The outbreak of 38 illnesses attributed to milk from The Family Cow has been a bad scene in any number of ways, from the ill consumers to the voluntary shutdown of milk from the dairy to the bad press. On this latter point, the Associated Press, the largest wire service in the country, published an article that highlighted both the illnesses and the popularity of raw milk–another reminder of how raw milk grabs media attention.
It was late today (Monday) when The Family Cow received clearance from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to resume selling raw milk. According to owner Ed Shannk, “Despite what many think, we have not found the state regulators hard to work with. Cautious, yes, following their rule book religiously, yes, but we understand their job and respect them.”
On some level, the unfortunate experience of tainted milk from The Family Cow is already beginning to feel as if it has positive elements. Here are three I see:
1. The episode has encouraged The Family Cow to make some significant plant upgrades that owner Edwin Shank, the owner, says will improve safety. These include improvements to the dairy’s hot water system; installation of a web-based system to monitor control points in the milking, cooling and washing process; and setting up its own laboratory testing system.
The sign The Family Cow is finally able to put out again, after getting the all-clear from regulators. “Extremely hot water is needed for washing the milk tank, milking system and bottler,” Shank said in a letter to customers. “We suspect a hot water heater that was making hot water (140-150 degrees) but not super-hot (160-170 degrees) played a part in this (outbreak). We replaced the older heater with a high tech, computerized ‘tank-less’ system that consistently delivers 180 degree water or hotter if we wish.”
He says the new web-based monitoring system is very important because, “If the new water heater loses capacity slowly like our old one did, run out of propane or any other imaginable problem, the computer of this system will send an email alert to our smart phones instantly…It makes so much sense…fix the problem before it becomes a REAL problem!”
The new on-site lab will enable the dairy “to initiate a new test and hold protocol we have long dreamed of. By test and hold, we mean we will test every lot of milk we bottle and hold it till the test show that it is clear to go. This is a major food safety improvement!” He likened it to “the difference between looking in your rear-view mirror vs. the windshield while driving.”
2. It has changed the tone of discussion and debate on this blog, Yes, there are still arguments about whether raw milk is nutritionally and otherwise superior to pasteurized milk, but it seems as if there is more acceptance that people can, and do, become ill from consuming raw milk. I believe the absence of conclusive lab evidence in a number of other cases has always created a measure of doubt. The presence of conclusive evidence in unopened bottles of The Family Cow’s milk helped seal the deal. In so doing, it provided a measure of clarity that, yes, the people emailing and phoning owner Edwin Shank with tales of illness were indeed the dairy’s doing.
3. It has encouraged other dairy farmers and consumers alike to think more about safety. I’m impressed by those interested in learning more. For example, Cali Farmer lists a number of questions he has for Edwin Shank, and concludes that, based on the vagaries of the factory food system and increasingly compromised immune systems, “The milk should be cleaner than the days of our forefathers.” (To gain answers to the questions, I suggest Cali Farmer, and others, contact Shank directly, maybe once this crisis has eased; edwin@thefamilycow.com.)
It’s also raised awareness among consumers. I saw a question recently on a raw dairy listserve from a pregnant woman who wondered if a particular raw dairy farmer “regularly tests for listeria. I know he does various tests and keeps his animals clean and I trust him but I was wondering about this since I am pregnant now and there is all this talk about listeriosis being dangerous during pregnancy.”
Which brings me to an issue raised by a number of readers: the role of the Weston A. Price Foundation in disseminating information about food, and raw dairy in particular. Obviously, a number of people don’t trust the WAPF, feel it is dogmatic.
I’ve always thought the the WAPF’s reluctance to admit to the risks associated with raw milk stemmed from an understandable defensiveness born of unfair governmental targeting of raw dairies. I’m hopeful that the experience of The Family Cow will perhaps convince WAPF’s leadership that there is more value in transparency than defensiveness, and it will try to learn from the experience of Ed Shank. There is nothing to hide, after all. As Brian Oz4caster suggests in a comment following my previous post, the number of illnesses from raw milk remains relatively low compared with other foods.
Indeed, I see in Edwin Shank’s forthrightness a good preview for what the Raw Milk Institute should be about. Wouldn’t it have been useful to have an operating RAWMI providing lessons learned from the experiences of The Family Cow.
