Just what is going on with Chipotle Mexican Grill, the 1,800-plus-outlet chain of Mexican-style food? And what might be the impact of its food-safety problems on its local-food model, along with many thousands of smaller producers of sustainable local food?
Since last summer, Chipotle been dealing with report after report of illness outbreaks at its restaurants, from around the country, affecting 500 or more people. Its financial results have taken a big hit, which has caused its stock price to decline by nearly one-third.
So, which narrative do we want to believe about Chipotle Mexican Grill, which, over its 22-year history, has been one of the fastest-growing fast-food chains in memory?
Is it just another fast-food chain that has run into the same predictable problems with pathogens from factory-produced food as other mega-corporate chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell?
Or is it a health-and-locally-oriented producer of non-GMO food that is being singled out for blame by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for causing dozens of illnesses from E.coli O157:H7, and a variation of that pathogen, that it may not entirely deserve?
Chipotle has distinguished itself in the brutally competitive fast-food arena—and become an investor darling in the process—by producing what it calls “food with integrity”. This is based on its narrative of providing locally-sourced meat and produce, “respecting the soil,” along with a commitment to avoid GMO foods. It’s stock has soared more than 1,000% since it went public in 2006.
It has been both praised and disparaged for its highly public focus on healthy fast food. Millions of consumers have bought into its promise of a serious healthy alternative to traditional fast food.
Skeptics have questioned just how much of Chipotle’s food is really locally produced. There has also been criticism of its widely publicized non-GMO declaration earlier this year, with critics pointing out that the company didn’t commit to feeding animals non-GMO feed.
Since the first reports of illnesses associated with Chipotle, it’s been interesting to read reports in the investment media. Much of the analysis has been concerned with just how much Chipotle’s stock price will be affected, with most speculating that the stock price will recover once it is clear Chipotle has the illness problems under control.
But as the problems have dragged on through this month, with new illnesses cropping up each time it seems the problems are over, the financial analysts who closely follow the company’s every move have expressed ever more skepticism about the company and its ability to recover the mojo that sent it soaring.
Here is how one analyst, seeing a more conventional fast-food future for Chipotle, put it a few days ago:
“Ultimately, though, Chipotle will need to step back from its ‘food with integrity’ corporate ethos and become a more traditional fast/casual chain. Foods, including all produce (not just tomatoes), spices, and meats, will need to be centrally sourced and prepared to realize the economies of scale that are necessary to profitably integrate costly periodic food testing….”
“All this downgrading from “premium fresh” will, of course, put pressure on CMG’s premium pricing strategy. A more ‘corporate’ model of Chipotle food will allow the chain to survive, but with lower margins and profits that would even further endanger Chipotle’s depressed recent stock price.”
With those reports have come suggestions that Chipotle is moving away from the local-food orientation, to more of a centralized approach typical of fast food producers. Such reports have alarmed some analysts.
One analyst expressed his worry this way: “The company claims that this will allow them to better control the handling of these vegetables, minimizing the risk of another E. coli outbreak. By saying this, Chipotle is essentially vilifying its own business model over the E. coli outbreak, when in fact it should be taking steps to fortify its business model. Yes, there are certain steps that restaurant employees can take to minimize risks, but serving locally sourced food is the best way to provide guests with fresh ingredients that are free of preservatives and contaminants. Instead of vilifying their supply process, Chipotle should argue that despite this unfortunate outbreak, its guests are significantly safer, and eating significantly healthier at Chipotle than when they visit other chains who do not focus so heavily on local sourcing.”
Gee, this line of reasoning is beginning to sound more and more similar to arguments I’ve read before on this blog. For example: “Without deflecting blame, Chipotle should be pointing out that there have been hundreds of foodborne illness outbreaks since the 1990s, and that these outbreaks have come as a direct result of the increasing industrialization of our food supply. According to the Center for Food Safety, one in six Americans get sick from foodborne contamination every year. They claim that our industrialized food system is to blame for many of the outbreaks, as contaminated runoff from large factory farms and unsanitary conditions at large processing centers pose an increased risk to the public. What is the Center for Food Safety’s recommendation to avoid contamination? They recommend buying from ‘local, small, and organic food producers whenever possible.’ “
The solution, says the analyst. Stand up and fight for what is right! “Yes, apologize to your guests and loyal followers about these unfortunate incidents, but do not add insult to injury by taking away what they have loved most about your brand. Instead, raise the bar further by taking an even larger stance against industrialized processed foods. Make a commitment to having even more ingredients sourced locally, and instead of alienating your local suppliers, help them attain the tools and technology they need to ensure their goods are safe. By doing this Chipotle will ensure that once this scandal no longer interests the media, their guests are left with food they are proud to eat, and shareholders retain the business model that has already made them a fortune, and should continue to do.”
