The deaths keep coming from pasteurized dairy products. In 2007, it was three deaths (and a miscarriage) from tainted pasteurized milk in Massachusetts. Last year, it was two deaths, one in Wisconsin and another in Delaware (along with at least one miscarriage), from bad pasteurized cheese. And this year, three deaths from contaminated pasteurized-milk ice cream.
This doesnt capture all the suffering of children and adults sickened, some seriouslyall from listeria.
Of course, you dont hear much about these deaths (or the illnesses) from public health regulators, because the incidents are played down publicly, and their reports never ever say the milk in question was pasteurized. Its just milk or cheese or ice cream.
Even the government reports about the pasteurized-milk deaths are curiously written so you have to read them very carefully to even know people died. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control report on the Crave Bros. Wisconsin pasteurized cheese outbreak last year: A total of six persons infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes were reported from five states .All six ill persons were hospitalized. One death was reported in Minnesota. In addition, one illness in a pregnant woman resulted in a miscarriage. Seems they forgot to say, after noting the hospitalizations, And by the way
You know that if it had been raw milk that killed people, the reports would have been written much differently. The deaths would have been headlined and highlighted. There would have been fear and horror expressed, not only in the official reports, but in the media reports on the official reports. There would have been graphic articles about the people who died, the terrible waste, the what-could-have-beens about the mother who lost a baby.
I wrote about this double standard last year.
But the double standard doesnt just apply to the reporting of outbreaks. It applies to the official aftermath.
Theres a report out of Oklahoma, home of a maker of bad ice cream earlier this year (the ice cream that killed two people), reporting that the regulators cant figure out what made the ice cream bad. The manufacturing plant was dong a great job, says one report, and had no history of safety violations.
But, the article suggests, the investigation will continue, because tracking down the sources of listeria that invades pasteurized-milk products can be very tricky. Yes, much trickier than any pathogens in raw milk.
Can you imagine an official, all-out, lets-get-to-the-bottom-of-this, investigation to figure out the cause of illnesses from raw milk? With the idea of fixing things so it doesnt happen again?
In the end, you have to wonder: five deaths in two years from pasteurized dairy products, plus some number of miscarriages. Is it time for the public to be warned about the dangers of pasteurized products? Maybe warning labels on pasteurized products, stating something like this: This product has been pasteurized to kill dangerous bacteria. However, this processing doesnt always work as expected. Pasteurized dairy products have been associated with forms of listeria that can cause serious illness and death in children and people with compromised immune systems, and miscarriages in pregnant women.
Doesnt the public deserve more than official pretending that no problem exists?
Outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes Infections Associated with Pasteurized Milk from a Local Dairy Massachusetts, 2007
five cases were identified, and three deaths occurred
This outbreak illustrates the potential for contamination of fluid milk products after pasteurization and the difficulty in detecting outbreaks of L. monocytogenes infections.
Physical facility design, product flow, and maintenance procedures likely contributed to contamination of finished product in this outbreak. How the pasteurized milk products became contaminated is unclear, but because records indicate that pasteurization methods at the dairy were adequate, and given the expectation that pasteurization kills Listeria organisms, contamination of the product likely occurred after pasteurization.
Especially note: pasteurization methods at the dairy were adequate
When you come down to it, most milk is highly processed. Besides being pasteurized, it’s fractionated and homogenized. Flavorings, Vitamin D, and other chemicals are added. It’s shipped all around the country. At each step, contamination is a risk. Even more reason for a warning, it seems.
Physical facility is the ultimate reality so deal with it, see you there
We have a very serious cover up and an even more serious political reality problem here in the USA. When our food safety organizations become extremely biased corporate protectors & political puppets….people die !! Thank you David for writing about this.
I really do not think we can change this paradigm with out suing individual regulators ( making them personally responsible for failure to warn about potential fatal risks from pasteurized products ) and bringing these facts to the judicial and public arena.
When I spoke with Pat Kennely at CA DPH and he told me that raw milk and its warnings could be compared to smoking cigarets…I nearly choked. When the dogma is this wrong and this deep…change is going to look a little more like a “judicial wake the hell up ” revolution than a nice evolutionary transition.
