The public health profession is terribly inept when it comes to public communication. Some of the problem–the tendency to talk in scientific terminology and to limit public access to information–stems from ignorance about how to communicate with the public. But some of it is more devious, and stems from a desire to control and confuse.
Two current examples make my point.
The situation with Tennessees reporting about the the McBee Farm is one example of communication ignorance. It took science researcher Michele Jay-Russell to report in a previous comment on how she tracked down a press release from Tennessee public health officials by going to the agencys Twitter feed and finding it there among the various tweets the agency put out. (She also provided a clear explanation about how DNA from shiga toxin creates health problems.) Is relying on Twitter, which many people dont use, a reasonable way to keep people informed about what is supposed to be an important public health situation?
Move from Tennessee to Massachusetts, and the Foxborough campaign to put Lawtons Family Farm out of business, and you have more of the deviousness element. I finally got to speak with Foxboroughs health director, Pauline Clifford, and she portrayed the proposed regulatory changes against Lawtons Family Farms as a matter of taking the minimum standards (of the state) and tweaking it up. In other words, no big deal.
When I pointed out that the change to weekly testing from monthly seemed more than tweaking, she expressed surprise that was in the proposed town regulations, indicated she wasnt sure the changes went that far. And what about the requirement that the town have access to the customer lists? We can talk about that, she said, presumably referring to the upcoming board of health meeting on Monday evening. I guess people are upset about that. Yes, they are, and apparently Clifford has been hearing from them.
She said the town was prompted to propose the new standards following on two instances since last April when Lawtons Family Farm was out of compliance with state testing standards. She says she was concerned that the farms customers werent properly notified, and when she inquired of Terri Lawton, was told only that the compliance issue was posted in the barn. She said she was concerned that customers who had the milk that was out of compliance needed to be informed not to drink what they had purchased (though there was never any evidence of pathogen contamination).
Terri Lawton, who runs the farm, told me that not only was the compliance information posted in the barn, but emails were sent to all customers. Moreover, these actions were above and beyond anything required by the states Department of Agricultural Resources, which has responsibility for overseeing raw dairies in Massachusetts. She speaks with the voice of authority, having been a dairy inspector for MDAR for two years.
Even more misleading information has been communicated by the town to the public. An article in the local paper, the Foxboro Reporter, quoting a member of Foxboros Board of Health on the new regulations, was full of inaccuracies, really, misinformation.
In that article, Eric Arvedon, a member of the Foxborough Board of Health, makes a number of statements that are flat out false. Here are several examples, quoted from the article:
*”He said 30 states do not allow sale of raw milk and cheese products ” This is completely untrue. There isn’t a single state that bans raw milk cheese sales–these are allowed by the U.S. FDA–have been since the late 1940s, so long as they are aged 60 days. While there are 17 or 18 states that ban public sale of raw milk, even most of these states (like MI, WI, OH, VA) allow herdshare arrangements where customers buy part of a herd of cows and gain access to the milk. This makes raw milk more widely available than might seem at first glance.
*”Less than half of the towns in Massachusetts permit such products.” Nearly all towns that banned the sale of raw milk did so in the 1950s and 1960s, when a number of state bans were going into effect as well. When towns want to allow raw milk sales, they usually find these bans and reverse them, like Framingham, in eastern Massachusetts, did in 2009. There are enough towns allowing the sale that between 27 and 30 farms selling raw milk around MA.
*”Arvedon said the draft regulations mirror current state regulations This is a similar pronouncement to Pauline Cliffords statement that Foxboroughs proposed regulation are just a tweaking– also completely untrue. The Foxboro draft regulations are much more strict than the state’s regulations, indeed, much more strict than regulations of ANY state in the country, as Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures pointed out in the comments.
* “I have suggested that the BOH evaluate whether to continue to allow the sale of unpasteurized dairy products in Foxboro ” In other words, Foxboro’s Board of Health could vote on Monday evening to ban raw milk sales entirely. Foxboro has allowed the sales since time immemorial; Lawton’s started in 2005 or so, and there hasn’t been even a hint of illness; indeed, there are many more serious injuries and maimings on an average Sunday at Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play football, within earshot of Lawton’s.