Indeed, one analyst even said the unthinkable: that Chipotle may not be responsible for many or all of the illnesses. “Chipotle sold off heavily in October and November after about 50 people were infected with the E. coli strain 026. The majority of these (but not all of the infected) had eaten at Chipotle restaurants in the weeks before they got ill. It is not clear yet if it was indeed Chipotle’s food that made these people sick, and if it was, what kind of ingredient was responsible. The fact that the infections were spread out over several states (some of which have seen only one infected person) and that no Chipotle employees were reported as sick could mean that this was an issue which was not caused by Chipotle, but rather a pure coincidence.”
When raw milk advocates suggest mystery illnesses, they are written off as conspiracy nuts. But when investing professionals begin raising the same sorts of questions, it’s all just legitimate speculation.
Before these outbreaks, I had bought into the Chipotle narrative. I like the food, and I admit I felt good eating it, knowing it was being produced sustainably. Now,I fear that the local-food option will take a big public relations hit because of the Chipotle debacle. If Chipotle goes the sanitized-food route, it will pave the way for aggressive enforcement on small producers of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which is at long last due for FDA enforcement beginning in 2016. Because now the regulators can cite Chipotle as a reason for their concerns about the safety of locally produced food.
there is no other, more logical explanation of what’s going on with the Chipotle chain, than sabotage. Start with the fact that the e. coli purported to have been identified, in some of the cases, is a strain never seen before in the general population.
with Trillions = with a capital “T” of profits in the offing, not to mention control of the food supply at-source = the Genetic Engineering evil genius will not allow fair competition from “free range” heritage breeds nor seeds. Chipotle is being demonized so it can be held up as the bogeyman in the propaganda war for consumer $$$.
I’d have to agree with you there. I smell a big biotech rat in all this.
Totally agree with you.
The behavior of our local restaurant, one of those in Oregon with a reported case ofor illness, implies they feel this possibility also. Small changes, much taller sneeze guards, a new soda fountain that you would need a ladder to access inside, and lemon wedges that used to be with the utensils are now kept behind the counter to reduce the possibilty.
Taking whole raw foods mainstream disrupts capitalism as we know it. The money starts flowing in a direction that the establishment can not tolerate!! This is where true innovators and pioneers separate themselves from the pack.
I love Chipotle….great food and a great mission. This is a time when Chipotle must innovate to re establish faith in their foods. It is not a time to start irradiation, extreme sanitation or other anti food concept. To the contrary, Chipotle, must embrace local producers…but at the same time, demand excellence from local sources of food. Lets all face it….food safety and liability is an American thing. It does not happen in the EU…it is a Marler/Clark phenomenon. It is a blame game to transfer the responsibility from Monsanto, CAFO antibiotic abusers and GMO labs that create superbugs, to the local food chain producers. This blame transfer works great and protects the true evil that big Pharma, CAFO antibiotics and GMO has created!! What a convenient atrocity.
This being said…..”never miss an opportunity to exploit a crisis” comes to mind. It is time to point the finger of blame directly at the true sources of causation. Why can’t Chipotle raise public capital as an educational challenge and place the blame directly where it belongs. They are a beloved public company.
Super pathogens were not created by local organic producers. Super pathogens are the direct result of CAFO antibiotic abuse and GMO crap. It is time to teach and fight!! Americans need to know the truth and will vote their consciousness and their dollar if given a chance. As immunity gets weaker and bugs get more resistant….this is only going to get worse.. Why not build a public company on the truth.
In addition…Chipotle must demand excellence from their producers. RAWMI, rapid testing and food standards come to mind as well.
Mark, I really think Chipotle would benefit greatly by sitting down and having a chat with you!
See my post above. Their local producers are the ONLY ones getting contamination? Across the country? Mutliple sources? They don’t get e.coli contamination from their other customers? The magic solution is to cut out all this anti-GMO krap and get standard centralized sourced food according to the Wall Street propagandist – i mean analyst?
