by David Gumpert and Liz Reitzig
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last week issued a report accusing Miller’s Organic Farm in Pennsylvania of producing raw milk that was “the likely source” of listeria that killed a Florida individual. It was an open-and-shut case, the CDC suggested, by virtue of genetic similarities in listeria found in the individual and listeria found in Miller’s raw milk.
Unfortunately, the CDC left out a number of key facts associated with the individual, including that during the weeks preceding the death in late 2014, the individual complained of gastrointestinal pain, was diagnosed with advanced cancer at a major medical center, and was placed on intensive chemotherapy. Moreover, several family members are understood to have told CDC investigators earlier this year about the cancer diagnosis.
The CDC contention that Miller’s Organic Farm raw milk was the culprit in the death has been reported as fact in hundreds of media outlets, including CBS, NBC, Daily Mail, Yahoo, CNN, and the Associated Press, which together reach tens of millions of people. Typical was an Associated Press story on the ABC News site: “Pennsylvania Dairy’s Raw Milk Is Linked to Listeria Death”.
Here’s the real story, which we have uncovered over the last several days: The supposed victim of tainted raw milk was a 73-year-old woman, Christa Rittel. For several weeks in October and November 2014, she lived in the home of Peggy Stevenson, a 54-year-old mother of two in North Palm Beach, Florida. Stevenson, who is a member of a private association that distributes food from Miller’s Organic Farm, is also the sister-in-law of Rittel’s son. Rittel had come down to Florida from North Carolina with her son and his wife (Stevenson’s sister), and needed a place to live while her son and wife completed construction of a house nearby.
Rittel had had a stroke two or three weeks prior to arriving in Florida, according to Stevenson, and while Rittel had only slight paralysis on one side of her body, “she complained that her neck and stomach hurt.” Stevenson says she tried providing Rittel with massages to help her neck, and enzyme supplements to help her stomach.
Neither approach seemed to help, and Rittel’s pain and discomfort just worsened, reports Stevenson. “She said, ‘My stomach really hurts after I eat.’”
Stevenson isn’t even sure if she had raw milk in the house at that time, since her children weren’t drinking milk, but she is nearly certain that even if she did, Rittel didn’t drink any. “She mostly ate dry toast,” says Stevenson.
Some two to three weeks after Rittel’s arrival at Stevenson’s, the family took her for medical evaluation at Jupiter Medical Center, the main hospital in the area. “They found blood in her stool,” says Stevenson. Then, they put a scope down her throat and found a mass in her stomach. The diagnosis: diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells that occurs primarily in older individuals.
She was put on R-CHOP, a chemotherapy for such cancers, but her condition continued to worsen. She went to another hospital, Palm Beach Gardens, where she died November 24, 2014, according to Stevenson.
It was after Rittel’s death that the family learned that Rittel had listeria in her system. Family members were understandably upset about the contradictory diagnoses, and consulted with medical malpractice lawyers, who suggested that there was too much confusion around the situation to take on a legal case. But even with the possibility that Rittel was made ill by listeriosis, the family didn’t make a connection to raw dairy, because Rittel hadn’t consumed raw dairy, to anyone’s knowledge.
For some reason, the confusion, uncertainty and contradictory medical data surrounding Rittel’s illness and treatment wasn’t considered worthy of even a slight notation in the CDC report issued last week. Rather, the CDC stated flat out that the “ill person from Florida died as a result of listeriosis,” the “likely source” of which was raw milk from Miller’s Organic Farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania.
Nor did the CDC see fit to report that Rittel arrived from North Carolina in Florida already complaining of gastrointestinal symptoms.
Or to note that no one observed her drinking raw milk.
Or to add the possibility that Rittel might have contracted listeriosis during her treatment at either of two hospitals.
Instead, the CDC has used this death to smear Amos Miller, the owner of Miller’s Organic Farm, and to generate hysteria about raw milk dangers. “Because Listeria was recently found in raw milk produced by Miller’s Organic Farm, we are concerned that contaminated raw milk and other raw dairy products from this company could still be on the market and make people sick,” the CDC report warns.
