I keep trying to figure out what’s really going on with New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, and I’m having trouble. A few people have written me to suggest possible motivations. A couple have suggested that the regulators in New York are just doing their job. They’re enforcing the law and using U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines that provide for zero tolerance of listeria in dairy products.
They point out that the regulators are actually involved in a dialogue. Sure, there was that unfortunate timing of taking that milk sample from Chuck Phippens’ bulk tank while he was at a meeting with NY Ag & Markets, but the regulators are talking. Certainly they deserve a chance to see that process through.
I guess I don’t like their track record. There’s the case of Dawn Sharts, who in 2007 turned in her raw milk permit after a listeria finding, and using a video recorder to capture questionable practices by NY Ag and Markets inspectors. She had been promised a meeting with Ag and Markets officials to discuss her concerns, but somehow the meeting never came off.
There was the case of Lori and Darren McGrath, who had a listeria finding in their milk nearly a year ago, and had a split sample tested privately, with no listeria finding. You think there was an investigation or reassessment by NY Ag and Markets of the testing procedures?
Chuck Phippen has yet to receive a response to the letter he sent last November (noted in my previous post) challenging the fines he received in connection with the questionable listeria findings in his milk (unless you consider the inspection that occurred while he was meeting with Ag and Markets officials a response).
So maybe something will come from the pow wow held a couple weeks ago between raw dairy producers and NY Ag and Markets officials, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting. (Suggestion to Jennifer B., about the promise of a call back by Commr. Hooker’s office: You may well want to not only follow Mark McAfee’s advice, but also stay after the commissioner, since my guess is you won’t hear back as promised.)
The reality is that if NY Ag and Markets was in the least bit inclined toward playing fair and working with its raw dairy producers, there are all kinds of possible compromise approaches available. To begin with, there’s nothing in any laws that require NY Ag and Markets to force milk off the market with a finding of a single listeria cell.
NY Ag and Markets has chosen a strict interpretation of the adulteration rules.
Here’s the take of Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, who has much experience tangling with NY Ag and Markets: “When they find listeria, they say that automatically constitutes adulteration because milk is supposed to be free of any pathogen. The presence of any pathogen is an automatic ‘adulteration’ scenario according to their interpretation of th regulation. However, the problem is that not all pathogens cause illness in humans Thus, if it doesn’t cause any illness it should not be adulteration.”
So why are they totally inflexible? As just one example, why couldn’t they use the rapid test (described in my previous post), which could be slightly more forgiving?
But why especially now, in the midst of a crisis that has conventional small dairies collapsing all around us?
And when taking such a hard-nosed attitude is driving raw dairies to avoid Ag & Markets, and just sell underground? Wouldn’t you think Ag & Markets would be concerned about a growing public health menace from having an increasing amount of uninspected raw milk hitting the market?
There’s only one explanation I can come up with. And that is the FDA. Look what’s been happening. A number of states have responded to the hard economic times by showing more flexibility about raw milk.
In California, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures reports a new friendliness from inspectors from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The new friendliness corresponds with growing talk about eliminating CDFA entirely. That talk is being promoted by none other than Dean Florez, the Senate majority leader—the same Dean Florez whose requests to appear at an April 2008 raw milk hearing CDFA chose to ignore.
The FDA is losing its raw milk war. But it is determined to turn things around. What better way than to get its henchmen in New York to crack the whip on people like Chuck Phippen and Jerry Snyder.
Maybe the answer is to take the Dean Florez approach to New York. Just get rid of NY Ag and Markets. Save money, end harassment, open up the dairy economy.
At the federal level, I think the FDA is betting on the Hail Mary pass, e.g. pending food safety bills which are poised to give FDA broad new powers, new money, legislate NAIS into full-fledged mandatory bloom, all with draconian new enforcement powers. If the tobacco industry can be corralled (which looks likely as of today), then small farms and conventional dairymen (like they need more of anything) should be "no problem."
Congresswoman DeLauro today zeroed out funding for NAIS from the 2010 appropriations bill, but the concern is that "NAIS is a failure, so forget it; we need something with teeth in it." Stay tuned.