When all is said and done, I am convinced we will all owe Edwin Shank and his family a debt of gratitude, for exposing us all to a refreshing breath of fresh air. No marketing, no denials. Just the facts.
**
There are a number of legislative initiatives on the docket, beginning with Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and New Jersey.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/02/raw-milk-games-already-underway-in-3-statehouses/
In New Jersey, I am told by Joseph Heckman, a Rutgers professor who was present at last Friday’s hearing, that the Assembly committee hearing the legislation permitting access to raw milk, passed it overwhelmingly, despite the fact that opponents brought up the recent illnesses in neighboring Pennsylvania at The Family Cow. The legislators “didn’t seem bothered,” according to Heckman.
If the wash water is TOO hot it can also be a problem, because excessive heat will cause the milk proteins to "bake" onto the stainless steel, making them much harder to remove. From what I have been told, that threshold is around 175F.
If this does happen, a good strategy for dealing with the baked-on proteins (which is used commonly for the plates in HTST pasteurizers) is to do a warm (not hot) acid rinse first, before you do the alkaline caustic wash. This causes the proteins to unfold and makes it easier to clean them with the caustic. And of course, once you are done with the wash cycle, do another acid rinse to make sure there is no milk stone or mineral buildup.
There are additional issues and perceptions that are changing because of this last outbreak, however I do not see adding additional technology, redundancy to the milking process as a the resolve of the real problem that may be facing the Family Cow Farm.
One clear issue that is being recognized with this outbreak is the sacralization* of milk and the real danger in the lack of growth in understanding it brings and barriers it presents in understanding the truth as people come together.
Milk is not perfect, nor is our environments it will be produced in, and add the resulting pressures of human activity of the last 200 years and the scales are tipped in favor of things going wrong more often than not, if we do not strive for an open attitude, realization of the current factors our fathers left us, and strive to understand the principles in which we are a part of, not masters of and can subdue with added surveillance of our equipment and processes that are only at best 30 percent of the equation.
We do owe the Shanks a debt of thanks, and to those who became ill the same gratitude given the scope of exposure the Shanks have, with the volume they serve, this experience will bring us closer to understanding better what we are faced with, the true angle of attack needed to remedy this and other pathogenic bacteria to achieve the health we are all seeking and the profitability that is attainable if we focus on the true issues at hand.
Not the ones we invented and sold as cure, but the ones we daily attempt to destroy in our pride of accomplishment in the tech and human triumph of the very thing we depend on most for that we strive to attain.
*verb (used with object), -ized, -izing. to make sacred; imbue with sacred character, especially through ritualized devotion: a society that sacralized science(or milk emphasis added)
Regards
Tim Wightman
Since you mentioned the dogmatic nature with which some of us view the Weston Price Foundation I'd like to repost an excerpt from the Parsifal study, which is often cited as "proof" that there is a correlation between raw milk and the reduction of allergies and asthma. I originally posted this at the end of the previous article.
The authors state, About half of the parents indicated that they usually did not boil the milk before consumption but no differential effects were observed between those boiling and not boiling the milk. This might be a result of biased parental answers or may indicate that pasteurization is not of key importance because compounds other than microbes may play a role. They then go on to hypothesize that it's the higher omega 3 content in farm milk that offers the allergenic protections, as this has been observed in other studies.
They also state, Future analyses of the farm milk components responsible for the beneficial effect therefore have to include fatty acid profiles in addition to microbial compounds.
Back to the issue of dogma: To say that the Parsifal study offers "proof" of the health benefits of raw milk seems misleading. While the authors of the study gave ample evidence of a correlation between the reduction of allergies and asthma and the consumption of "farm milk", they suggest that it may not matter if that milk was raw or not. Until there are further studies done, this issue seems inconclusive.
The Gabriella study is pretty specific about the raw milk contribution:
"Reported raw milk consumption was inversely associated to asthma (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.59; 95% CI, 0.46-0.74), atopy (aOR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.61-0.90), and hay fever (aOR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.37-0.69) independent of other farm exposures. Boiled farm milk did not show a protective effect. Total viable bacterial counts and total fat content of milk were not significantly related to asthma or atopy."
Conclusions
"The findings suggest that the protective effect of raw milk consumption on asthma might be associated with the whey protein fraction of milk."