The fact that the CDC’s investigation into the Rittel case was so terribly flawed and then dishonestly reported calls into question the agency’s overall credentials and trustworthiness. That’s simply another instance of what happens when scientists become ideologues on a particular health issue; we have called the CDC to task repeatedly for misrepresenting data about raw milk illnesses.
Having dealt with one of the CDC investigators and then seen what resulted last week, Stevenson now views the agency’s report as an attempt to economically destroy a small family farm and business. In a letter she plans to send to the agency, she expresses her outrage and disgust for the improper reporting on what happened and for using her family’s tragedy to further its ongoing agenda.
Stevenson says she continues to have high regard for Miller’s Organic Farm, and wouldn’t hesitate to serve its milk to her children.
While this new evidence goes a long way toward vindicating Amos Miller and Miller’s Organic Farm, it seems as if they will likely be dealing with a long, intense regulatory or legal battle to simply continue peacefully feeding their community. Stay tuned.
Copyright 2016 by David Gumpert and Liz Reitzig, all rights reserved
Thanks to David and Liz for digging deeper on this issue.
Thanks, Amanda. We didn’t say it in the post, but there were even those in the food rights movement who accepted the CDC smear as fact, and said so. Without naming names, I’d say those individuals owe Amos Miller an apology.
I’ve been feeling bad for the family and while I still feel badly for the family, the extenuating circumstances of her death make it a little easier. It’s so easy to second-guess ourselves on so many things. In any case, my condolences to the family once again. I’m sorry too to Amos Miller because this is going to be a very long road and one apparently brought on by a competitor’s greed.
I was raised drinking raw from the cow daily milk, butter and cream. So was everyone in the little town in Texas where my grandparents lived. No one died. What is dying is our freedoms and the CDC is NOT a federal office.
I have no real words for this. Truly sad and disgusting. All alphabet agencies need to be disbanded because they have lost sight of working for the people (or was that ever the case) and are merely pushing big money agendas. Good job David, keep up the good digging!
the Centre for Disease Control has no patent on dis-information. In Australia last year, much the same thing happened : a child who had been diagnosed with serious cancer, drank a bit of raw milk shortly before she passed away. The lap-dog media blazed it to the skies as ‘child dies from raw milk’
I agree, Amanda. This casts quite a different light on the incidents.
I don’t suppose there will ever be a retraction from the CDC? They’ll likely have to stick pretty tightly to their original story, even if it was wrong. That seems to be the way gov’t agencies roll.
Yep, its mid 2019 and The greedy lying government is still pounding on The Miller Farm!
Thank you for telling us the truth. And has there been even an allegation of anyone else being made ill by this farmer’s products?
John, the CDC alleges that a second individual, in California, became ill from listeria in the PA milk. Haven’t yet been able to track that one down, but knowing what we know about the Florida situation, I wouldn’t trust anything the CDC has said about the case.
One of the interesting aspects of these situations is that the CDC can hide behind “patient privacy” to avoid releasing information about the individuals sickened. In the FL case, at least, that patient privacy was a fig leaf for the CDC to hide behind to protect itself, not the patient.
Isn’t it interesting that this farm in PA, whose milk is presumably consumed almost entirely by those in and near PA, is blamed for the illnesses of people in two of the states farthest from PA while still being in the continental US, and yet no one in the actual area of the farm seems to have become ill?
Thanks David, this explains a lot.
Chemotherapeutic drugs are designed to destroy fast growing cells, a unique quality of cancer cells. Unfortunately, bone marrow stem cells, hair follicle cells, skin cells, cells in the mouth, digestive tract, and reproductive system to name a few are also some of the fastest growing cells in the human body, and are therefore the most sensitive to the effects of chemotherapy. This is why a patient being treated with chemotherapeutic drugs experience hair loss, diarrhea, rashes, and a depressed immune system etc.
As I have stated before, the medical profession have become quite adept at blaming natural foods such as raw milk and the microbes that we rely on for our survival in order to detract attention away from the effects of their toxic drugs and chemicals. When are people, especially germaphobes, going to wake up and smell the coffee?