As these various issues come into Congress, the most effective chorus of resistance, in my view, is to push for complete exemption for small farms, whether they produce raw milk or cucumbers.
Finally, other things are a-cookin’ as well – today’s NY TImes had an article on the new movie Food, Inc., and NPR had a 7-minute piece on it this morning:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html?th&emc=th
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105285829
If you dont get to see the movie Food Inc at least watch this 24 minute PBS interview of the filmmaker Robert Kenner
Preview- chickens that cannot stand up and a hamburg that may contain meat from 1000 cattle. HMMM if true that doesn’t sound good.
"Who could be against food safety?"
Is the CLAIM of food safety a HIDDEN MONSTER clad in sheeps clothing?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/health/research/12cdc.html?em
Quote about raw milk from there::
While dairy products accounted for just 3 percent of traceable food-related outbreaks, 71 percent of these cases were traced to unpasteurized milk, the researchers found.
By making a blanket statement, it has the potential to be grossly misleading. Too bad it didn’t site where the research can be viewed.
http://www.apria.com/resources/1,2725,494-945812,00.html
This site added "in 2006" to this same statement.
http://www.foodhaccp.com/memberonly/newsletter118.html
Contrary to some recent media reports, 88 percent of foodborne illness outbreaks were traced to foods other than fresh produce, Marilyn Dolan, executive director of the Alliance for Food and Farming, explained. For those outbreaks traced to produce, 83 percent were associated with improper handling at the foodservice or consumer levels."
http://www.foodhaccp.com/indexcopynews.html
Im with Sylvia.
Since many of the outbreaks involved cheese made with unpasteurized milk, yes, Id like to see the original research / source of these numbers and how they were parsed. I am suspicious.
Outbreak in the raw milk context is frequently just hype. In general usage, an outbreak of disease conveys the idea of much or many people out of a much larger population. As used by the Regulators, there must be only two (three?) showing symptoms for there to be an Outbreak especially an unsubstantiated outbreak. This is a deliberate distortion of the word and it gently, stealthily leads us to misunderstand many situations.
I prefer to remember what is commonly understood by outbreak – and refrain from using this Regulator Distortion when there are only a few (less than 10?, 15?, 20?) cases.
This is where the listeria numbers come from and they are the majority of the illnesses. Even though these illnesses were from garbage low quality milk in listeria filled cheese facilities that never used a high quality raw milk that was tested and intended for human consumption.
We will continue to have skewed data until the FDA and CDC acknowledge that their are two different raw milks in America. One for people ( the clean and tested one ) and one for the pasteurizer ( the dirty untested one ). This is waste basket data.
When I posed this question to the FDA they refused to anwer it. They are not only disrespectful….but they are arrogant.
By the way…the FDA Citizens Petition relating to "amending the interstate ban on human consumption raw milk" that OPDC and CREMA filed with the FDA in January 2009 was supposed to have a FDA response by now ( per the regs ). This is yet another example of their arrogance. Now I need to sue the FDA under a Writ of Mandamus to get the courts to mandate that they follow their own rules and regs and laws.
The FDA is deeply corrupt. Who do they think they serve????
When the data is screened and only raw milk that is tested and regulated for human consumption is found….there are literally zero to perhaps a very few cases and zero deaths.
Pastuerized milk has thousands of illnesses and many many deaths. Some of these are blamed on raw milk as well. This is an error. When a milk is intended for being pastuerized it should never be classified as a raw milk illness. This is also a part of the data….if the pastuerizer fails why not blame the raw milk.
This is crooked and all wrong.
Mark McAfee
"David’s blog entry about talking past each other – I’m still thinking about that one, and how to stop doing that, and really listen. Hell hath no fury like a PERSON scorned"
Yeah, well, I’ve learned the hard way that this movement doesn’t give an inch toward compromise…conversation isn’t an option. "We" that care about food safety are all pooled into one category…as Mark says, crooked, corrupt, and all wrong."
Don W., et al – don’t tell me where my motivations come from. They are food safety, period. You can fantasize that we are all in the pocket of big ag, but that doesn’t make it reality. What a crock of manure.