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2811%2901234-6/abstract
David
I have tired of the conflict, and am heartened by comments like Cali Farmer that tends to focus on the process of good and rhythmic farming, rather than the players. Forget the conflict for a while, keep milking and do it right. Demand science.
In my father's day, when Guernsey's were milked on pioneer farms in Wisconsin (for their cream alone) the guts of those who drank the only milk available (unprocessed) were different. The gastrointestinal system hadn't yet been introduced to Twinkies, over the counter cold remedies, and a list of ingredients Joel Salatin so rightly says we can't possibly recreate in our kitchens. It isn't surprising that the same thing happened to our immune systems with superbugs that could overcompensate for antibiotics.. and with the apple trees in my orchard that can't produce fruit without chemicals when the same varieties sustained my mother as a child in war torn Germany without any chemicals.
The focus ought to be on ways to return to sustainable farming..on good farming… on healthy farming. And that begins with healthy cows that ought not to be kept inside in a winter without snow in the Northeast simply because the farmer has always kept them inside…to slosh around in stanchions that can't be cleaned fast enough from manure that rests against teats.
What is the relationship between somatic cell count and being allowed to range outside year round….recently, the verbiage on advertising for bull semen highlights transmission to daughters of a good somatic cell count- essentially a genetic advantage for a healthy disposition and milk.
In a smaller herd it is perhaps an advantage that the milk flows through very narrow and short channels with fewer players…simple is best…udder to stainless steel to bottle, direct and immediate.
The more complicated the process, the more fraught with problems.
None of us are immune from the risk of illness, me included. But we need to focus on herdsmanship, the kind of discourse that would have been offered over the dinner table generation to generation…Necessarily, it must now include information consumers give back.
My heart goes out to Edwin Shank and his family, but it is a lesson we can all learn by to be vigilant, humble and ready to make change to answer the demand for a product with rare nutrient qualities the Associated Press might rightly have quoted as "snake oil."
Ed is back on the shelf today, released from quarantine. The feedback he has gotten from his consumers has him very happy indeed. I know the feeling. He has learned much and he is now better and his product is better. Awesome job Ed!
Dr. Heckman reported to me all about the recent committee meeting where processors and everyone that is anyone showed-up against the New Jersey raw milk bill….it passed with 100% votes supporting raw milk.
Use cold water first…and then follow with superhot water….OPDC uses 185 degrees going into the system and 145 on exit. Our coliforms tell the story…..super low.
as much as is understood today about the situation in Pennsylvania = it wasn't the milk
It appears the problem stemmed from how it was handled post-harvest ( milking)
this matters because the premise of our opponents in British Columbia is that 'all raw milk is always and only infected with bad bacteria, as it leaves the teat'… of course that is incorrect, and they know it. But it's the rationale for outlawing raw milk for human consumption. From a false premise you cannot get to a correct conclusion.
You can bet sales at the Family Cow are booming … what is it the free market knows that the over-educated idiots, don't ?
More studies are needed.
Mark, Pattie had told me a few years ago, to rinse the 1/2 gal jars with cold water first before washing or a film develops…..a simple fix for the jars.
Super clean udders. Inspect those udders. Use plenty of water and use a dry cloth and "dry them thoroughly"….use a predip and always strip and prep looking for poor milk quality.
When this is done…less than 10 coliforms is nearly always assured. It is then the cleaniness of the handling of the milk later that becomes the serious challenge…that is where the coliforms grow in numbers.
Mary Martin always says….it is the shit on the udder that is getting into the milk that causes illness. This is not so…
It is the hiding out of pathogens in the "after milking management of the milk systems" that is the far greater challenge and threat. Campy loves to hide out in biofilms…
Pathogen protective Biofilms are the real problem here. All you want is raw milk running through your systems…nothing more and nothing less. That is why a very short milk hose connected to a milk bucket is the best method found yet to make super clean raw milk. Long Milk lines, bulk tanks, pumps, filters, plate chillers and extended systems are the devil when it comes to safe raw milk and bioflims and require extensive management to reduce risk.
Mary…..the udder is important…but the devil does not reside on the udder. The devil is in the management of the milk systems after the udder. Sorry to burst your bubble and ruin your rhyme with your focus on the "shit and the tit".