Not all of their food is locally sourced. Only a targeted percentage.
I don’t presume to believe that the whole company is of the same mind on these issues, or that they even believe in it at all. The fact they allow GMO feeding of animals in their supply chain is a MAJOR red flag. They won’t the image without the substance.
I truly hope people will put on their critical thinking caps and really see what is going on here. Chipotle is disrupting the way TPTB want things to be done. On a larger scale, they are a threat to Big Ag, Big Food, Big You-Name-It and they are being sabotaged. They cannot be allowed to be successful, because what they are doing is turning fast food on it’s head. Corporations like McDonald’s keep losing money because people are demanding real food like Chipotle serves. When money is at stake, all stops will be pulled out to disrupt the offending entity. Helen Keller would be able to see this, for Pete’s sake!
The FDA is only interested in control via its so-called perverted definition of healthy food.
A wholesome natural food is lacking in health benefits if it fails to provide moderate exposure to microbes. We should thank the restaurant rather then kowtow to one of the FDA’s alleged “Official Stories”.
Corporate jealously gone amok.
Corporate jealousy gone amok.
It’s not possible for all of Chipotle’s food to be locally produced. You can’t get local lettuce and tomatoes in Colorado in the winter (where I live), nor in other states that have a long winter. You go to the health food store here and the lettuce, etc. is from California or Mexico. The farmers here just don’t produce these foods in the winter. You go to the one year-round farmer’s market here and all you can get is root vegetables and winter squash, and these are very small scale producers, not anyone large enough to supply Chipotle. I think the locally-produced food that Chipotle really focuses on is their meat. It is probably more possible to get local meat year-round than vegetables. So, if Chipotle’s vegetables are coming from CA in the winter, and they’re not organic (which would be cost prohibitive), there’s a good chance of the vegetables becoming contaminated with e coli or other pathogens, just as has happened with other restaurants and stores. I don’t think there has to be a conspiracy against Chipotle for this to happen. Even organic food gets contaminated sometimes. If you’re buying food on the scale they have to buy it on, sooner or later you’re going to get contaminated food, given how large scale food is produced (both organic and non-organic food.)
@ Margaret: You will need to put on your critical thinking cap here for a moment. Of course “local” veggies can be produced anywhere on a year ’round basis as long as the producers have a client (say Chipotle’s) who is willing to buy year ’round. These producers aren’t just planting two rows of lettuce. They are planting entire greenhouses full of the stuff, and so on with all the other veggies. Greenhouses are very modernized these days and can function all year no matter where they are located and the food is considered “local” to a given area. It would likely depend on the State definition of “local”. Also, as you say, the meat could easily be locally sourced all year.
So, it is possible.
Also, as I well discovered several years ago, buying food from a “health food store” or a farmers market does not guarantee the buyer of anything about how it was grown. You have to know the producer/supplier and check these things yourself. But an organization as large as Chipotle’s likely has people “out in the field” who constantly monitor and check these things, at least as far as making sure the produce is organically grown (if that is part of their business model, I don’t know). There is a difference between local and organic, too. They are not one and the same. We have to be careful with words and how they’re used in marketing.
There is NO possible way in which multiple sourced food supplies can consistently and singularly be contaminated for ONLY Chipotle’s. Are we supposed to pretend that ALL of Chipotle’s “suspect” food suppliers are exclusively growing and selling for Chipotle’s? If that is not true – how come their food supply has not contaminated OTHER local food service industries who buy their products.
Maybe it’s magic. Maybe the Chipotle’s buyers magically buy the ONLY contaminated foods these people grow – you know – that broccoli from row 16, plants 48, 49, and 53-57 that were contaminated.
We DO know that Obama put out an illegal Executive Order on 16 March 2012 in which he stated that in case of an unspecified national emergency (Michelle! My cuff links are missing – call the Secret Service and….) that the Sec of the USDA will make ALL food decisions for everyone, everywhere. The reason this is illegal is because any EO which forces restrictions and actions or forbids activities by the general populace is not in his authority – he can ONLY make binding EOs on employees of the executive branch of the federal govt.