I can understand a problem of information dissemination, like in Tennessee, since it likely isnt badly intentioned. But Marlborough, MA, is on a path that any number of state and local public health bodies have taken, of disseminating patently false information, under the illusion of scientific pronouncements. These agencies hope people wont notice, or if they do notice, wont be informed enough to recognize the lies.
If you are in eastern Massachusetts. try to make it to the Foxborough Board of Health meeting Monday evening, 7:45 p.m., at 8 Chestnut St. in the McGinty Room of the safety building/fire station in Foxborough. There is plenty of parking at a shopping mall across the street. Terri Lawton deserves your support.
For those of you that may not know, 700 CA retail stores carry state inspected raw butter, raw cheese, raw Kefir,raw whole milk, raw skim milk, cultured raw butter and a favorite raw cream. It sells out every week and sales trends grow upwards every year. Besides the retail store available raw dairy products….there are perhaps 800 to 1000 micro dairies and or cow shares that share or sell raw milk to local communities. The state of CA has been very rational in regulating and managing all of this raw milk!!! We have good standards for raw milk.
Why is the CA raw milk market experience being ignored and or disregarded by other states??? Perhaps each state has its own reasons for ignoring CA. I know why Wisconsin does….the processors hate raw milk and Wisconsin is the land of dairy processors. But what kind of excuse is available for other states?
Not sure.
It would be very appropriate for other states to look west for an example for how raw milk can be done and done well, to not look west….is sheer denial.
Oops…nothing in Marlboro that I know of, the action is in Foxborough. Thanks.
Mark, I definitely am going to try to relate some of your comments about the California experience, along with your earlier assessment of Foxborough’s proposed regs compared to those in other places.
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So did Michele Jay-Russel say that Tennessee public health officials did tweet one raw-milk sample obtained from a consumer and several manure samples collected from the farm revealed the presence of DNA for the toxin produced by E. coli O157 that causes HUS.?
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Sense we’re talking about DNA for the toxin produced by E. coli O157 Let’s not forget E. coli O157 does not cause HUS. It doesn’t even cause diarrhea in most people. As a matter of fact it is only claimed to cause diarrhea and only in some people. Diarrhea is the most common ailment in America, afflicting the average American 3 times a year and only 3% of Americans drink raw milk. Diarrhea is usually not serious and usually never progresses to HUS. Even though HUS in children sounds serious it is not, if treated properly. If what they say about E. coli O157 were true we’d all be dead by now.
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/5/00-0503_article.htm
Our food safety heroes have so much to say about ad hoc alleged vectors like raw milk, and so little to say about systemic mass causes like subtherapeutic antibiotic use, antibiotic resistance markers in GMOs, leaky gut-inducing glyphosate (a comment above was linking HUS to gut absorption of the bacterial toxin), gut-busting Bt toxins. Same as always – they’re pure frauds, as is anyone who can mention “food safety” but isn’t committed to the abolition of CAFOs and GMOs. It’s a rational impossibility and a moral fraud.
The author of the following article states, As I wrote here in December, antibiotics are not picky about who they kill. They can destabilize your microbial ecosystem, allowing invasive species to push their way in. Doctors have to become more careful with using antibiotics, and scientists have to explore alternatives, such as repopulating ecosystems with transplanted bacteria.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/08/the-nightmare-bacteria-an-explainer/
The next article discusses the importance of phages found in mucus covered surfaces such as the inside lining of our stomach. Jeremy Barr, a microbiologist at San Diego State University in California states, ” “It’s a novel immune system that we think is applicable to all mucosal surfaces, and it’s one of the first examples of a direct symbiosis between phages and an animal host.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/05/friendly-viruses-protect-us-against-bacteria
Ken
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110609/full/news.2011.360.html
Our use of antibiotics may be helping those viral genes to spread. If bacteria are exposed to some types of antibiotics they undergo what is called the SOS response, which induces the phage to start replicating. Active replication of the phage causes the bacterial cells to burst open, which releases the phage. It also releases the toxin, which is why antibiotics are not usually used to treat E. coli infections.