First of all, it says RECORDS indicate. Does that mean there was no actual physical inspection done? Second, as Dr. Heckman notes – “adequate”. What does “adequate” mean, exactly? Is it the same adequate for pasteurized and raw milk both? And third, whoever did the inspection of the “records” must not know about listeria and pasteurization being a problem.
My guess would be some parvenu flunkie did a records check from the comfort and safety of his desk, not physical visitation of the facility and likely has no clue what the term adequate means, even in the merest terms. Not to mention the lack of understanding about listeria or probably any other kind of *bacteria*. So they conclude it was contaminated AFTER their famous pasteurization process? Oh, well, that’s comforting information for them to use, but I would bet it wasn’t very comforting to the families affected. But it does help the authorities slide by unscathed.
If raw milk products have to be labeled, so should pasteurized products. That label should include the numbers of illnesses and deaths attributed to each product using an actuarial, statistical table, not some made-up numbers justified by the CDC based on their $$ intake by BigDairy/BiGAG.
But that’s just me . . .
Exactly, and I said something similar about it years ago. Think about the consolidation in pretty much every sector of the Ag/food industry (I’m including the farmers, and processors). The bigger everything becomes, the more it has to move around the country, and the more it is handled, the more chances of it becoming contaminated, which increases the risks for those who consume it. But, try to get that thought into the heads of these bozo regulators, inspectors, or whoever they are. It just doesn’t register. Instead of infecting a small number of people, it becomes widespread. Then again, maybe this is their intentions (I’m waiting for someone to call this a conspiracy theory, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what’s actually going on). Who was it that talked about the “sickness industry”? It’s kind of like, “See this hand?” (while I preform my magic trick with the other, because you aren’t looking at that one).
I worked in retail meat, and just about on a monthly basis, there was some sort of recall list to check (if it was available for the whole department to see). I only remember one item that was actually on recall, and it had nothing to do with any harmful bacteria/pathogens. Somebody had thrown metal staples into a food product. I even saw the list for pre-packaged lunch meats that had tested positive for listeria. Most of them were in the form of boxed lunches, like how the Oscar Mayer Lunchables are packaged.
Then there was the usual e. coli recall for ground beef. When I was there, most of the ground beef came in ten pound sticks which was coarse ground. It went through the grinder onto trays to be wrapped. Before I quit, pre-packaged ground beef was coming in. We did grind trimmings, but it was for regular ground beef (higher percentage of fat), and ground chuck. Oh, and a grinder log had to be filled out–species, time, date, lot numbers–unless it was from trimmings, cleaned between each species and kind of grind (regular ground beef, chuck, round, sirloin), etc. They tried to get away from grinding any pork, or turkey, and if they were ground, it had to be after beef. If you expected everyone to follow those procedures correctly, guess again. It was common to just fill out the log without actually doing things the way they were supposed to be done, and that include temperature logs. SOP from the department head was, just fill in the logs. If you made up temperature numbers, or what order you ground the meat, no big deal, who’s gonna know? You also weren’t *required* to physically check the temps.
You know, it’s interesting that pasteurized milk seems particularly susceptible to serious contamination by listeria, yet no problems with E.coli O157:H7 (as Mary McGonigle Martin pointed out). Yet raw milk seems particularly susceptible to serious contamination by E.coli O157:H7, yet not a single illness from listeria in at least a decade. Must be more than coincidence.
http://rawmilkconsumer.ca/public/pasteurized-milk-jug-warning-ccrmag.jpg
“a statement summarizes the most important aspects or gives a roughly accurate account, of a more complex situation.” Like a chicken that won’t hatch or dog that barks at everything,
Shelly, guess I wasn’t the first to think of the idea of a warning label. That is actually reassuring. Thanks.
Its seems that listeria is particularly keen to take up residence on surfaces in processing areas, and it can be very difficult to get rid of once that happens. Most of the suggested managment strategies focus on cleaning processing surfaces, keeping them clean, and not re-contaminating with soil. The fact that raw milk is by nature very minimally processed likely accounts for minimal listeria. That’s my best-guess hypothesis, and I’m sure there is more to it.
E coli 0157 is another story, and requires different management if there is no plan to pasteurize. For all the ways that pasteurization alters milk negatively, it does seem to do the job of killing STEC. Avoiding fecal contamination and creating conditions on the farm to decrease STEC prevelance are key to producing safe raw milk.
excreting L. monocytogenes in their stools at any given time.