The point of this EO and my bringing it up is that the intent is to MANDATE (again, illegally and unconstitutionally) that nobody can buy from local and uncertified, untracked food suppliers. Now – who is going to pay for and get such certification? Did you guess GMO factory farmers? Good guess. Their assumption is that any food NOT tracked will be susceptible to terrorist contamination – so YOUR goats are just as prone to tampering as that container of contaminated and toxic meat shipped from China, or Turkey.
Bullhonkey. The “centralized sources” the “analyst” has stated that Chipotle’s must return to ARE the point – force all income into the hands of the psychos running the food system into their wallets. The analyst is really just a propagandist. This is such blatant manipulation of facts, or sabotage of the company that anyone should draw the conclusion that a user friendly food system is actively under attack on every level possible.
Good post, Brad. Chipotle was setting a new standard, making money, very popular with the public and had a good business model. Well hell, the american food gods from the alphabet agencies from A-Z can NOT have anything like that going on and competeing with THEIR model. Even when those jackasses have everything “checked and tracked” we end up with numerous food poisoning episodes throughout any given year, but their model is better, doncha know? And even if it’s not better, well, you know, it’s THEIRS so it must be the law of the land and how dare any upstart business do anything different.
We don’t even have a Chipotle’s where I live but it’s still the same story, same program, different day. Most americans are so sick of all the cronyism and the constant fear-mongering about “terrorism”, they don’t even pay attention anymore.
Well . . . I pay attention. Most of what we hear is pure chicken puckey and out-and-out lies. People are also getting used to that.
A dangerous place to be when we don’t have anyone to believe.
further to “… we don’t have anyone to believe” …. if you-all want an excuse to get out of the house, go see “The Big Short”… Info-tainment wrapped around a serious message. An explanation of how middle Americans lost half their life savings, in the 2007 financial meltdown, it does have implications in our Campaign for REAL MILK
… the guy who called “bullshit” against the sub-prime mortgage racket is now concentrating on : water. In a brief interview * he opines that the most efficient way to get water from where it is, to the mega-cities, is = as food. I say that REAL MILK dairying is now at the stage in the movie, where the traders who bet against the Wall Street crime syndicates [ often called “banks” ] sweated it out for 2 years ’til they were vindicated. The quality of what the CAFO system puts out called “food” perfectly parallels the fraudulent “NINJa mortgages” which were the rotten underpinning of the tragedy. …. The movie proves how a small group of rational thinkers can = sometimes = know better than the entire gang of over-educated idiots in positions of power
… I get glee from this movie, ’cause the guys I hang out with … religious fanatics + conspiracy buffs of the first water … saw it coming a decade prior. And the worst is yet to come
* Michael Burry, Real-Life Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming
* http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/big-short-genius-says-another-crisis-is-coming.html
I sort of disagree with your closing statement “A dangerous place to be when we don’t have anyone to believe” because you CAN’T TRUST ANYONE ELSE!
There may be people who agree or disagree, have truth or not have truth, but since we are all individuals your truth may not perfectly fit me. Your closest view to my view is at best going to be over my shoulder. That still puts a different angle on things – even things very far away where the angle difference is muted.
We also don’t have a Chipotle’s – closest is likely 2 hours in either direction. i have written their corporate people though to tell them that if they had one locally i would patronize it on the few times that i do eat out – and that i appreciate and thank them for those choices. i think that positive feedback is essential, or they may give up and say “marketplace….”
The fact that our govt on every level IS a bunch of hoghonkey is actually wonderful. It is so blatant and obvious that it makes it easier to wake people up. Example: for 3 years i have thought that mandatory vaccination would be the SWAT assault to break down the doors protecting our freedoms. Now it is happening. So before i was a crazy, conspiracy theorist, paranoid – but when Maryland called a bunch of unvaccinated people, put them in the courthouse under armed deputies and attack dogs, then forcefully vaccinated them – including objectors – against the laws of the state and nation – well, now i’m a prophet with two people who know, lol.
These things provide LEVERAGE to reach people – not on a scary fact basis, although that does ring out – but on the basis of being able to reach their emotions and through that means touch their visceral reality BEYOND all the propaganda and brainwashing that now forms that societal set of paradigms.