For anyone interested in outbreak stats, I recommend downloading the CDC NORS outbreak database, in spreadsheet format, from http://wwwn.cdc.gov/foodborneoutbreaks – see “Download Data” near end of page.
Examining this data, there have been NO listeria outbreaks connected to fluid raw milk at any point from 1998 to 2014.
In 2007 though, 5 people got ill and 3 died from listeria in pasteurized milk – see http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/foodborne-illness-outbreaks/2007-post-pasteurization-listeria-contamination-in-milk-caused-5-illnesses-with-1-death-in-massachusetts .
The CDC is just doing what most government bureaucrats, from top to bottom, have always done and always will do, which is to take power and control out of people’s hands and enhance their own agendas, which pretty much begin and end with getting paid every Friday and collecting a fat early retirement. This will continue to get worse until and unless a majority of Americans vote for people who truly want less government. Wake up and smell the coffee, indeed, or maybe the fresh raw milk. It’s all politics, folks.
Amen, Ron. Same with the “war on drugs”. Many people have a vested interest in keeping a failed policy going. Just too much money and too many jobs on the line.
I totally agree with Ron Schmid. The CDC is just being a bureaucrat. We definitely do have to start picking gov’t officials who want less gov’t. I’m sorry for the family who lost a relative but so glad that it wasn’t from the raw milk. As usual, raw milk is always the scapegoat.
In the past, I have drunk up to 7 gallons a week of Amos Millers milk. It is so good. And NOTHING bad EVER happened to me. Listeria is ubiquitous. And the secret they really don’t want you to know is that it can be cured with a simple vitamin c flush. I never thought I would live to see the depth of corruption witnessed here in the United States.
Thank you once again, David, for unearthing the truth of what is really going on here. These alphabet government agencies are a complete waste of taxpayer dollars (we are actually paying for them to do things like this to us!) and the only people they are looking out for are big dairy, big ag and big pharma. They are most certainly not looking out for us and their methods of deception never cease to amaze me. Unfortunately, most people believe these reports without question, because they are too busy with their faces in some electronic device instead of using anything resembling critical thinking skills. If people really woke up and paid attention, this type of nonsense would probably stop overnight because of the protests and demands for truth and consequences. But people do wake up because of articles like this one, so thank you for continuing to report what is really happening.
I don’t suppose there is any way to call the CDC to task on this? Would DOJ care? Would any media outlets care to report the truth, or that what they reported was a wild misrepresentation?
David,
We should all be ashamed including you and me….yes me. The headlines written showing the “smoking gun” was premature and played into the CDC and FDA game. They know this game well. They have had 40 years of anti raw milk practice. For years all through the 1980s and 1990s the CDC played this exact same blame game with Alta Dena. Once they claimed that a group of very old VA vet cancer patients had died of consuming Alta Dena raw milk when in fact, the terminal patients were simply trying to feel better as they died in hospice like care.
David, I do very much appreciate your skilled investigative research in finding the rest of the truth. This is the kind of 2nd round story that advances our cause and defends the producers and most of all, exposes the bias and government anti raw milk rhetoric. It would have been really great to have had this story come forward first and expose the bastards for what they are….liars. The CDC is corrupt and live in pharma pockets. However…This entire story would never have happened if the Millers had taken some friendly advice and stopped selling before the inspectors arrived.
I am beginning to wonder by their actions….if the FDA endorses ” membership sales” of raw milk and dairy products over state lines., maybe the Millers have it right. Maybe the FDA has had enough and this is their quiet white flag of surrender to raw milk?
Consider this. The FDA enforces interstate bans on raw milk sales with ferocious tenancy against OPDC. But…they ignore sales across state lines when others do it. I have already consulted a world class attorney and that lawyer says..”..my case has real legs for huge damages, Capricious, arbitrary enforcement of CFR 1240.61 is clear”. ( Further legal research is being done now ). No question. If the FDA defends membership sales ( thats why they do not enforce ) as different than pet food or human sales, then membership sales win!!! And we have a model for raw milk for all of America! If the FDA says membership sales are illegal and simply choose not to enforcement federal law they ( the FDA ) are screwed. I have lost millions in interstate sales in the last 8 years since their arbitrary enforcement against OPDC. This is all documented. A huge check for damages plus punitive damages would go along ways to support raw milk. All paid for by the FDA…how nice.
