A few weeks ago, the United Kingdoms Food Standards Agency came out with an eye-opening report on raw milk. This agency, the UKs equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged and accepted, at least on a minimal basis, the reality of raw milk, including the following:
- The FSA sought out the opinions of more than 100 raw milk consumers via an innovative consultation event on options for controls for RDM (raw drinking milk). The overarching conclusion from the event is that there is an appetite among producers and current RDM consumers for increased consumer access to RDM .
- The FSA said it was open to allowing raw milk vending machines in the UK. Vending machines for RDM are used across many countries in the EU and producers and consumers have suggested that more flexible rules to allow vending machines placed in retail outlets would allow wider, but still controlled access to RDM.
- It concluded that consumers and producers hold a strong view .that there should be wider accessibility to RDM but this should still be managed and controlled. The FSA report, coming on the heels of renewed openness to raw milk by New Zealand (including an online survey of raw milk consumers) has prompted Mark McAfee, the founder and director of the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI), to try to capitalize on the international warming trend (as it were) on raw milk. In a letter to John Sheehan, the FDAs dairy regulation head, he proposed, a meeting to create and establish an investigational pilot project that would narrowly permit interstate commerce of raw milk for human consumption under FDA supervision, specific standards, testing and control.
McAfee argued in the letter that the FDA should engage in a dialog on raw milk in the interests of public safety. The FDA does not need to like raw milk to regulate it or set fair standards for it. The current FDA policy of suppressing raw milk does not work. In fact, it appears to excite and stimulate markets .as raw milk is being pushed underground by the FDA which makes it less safe.
It is difficult to imagine the FDA engaging in a dialog with McAfee, or anyone proposing a shift in its ideological opposition to raw milk. As McAfee points out in a comment following my previous post, the FDA has ignored his citizens petitions of the last few years, seeking a lifting of the ban on interstate sales of raw milk–that despite its obligation to respond to citizens petitions within six months. He has threatened to seek a court order requiring the FDA to act on the most recent petition, filed a year ago.
The only sliver of hope I can see is some kind of recognition within the FDA that it is not only losing the battle to scare people away from raw milk, but that it is becoming ever more isolated in a world in which raw milk is becoming ever more popular, and regulators in other countries are coming to accept the raw milk reality.
Last week when I went head to head with the FDA agent that had been sent to the annual Fresno Food Expo to sit at the very lonely FDA booth to advice Food Expo consumers not to drink OPDC raw milk…I realized that the agent was just a normal human being doing her job. Her feelings, her opinions, her lack of detail knowledge, her just following the the company line…all very American and all very expected. But what I did not expect was the warming and receptive conversation that transitioned after a few minutes of getting the facts straight. The FDA is filled with very good people that are just following orders and believe that they are acting for the protection of consumers. If they do not get the needed facts…they just stay uninformed and ignorant. It is our job to educate the FDA about raw milk food safety. It is a reality that the FDA intentionally suppresses and bars from entry any positive raw milk message.
The extremely loud crash of the closing of 12 of Deans Foods pasteurized milk plants is changing the lock on the FDA door. I am knocking on this door and if I am right…I find it slightly open and the time just might be right. I am concerned with the FDA policy of secrecy and closed door operations. Who will answer the door?? Their policies say…never answer the door.
I hope progress and openness can prevail. If not….at least I tried and we can tell the judge that we did our best to open the door and go at least half way over the raw milk bridge of peace…..or perhaps a better parallel….we tried to start a detente at the CFR 1240.61 check point Charlie in our attempt to tear down that unjustified and unjust FDA erected raw milk Berlin Wall that separates farmers from those that they feed.
http://www.riams.org/2014/07/24/fsa-board-asks-for-more-evidence-on-raw-milk-sales/
http://www.food.gov.uk/news-updates/news/2014/jul/rawmilk#.U9HqNPmSySo
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/latest-news/fsa-board-defers-decision-on-expanding-raw-milk-sales/66280.article
The FSA is now also waiting for the results of an EU review due in December which may be a concern. The minutes of the review meetings give little away – http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/biohazwgs/docs/rawdrinkingmilk.pdf
But an earlier working group gives us a hint of the research being undertaken http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/doc/369e.pdf
Pages 6,7 & 8 involve raw milk.
I am a little concerned however, that Erica Von Mutius and others from Basel Switzerland that have studied raw milk deeply and broadly have not been quoted in this EU raw milk discussion. Erica discovered that raw milk for some unknown reason reduces allergies and asthma. This raw milk virtue was not mentioned in the EU discussion. The only raw milk value that was mentioned was the taste value. Although important, this is not the sole or most important consideration for raw milk. Non allergen and being easily digested are the more important and most widely experienced consumer values for raw milk.