I’ve learned (the hard way) that anyone who doesn’t wear a WAPF badge, but tries to talk about this issue in public, is the enemy and becomes quickly a target. Lesson: don’t get tricked that there may be opportunities to talk to raw milk proponents, in the end, if you are not "one of them," your ass will be burned no matter what (and like a gang, the TPTB will burn ya too for trying). It is the epitomy of a lose lose.
I think it is really the various regulating bodies that Mark is referring to as crooked, corrupt, and all wrong." These are strong, inflammatory words. (Dont confuse content with personal style.) But, regarding raw milk, the distorted data and information / disinformation, actions and inactions they tell their own story.
Go along to get along. [Sam Rayburns advise to a freshman Congressman – Lyndon Johnson.] My hat is off to Regulator employees who have tried to walk in the regulateds shoes. I dont doubt that some may be in a difficult moral position. Anyone can be wrong, but Id be very slow to characterize these folks as crooked and corrupt.
Thank you Lykke, for your forbearance. I appreciate that you have helped make this blog more provoking and interesting. I would be reluctant to stick my head in a beehive too.
I hope charity and honoring become watchwords here.
BTW, Lykke. Regarding beekeepping, find a copy of Towards Saving the Honrybee by Guenther Hauke
Raw dairy [from clean grass feed cows] stands ALONE as the most hated of all modern day foods and yet our for thousands of years our so called knuckle dragging ancesters thrived on it. What did they know that we dont?
The horrible story recently reported of the of the little girl whos death was linked to contaminated hamburg seems to have vanished from the news. No police no raids no arrests no charges no anger no outrage and no double standard just silence? The story would have been far different had it been raw dairy. WHY?
THE TRUTH ABOUT RAW DAIRY IS TPTBs WORST NIGHTMARE because it is a route that exposes all the rest of lies and fairy tales they inflict upon us all. IMHO
I offer the following for your consideration. We are an independent bunch. We feel that raw milk is the best medicine and the best prevention. We feed it to ourselves, our infants, our children and our elderly. We go to great lengths to get it. I know some folks that travel many hours out of state.
Your ideas of compromise, by necessity, are to limit our activities. At the most, we would be forbidden from feeding our young and old raw milk. At the least, producers would have to be licensed and inspected just to serve our needs. These limits are imposed by government policy, and ultimately at the point of a gun.
I don’t think anyone here will shy away from a good debate on health, disease and raw milk. I encourage you to continue to participate.
You’ll forgive our concern with your ideas of "compromise".
Peace! Geek out.
http://freefarmgeek.wordpress.com/
It is the polciy makers at the FDA that direct the CDC data collectors on how to gather and categorize raw milk outbreaks that have a corrupt agenda and they are all wrong and crooked.
If they wanted to show the truth about a clear line between pasteurized milk safety and tested and inspected raw milk safety ( as supervsed under individual state laws ) they would do things quite differently.
The CDC instead is a data base tool used to reinterate their broken paradigm arguments.
I have witnessed first hand the FDA corruption…..in orlando at NCIMS and through their twisted emails and letters sent through Gary Cox and their refusal to follow their own Citizens Petition laws.
They have shown me that they are corrupt and I stand behind these statements 100%.
This is why this fight will be won at the grass roots level and will turn at the tipping point via dollars not spent on burned dead milk but instead on living clean delicious milk direct from farmers.
I am interested in a good dialogue with the FDA and have begged for one. When I tried to invite them to test raw milk for interstate milk shipment they refused to hear the argument and cancelled the hearing…..I know the agenda and I am not going to be Lykke’s fool.
Instead I will spend this morning ( just as I did yesterday at Torrance and Malibu ) at the Beverly Hills LA Farmers Market talking with real people, educating and sharing raw milk sampleswith real moms and real people. This is the real grass roots of change.
When the FDA calls me a drug pusher because "I sell an illegal new drug called Raw Milk"…..I disregard them as unreasonable and irrational ( this I have in legal letters and emails from the FDA and can provide them to David if requested ). They are psycho in their defense of drugs and pharma. They are corrupt and deaf. They can only hear what their Drug Company Ipod ear pieces scream to them in their heads and ears.
