take a step back and see the whole picture without getting lost in the details? How can we deal with the details while seeing how all pieces fit together – even if they appear to be at complete odds with each other?
How, as we gain new perspectives, are we going to chose to participate? Even though it appears we may have to make a limiting – perhaps even faulty – choice at this moment in time, that is not actually the truth of the situation. One door closes, and another opens, sometimes several…
I attended and spoke at the raw milk hearing in Sacramento, CA in April 2008. I was quite struck by the dynamic, and even more so by the gaps, no, the chasms between the politicians and one group of scientists and another group of scientists and the farmers, etc. I watched eyes glaze over on one side and on the other side the glazed eyes went unnoticed. The disconnect went each and every which way.
When one desires quality communication and authentic negotiation and witnesses what appears to be a breakdown, the situation is downright disheartening. When one sees that things are evolving along their natural course and that things are going just fine, then the disagreement on this blog and everywhere else is just a natural part of the course.
We can’t help but change the science. Access is unavoidably broadening. There’s no way around either of those. Growth is in the design – everywhere and all the time. There’s no way around the truth coming to light. Even when things appear to be getting worse it’s usually just a step on the way to getting better, or just a matter of perspective. We’re all going along at our own pace, some taking a seemingly more direct course. But, in the end, no course is indirect, no extra step is extraneous.
Even while we are disagreeing we can still see that each one of us is playing our part in our betterment, just as we have come to relearn that the waste product of one animal is fodder for another. Even as you say "or" and I say "and" we are playing our part, just as Miguel describes the shifting roles of bacteria. We may make better sense of ourselves and our interactions if we understand ourselves as parts of a sick piece of land being brought back to health. And with that understanding we may play our part that much better.
All of our ideas are Nature experimenting, looking for the best possible next step to express herself. Just like evolutionary lines of plants and animals, some ideas come to an end and some persist. No experiment is wasted. Whether they end or persist, they all play their part.
Is there any doubt that our dialogue is a reflection of our evolution as a species, as an organism inseparable from the earth, as a reflection of Life itself? Is there any doubt that we are no different from any other plant or creature competing with itself – in the guise of another – to persist in the form of future generations?
In this conversation I’m like a mother watching her child grow, looking forward to seeing how we turn out, who we choose to become, and what choices we make along the way…
Cp..
In an answer to your question "is it a simple question of the soil mineralization being out of wack."
In short absolutly.
Long answer, not having been on the Hartmann Farm and talking from experieince….
When I first created a testing protocol for Clearview acres i called the most respected food safety lab in our region, who just happend to do all the food Safety testing for Land O Lakes on both sides of the pasteurizer.(no Land O Lakes did not have raw milk…they liked to see what they were dealing with before it entered the facility.)
I asked what it would take and cost to test for 8 pathogens DATCP said would be in our milk.
She asked Why? I said I want to make sure our milk is safe.
Ok why test for 8 you should only really be concerned about maybe 2 L-mono and Salmonella.
I said we wanted to make sure we were safe.
She said alright and gave me the cost and time frame.
I then asked what about environment, should we swab the floors wallls draines ect. of the milk house.
Why she asked, well we want to be safe.
Look she said… I can bring a team in and find anything you want me too if I look long and hard enough………….It only matters if we find it in the final product.
Ok then.
Just a back story.
In Northern Wi we had a creamery in every small berg about 25 in the 40’s and 50’s supporting 140 dairy farms in Sawyer County. there were 5 left when we sold out in 2005.
The last local creamery in Hayward was asked to forfit there license in 1990 when a crew from DATCP came and swabed the whole facility and found L-mono in the floor drains.
No illnesses were ever reported form the facility, what consolidation hadn’t done, inappropriate food safety policy did.
Back to Hartmanns.
Too my knowlege there has been no trace in the milk or the Cows of the identified pathogens found on the farm.
How did pathogens get placed on the farm?
Well lets look at a few possiblities…egg and meat chickens from a large hatchery as replacements, turkeys from a large hatchery as replacements, cows needed to meet demand as replacements and not grown on farm.
Starlings, geese, veternarians traveling from cafo to small producer.
Maybe and just maybe as miguel points out these things are perfroming a dutie to remove unwanted items from the food chain and we just hold it off enough to consume it but the perverbial canary in the coal mine does get sick.
Trace minerals are immune support for soil plants food and humans.
Of the hundreds of soil samples I have personally taken I have found one that was in balanced proportion in trace minerals and macro plant nutrients.
It hadn’t been farmed for 80 years and was going to grapes.
It is legal to put minerals in a feed bag and say they exsist, but there is no oversite as to their availability to the soil or to the animal.
Ask any Vet who has been stumped about a cow or mutiple cows death on a farm and when they cut open the rumen of the animals they find a large amount of sand like material that was supposed to be a mineral program.
Same goes for the soil as it relates to calcium, phosphorus and potassium, availability is key.
Most and I would say 99.95 % of fertilizer spread sprayed in this country does not have a trace mineral component.
So the above mentioned replacement animals are mineral defecient due to the fed they eat and any mineral given in the diet is not absorbable…..look at any compoist or manure test from a large animal operation and it lists trace minerals as part of the package you are buying.
However if they can pass through an animal(or not as mentioned above) what makes you think a microbe can break them down and give it too a plant.
