The discussion about possible causes of Chris Martin’s illness is very impressive, for its scope and breadth of knowledge. Each of us wants to take the confusing set of circumstances that were part of Chris’ illness and make sense of it. We want to figure out whether the milk made Chris sick. If it wasn’t the milk, what was it? If it was, how did the milk make just a few children sick, and none of the thousands of others who consumed it? How come no pathogens showed up in a sample of supposedly tainted milk, or in any of Organic Pastures’ cows? How could milk from possibly two farms make kids sick? Did the heat have something to do with it?
I respect all these questions, and would like nothing better than to somehow solve this detective story…on this blog! Seriously, I find the fact that such questions are simply being asked, with an openness to truly hearing the answers, whatever they may be, as reflective of an openness that is refreshing.
Yet it’s also important to not get lost in the detail of the circumstances. Part of the challenge here is that milk is such a powerful symbol of truth and progress in our society. I can still remember being taught in history books and classes that the top inventions/discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, and Louis Pasteur’s process to render milk a safe and healthful drink.
To learn many years later that pasteurization has a serious downside was a major assault on my belief system. If unpasteurized milk is actually healthier than pasteurized milk, what else am I being told that is in error, or not being told? Just in the area of milk, there have are such matters as infant formula, dairy price supports, bovine growth hormone, and antibiotics, to name a few. And we’re still on the subject of milk.
I know a number of people here resent that I labeled Chris Martin’s illness as a raw milk illness. I can appreciate their concern that I’m helping keep raw milk stigmatized.
I suspect that people make their decision to consume or not consume raw milk apart from news reports about it being suspected as a cause of illness. They make it not only because they feel it is healthier for them, but perhaps more significantly, because they are suspicious of the existing process-oriented additive-oriented food chain. I remember asking Mark McAfee after his dairy re-opened last October following the two-week closing in connection with the state’s investigation of the children’s illnesses whether his business had been adversely affected. Not at all, he said. During the closing, he had received hundreds of emails from customers upset at being deprived of their milk, and once he re-opened, demand for his milk was stronger than ever. (See my posting on the business prospects of Organic Pastures.)
Consuming raw milk is generally part of an overall life decision to seek real food that is closer to the original source in the belief that such food is healthier, and that other food is potentially dangerous over the long term.
Just as the possibility raw milk made Chris Martin and several other children sick wouldn’t turn me away from consuming raw milk going forward, the evidence that it is much healthier than pasteurized milk won’t change the habits of those who were disgusted by the idea of raw milk before reading these posts. Thus, Melissa Herzog’s recollection, after her daughter became ill, “When her pediatrician was finally told, he said, ‘Raw milk is for baby cows, not humans.’” Had Melissa told this individual that Lauren had experienced relief from asthma or attention-deficit disorder after drinking raw milk, I suspect the physician’s reaction would have been the same.
Raw milk is a lightning rod for much larger issues. The fact that pasteurization was the first major food processing approach, and given so much stature in the history books, affecting such a basic food, makes it highly emotional. So emotional, it has the power to affect our belief systems.
It’s up to us to continue questioning and, most important, to be open to answers, whatever they may be, and not be captives of our own mindsets. Okay, enough preaching.
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