I am a bit perplexed by the very high rate of pathogen detection, yet very low rate of apparent illness from raw milk vending machines in the EU. If CA raw milk had that kind of pathogen detection rate….I can assure you that raw milk would quickly be banned and evolve from legal status to illegal. Yet…it appears that illnesses are rare. Perhaps Aagonus was right. Low levels of pathogens provide immunity. Dare I speak his name or quote his thoughts. I do not advocate pathogens in raw milk…to be clear, however, it appears that illness from exposure to salmonella at levels ( at the 3 % level ) of vending machine raw milk is not causing illness. It also tells me the EU has a distance to go before it can achieve the standards that are being used in America by RAWMI. The EU standards would fail miserably in the USA when compared to verified test data here in the USA by Listed RAWMI producers.
I am disgusted by the recent response that Isreal has unleashed against the children of Gaza. I do not agree with the Hamas position or methods and I do not agree with any extreme group that uses death to put its agenda forward.
To make this a very American story….think of Gaza and its Hamas like a bank robber or any other common criminal that has taken over a bank and holds hostages. Would any police SWAT team simply blow up the entire bank if the bank robbers held 100 hostages and most of them children or would a SWAT team blow up an entire hospital to get one crazy person with a rocket launcher on the sixth floor. Of course not. But that is exactly what Isreal is doing and that is exactly what America is supporting. My tax dollars are now resupplying Isreali tanks and planes with more bombs. That is right… America gifts Isreal more than $3 billion of our hard earned cash every year. The news just reported that we are now adding additional munitions to Isreal to support their leveling of Gaza…they call it “mowing the grass”.
Where else in the world is the killing of hundreds of innocent children and their mothers tolerated!!!! Right here in America…we support it and we pay for it. Hamas may be a terrorist organization….but they are of our own making. When a people are starved, deprived of trade, deprived of rights, bombed at will, choked off from the rest of the world…then they will do terrible things like send inneffective rockets toward the agressor. Doing more terrible things to them just makes them more hardened and more steadfast and resolved in their mission to kill as many Isrealis as possible. When your whole family is dead….you no longer give a damn about morals, ethics or anything human….you want bloody revenge. Adding more death and pain to Hamas makes it even worse!!! and perhaps makes their case even more compelling when they recruit. That is precisely what American and Isreali policy and actions have done.
I am sick….I am sick that our president is a coward and refuses to say what he really thinks and feels and instead plays politics to save his ass politically. In Obamas heart he hates what Isreal is doing….but he is a coward by following politics as usual under the intense heat of the Isreali political sector and says and does the politically correct thing instead of truly being a leader and stopping and fixing the problem. As long as we write the checks…Isreal and the “100 childrens eyes for an eye” current dead end policies will continue. We are the problem…right here in America.
I have blood on my hands….because America is mine. As an American….please accept my deepest humanitarian apologies to the children and families of Gaza. I cry with you….I am so very sorry.
Jeneraytions, I had been aware of the delay at FSA in deciding on the report I quoted from. To me, what was most important about the report was the interest in and sensitivity toward what raw milk drinkers wanted. The FSA actually invited people to comment, and seemed to take those comments seriously. That represents a big change in attitude from FDA-style corporate-directed autocracy. The FSA report also said its change in attitude was driven by an absence of illnesses from raw milk in recent years. An important shift is definitely under way.
I wasn’t aware of the EU review and the comments on raw vs pasteurized milk, but what I see there is mostly the old observation that pasteurization kills off pathogens. There is also concern that raw milk sold via vending machines has been shown to harbor pathogens. This could be a prelude to stricter standards for milk sold via vending machines.
The EU has a history of tolerance as well as appreciation for raw dairy products, so hopefully tradition will hold fast there.
Maybe the EU doesn’t have the great fears of “pathogens” that the US powers-that-be has? One can only hope.
The original consultation document also at the bottom of the above link looks at the allergy studies and has footer links to lots of other studies as well. It also looks at the Italian vending machine data, and this news item sums it up http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/italys-experience-with-liberalizing-raw-milk-sales-cant-put-the-genie-back-in-the-bottle/#.U9oTPfmSySo .
The more I read the more I am getting nervous about what the EU might do, and despite Britains openess what pressure might be bought to bare on them by the December EU findings?
I think it was chaney who made a statement that the innocents killed were nothing more than collateral damage….. (IMHO another who has no regard for life, other than his own)
Anyone who enters an establishment with intent to rob and has weapons, you can bet that they intend to use the weapon to obtain their goal. One of the first lessons on gun use, never point it at someone unless you intend to kill them. They were pointing the guns at the tellers heads. They were heavily armed for a “simple” bank robbery. They shot one of the bank tellers in the SUV and dumped her from the car @14 blocks from the bank. http://www.lawofficer.com/article/news/police-find-similarities-stock
Given they were gang members, it is highly unlikely those hostages would have been released other than dead, and you can be sure they would have raped and tortured them before killing them. Could the cops have handled it differently? Possibly, hindsight is always better than foresight.
