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Why would the U.S. Food and Drug Administration feel so threatened by a scientific assessment of research on raw milk out of Europe that it would bully a dairy group into forcing the article’s removal from a major university’s web site? 

After all, the assessment wasn’t revealing anything that lots of people didn’t already know. The most recent of the findings, the GABRIELA study, has been out for more than a year now, postulating that it could well be a protein in milk–damaged or destroyed by pasteurization–that confers protective effects on children from allergies and asthma.  

And interfering with the academic freedom of a major university like the University of California, Davis, is not a trivial matter, even for a bullying organization like the FDA. There had to have been  a number of approvals necessary before the dairy group’s head, John Sheehan, did the dirty deed.  

My guess is that the FDA wanted to send a clear message to the dairy industry that any thoughts its members might be having about exploring even the most minimal shift to raw milk won’t be tolerated. Even though dairy processors have been as opposed as  the FDA to  raw milk, the dairy farmers are another matter.  

They’ve gone along with what the processors want, since they know well where their milk checks come  from. But as ever more dairies flounder and fail in the face of insufficient pricing, well, more dairies are beginning to think the unthinkable.  

The California Dairy Research Foundation foundation says it is  governed by seven directors. The representatives of the Board of Directors are drawn from key producer and processor organizations…” But if  you  look at the seven board members, five are from dairies.  

Might it be that the dairy board members are beginning  to see that the economic future of  the dairy industry needs to accommodate raw  milk somehow, if  the industry is to have  a viable future? Sales of pasteurized  milk continue a long steady decline. The future is increasingly in value-add products, particularly probiotics.  

What the censored research paper, “The evidence around  raw  milk”, was suggesting is that dairy products will have much greater health benefits if they  are produced from raw milk.  

All you  have  to do is review other articles on  the CDRF web site,  and you will appreciate  where I’m going with this. (You may want  to hurry, since there’s no telling  when these  articles may disappear as well.)  

There  is one on how probiotics are showing ever more evidence of being able to lower cholesterol.  

Then there’s this  uplifting one: “Stress, Depression and Suicide Prevention for Dairy Farmers”.  

Finally,  and perhaps most significant, there  is an article just posted in the last few days about how the FDA has interfered with American researchers who have been  having trying  to do research on probiotics.The title pretty  much says it all: “How FDA’s actions are guaranteeing research on probiotic foods is not conducted in the USA”  

The article advises researchers: “The FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research‘s (CBER)role is to evaluate biologic drugs – so when they see probiotic it seems they automatically think drug.‘…But if your intent is to conduct research that will substantiate claims on a food (or dietary supplement), then an IND (investigational new drug application) is an expensive, time-consuming, unnecessary task, that may lock your product into the drug category...Consequently, companies are turning to ex-US locations for conducting probiotic food research.” 

In  other words, the CDFR appears to be supporting complaints that probiotic research is  being forced outside  the U.S., possibly for foreign countries to  benefit from  the  emerging business opportunity.  

What the CDFR seems to be saying via these articles (including the banned one) is that California dairies are being screwed over so badly that its members are committing suicide, yet there’s this emerging business opportunity via raw milk that lies out there just beyond the horizon, if only they are allowed to grab it.  

If you  are  wondering why  the CDFR didn’t just  tell  the FDA to get  lost when it told the foundation  to  pull  the raw  milk article, the  answer is that the FDA has pretty much  complete  regulatory control of the  dairy industry, through the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance,  which it enforces with  the  states. It  also determines which foods can  be  sold  as  foods,  and  which must get approval  to be sold  as  drugs, per the above article.  

It  could  be  that the  struggle for control of an emerging commercial raw milk business is unfolding right  before  our eyes.