@ Brad: You are free to disagree. But when we, as a nation, cannot trust anyone or anything, that is a very dangerous place to be, IMPHHO. Yet we are supposed to live by their rules . . . in fact they demand we live by their rules, even though we know better than they do. So we try to “elect” people who will do as they promise and champion causes that are for the people. But those elected people are more and more often disappointing us. When we cannot count on our officials to help change things (laws, rules and such) we really have no recourse. I consider that a dangerous place to be, but that’s just me. 8 )
Heather F.
Fancy you suggest that Chipotle come have a sit down chat with me. Last year about this time…my friends at Bidart ( apples growers in Bakersfield CA ) made an appointment and came visited me for three hours to talk about LISTERIA and their apples which were found to be involved with an international LISTERIA recall with illnesses. I had known the Bidarts for years. Many years before I became involved with raw milk and food safety on the dairy side, I was deeply involved with food safety on the fresh fruit side in the 1990s and especially apples ( I was not part of it, but learned much after the Odwalla incident in 1996 ).
After they left…their perspective “on the deep pocket blame game” completely changed. They had sold fresh raw granny smith apples to a processor that had further processed them. There had been no illnesses with the apples in unprocessed form, but after being candy apple dipped and heated then cold transported…all kinds of problems and illnesses emerged. “Conditions matter!!!” Whole apples have a stellar safety record…but juiced whole apples do not. “Conditions matter”
They came into my office with drawn faces as if they were attending a funeral….they left feeling like they knew a way out of their mess. I guess when you need to get some counsel about recalls and a perspective on biodiversity and conditions that create different pathogenic development….you come talk to a raw milk guy.
Maybe I need to start a “recall counseling service”, not something I am particularly proud of but sure gives me a perspective on things. Perhaps RAWMI goes one step further and effectively prevents most all of them ( that’s another story ). Chipotle needs to appreciate that the people that they feed would be very excited to know more about healthy, living foods and their own immunity. You can not get half way into this food revolution. Once you are in for an inch….you are pregnant and need to go all the way!! Chipotle…really needs to rally around itself and start teaching like crazy about the nutrition that comes from real food…some of that food might even have a slight risk to some consumers! that’s OK, the risks of good healthy food far outweigh the disaster of known disease from eating processed crap.. As a publically traded company….it is essential to spur on investor excitement. Chipotle has the economic bull works to bully -pulpit this thing all the way!! Especially considering that the FDA, USDA, CDC and other investigators can not find the smoking gun or bad bug origin??!! enhanced food safety protocols combined with consumer education about the true benefits of unprocessed food consumption would send their stock flying!!! It is time for Chipotle to stand proud!!
I just reviewed the Wikipedia raw milk site…..boy does it suck. It looks like it was written by a drunk FDA or CDC lover after to many beers. Poorly written, bad science, lousy references, blatant lies and bad data. Some body needs to really take some time to edit and get it right. Then stay on that site to make sure it stays right.
The site denies all of the EU studies and their profound and clear findings.
Maybe a task for the new year.
Mark,
Wikipedia information is often subjective and biased especially when it comes to controversial topics or information on alternative health. It’s hard to adjust for bias when a resource decides to censor controversy.
Wikipedia has almost any controversial issue watched over by editors that can and do delete the truth – sometimes within minutes. It is totally censored. Everything from the Worlds Largest Pyramids in Romania/Hungary to food issues, vaccination and other health frauds……
Good TEDx talk on it by a former investigative reporter who explains the whole programming thing there.
@ Brad: I posted the link to that TEDx talk a while back, on astroturfing – but few watched it, evidently, and even fewer understood the term astroturfing and what it means to businesses. Here’s the info as I posted it at my forum:
This is fascinating. Sharyl Attkisson for 10 1/2 minutes that will kinda sorta shock you, and if it doesn’t, it should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU
At exactly 3 min and 58 seconds, you’ll get a real eye-opening lesson.
Fantastic stuff. It’s a don’t miss segment, for sure.
Hi Brad! I’m one of those notorious Wikipedia editors that you describe. Anyone here could become a Wikipedia editor – just create a free account on Wikipedia and start editing.
Wikipedia is not a conspiracy. It’s a consensus – and yes, often a bad consensus, but it’s only as good as the people who contribute to it. These are some of the rules:
– The principle of NPOV is supreme: Neutral Point of View.
– Just people can delete your material, you can delete theirs.
– When you make an edit, you need to provide your justification for doing it, if you want your edit to stand.