All of this fuels very interesting thought. I can assure you that the FDA reads every word of this blog and will spill coffee on their military uniforms this morning as they choke on these words and realize their errors and very public display of bias and arbitrary action.
I think we set the FDA up for a massive fall….a fall that we the people will take full advantage of. Why tell the FDA this strategy? It gets them off their ass and change will start to happen. It brings heat to this movement. They can not fix their past bias and arbitrary actions. That’s a damage written in history.
Let me be clear. I do not blame the Millers or their group of cooperative farmers that sell raw milk in their buyers members only club across America. They are smart and they have found the weakness in the enemy. I also intend on exploiting the FDA weaknessss, I intend on breaking the FDA by exposure of this bias. They need breaking. See. Documentinghope. It is medical documentary that exposes the massive illness and disease brought on by CDC and FDA collusion with the medical industry. Who lost? ….our children. Who won….corp profits!!!
This madness must stop.
http://memegenerator.net/instance/67540374
@ Amanda: I’m not big into things like memes but I had to howl when I read your words under the photo . . . I think you omitted an “l” ?!! One thing I can say for certain – Mark definitely looks a helluva lot healthier than uglymug Sheehan. A total testament to the advantages of consuming living raw milk, wuddunja say? 😎
I am trying to edit the photo now…
Anyhoo, anyone can make a meme with the graphic. Have at it! I’m headed out.
It is at times like these that I go back and re-read Patrick Henry (at age 38) and James Madison (at age 36).
“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” PH
“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
“Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many. . . .
“What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.
But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.” JM Fed. No.62
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Two points you left out: #1. Since the household was a member of Miller’s “private” association as quoted above and reprinted below, will you verify if any milk products were shipped or received by the Stevenson home during Oct. or Nov. of 2014, FROM MR. MILLER’S RECORDS? Or doesn’t he keep records? Having Mrs. Stevenson say “she
“For several weeks in October and November 2014, she lived in the home of Peggy Stevenson, a 54-year-old mother of two in North Palm Beach, Florida. Stevenson, who is a member of a private association that distributes food from Miller’s Organic Farm, is also the sister-in-law of Rittel’s son.
#2. Doesn’t the CDC claim it was the exact same type of listeria found in the deceased as was found on Miller’s farm? If you can answer “NO” to both of these, then you have a much more air tight argument and defense for Mr. Miller; absent such evidence, we must give more credibility to the governments position.
Also, Stevenson may be trying to protect herself by saying she doesn’t even think she had raw milk in the house at the time. The statement that the deceased only ate toasted bread lacks credibility, or if true, that could be the reason for stomach pain by itself! How long can one exist only on bread? Was it dunked in milk by any chance to make it go down easier???
I would kindly and respectfully like to reply. I am in charge of a food club that receives Miller’s Farm products. We have received his products for many years and even before I was put in charge to head it up, they existed many years before then. To my knowledge, we have never had anyone to get sick from Mr. Miller’s products. In fact, quite the opposite. We have many testimonies of people who have improved health due to his products. I would think that he keeps good records. Our orders always come with a numbered and dated invoices hand written by them. It would be hard to operate a business of his size without keeping good records. As far as the CDC claim that you mentioned, I have not found that they said it was an exact match between the cases and the milk. I have read that they said that it was closely related genetically to the same strain, but I haven’t read that it was an exact match. My brother died of cancer two months ago and I can attest to the fact that when a person goes through chemo treatments their taste buds change and he or she may not like the same things they once did and can only eat one certain food that may suit them at that time, which is what happened to my brother. He greatly reduced his food choices and could not eat like he had been. He had great stomach pains as well due to cancer. Maybe this lady had the same experienced with just eating toast, but of course, I can’t be sure of that, it was just our experience with my brother. Suggesting if the toast could have been dunked in milk is speculation. Only the family can answer that question. I pray that truth will come shining through. Kindly and respectfully leaving my reply and experience here.