Here again we see people bad mouthing organisms. Organisms are not the devil they are simply responding to their environment, an environment that we have created. They are merely doing what is necessary in order to survive and maintain balance
Mankinds antagonistic attitude is what has created the scenario we find ourselves in and such a scenario is not sustainable. If the devil is in anything it is in us and in the chemicals, drugs, hormones and radiation etc. that we use in our attempt to control. All of which represents an unnatural and invasive manipulation of our ecosystem. Cleanliness is important, however, unless we deal with the root cause of the problem are efforts are to no avail.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~laserweb/woodbury/classes/bch561/papers/antibiotic%20resistance%20general.pdf
The abstract from the above article states, The intense use and misuse of antibiotics are undoubtedly the major forces associated with the high numbers of resistant pathogenic and commensal bacteria worldwide. Both the volume and the way antibiotics are applied contributes to the selection of resistant strains. Still, other social, ecological and genetic factors affect a direct relationship between use and frequency of resistance. Resistant bacteria, following their emergence and evolution in the presence of antibiotics, appear to acquire a life of their own. They proliferate and maintain the resistance traits even in the absence of antibiotics, thus jeopardizing the reversal of bacterial resistance by simple reduction in antibiotic use. Reversing resistance requires restoration of the former susceptible flora in people and in the environment.
Take note of the last sentence, REVERSING RESISTANCE REQUIRES RESTORATION OF THE FORMAL SUSCEPTIBLE FLORA IN PEOPLE AND IN THE ENVIRONMENT.
Now how in the hell are we going to accomplish the above in our current germaphobe driven society?
Situations such as The Family Cow scenerio will continue to crop up despite our efforts. Lactic acid bacteria also have a stress response mechanisms and host defense systems that are relevant to its environment. They to are adapting to their environment by demonstrating antibiotic resistance, heaven forbid if they should happen to demonstrate undesirable mutations.
Bill
Pipeline systems should and have had for the last thirty or so years a pre rinse cycle built into the wash schedule. I see no constructive purpose with incorporating acid into the pre rinse cycle, potable warm water aught to be sufficient. The hot water entering the sink for the wash cycle however should be no less then 175F. By the time the wash sink fills and the wash cycle begins the temperature of the water has had a chance to drop several degrees and aught to remain relatively hot to the end of the cleaning cycle. The length of the pipeline and the outside environment temperature are all factors to be considered
Ken
My only point was that there IS such a thing as "too hot." The 175F figure I cited is for the the water being circulated. I realize that on farm systems, you must start out hotter because you lose heat to the environment. Most of the systems I have seen and operated are in dairy plants, where there is in-line heating. That changes the approach a little bit, and you have to be careful about not getting "too hot."
I don't think the majority of your long-time readers have ever believed that raw milk could not cause illness, nor did the majority of us think the WAPF's every word was gospel truth. I really don't recall the merits of the WAPF ever being discussed much on this blog. In my opinion, the WAPF are like the food fashionistas that promote the miracle food or diet du jour, whether it be the Adkins' diet, vitamin E, or acai berries. Sally Fallon uses the organization to promote her views, and perhaps to some people being the head of an organization lends her credence.
There is a wealth of information available regarding the dangers of raw milk, including information about populations that should strictly avoid it. I don't think this view is overly paternalistic on the government's part. What I do think is paternalistic is that milk is singled out as being the equivalent of playing Russian roulette or smoking hashish. This type of hyperbole is never used for sushi or raw spinach, for example. I resent the amount of money wasted in the attempt to prevent people from enjoying a food that has been consumed from time immemorial. I firmly believe the prosecution of small dairies and herdshares has more to do with monied interests than it does the public health. As I recall growing up we were told that margarine was better for you than butter, and cholesterol from animal sources could cause heart attacks. At that time there was a glut of plant oils being produced by large subsidized ag concerns. These oils could be hydrogenated to produce products with a much longer shelf life, i.e. trans-fats. We now know that these fats are very deleterious to health (they cause inflammation), and that consumed cholesterol has no bearing on a person's total cholesterol concentration. Thus, for decades the government had us believing a pack of lies. Meanwhile, people got sicker and big ag got wealthier. Even today, some hospitals serve margarine rather than butter. It's very hard to dispel a myth once you've repeated the lie thousands of times. The lie that "no one can produce or consume raw milk safely" is just the lie we are being asked to swallow today.
