As the inaugural Food Freedom Fest gets under way in Staunton, VA, on Friday, it only seems appropriate that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should show its true colors and prohibit French raw milk cheeses….for having too much good bacteria.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that a number of popular French raw milk cheeses have been prevented from being brought into the U.S. because they have what are suddenly deemed too many harmless E.coli bacteria. These are the sort of bacteria these cheeses have contained for hundreds of years, and part of why they are considered delicacies worldwide. But new FDA standards have suddenly made these good bacteria….forbidden fruit.
The L.A. Times is notable for not only raising its eyebrows over the FDA’s judgment, but even quoting a food safety expert questioning the FDA: “The limits for nontoxigenic E.coli were cut from 100 MPN (most probable number) per gram to 10 MPN. These are bacteria that live in every human gut; they are typically harmless and we coexist happily. The FDA considers them a marker for sanitation: If a cheese shows even modest levels of nontoxigenic E.coli, the facility that produced it must be insufficiently clean. Dennis D’Amico, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut who specialty is dairy microbiology, says this premise is flawed.”
I hate to say this isn’t a surprise, because it isn’t. The FDA has been heading in this direction ever since Dairy Director John Sheehan in 2004 took aim at the 60-day aging rule for cheese that has been in effect since the late 1940s, and has seemed to work well, in that raw milk cheese causes very few illnesses in the food safety scheme of things.
But as we’ve known for a long time, this isn’t about safety. This seems to be about helping giant American food corporations retain market share, first at the expense of small American producers, and now at the expense of French producers….even if it means depriving Americans of important sources of good bacteria. This from the L.A. Times article, quoting an American cheese producer, now worried about whether his company will be able to deal with ever-hardening FDA restrictions:
“People need some microbial diversity in their life. This is going to create people with immune systems that can never handle anything.”
The silver lining here is that the FDA is now targeting gourmet items that many politicians, entertainers, medical professionals, and others in mainstream America highly value. Will that begin to clue people in to finally appreciating the real FDA agenda?
When I see the fear mongering that continues about raw milk products, including raw milk cheese, at university levels, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Here is Ben Chapman, of Barfblog, going after the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, for serving raw milk cheese at a social. As if they are violating “the code.” This is a faculty member, at a large university, basically calling on his peers to stand strong based on a prejudice against age-old cheese production, that rules among a professional class. Very difficult to comprehend, even after all these years of seeing it again and again.
http://barfblog.com/2014/09/unc-public-health-school-serves-raw-milk-cheese-at-welcome-reception/
“Researchers now speak of an impoverished Westernized microbiome and ask whether the time has come to embark on a project of restoration ecology not in the rain forest or on the prairie but right here at home, in the human gut”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Lets just say that this May 2013 New York Times article…has it dead-on!!!
Our raw milk market is the restoration ecology movement initiated by the people. It appears that the conscious people are one hell of a lot smarter than the FDA….that is one fact that I am certain of. Where else on our stores shelves or any where else….can we get or buy “restorative ecologic foods” to recover our “impoverished western biome” . It is the raw milk!!! That is its purpose at all mammalian birth and that has been its purpose for adult humans for tens of thousands of years! Biodiversity and the food to feed this diversity is in every cup of raw milk.
The French had this figuered out for forever in their cheeses.
This is in an article by Andrew Jenner published at Modern Farmer on 8/29/2014. Heres the URL: http://modernfarmer.com/2014/08/brilliant-unusual-twenty-something-hopes-unleash-next-green-revolution/
From Jenner:
Kempf quickly began to suspect that the chemical-drenched farming methods hed been using were causing, not helping, his problems. . . .
His father issued an ultimatum: Stop talking or make some money doing it.
Kempf eschews the phrase sustainable because that would imply theres much worth sustaining about the current state of farming. Instead, he calls his approach regenerative agriculture. He occupies a curious niche, advocating that farmers ditch pesticides while simultaneously critiquing organic farming. Mainstream organic agriculture, says Kempf, is all about negative certification and is preoccupied with what farmers arent allowed to do no GMOs, no chemical pesticides, no this, no that, etc. While that ensures that organic products are largely free of pesticides, it provides no assurance that crops in an organic farmers field are thriving, or that organic produce is healthier than its conventional counterparts, according to Kempf.
He started his company at 18, in 2006, when his father issued the ultimatum Jenner mentions.
If you guessed that John Kempf is from the Amish side of the equation, you guessed right.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
He really needs to spend an afternoon inside of the NIH human genomics lab and realize that it is the balance of good bacteria verses bad that is associated with disease and illness.
I am more and more believing that super clean milk could also be “a challenge of unitended consequesnces”. Milk must have good innoculum in it even when it is very clean. If not…what happens when it gets warmer and tries to culture? Only the dominant will grow. That is what happens in pasteurized milk….that is what could happen with super clean raw milk! I just do not know…no one does. But our research friends that look at this stuff for us, hint that this is a possibility.
All of the national raw milk standards are developed as a favor to processors to restrict raw milk. The less than 10 coliform zero pathogen raw milks that are permitted today refect this regulatory reality. Is it safe….it has shown its self to be pretty safe….but when studied this set of super clean raw milk standards still could use some improvement.
So…is there a lesson here? I think so. Perhaps the safest raw milk is clean and pathogen free but with some added known very good bacteria to direct the fermentation process ( as it ages ) to always provide a good direction and dominance over potential bad guy stranglers that could be in the trace mix of the clean raw milk. That is food safety direction worth really looking at and researching. Do you think the FDA will invest money to do this? Do you think processors will allow any funding for this?
I have a better shot at becoming a NASA astronaut at 53 years old. It will be private investment that will make these studies happen!