And here is the kicker, Not only are more E. coli strains being infected with Shiga toxin, but it seems to be moving into different classes of bacteria. The genome of strain O104:H4 has been sequenced, and it shares many genes with enteroaggerative E. coli (EAEC) strains. “EAEC strains are not typically associated with zoonotic infections, and EAEC and Shiga toxin is a very unusual combination.”
Ken
Ken
Now if that article would only have gone on to say, definitively, where the “infected bacteria” came from. They know, they just aren’t about to state the obvious. Anyone with half a working brain cell can figure it out, as you obviously did, Ken.
Keep in mind there are micro and macro phages . . .
For anyone that has seen the Bill Marler Vimeo video piece about his recent trip to South Africa and his speech about food safety liability,.. brace yourselves. South Africa is in the beginning phases of starting to adopt US style lawyer based liability hunting system. All in the name of protecting kids. If South Africa was smart…they would embrace smart food safety practices and prevention right up front and avoid most of the pain of increasing insurance rates, jammed courts, increased food costs, increasing sterile long shelf life low liability food in the market place and on and on. Is it human nature that pain is the only motive for change ? Why can it not be intellectual anticipation of challenges and practical changes in the present that leads progress. If South Africa could learn one thing from America….it would be this. Low liability, long shelf, non-gut friendly foods are also the foods that will bankrupt the health & immunity of your nation!!! And send your nation into health hell with diabetes, obesity,asthma, Crohns, IBS, ADHD, autism rates and on and on. The Bill Marler food world is the long shelf life sterile food world!! It is not the gut and brain friendly world of whole food nutrition.
I would be glad to speak in South Africa to try and offset the heart felt landmark speech made by Bill Marler that championed the virtures of “suing the hell out of anyone that that causes illness by food”. It is critical that his speech be followed with an equally passionate speech that emphazises proper balance of precaution with investment in whole food production safety. If not….surely South Africa will find itself in the same disaster that America finds itself. A disaster characterized by a few stinking rich food liability lawyers and tens of millions of very sick children and corporations scared to death to produce whole foods….even though the First Lady begs US families to eat as many farm or garden fresh raw foods as possible every day.
Bill, your speech was a speech I could have made myself in 1997 when I spoke on the side of the FDA and sterile food loving bacteria paranoid scared parents ( Odwalla victims ). I now know better and I now know about the value of gut biodiversity and the critically essential research done at the NIH and he human biome project.
Sadly…it is so much easier to blame farmers and processors on behalf of one sick child. It is much more courageous and important to teach good standards to farmers and processors and nourish millions of children with gut friendly whole food.
One idea is narrowly & selfishly shortsighted…the other, a vision to protect and nourish humanity on earth. I know where I stand and who I serve!
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a23208243/can_vaccines_give_diarrhea
It looks like diarrhea is a listed side-effects on many vaccines.
And this one;s again, for mama:
Origin of NON SEQUITUR
Latin, it does not follow.
That’s me
A very well done video and excellent look into the well meaning heart of Bill Marler.
It is too bad that nowhere in the Food Safety Modernization Act or anywhere else in America is their a penny of funding to prevent raw milk illness by prevention or farmer training, setting protocols, testing, or anything else. Not one penny!!
Perhaps a fund should be set up that forces the settlements paid out by insurance companies to fund prevention. I do not even like this idea….it is after the cow left the barn.
Smart money and investment happens before the issue begins to present. Unfortunately, consumer raw milk demand is far ahead of available supply from sources of low risk raw milk from smart caring produers…and the FDA could care less and in fact I think I hear some distant applause…not sure, but I think that is what I hear from the FDA and others in industry when kids get sick from raw milk.
I am working on this right now.
None of us now very much. The more we look for answers to our questions the more humble we become. Complacently is the real problem. We must never rest in our work to be safe and low risk. I guarantee any farmer even with great bacteria counts …. Somewhere someplace in your herd looms the next challenge. Innovation, humility, and an open minded discovery based mind set will be the key to safety. Remember, so little has been done to research raw milk production safety. We have made a great start but so much more to discover. Remember this also, GMO and Antibiotic abuse even though not on your farm.,,,, dramatically effects your farm. The immunity of the depressed American public effects your farm. Natural and raw means being on the end of the “crack the whip” rope when industrial forces run the majority of the environmental game and deliver to us undeserved industrial pathogens.