The fact is, people do produce and consume raw milk safely every day. This is not to say this milk may not contain "pathogens". Many raw milk drinkers are simply immune to these organisms. I recall years ago some students visiting a dairy drank some raw milk and became ill with Campylobacter. The farm family and the farm hand's families did not suffer any ill effects. Thus, a pathogen to outsiders was not pathogenic to them. This is not to say raw milk should contain this organism, but it is an example of the immunity that raw milk can afford. New pathogens are being identified all the time. These are often organisms that were once thought of as being benign or even commensal. Campylobacter is one example, C. difficile is another. Ken Conrad has the right idea about our environment being out of balance. Judicious consumption of raw milk can be a way to restore balance and de-escalate this war we have been ruinously waging with the world around us.
"Thus, a pathogen to outsiders was not pathogenic to them. "
Same scenario for Montezuma's revenge.
I read on many different blogs and news articles; responders state words to the effect that they think if people want to drink raw milk it should be their choice as long as they are educated about the risks…..
Are people educated about the risks of all foods? As an example- lunch meats- they have a greater potential of contamination and causing pregnancies to be aborted. Are there warnings on the packages?
Education of the masses is lacking. The family Cow Farm sounds really nice, I would like to visit it some day. Learning from farms such as his and Polyface, sustainability is the key. Ken, Miguel and other have been right.
The health risk du jour is vitamin D, the powers that be/medical environment et al cannot agree on how much D you truly need, what lab test is best and what range is best and if D2 & D3 are the same or different, etc,etc,etc…. So the lay person is left to fend for themselves and hope they make a good choice from their own research from the web and from amongst the contradicting views from the establishment. (So far, I have not found where the govt states that Vit D requires co-factors to work correctly. Nutrients do not work alone, they require each other to be optimal in our bodies).
"Researchers said that past studies have found conflicting results when it comes to the effects of breastfeeding on kids' lungs, with some research suggesting that moms with asthma who breastfeed may be putting their kids at risk as well."
More evidence that- the powers that be- haven't a clue of what they are doing…other than confusing the public. Perhaps that is their goal, keep them confused.
Alex Beam is a turd as I've called him out in public before but here's his latest and greatest, mentions this blog and ignores / distorts some basic facts:
http://www.bostonglobe(dot)com/lifestyle/2012/02/07/small-farms-claim-right-grow-and-sell-outside-regulatory-bounds/5AzgjbD24kdPyz0aTjtpRI/story.html
He claims that "food safety laws exist for a reason" but neglects to tell us what the reason is, and why there is selective law enforcement which is certainly not based on comprehensive compilation of scientific consensus and certified data especially of the huge food suppliers. Why do they need to pile on the small farmers while avoiding the real problems, you don't think money would be involved do you?
Show me the bottom line as to how many people have been made sick over the last few decades from consuming raw oysters, lettuce or spinach, hamburger or hot dogs cooked rare, sushi, tobacco products, plastics in our food and then please explain to me why they choose to persecute raw, private milk small farms instead. Some journalist…
What exactly are we to make of this event? I wonder specifically if such biological strength as was conferred to the farm family is transferable via products grown on that farm to consumers who are many miles away.
Ive suggested here before that proximity to ones food sources seems to be a critical element in optimizing health. I suspect that that holds true for all sorts of exposures, from mosquito bites to home-grown lettuce to home-grown raw milk.
Two important ideas: 1. The environment is very dynamic, continually in flux, and the biologic components of various environments had best be able to adapt to change. 2. Good health does not come from avoiding illness, but rather from exposure and subsequent defense-building. (The best human physiologies do experience illness, hopefully gently, and then recover, coming out the other side of recovery in better shape than they went in.)
Raw milk has indeed become a whipping boy for the crowd who believes that good health means blanket isolation from perceived dangers. But is it wise to believe that because raw milk can transfer good things to those who consume it, that those good things have the same value to each organism? Are we missing something when we ignore the geographic/demographic context of that transfer? Raw milk and lettuce and just about everything else we consume and come into contact with carries biochemical energies and messengers. The process is necessary and good (which is why antibiotics and pasteurization and chemical sanitization must be approached very, very carefully). But we have built our modern lives (a very new development historically) on products that travel extremely long distances. Does that distance inhibit proper adaptation to our personal environments? Has the ubiquity of our long-distance society clouded our understanding of defense-building?