Mark McAfee
My state raw milk agency…CDFA understands that there are two raw milks and I have not seen them confuse the two ( at least recently ). The waste basket raw milk data is collected by the CDC and the FDA not California. In fact CA has been perhaps overly stern and tough on enforcing the line between raw milk for people and raw milk for pasteurization. There is no confusing in CA…it is very clear.
CDFA inspectors and CA regulators have been quite public recently in their pride of the emerging CA raw milk market. ( this from my interview with John Schoch Dairy ).
This is a federal issue.
Mark
This can be said for tptb and some who post here as well.
What is there to compromise about? What is it exactly that tptb want?
Mark,
Please clarify; I get cheese made from the Petaluma creamery and a few other local creamery’s here in NoCal, you stated the milk used in cheese making is from the " lowest quality milk on the market". Are you referring to the mass marketed cheeses? or all cheeses? Some of the cheeses we buy are raw and some pasturized. Not mass marketed.
If raw milk is considered a "drug" that to many would speak volumes that it has the potential to heal. After all, the majority of the population is fed through the media that "drugs" heal, the ads on TV show how you can break dance with painful arthritis, or you can sled with RA, etc. Just pop a pill and you are going to be fine.
When I was working in FL, I had a roommate that regulary ate TV dinners and fast foods. I was there for a 18 month contract. She began eating home cooked foods and her chronic GI problems becam sporatic. That purple pill that she had been popping for yrs wasn’t doing anything postive for her. It was the change in diet. I’ve since spoken to her and she has reverted back to processed foods on a daily basses, the GI issues are back. She is intellegent, she realizes the diet she consumes is the cause, yet she is "too busy" to plan and cook nutritional foods. She would rather suffer. I don’t get that way of thinking.
On this Listeria testing discussion….
"As just one example, why couldnt they use the rapid test (described in my previous post), which could be slightly more forgiving?"
Here’s some things that come to mind when examining testing algorithms for regulatory purposes or as part of HACCP, for example. While I personally question the scientific validity of "zero tolerance" for Listeria monocytogenes vs. a quantitative standard, rapid screening tests are not the be all end all answer either. As mentioned in the previous post, if Cornell had reported a positive PCR test from that bulk tank milk, they would have gone on to "confirm" the result using the same approach as FDA: culture/enrichment, which is the gold standard. A positive culture test always trumps a PCR or other rapid screening test (positive or negative) in bacteriological food testing. I think the Cornell lab would agree on that.
The things that are perhaps more debatable include the zero tolerance rule as it applies to adulteration, the frequency of testing, how recalls are handled , etc.. For example, if the postive test is from milk distributed by a very small farm and all the customers are known, or can be traced….why do a statewide or nationwide press release? The situation could be handled locally. That example is what I’m talking about when using the word "compromise."
The suggestion to not take action (recall) after a positive FDA test and instead re-test using other protocols and laboratories that are more likely to show negative results (be more forgiving) sounds awfully similar to the Peanut Corporation of America’s approach. They had positive Salmonella results followed by negative results, and sent the product to market anyway. The rest is history (including their company).
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm166366.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — June 13, 2009 – Torres Hillsdale Country Cheese of Reading, Michigan announces the recall of all lots of various types of soft Mexican-style cheeses due to potential Listeria contamination.
A sample of queso fresco cheese, taken by an investigator from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 26, 2009, was subsequently tested by an FDA laboratory and discovered to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes
No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with the recalled products.
http://www.senate.ca.gov/~newsen/audiotv/audiotv.htp
I plan to listen and may even "tweet:" #CDFAplight
On Twitter (and Facebook), my username is "amgrose"
My comments about cheese being made from manufacturing milk that is classified as grade B and Class 4 milk is general. You need to dig deeper to get the real truth…here is the way to dom it…
The Fascalini Cheese company in Modesto has won world champion cheese awards with their grade A Truly Raw milk cheeses ( San Joaquin Gold )( Truly Raw cheese is alive and never heated above 105 degrees or about ). The Bravo Cheese company makes award winning "truly raw" cheeses from grade A milk. So do some other wonderful CA cheese companies.