Do this long enough and take forage samples and quess what….no trace mineral profiles in the forage/grain from the manure you thought had trace minerals in.
Everything we are considering here on this thread is dealing with severe mineral depletion and inbalances of health, microbes and end products.
Humans are the weak link in this chain.
We can only heal ourselves from taking care of the soil and understanding the transition process we are witnessing right now.
We have damaged our environment, it is trying to heal itself.
If we do not begin to understand how we can help it………. it will remove us and the healing then can be completed.
Tim Wightman
"This is an excellent example of the American attitude of "rugged individualism" getting in the way of genuine freedom and democracy."
And while I was struggling to find a way to explain how and why bacteria can change from one strain to another,it reminded me of an article about community and specialization that we discussed on this very Blog a year or two ago.It was about the rise and fall of community.
In small communities the individuals tend to be generalists and more independent.AS the community grows it now has the resources to support more specialized activities by a few individuals.The individuals in the community become more specialized and more dependent on each other.The specialization makes all kinds of things possible that were not possible when the individuals were simply depending on their own generalized skills.If for some reason these specialists feel that the community is no longer able to provide for their basic requirements,the specialist will start to look after his own needs and neglect his job as a specialist.This causes other specialized individuals to revert back to caring for their own basic needs and soon the whole community of specialists are reverting back to a community of rugged individualists.
Dairy farmers know what it means to have the rest of the community fail to meet their needs.That is why the ones that survive have become rugged individualists.The same holds true for bacteria too.An individual that is a hard working, upstanding well respected member of the community,will, under stress, revert back to a rugged individualist.Bacteria that were once a specialized part of a complex community will become opportunistic individualists when the community falls apart.For both the dairy farmer and the bacteria it is simply a decision to change rather than to die.Both the dairy farmer and the bacteria can just as quickly change back to being hardworking members of the community when the community is healthy enough to provide them with their basic needs.
Who is saying this? All I see are people saying, "If the results of using a particular measurement tool are inconclusive, that method cannot be used to draw conclusions." This is perfectly logical. Nobody claimed that other methods cannot be used to draw conclusions.
It seems to me that David is putting words in peoples’ mouths. He’s attacking a straw man.
Jeremy Johnson
Exactly.
If, as you say, the only question is how manure found its way into the milk (or in your words, the expletive—by the way a cheap, shock-value-only sales trick, which is how it found its way into your comment) the logical reaction must be to destroy everywhere an uncountable number of potential pathogens that currently and naturally exist in you, on you, and in your environment. Impossible!
The mere existence of a pathogen is simply not the whole story. You yourself have undoubtedly been exposed to pathogens many, many times without becoming symptomatic. You know, as everyone knows, that if someone with a cold sneezes on ten people, not all, or even most, will in turn get sick. Have you ever wondered why? Likewise, why did not everyone who drank Hartmann milk get sick? (Remember we are talking about fluid milk here—it is irrational to presume that a pathogen would exist in discreet portions of the product and so make its way to a very limited group of consumers.)
The plain reality is that there is much more at work here than the existence of a bad bug. This is what miguel has been patiently explaining to us. There is no sense, no compassion, and no justice, in ignoring that.
David,
You say, In most of the cases of illnesses, what miguel, Pete, Ken Conrad, Samantha Stevens, and I think doesn’t matter much. Well, I get the point that our powerful, controlling systems are unmoved when miguel or Pete or Ken or Samantha speak, but I think you would agree heartily that, in the larger sense, what they say does matter, VERY much, because they are those very rare voices speaking up against oppression and false ideas. Small voices are and will always be extremely important because the big voices are far too likely to merely regurgitate corporate/government rhetoric, without regard for truth and justice. That is, not incidentally, why I have enjoyed your blog. It has been a fine mouthpiece for small voices, and has, to me at least, set the gold standard for information transfer. I sincerely hope that that idealism is not set aside here for mere expediency in dealing with an overly powerful political and legal system and its wrong-headed standards and criteria.
Which gets to the problem of centralized systems
Everyone,
Steves 11 Great Thoughts suggest that, among other things, openness, transparency, education, freedom, and independence are necessary ingredients in a proper food (or for that matter any) economy. That is fine and good, but does anyone really believe we can get any of that from a centralized (government/corporate) system?
The reality is that just like good and bad bugs are everywhere, good and bad ideas are everywhere. And just like bad bugs are best controlled by good bugs, bad ideas are best controlled by good ideas. Systematizing ideas upsets the balance, allows bad ideas to proliferate, and eventually causes rampant political disease. The solution is not to kill the bad ideas (that is as impossible as killing all the bad microbes) but to allow good ideas to have voice.
THE issue, THE fight, is AGAINST SYSTEMS, against all the homogenizing, centralizing, often wrong but never in doubt killers of freedom, truth, and individualism. At base, that is what this discussion is all about. And when those on the receiving end of systematic injustice accept even one of the systems falsehoods (e.g. the germ theory, or a phony epidemiological precision) for practical reasons like perceived improvement in the system, or the false attractiveness of a systemic lesser evil, they only feed the beast, and in the end lose much more, very much more, than they gain.
Bigness has never been more prevalent or more powerful. But it is smallness—private, local, regional—where we will most effectively find and build openness, transparency, education, freedom, and independence.
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