Attempting to kill off bacteria to protect health is futile, just as loading every product with toxins is stupid. But similarly, expecting proper adaptation to local biological environments via products from far away places may very well be overly optimistic.
Seems to me, again, that integrating food production into local regions is a necessary step in optimizing health.
"I don't think the majority of your long-time readers have ever believed that raw milk could not cause illness, nor did the majority of us think the WAPF's every word was gospel truth."
I agree. I also think one has to take Sally Fallon and the WAPF site wholistically. Like I said in the previous thread, she (and they) come from the perspective of traditional foods. She's also into bone broths and animal fats. I wonder how many people went there looking for the good health silver bullet and thought that simply consuming raw milk would make them healthy. As if every unhealthy thing they did would be cancelled out by consuming just one healthy thing. Because we all know there are people like that. In fact, every food fad is based on that kind of thinking.
I like the idea of a traditional diet. It works for me. I am willing to cook my meals from scratch, preserve foods, and so on. Perhaps I have built up my own immunity in this manner. Perhaps simply not having the crap prevents illness by keeping my body uncompromised. I don't know.
But I do not think people thought no one could become ill from raw milk. For me, I accept the risk and the responsibility of making my own choices. I should mention that I chose my farmer too.
Thank you for your insightful comments. I was sure we weren't worshiping at the alter of the "Magic Foodstuff".
I was thinking of another long-time poster and his family. It seems he has lost his cow and he feels he has also lost his connectedness to his terroir. I can totally grok and embrace this concept, and I mourn with him.
Many a concern has been expressed here that raw milk isn't ready for "prime time", meaning multi-state retail. I had been sitting on the fence, but now I'm ready to say "No" to the concept that milk should be available to people living long distances from its source. If you are drinking raw milk, you are drinking part of a local ecology. Your physique may not be prepared for another region's ecology, and you may well become ill from drinking such milk.
This being said, I do think raw milk is a good way of attuning yourself to challenges which arise in your local ecology. At any dairy sanitation, good husbandry, and breed selection are key, but it is clear to me now that fresh milk is ideally a local thing.
I absolutely think raw milk is a local thing. I think agriculture in general is local or at least regional. And small. I don't think agriculture scales well. Something always suffers when it's pushed past its natural limits. I do support interstate raw milk when its local. Sounds weird, but the NY border is very close to an excellent CT raw dairy.
Don't cancel that Boston Globe subscription just yet. That article by Alex Beam was actually much more fair than we've come to expect from the mainstream media. In the few paragraphs leading up to the material you didn't like, he included some ideas and info that don't often make it into establishment publications:
"Getting government off small farmers backs sounds laudable in the abstract, and the Dont Tread on Me foodies proposals are hardly radical. They push ideas such as herd-sharing, where urban consumers pay for access to raw or farm-fresh milk, or farm to fork banquet meals, where farmers serve, say, freshly slaughtered pork and straight-from-the-cow dairy products to the Michael Pollan-Mark Bittman crowd.
"Sounds pretty harmless to me. But David Gumpert, who has been chronicling the food sovereignty movement on his website, The Complete Patient, says government intrusion into what amounts to peoples food privacy has become more harsh. 'Theres clearly more aggressiveness on the part of the food safety community toward protecting us, he says.
"Examples abound. In Venice, Calif., agents filed felony charges against the owner of Rawsome Foods and led him off his property in handcuffs. In Nevada, state authorities busted a farm to fork banquet and insisted the farmer destroy the food she had prepared – even after she offered to feed it to her livestock. Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? farmer Laura Bledsoe wrote in her account of the incident."
http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2012/02/07/small-farms-claim-right-grow-and-sell-outside-regulatory-bounds/5AzgjbD24kdPyz0aTjtpRI/story.html
David
I've always assumed that the differences in how food affected people's health was a function of different individual makeups. But the idea that food's "biochemical energy and messengers" are a function of the "geographic/demographic context" makes a lot of sense. I think you're suggesting in part that the farther food has to travel, the more biochemical energy it is likely to lose. I'd definitely like to see more exploration of that point.