– You need to provide your sources – published sources for your material. Several years ago, it had to be hard-copy sources – i.e. published books, newspapers, journal articles, etc. The policy has eased-up recently – you can now provide internet-only sources to back-up your work.
– Every article has a “Talk” page – use this to provide more background information for what you are doing.
– Just as your own work can be flagged for not being neutral, similarly you can flag someone else’s for the same reason.
And yes, you DO have to be active and monitor pages. Even good pages can be defaced by idiots.
I haven’t touched the raw milk page yet, because frankly, I don’t have time in my life to do the massive re-write that it needs or the research necessary before making changes. My specialty is in other areas. The pages that I have created and edited have stood the test of time. But I encourage everyone here to get involved in Wikipedia and make those changes. If you have solid references to cite to back up your work, then do it.
How about someone here takes on editing and monitoring this page, and Mark and others gives them the material to do it? Brad, do you have time to do it?
A good place to start with the Wikipedia page on raw milk is the section on the pasteurized vs raw milk debate, where the European studies on raw milk’s protective effect for asthma and allergies are completely misrepresented. The section says the studies attribute the protective effect to the farm environment, yet that isn’t what the studies conclude. I can certainly try to edit that material, but I’d also be willing to review what others here might contribute to the site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_milk
Thank you, David. Also, for anyone interested in editing, don’t forget to read and contribute to the “Talk” page – – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Raw_milk to update yourself on discussions and debates about page content. If you make changes to the page, note here what changes you made, and why.
D.Smith,
Your TEDX link was brilliant. Great way to start the new year. It also got me thinking about ” the modern educational environment” and what consumers are being pounded with. How does a consumer sort information and find the hard facts??? When commercial or special interests have completely and intentionally usurped the facts for market or financial gain.
Perhaps the farmer to consumer connection bypasses this morrasse of intentional confusion. Perhaps in the coming era….no one can be trusted and trust will become the newest and hardest earned commodity. Trust….when your own personal experience matches the farmers own words.
What a mess…
When doctors sell drugs that kill and bias and contempt is used to destroy the truth. Ugly.
How does a farmer connect to a consumer to help that consumer cure their IBS, Crohns or Asthma with raw milk or raw Kefir? with No side effects!!! …..when pharma will literally kill that same consumer with cancer causing Remacade or Humera and add a colostomy attached to his or her belly in the trade!
Guys….we have our work cut out for us.
Interesting. Is there any independent evidence that IBS or Crohn’s can be cured by consuming raw milk or raw kefir? The other implication is that Remicade and Humira are ineffective and lethal?
Sorry, the last paragraph I find isn’t very consistent with the first one.
I am independent of Mark. I have met many people who have curred or put into remission IBS and Crohn’s using diet, especially raw milk. It is fairly common.
Conventional food is toxic; period end of story.
There are many types of evidence. Anecdotal, scientific, juditial, historical. Now if someone where to gather up these anecdotes and do a study, we’d call it scientific. But it doesn’t mean its any less evidential.
what standard of “evidence” would satisfy you, Mr John? We have the testimonies of dozens of live human beings, whose irritable bowel syndrome dis-appeared within weeks of them starting to drink REAL MILK = and that’s just one dairy, over 8 years.
As my old man used to say ” One excuse is as good as another, if you don’t want to do something” … whilst admitting that its successful treatments for cancer are in the order of 7 % of patients – versus much better – provable – results obtained by Dr Wm Donald Kelley / Dr Budwig & others, the cancer industry demonizes and rejects alternative therapies. They refuse to look at the evidence ; They’d rather people die than admit their answers don’t work
… same with Raw milk / raw milk kefir. The seat of opposition to the Campaign for REAL MILK is in the temple of the Cult of the White Robe. They do not want to hear about raw milk curing = I said “curing” = various dis-eases because they’d be out of business.
“There is a principle which is a bar to all understanding, proof against all argument and which cannot help but keep a man in ignorance. That principle is ; contempt prior to investigation”.
,,, in a political controversy, things have to get to a situation so insanely unworkable, that people start to mock the experts. We’re at that stage in British Columbia, with the raw milk thing = the Minister of Health and the Chief Medical Health Officer boast about “health policy being evidence based”, meanwhile, up on the witness stand, their boy admitted they have no evidence whatsoever, of anyone getting sick from drinking raw milk.