I have crossed the street all my life and have never been hit by a car but I wouldn’t even mention that if we were discussing how dander ours crossing the street is and I wouldn’t imply that no one else should be concerned when they cross the street because I’ve never been hit.
This entire episode has to have been horrible for the Miller Farm and the family of the lady who died. I feel so badly for both families. My prayers are also with both. We really need a Convention of States. The Founders vision for the Federal government was a small, centralized government who’s main duty was to stay out of its citizen’s way in their pursuit of happiness. This ain’t that.
Leon, you ask: “Doesn’t the CDC claim it was the exact same type of listeria found in the deceased as was found on Miller’s farm?”
The answer is no. The CDC report says, “the Listeria bacteria from the raw chocolate milk was closely related genetically to Listeria bacteria from two people in two states who got sick in 2014…” Maybe the key Q is this: what exactly does “closely related” mean? And there’s another related Q: are there other examples of listeria in other foods that are “closely related” genetically to that found in the Miller chocolate milk in California?
Having seen now how the CDC twisted the facts in the Florida case, to ignore entirely the cancer and chemotherapy in the Florida woman, I frankly don’t trust anything they say. The CDC owes it to Amos Miller and everyone concerned here to come clean and explain in detail the data it used to try and convict Miller via a supposedly scientific report.
Another issue is that if the listeria was only found in the chocolate milk and not in the regular milk, did Stevenson ever buy chocolate milk, or buy it at that time.
There are so many holes in this that it could never go to court. The fact that they are making public statements like this means that they aren’t planning to go to court, because otherwise they wouldn’t talk about it until they filed charges. They can’t go to court because they have no evidence. They are waging a PR war.
Steve, Peggy Stevenson said specifically that she has never ever ordered chocolate milk.
Watching this story from Australia. We have our own issues with the anti-raw milk authorities. Thanks for the information.
Know exactly how this farmer feels!!! Pretty much same thing happened to our farm. Customer made claim of campylobacter in milk. Turned out to be false. However; damage had all ready been done.
What does the death certificate issued by the hospital say,I’ll bet it says the lady died from Listeria .The hospital had to report the results to the proper authority It’s the law .Mr Gumpert should know this .
Angelo, your guess is as good as mine. The immediate family controls access to the death certificate, and the family has chosen to keep it private. State public health authorities have access to that information as well, but they keep it private. But the death certificate could provide several causes of death (immediate vs primary). My guess (as long as we’re guessing) is that it says she died of cancer.
Angelo, officially…according to the death certificate my first wife passed away following the birth of twins as a result of a stroke (massive brain hemorrhage). It doesn’t say that her stroke was a result of the drugs she was administered according to protocol prior to and after the birth of the babies. The drug Ritidrine (Yutopar) a “β2 agonists” that she was initially placed on is well known at the time to cause, both mother and child, to experience an “increase in heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pain, fluid retention, heart failure and postpartum bleeding. The drugs she was put on to offset the side effects of the Yutopar, such as Tylenol 3, and Demerol, etc. are equally problematic.
Following the birth of the babies she began to experience difficulty breathing. They (the doctors) assumed a lung embolism and immediately placed her on a blood thinner (Heparin), failing to recognize that her breathing difficulty was the result of a brain hemorrhage. In administering this blood thinner they made an existing problem worse and in essence signed her death warrant. Yet, nowhere on her death certificate did it mention “drug induced” stroke.
@ Ken: Death is never listed as “iatrogenic” on a death certificate. About 99% of the time, however, it’s a much more accurate cause of death than what’s listed. If a patient dies on the surgery table, it’s never listed as “surgical error” on the certificate even if that was the DIRECT cause.
This is why death certificates should never be used as a guideline for monitoring “cause of death diseases” – but it’s done more often than not. This inefficient method is how our gubmint allows bigMed to keep track in their own inept way, but there’s nothing truthful about it. They list cancer as the #1 or #2 cause of death or whatever, never cancer medications as the cause, which is much closer to the actual truth of the matter.
Thank God people are waking up and asking the hard questions. It’s about damn time.
Just as some feel the CDC is overstating the case, I strongly suspect that the case offered against the CDC here is overstated as well