This is not the story for all raw milk cheeses. I do not know about the Petaluma Cheeses you are speaking about. In general raw milk cheeses are heated to medium temperatures to eliminate most of the bacteria so the cheese cultures will work better. Remember that cheese milk is considered ( class 4 milk or grade B ) manufacturing milk and that type of milk can not be used to bottle fluid milk. OPDC and some other creameries actually use high quality Grade A raw milk to make raw cheese but this is not the norm. It used to be that "cheese plant" was the place of last resort to sell your milk because you got the lowest price for it….because the milk had a problem with it.
The best way to find out about their cheeses and to find out if they are TRULY RAW is to call and ask the cheese maker what the maximum temperature is when they put the milk in the cheese vat. Some processors call their cheese raw and in fact the milk in the vat has been taken to just below pasteurized milk temps and is basically pastuerized, yet called raw. This is a fake raw cheese and you can taste the difference. Truly Raw cheese never goes above 100-110 degrees.
In Canada they call this milk thermalized….in the USA we do not have a classification for this mid level heating of milk when we make cheese. That’s why we have huge challenges with listeria in raw cheese. We need those organic acid producing bacteria at work and when the milk is taken to just under pastuerized temps they are dead…this welcomes listeria.
So do some investigation and find out what your raw cheeses are made of and what the temps are? Some cheese plants will not tell you….that is a dead give away that they are phony raw. Truly raw cheese makers are proud of the fact and freely share this fact.
In fact I have found some raw cheeses are taken to very high temps but because the cheese maker does not have a state liscence to pastuerize….it is considered raw.
This is something that pissed me off when I found out. There are lots of nasty little milk secrets out there. Lactose intolerance generally gives away these secrets. Mother nature does not lie.
All the best,
Mark Mcafee
Thanks for the hearing info. I’ll try to be there.
The FDA recall does not disclose that the recalled cheese that was pastuerized….this was not a truly raw cheese. The FDA almost never discloses facts that could hurt the pastuerization process or its standards. The same thing happened with the Jalisco Cheese incident in the early 1980s when 49 pregnant woman lost their babies and there were lots of deaths associated. The Jalisco Cheese incident was pastuerized cheese not raw cheese.
Listeria loves an environment that lacks organic acid producing bacteria. Listeria love the vacume created by pastuerized milk conditions.
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm166366.htm See for yourself!
This is another dark day for pastuerized milk and processed dairy products and what it does to beneficial bacteria.
Do not think for one minute that the FDA would have not blamed raw milk if it had been raw milk that was at fault. The recall notice would have started out with a huge bold letters…saying "RAW MILK CHEESE and Listeria". In fact there was not one single mention of the word raw or pastuerized. This is the kind of data that historically gets put into the raw cheese category….becuase if the product was pastuerized then it must have been that filthy dirty raw milk that was the problem. In fact….so much of the raw milk that goes to pastuerization ( not all ) is exactly that….filthy.
Lykke….what do think about this? No mention of raw milk or the true villian "the pastuerization process".
Mark McAfee
I didn’t know cheese was made from low quality milk. I would hazard to guess that the general population also doesn’t know.
Alyssa
I intentionaly added the word "pasteurized" when writing the earlier comment on the mexican-style soft cheese recall. even though it wasn’t stated in the press release. IMHO, there’s no downside to being honest about the processing (whether raw or pasteurized) when describing a recall or outbreak. The more information the better. Soft cheeses are vulnerable to Listeria contamination. To prevent Listeria infection, people at higher risk (especially pregnant women) should consider avoiding eating soft cheeses. Manufacturers of soft cheeses need to take extreme care to prevent Listeria contamination, especially post-pasteurization contamination.
That is a scary thought! Just skimming some of the codex "policies" gives chills.
http://www.gmabrands.com/publicpolicy/codex.cfm
http://codexblog.foodlaw.org/
http://www.gmabrands.com/publicpolicy/docs/whitepaper.cfm?DocID=297&
I wrote an article about Codex Alimentarius about four years ago:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/may2005/sb20050524_3601_sb037.htm
From what I understand, the U.S. has successfully fought off/delayed application of its draconian rules in this country for a number of years. It’s hard to know how close real implementation is for us–but there’s no question, it is bad news.
David