The last week or so has been a terrible time for Edwin Shank and his family, along with twenty or more of his raw milk customers.

The suspicions that his dairy’s milk was behind an outbreak of campylobacter were confirmed when the Maryland Department of Health reported yesterday that it isolated campylobacter in two unopened jugs of the Pennsylvania dairy’s raw milk retrieved from a customer’s refrigerator.  
 
“So now the wondering, suspense and uncertainty is over for our family and farm crew and is replaced by humiliation and embarrassment,” Shank wrote in a letter to customers and friends of The Family Cow. “Dawn and I have shed a lot of tears over this. Now we know for sure what the growing list of emails and calls from you were pointing to. It was us. We are very sorry.”

The Shank family preparing food for pickup at a drop point in Pennsylvania. To his credit, Shank has handled the entire crisis of the last week in an upfront, transparent way. He cooperated fully with public health authorities and did extensive private testing in an effort to get to the bottom of the reports of illness among his customers. Campylobacter isn’t easy to isolate in milk, it turns out.

Even today, he invited those sickened by his dairy’s milk to call in. “We would love to communicate with you personally.  We really do care.  You won’t be the first customer we have cried with this week.  My personal email is:  edwin@thefamilycow.com.  If you can, please leave your phone number too.  Sometimes I get so tired of emailing that I would rather just talk.”

He gave some indications as to the personal pain his Mennonite family has been feeling.  “Our whole family and farm team is praying fervently for your speedy recovery.  Even Jefferson, who is 5, prays at every chance he gets that God would make all the sick people better again.

“Please pray for our family too.  We are not physically ill, but we are sick at heart and spirit.  It is so hard for Dawn and I to accept and understand that we made some of our loyal customers sick when we were trying so hard to provide food for them just like we feed our own children!

“To everyone who reads this, please pause a few minutes right now with our family in prayer for any and all who are sick.”              

Shank cautioned those who might be tempted to criticize his tack of openness. “Please, please… Those of you who have not been ill, do not criticize us for being this honest. I know what the lawyers and legal counselors would say.  But frankly I don’t care anymore what they say.  Dawn and I have prayed, fasted and agonized long and hard over how to say all of this.

“We have decided that the only way we will ever have peace is to follow our hearts, our conscience, our God and His Word.  We sense all four of these guiding lights in harmony with our decision and we have peace.

“If our family’s sustainable, local, know-your-farmer-shake-his-hand food production and distribution model cannot stand up to Honesty and Truth…then I guess Dawn and I are in the wrong business.”

Surely there are any number of lessons to be learned from this episode. Shank has already said he is in the process of implementing changes and improvements in his dairy’s operation, to reduce the chances of problems going forward.

In the meantime, he is serving as a refreshing model of openness and understanding, and how best to handle a crisis of foodborne illness. You have to feel for the Shank family and its customers. You know that his dairy will be the stronger for everything it has gone through these recent days.