If what you say is true, I'm not sure that we should go the next step, as Kirsten Weiblen does, and say, " 'No' to the concept that milk should be available to people living long distances from its source…" It could be that milk loses energy as it travels, but in its raw and whole state still hold a lot of benefits to those who value it and desire it from certain locales. In other words, we have to be careful about imposing such a belief on others. The government has been attempting to impose such restrictions, albeit based on different beliefs, but to unhappy endings.
David
CDC. 2011. FoodNet Population Survey: Atlas of Exposures, 2006-2007. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/foodnet/surveys/FNExpAtl03022011.pdf.
In comparison, lettuce, ground beef, and chicken are consumed by 50-80% of the population in the same survey. Of course there are more illnesses from these products given consumption statistics. If raw milk, raw oysters, and raw sprouts were consumed by 50-80% of the population and you multiplied the number of illnesses…yikes.
Regarding the Campylobater outbreak being discussed, the health department says around half were among children. Why did their parents choose to give them raw milk (would they pick raw oysters or raw sprouts given the CDC statistics)?
MW
CDC. 2011. FoodNet Population Survey: Atlas of Exposures, 2006-2007. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In comparison, lettuce, ground beef, and chicken are consumed by 50-80% of the population in the same survey. Of course there are more total illnesses from these products given consumption statistics. If raw milk, raw oysters, and raw sprouts were consumed by 50-80%…yikes.
Regarding the Campylobater outbreak being discussed, reports say at least half of the illnesses were among children.
MW
For instance, I am in Missouri, I have had visitors come from CA and Texas and stay for a week and absolutely love and have no ill effects only positive reports from drinking our raw milk. And these are not farm folk, but life long city dwellers. If this theory that the internal terrain is completely linked to the area in which someone lives is accurate, then the anecdotal evidence of visiting far flung farms and consuming that produce with no problem would not exist.
Also, shipping frozen milk to someone far away and having them report health benefits from it would not happen…..Would it?
I think this is all more complex than we understand.
While I completely advocate for local food production and consumption, I think that when we get into all of the whys and wherefores of individuals getting sick versus individuals not becoming sick, we are on a never ending quest.
The human body is so complex with all it's various stresses, some linked solely to emotions, that we can't ascribe science to the logic behind an illness resulting from raw milk consumption—-even where the bacteria is present. I think more people drank the milk from Edwin Shank and didn't become ill than became ill. Hot spots in the milk? Maybe. Maybe not.
What I am saying is that we get into the realm of philosophy more than science when we try to decide what is going to be "safe" or unsafe for the populace at large when it comes to raw milk consumption. If we do the best we can with what we actually know and what has borne itself out through the tests of time, we are doing better than the corporate, consolidated, centralized food chain.
So I don't think that there is any benefit to the FDA ban on raw milk shipments across state lines. There isn't science to actually support it.
"studies that compared the mineral content of soils today with soils 100 years ago found that agricultural soils in the United States have been depleted of eight-five percent of their minerals (Rio Earth Summit 1992.)"
"Unless growers replenish nutrients, the mineral content of harvested food will continue to decrease."
"The decline in the nutritional quality of food has been linked to production methods that result in soil degradation or the mining of soil fertility."
"USDA standards are limited to size, shape and color. None of the current USDA standards address nutritional values. Organic industry standards address production methods that reduce toxicity and avoid the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Neither the USDA nor the organic industry standards address the nutritional quality of food."
"consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, interested in wellness and the prevention of disease. With this increased awareness they are seeking high quality, organic produce."
http://usfoodpolicy(DOT)blogspot(DOT)com/2009/01/evidence-on-declining-fruit-and(DOT)html
Education of the consumers will increase the demand for nutritional foods. Hopefully change the way foods are currently produced.
A clarification: I am suggesting not so much that food loses some percentage of its health-inducing properties over time and distance (although I do believe that, and think most would agree that tree-to-mouth is always better than tree-to-truck-to-mouth, or tree-to-truck-to-plane-to-truck-to-mouth). In this case however I am rather suggesting that a persons regional bacterial biome is more specific and more important than we allow in our discussions of how to achieve optimal health.