“An important fitness factor with applied potential is
the capacity to produce a broad host-range bacteriocin
that allowed Lactobacillus salivarius to outcompete Listeria
monocytogenes”
From a published research paper: http://www.microbialcellfactories.com/content/pdf/1475-2859-13-S1-S8.pdf
What I find most interesting is where the researchers found these beneficial Lactobaccillus bacteria. It ranged from feces, the oral cavity to the vagina to all over the place including beer, French raw cheeses???!! and milk samples. They are found every where. They are critical to our health and they inhibit pathogens!
people for this very reason. Even the science concerning raw milk indicates that the health benefits of drinking raw milk are real.
With so much pleasurable drinking and positive health connections to raw milk it leads one to ask why is there such a never ending opposition to this special food? And why is there also so much opposition to the freedom of choice argument for raw milk?
Sometimes it all seems incomprehensible – except that we bear witness to these phenomena again and again.
Long time readers of TCP blog may recall a doctor offering an explanation for the never ending opposition: Dr. Richard Schwartzman explains the emotional plague.
A Psychiatric Assessment on Why the Regulators Will Never Relent on Raw Milk…
http://thecompletepatient.com/article/2010/february/25/psychiatric-assessment-why-regulators-will-never-relent-raw-milkhow-about
Government vs. Raw Milk
http://orgonomist.blogspot.com/2010/02/government-vs-raw-milk.html
Where ever health, happiness, and pleasure are involved there is opposition and interference. The opposition always seems well rationalized, at least on the surface but the underlying problem is hatred for health, happiness, and pleasure. Dr. Schwartzman further defines and elaborates on the emotional plague problem in his most recent blog.
Exploring the Emotions Behind Genital Cutting
http://orgonomist.blogspot.com/2014/09/exploring-emotions-behind-genital.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FChJh+%28Wilhelm+Reich+Today+–+http%3A%2F%2Forgonomist.blogspot.com%29
Dr. Schwartzman concludes that blog post with this recommendation: It means exposing the work of the plague to the truth. Consistently making people aware of the lies that allow this practice to continue. Also, to keep our focus on educating the public and the upcoming generation of doctors and others who will re-shape existing policies. We have truth on our side, and the children of the future will be the beneficiaries of our efforts.
The same approach can be applied to dealing with plague opposition to raw milk. So teach, teach, teach, the truth.
The FDA’s assault on French cheeses is even beginning to irritate its allies in medicine. This from Medical Daily: “So why is the FDA making such a big deal about nontoxigenic bacteria in nice cheeses? By the FDAs logic, if the nontoxigenic E. coli reach a certain level in cheese, that must be a sign of dirtiness at the facility, and must therefore mean all their products are unsafe. Though it might not make sense, the FDA is sticking to its decision.”
http://www.medicaldaily.com/fda-bans-roquefort-other-french-cheeses-due-bacteria-levels-though-theyre-virtually-301638
I found Bean’s book especially interesting because reading it in the mid 90s, I was going thru a very similar process, but it was triggered by meditation, not by a physical therapy. “Meditation” has many meanings today but there is a very simple powerful natural method I discovered, which relates to an article David wrote here a while back about “mindfulness”.
Meditation started out for me as very relaxing, initially, but then progressed to where deep sadness and fear, followed by intense crying, would come. I always had a sense something very good was happening, where stored pain was being cleansed from my system. Fortunately I lived alone so people didn’t come rushing into the room crying, “My God, what’s wrong”, trying to shut down the process.
After the crying I would often feel and hear bones “adjust” in my spine and neck, as patterns were removed from my posture. It was hard to believe how much crying I needed to do, and Bean’s book helped me understand this was not unusual. I had no interest in using any kind of physical therapist, but I think what would have sped up the process would be if you know someone where you each give the other a good vigorous massage once a week. Also light stretching daily, and there are some simple two person (“chiropractic”) stretches that can be learned that really help get the joints unlocked and the life force (orgone aka chi) flowing.
I knew a Native American healer who had a doctorate in Psychology, and he had this mug that said, “It’s never too late to have a good childhood.”
He had been put there after being prosecuted by the FDA. Part of the ruling against him was that all copies of his books were to be burned … in America! in 1954!… a few years after we’d gone to war, supposedly, in order to subdue people = the Third Reich = for perpetrating fascism upon Germany. Reich called Nazi-ism “black fascism” and what he saw happening to America – “red fascism”
Reich was the genius who pioneered much of what is now accepted as alternative healing practices.
an excellent treatment of the raw milk issue, in light of the work of Wm Reich, is found on the Bovine WordPress website : URL
< http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/u-s-psychiatrist-contends-that-the-same-emotional-plague-that-led-to-wilhelm-reichs-imprisonment-in-1957-is-behind-official-opposition-to-raw-milk-today/ >
Rest in Peace until Judgment Day, Wilhelm Reich
Reich is a mixed bag, but nevertheless, the FDA did what it set out to do when they destroyed him, literally. The FDA even in 1954 was up to their own standards of effectively destoying whatever they were afraid of. They say something doesn’t exist but then they ban it because it might be a threat? Ah well, I guess it makes sense to the doods at the FDA and beyond.
http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Wilhelm-Reich-Mainstream-Defamatory/dp/0980231671#
There is certainly a difference between NOT being a sexual prude and teaching children about the facts of life with demonstrations . . . we all understand what sex is about at some point in our lives, the trick is not to misunderstand it. The way today’s society turned out, I’d say we kinda sorta overdid part of the education (you know, the nonchalant or simplistic part) or else we did it all wrong by letting the churchs and schools teach something to children that only parents should be doing.