2 P.M. – Three armed men enter a Bank of the West branch in Hammer Lane and Thornton Road in north Stockton, Cali.
2:11 p.m. – A bank guard alerts police before being restrained
2:12 p.m. – Police arrive on the scene
2:16 p.m. – The thieves make off with three hostages in a bank employees green SUV. They make it 14 blocks before shooting one.
2:28 p.m. – The thieves pull off the highway in an attempt to ambush pursuing officers but are foiled when authorities spot them
3:16 p.m. – They shoot the second hostage
3:18 p.m. – Police are able to shoot out the SUV’s tires bringing it to a halt in the middle of an intersection
3:20 – The thieves exit the SUV using hostage Misty Holt-Singh as a human shield. She’s killed in the crossfire along with two of the thieves.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695218/3-dead-California-bank-robbery-gunbattle.html#ixzz392OgAH59
If we can agree that the FDA is an entity that has been created by Congress then we could have a very interesting conversation; one that I believe could single-handedly redirect the course of the “raw milk controversy” out of the arena of the government whenever and wherever the issue is on free American soil that is beyond the proprietary jurisdiction of the United States government. If we want to fully address issues about the Law (as I continually see presented here) then it’s imperative that we come back to obtaining a foundational understanding of what the four-fold written Organic Law says and especially regarding jurisdiction. Otherwise we will be endlessly chasing the tail of a legal myth.
The FDA has absolutely no business within any of the fifty States of the Union telling any “free inhabitant” anything at all (unless that individual is a federal criminal)! The only reason any FDA “agent” is tolerated by any free American inhabitant is because of ignorance. It only underscores the need “to educate” however it is the American people who first need to be “educated” about what a real “American”/free inhabitant is. Something that is not taught in any of our government school systems.
I’m repeating this term “free-inhabitant” because it is probably the most “hidden” (intentionally ignored) phrase in all four of our Organic Laws. It’s virtually hidden because I now see that it is the most potent phrase next to “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. Only the “free-inhabitant” knows that they have not surrendered any of their natural-born Rights to be free from all government whatsoever – just as the American people declared themselves to be with “The Declaration of Independence-1776”. The “free inhabitant” is a political status that was fully recognized in the second Organic Law: the “Articles of Confederation -1777” (see Article IV) a part of American Law that continues to be acknowledged in the United States Code today!
The reason knowing the Organic Laws is “imperative” is because government has Lawful limits that are well-defined in the four Organic Laws. If you disregard understanding the four Organic Laws you disregard the clearly defined written limits of government’s jurisdiction to your detriment. The Law that limits jurisdiction can not be understood by reference to the “Constitution” alone. This “Constitution” is actually only part of the whole complete picture, a picture that is dependent upon the other three Organic Laws that hold the greater context under which this fourth Organic Law came into existence – as it extended out (but not separate from) of the third Organic Law (the “Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest Territorial Government”) which was formed by the pre-existing “Confederation” (once it had the proprietary land base to exercise its jurisdiction) – a form of government for government-owned territory – the only kind of government that has continued and one that was not replaced by the “revision” authorized by the Congress and subsequently referred to simply as “The Constitution” (aka: “the Constitution of September 17th, 1787”).
However any can say whatever they want about or to any federal agent about anything! But without the four-fold Organic Law knowledge and the understanding of the governmental proprietary limits I do not expect that there will be any “redirecting” as a result of any of that talk. In fact it appears that if Mark had his way he would deliver all the free-inhabitant private business into the hands of the Federal Government!
I hope I’m wrong about that! Better yet, I would love to see Mark become a student of the four Organic Laws!
Another take on the UK’s enlightened FSA….quotes Mark McAfee, as well. Has the sounds of mass media articles done in the U.S., except this one has a happier and more positive “ending.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707905/The-conspiracy-stop-drinking-real-milk-Unpasteurised-milk-tastier-AND-healthier-say-devotees-So-banned-shops-long.html
https://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/the-democratization-of-agriculture/#comments
If you think that fact, not argument, rules intelligent thinking, consider an example. For nearly 2000 years, educated people in many Western cultures believed that bloodlettingdeliberately causing a sick person to lose bloodwas the most effective treatment for a variety of illnesses. The fact that bloodletting is beneficial to human health was not widely questioned until the 1800?s, and some physicians continued to recommend bloodletting as late as the 1920?s. We have come to accept a different set of facts now because some people began to doubt the effectiveness of bloodletting; these people argued against it and provided convincing evidence. Human knowledge grows out of such differences of opinion, and scholars like your instructors spend their lives engaged in debate over what may be counted as true, real, or right in their fields. In their courses, they want you to engage in similar kinds of critical thinking and debate.