What I described here recently regarding the loss of our family cow and the coincident increase in upper respiratory illness I noticed in myself, should help explain:
Cows continually sample their bacterial environment, and respond to it by developing appropriate antibodies in their milk. I believe that when I was in proximity to my cow, I was somehow part of her sample, via soil, air, touch, and perhaps other means I cant identify. The symbiosis was protective. Now my milk comes from 20 miles away. It is good milk, and helpful, but it is from a cow that has no relationship with me personally, and that means less than optimal health.
We are talking of course about degrees of goodness of course, not about blanket, black and white rules. But the ideas are important nonetheless—biologically, economically, and environmentally.
We have designed our modern economy around cheap oil and the freedom of travel it affords. At times that freedom has made us absolutely nutty, as when we pack apples on giant refrigerator ships and transport them from Chile to regions in North America where apples already grow exceedingly well. We seem happy to analyze such long-distance supply chains solely on financial terms, giving not a thought to the potential negative health effects that may occur by diminishing humans interaction with their regional biomes.
I am saying we ought to rethink the equation, that we ought to consider in the analysis the biological patterns represented by my cow and her environment and my interaction with that environment through her. If we can bring our attention away from the superficial fiduciary factors and toward the deeper biological ones, we may learn something critically important about how our biology, our environment, and our economy work best together to improve health and well being. I believe such insights will cause us to discover, among many wonderful things, much less need for antibiotics, sanitizers, pasteurization, and the like.
Its important to remember that trace minerals and the relation to microbes and bacteria are very specific. If you lack certain trace minerals in the soil and in turn forage rumen and possibly guts of humans(while we do not have level of understanding yet of the human gut as we do soils forage and rumens) certain bacteria are reduced and or dormant given the severity of the lack in trace minerals, and then you have the accumulative effect of microbes and bacteria working together and a lack of one hurts the rest we have the ability for those bacteria normally not present to grab a foot hold given there is space to do so.
This may be what is called human immune function for all we know, it certainly is in plants as we study the true causes of late blight and other plagues that are purported to fall from the sky, or brought in on the wind.
As to Daves point about local and the strength of the food, if we have the best possible trace mineral complex the farther it can go and still have a good effect on ones health. However health coupled with the reciprocal effect of knowing where you food comes from is lost if too much is between the soil and the consumer. The less you care the more we depend on cost and cost is driven down because we do not care and that will eventually lead to what we currently have which is low levels of trace minerals(aka nutrient density) because the understanding reciprocal nature of having a sense of place is not held high by anyone in the chain, that chain is broken and we get empty benefit unless the sense of place is present and is preserved for the simple fact we care about where our food comes from. We are a part of an extended chain of reciprocation just like the minerals microbes and bacteria, only if we are invested in the place from which our energy(food) comes from.
Tim Wightman
Yes.
The soil in my region, for example, happens to be deficient in selenium. I supplement it in our animals, and have been known to encourage human supplementation as well, when it appears there is no natural way for a person to obtain it.
My pattern is to, as much as possible and reasonable, obtain my food (and my friends and my furniture and my mosquito bites) from my local environment. If my region simply cannot supply me with thoughtfully produced products, I happily (and gratefully) burn some oil and go elsewhere.
I sure hope Sally Fallon reads this and changes her tune. Like I said in my last post, I'm not holding my breath that she will change her stance. But I think it would be extremely helpful if she did because I feel that the notion that raw milk is inherently safe because it kills pathogens is a myth perpetuated in the WAPF ranks. Have you spoken with her personally and explained the damage these myths create?
I am glad your readers are so enlightenened about raw milk safety, handling, and politics. But to the many busy moms out there, they take mark McAfee's word and Sally Fallon's word for it. I know I did, and I certainly am educated enough to know the merits of critical thought and skepticism. As we saw in WW2, charismatic leaders have the ability to sway even the most educated minds.
Kristen
Milk thistle 171 ppm selenium
raspberry leaf 25 ppm selenium
stinging nettle 22 ppm selenium
hawthorn fruit 20 ppm selenium.
Given access to a wide variety of plants, cows will supplement their diets with the trace minerals they need.
Brazil nuts have high selenium levels.
If they gave any type of “official” voice to their lack of facts, then those who follow like sheep may turn away. They will not admit they don’t know all the facts and will use speculation towards their own means.
You are correct that bacteria affects everyone differently.