Listeria can also proliferate asymptomatically in the vagina and uterus, and if and when a pregnant woman becomes symptomatic, which could be several months later, then this could be a possible explanation as to why pregnant women account for 30% of all complications.
Where and when individuals acquire L. monocytogenes is anyones guess since the bacteria are widely distributed in nature and can be regularly found in water and soil etc.
The tendency to focus on listeria in raw milk rather then pasteurized milk is an overt, gross distortion of the truth and to do so based on a total illness incidence rate of .00049% of the North American Population is absurd.
Secondly, listeria grows quite well under refrigeration temps.
That’s just for starters. Pasteurization plants try to “sterile everything”. I had a Cdfa dairy inspector tell me once that i would not find listeria in our creamery because we did not use quarts and we bottled kefir with aggressive bacteria cultures. In all my 15 years… Never found listeria in our drains or plant!!
To quote a phd from UC Davis, listeria is associated with pasteurized products not raw dairy. Duh!!!
http://www.vagalume.com.br/aimee-mann/love-in-a-vacuum.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Snakes
Look at the pics and scan the band names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_%27n%27_Roll_Rumble#History_of_the_Rumble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Snakes#/media/File:YoungSnakesRat.jpg
http://www.wncn.com/story/28714109/cleaning-with-bleach-at-home-linked-to-some-childhood-illnesses
And the obsessive foolish nonsenses in the following article is indicative of the results researchers observed in the above article.
Germ warfare: Kitchens can harbor hidden bacteria
http://www.chieftain.com/life/3284409-120/yakas-gaskets-compartments-minutes
My recommendations, Clean with mild soap and water, leave the disinfectants on the store shelves where they dont belong, use wooden cutting boards and dont worry about the microbes that are lurking in your clean to the eye kitchen.
Mark, with respect to the latest listeria incident in Washington state at Spanish Sonrise Dairy, the farmer mentioned that they had recently started using a disinfectant that was supposed to eliminate listeria. The article came up on a news alert for raw milk and I never saved it unfortunately.
Are you familiar with this product? Ill be damned if I can find it online nor can I find the article where I read the farmers comment.
The farmers statement was in an article very similar to this one.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/04/washington-dairy-recalls-raw-milk-and-cream-after-positive-listeria-test/#.VTPcP0tFuTA
I believe the comment was made by the owner of the Richard Dirie farm in NY. This farm was this past week experiencing a recurrence of positive Listeria testing (after one in Oct 2014 I believe). The quote I saw did not name the sanitizer.
I don’t think one should underestimate the resilience of Listeria in a food processing/distribution environment, as this thread seems to be suggesting.
John
http://thweb.ot.atl.publicus.com/article/20150415/NEWS/150419542/101143/NEWS
Richard Dirie states, No one really has a definite answer of where to look, he said. The only thing is we started using this sanitizing product used to kill listeria. We hope that will fix the problem.
Ok then why the sensationalism?
I don’t think one should ever underestimate the resilience of everyman that resists oppression in any form especially the kind propagated by politics and money. We will survive because we don’t really need you.
In Gene’s Weekly Posts on April 1, 2015 at 9:56 am
https://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/the-happiest-farmers/#comments
This is just my guess.
Finally,… Claravale has spoken. http://claravaledairy.com/wheres_the_milk.html
They have asked for help. It appears that there is a labor issue behind the persistent campylobacter pathogen management issue. They do report that campy has persisted in spite of being super clean. This is exactly what happened to Edwin two years ago. With the help of Penn State PHD researchers Edwin discovered a Campy Mastitis cow. When she was discovered the problem went away. OPDC was recalled in May of 2012 when some cream came up positive for campy, even though the milk that the cream came from was negative….that was really weird. What was even weirder was that the milk and cream where both extremely clean at less than 10 coliforms. The cream was actually less than 1 coliform!!
Campy does not play by the normal bacteria rules.
OPDC is on the watch for the exact same thing. We do not test for Campy on our Test & Hold because it is very tough to catch and we do not consider it a pathogen of great potential for severe illness like ecoli 0157h7.
Campy is everywhere!!