@ John: Would you be willing to help people find the funding for the “independent evidence” (which I guess must mean scientific evidence to you)? That would be great because up until now any evidence has been pretty much anecdotal – it’s costly to get this “evidence” you suggest. And once there is actual evidence, for some reason it never makes it to the general public except by word of mouth of those who know it works. The science seems to be pretty much anti-science, if you know what I mean. They don’t exactly want to find the evidence you think should be there.
And yes, my POV is that remicade, humira, methotrexate and a dozen more like them are ineffective and lethal. I have lost two sisters to those wonderful treatments and I’m here to tell you that a cocktail of drugs is not the answer to those types of problems – or any types of problems, for that matter. Drugs don’t heal people. Drugs may prove useful over the short-course, but in the long run they are most definitely lethal and tend only to cover up the true genesis of an illness. But that’s just me – you are, of course, free to believe whatever you wish. But so am I.
D. Smith. I suspect the big money is currently going to fecal transfer/refaunation. I believe this might be much more promising. I have tremendous sympathy for those who suffer through these conditions and sincerely hope that the future might yield more options to reduce their symptoms. I’m not certain if a ‘cure’ is even a possibility in many cases……hence my reaction to Mark’s comment.
Remicade and Humira are human monoclonal antibodies that block the pro-inflammatory cytokine tumour-necrosis factor alpha. The idea is to reduce inflammation, allow healing and a reduction in symptoms.
@ John: Fecal transfers are promising, but there are certainly other avenues which need to be explored. If simply boosting nutritional intake with pure foods like kefir and raw milk would help that process, I see far less harm than what comes from a surgical option.
I know what remicade and humira are supposed to do and I have a hard time reckoning how anyone can believe that a chemical drug will do such a thing – successfully – and without collateral damage. As I said, I’ve lost two sisters who supposedly had RA (I’m not sure they really did) and I saw them do nothing but deteriorate. Rapidly. One of my sister’s daughters was her “home care-taker” and to this day she cries every time we discuss her mom because she said she feels she killed her a little bit every day with those drugs and shots. She never saw an iota of health improvement, in fact it caused her Mom to have diabetes – a direct result of the drug cocktail, even her internist agreed with me on that statement. Neither of my sisters died from “the disease” they supposedly had – they died from the harshness of the treatment. But I’m really not going to discuss drugs with you because you have your vision and I have mine. I know people, right this minute, who are doing great things for their RA without a drug in sight.
More people need to get on board with indigenous medicines and foods. It’s the only future we have.
Drugs and poop transplants, yes those all sound so much more appealing than eating great tasting, nourishing food.
John,
If my comments are inconsistent, I guess I made my point. Who can you trust.
I tell you this….I do not trust a doctor that suggests that a cancer causing drug plus a colostomy bag beats therapy by whole food nutrition and Kefir.
The queen of the throne gal treated her Crohns with Raw Kefir and it was gone in months. The same goes for so many others.
David, it would be great if you could try and edit the raw verses pasteurized wiki pedia page, but if you listen to Sharyl Attkisson, it is sheer madness. Your edits will be barred, banned, blocked, and or re-edited nearly immediately. According to her, these controversial websites are watched over by special interst groups using the ” AstroTurf ” model in order to protect industrial interests. Astro turf is fake grass roots activity where in commercial interests dominate social networks, the media, and websites to corral public opinion any way that they can.
It is a useless and worthless excersize to try and edit wiki pedia and have it stick. But…I would love to see you try!!! I especially hate when great science is hijacked and made into garbage. Parsifal was very clear….kids that drink raw milk regardless of location, suffered far less asthma allergy and excema. That’s a fact….17 EU studies confirm and cross confirm this study. It is un refuted. Erica Von Mutius is a brilliant Phd. .
So
Happy raw milk in Michigan is allowed by means of a herd share, our State is pretty darn good in supporting farmers in this venue, Hicks Dairy has been doing herd shares since 2003/2004 an have been well supported here
Not if I can help it!!! I eat there every chance I get.
I’m glad to see March Against Monsanto is asking everyone to pledge to eat at their local Chipotle Mexican Grill on February 9th. It is a tremendous opportunity for the safe food movement to show our appreciation and support to Chipotle for their commitment to GMO-free dining options and the humane treatment of animals.