Meanwhile the true people who really want to fight for freedom and economic self-determination will do so without the likes of you, who clearly hate human beings infinitely more than you dislike the very corporate system which is destroying you.
We’ll get what we fight for, while you’ll get what you deserve.
where I started with this, was : saying ambulance-chaser-Marler is wasting his good will upon South Africa. It’s now spiraling-down to politically-contrived famine, as did Russia / Ukraine, in 1933. Calculated genocide being perpetrated on white farmers = Boers rather than kulaks = motivated by the same anti-christ race hatred.
Commissar Joe Slovo + his pal Mandella, “fought for freedom and economic self-determination”, alright … how’s that turning out? To see where SA is bound under the hard-core African National Council, look northward, at how former Rhodesia = within living memory the breadbasket of Africa = fares today. A 3rd world basket~case, like Detoilet. And for the same reason
Hmmm. For what? for pointing-out that the impetus of the Campaign for REAL MILK is = white people remembering our racial heritage? = that whites are rejecting the communist policy of industrialized agriculture, as that glaring failure degenerates to enforcement by police power … same as white flight from Detroit (etc) is, people voting with their feet against ‘diversity’ enforced by fixed bayonettes? For mentioning the fact that Caucasian DNA determines we produce enzymes for metabolizing milk, into adult-hood, while most other races don’t have that trait?
Someone who feels threatened by presentation of a scientific fact, had ‘better check their head’ as we used to say in the hippy~daze.
As for yr half-quote from John Donne … Indeed, he knew that the Bell doth toll for every man, but he had faith he would see his Redeemer in the Resurrection of the Just and the Unjust. Where will you stand in that Day, Master Russ? With Joe Slovo + fellow-traveller Mandella, shaking their communist fist in the face of Heaven?
< One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die >
In marketing, knowing who yr customers are, is all-important. with REAL MILK, that segment of the market is overwhelmingly white. As politically-incorrect as it is to even utter the R-word – other than in context of food/fun/festivals! – these demographic FACTS need to be grasped in order to get to a political resolution
If you yrself have signficantly more melanin in yr hide, than do I, and happily drink milk with no ill effects, it’s because the gene for being able to digest raw milk into adulthood, is dominant, ie you got that trait from the white folks in yr family tree. For instance ; my nephews, whose father was Negro, love raw milk + thrive on it because the genetic coding given to them by their mother, enable their pancreases to keep on producing enzymes necessary for metabolizing raw milk, into adulthood.
Even the commies know “the world belongs to those who show up” … My old man was a cop; He taught me to always “count the house” ( as did operative 007 ) Of the couple-hundred who showed up in Foxboro, asserting their heritage, what percentage were non-white? Q. E. D.
But be it keeping goats, sheep, water buffalo, llamas, yaks, or cows — or African, European, Middle Eastern, South Asian, or South American cultures (and “culture” is a better term than “race”) — dairying and the right to raw milk is universal. 🙂
the parallel between dis-integration of the Roman Republic and the Republic of the united states of America, is un-deniable. The Romans were unstoppable as long as they cleaved to the Laws of the Gens = the founding families, ie. breeding true to type. Rome failed for the same reasons Ham-merica is, today = they got soft and out-sourced the work / using slave labor to work the latifundia, producing food + goods far from the homeland, whilst scions of those ancient houses, wasted themselves in the fleshpots. See the similarity of Roman bread & circuses, with the NFL game, last Sat. at Foxboro? Hell-of-a-game, I hear
As Romans despised their hard-won heritage, citizenship was outright sold, rather than one being qualified by birth. Exactly as Canada / the US do today. George Washington had in mind the Roman experience, when he predicted Americans “would wind up serfs on the very land their forefathers had pioneered”. Abject servitude is next in the Israel-ite cycle. We do ‘come out the other side of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but in order to get back on-side with our God, we MUST separate ourselves from the religions of the other races. Practicing the agricultural laws set out in the Bible, is one of the easiest – most scientific – ways to start doing that. Thanksgiving being one of our ancient festivals