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/argument/
This is awesome stuff. More to come very soon on this with Dr. Oz.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152566717071181&id=171911861180
http://www.4029tv.com/news/arkansas/Only-On-40-29-Dr-Oz-weighs-in-on-raw-milk-risks/22029618#!btiK6F
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/addictive-milk-what-you-should-know-pt-1
http://www.projectcensored.org/dairy-industry-pushes-aspartame-sweetened-products/
China was the American farmer’s best friend. The world’s most populous nation had so many pigs and chickens to feed, it became one of the top importers of U.S. corn and soybeans almost overnight.
China also developed a big appetite for another corn-derived animal feed called “dried distillers grains with solubles,” or DDGS, a byproduct of ethanol production.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/31/336833095/when-china-spurns-gmo-corn-imports-american-farmers-lose-billions?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
How American Food Companies Go GMO-Free In A GMO World
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/02/04/269479079/how-american-food-companies-go-gmo-free-in-a-gmo-world
https://www.emlab.com/s/sampling/env-report-05-2010.html
Listeria is a type of bacteria found in soil, water, and sometimes on plants.
http://www.cdc.gov/pregnancy/infections-listeria.html
A number of pathogens are commonly associated with persistent diarrhea in children, but in children without diarrhea the pathogens are found with similar frequencies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709113/
The second link that you posted above regarding pregnancy and listeria mistates the CDC data. I truly wish I had the funds to drag the CDC into federal court and force the agency to accurately state the facts. It is not true that listeria is related to raw milk….even our dear friends at UC Davis ( that wish that I do not use their names ) state that “listeria illness is related to processed milk and not raw milk!”.
It is a damn shame that our CDC, one of the premier science organizations of the world can not find the ethical fortitude to tell the truth or state the facts as they are. Instead they twist data, suppress data, ignor new data, keep the doors closed tightly, refusing to be honest.
The one line that really disappointed me was the CDC claim that only pasteurized milk is safe from listeria, when only pasteurized milk and cheeses have killed consumers. That’s right, by my count 9 deaths between Roos cheese, Craven brothers and Whitteir Farms. All pasteurized dairy products…all killed consumers and caused a miscarriage as well. There is not one case of USA produced raw milk in the CDC database that has caused illness from listeria. Not one.
Yet…the CDC persists in this bad information campaign. Truly an illness of ethical nature and one that is cultural and deep. Anyone have $100,000 that we can give Johnathan Emord. He is the only lawyer that that i know of that could possibly force them to look in the mirror and rub this in their face.
It really pisses me off, that my tax dollars go to pay for this kind of garbage organization when with a little shift of culture the CDC could truly be great.
This is the kind of garbage that the CDC, FDA and state agencies use to manipulate the media. Listeria inocua, listeria ivanovia are both benign and are not human pathogens!!!! But….the horrible head lines read listeria. Totally playing on public ignorance.
An intense google search finds all sorts of FDA and CDC claims of illness by RAWMILK and listeria….but all of the links all go to some none factual warning with no data or incident.
In my opinion listeria M. Is the greatest pasteurized milk skeleton rotting in the FDA and or the cdc closet. Post pasteurized milk contamination by listeria absolutely kills and according to a study posted here last month about increased risk by increased heat in pasteurization….says that 18 people per year die from pasteurized milk and listeria prior to increased pasteurized milk temps protocols being initiated ? Where did that come from…yet it was quoted by PhD researchers. Is there also a huge coverup of pasteurized milk deaths also?? That could be grounds for criminal investigations at the FDA and CDC.
But – – it also doesn’t come as any great shock that now the SD Ag (dairy and egg board) folks are after the east side of the State. They’ve effectively shut down the western part of the State, as far as raw milk businesses/sales because of their ridiculous requirements so now they’re busy looking for reasons to do the same in the eastern half.
I was interested in a cowshare but trying to get information on what those requirements are is like pulling teeth. No one seems to understand my question, no matter how plainly I state it. Such as, if a rancher is already running his own cattle (not dairy cattle though) would he need a license to board and milk my one cow? I would own the cow and pay for everything regarding the cow. I got an answer from the realmilk folks but I’m not sure they grasped exactly what it was I was asking because they (and Pete Kennedy) referred to it as a one cow dairy. I’m not sure that description is exactly what I would call it, since the cow belongs to me, not the rancher. What a confusing mess.
Would be nice if these “experts” on food safety made mention, before or after all their fear-mongering verbiage about how “listeria can kill,” that there hasn’t been a single documented case of illness from listeria monocytogenes in raw milk in the U.S. in at least a decade. Guess they figure if you keep repeating a lie often enough….