Campy dies in acid environments ( the stomach )
Campy dies in salty environment ( cheese and salted butter)
Campy dies after exposure to oxygen ( the butter churn or airspace in the top of bottles )
Campy dies with just plain waiting ( in 24-36 hours it dies ). It does not persist very long in raw milk.
Campy is reported as the cause of between 2 & 8 million cases of diarrhea every year in the USA. 98% of all retail chicken tests positive for campy. After you have campy one time….you are immune for life!! Better than vaccination for sure!!
Yet…one little campy in one raw milk sample and the producer is shut down ( state regs )!!
Our 3rd party testing lab just confirmed that they can get a 1-2 day campy test using PCR BAX. This is much shorter than the state tests or the USDA approved older tests that take at least 5 days. Not cheap but it is now AOAC approved and available.
OPDC is adding campy to our daily rapid test program starting this week. I do not want to be added to the Claravale shut down list because of not knowing something. I hate surprises.
Am I paranoid??? Yes…I am paranoid. I trust nothing ( especially the state lab ) and assume nothing. I really feel that we have ecoli 0157H7 pathogens nailed down with our PCR BAX testing on milk filters with Test & Hold….we are now adding Campy to that protocol just because.
I do not want to share the situation with Claravale.
You took the words right out of my mouth with your comment, QUAT sets up conditions that favor Listeria even though it is intended to kill it. Indeed these noxious antiseptic, sterilizing agents disrupt raw milks living food status. How can we claim raw milk and its products as organic and probiotic if there are trace amounts of these disruptive toxins in it?
And your perceptive comment that, Campy does not play by the normal bacteria rules, is indicative of a human error in thinking, that microbes play by a hard and fast set of rules!
Fortunately that is beginning to change in the scientific community and the public. Not so much so however, among bureaucrats and what appears to be an ever-present nagging, unbending and indoctrinated public.
In truth, microbes are extremely resilient and the only rule they know is survival. As we keep trying to change the rules they in turn adapt and establish their own set of rules and at times it would appear, with a vengeance.
Hence, our great challenge. Our regulatory structure is based on 100 years of the “germ” theory….when that is not the game plan of the true bacterial life structure. Bacteria live under a different set of rules. Rules of evolution or die. They evolve. They change…they share DNA, they resist death, they hide out in bio films. They want to live. If they died easily, life on earth would have not persisted and would have died off long ago.
Now the change, how do we feed ourselves while satisfying the current regulatory construct while at the same time dealing with the true biology of the bacterial world.
We have only just begun….but we have begun. I my humble opionion, the solution is this:
Build a raw milk market so powerful, with dollar voting so profound, that the consumers own experience matches with the NIH funded Biome project science….( currently suppressed information ), while at the same time, markets fail for pasteurized milk with even more deaths from pasteurized milk as predicted by Cornell and Dr. Nicole Martin and her fellow researchers.
The truth will become self evident…clearly self evident. Meanwhile, we will endure using “rapid testing” and conditions management as best we can.
While I think your question might be rhetorical, I’d like to answer.
No.
I estimate that every day in the USA + Canada there might be as many as a billion dietary exposures to pasteurized dairy products (and these exposures are largely safe and uneventful). Sorry, but to me these are low (microbial) risk products that do not require warning labels.
John
PS I think controlling microbial growth/death is totally ingrained in the way modern humans live (examples: we cook, we pickle, we can/bottle, we dry, we refrigerate, we freeze, we cure, we bathe……all (in part) to reduce microbial spoilage/effects).
Well…perhaps a new warning that sits beside the prop 65 warning that says:
…no food in this store is 100% safe and no guarantees of zero risk can be assured.
Etymology is the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. Apply that to food it’s tasty.
All of the above that you mentioned are valid forms of food preservations for foods that have had their life cycle terminated and lack the self-preserving qualities necessary to keep them from going rotten. Where society has really gone astray however and where the greatest harm results is in the excessive and abusive use of toxic antimicrobials in order to control microbial growth.
Raw milk on the other hand is a living probiotic food that has the necessary self-preserving qualities that allow it to last indefinitely without the above-mentioned interventions, yet still remain safe and palatable to consume. Destroying this ability via pasteurization terminates its life cycle and therefore its self-preserving life giving probiotic traits.
ref.: 1. Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (ppnf.org); 2. wikipedia entry on Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.
Of course this was a study with cats.
There was much, much more to Pottenger than this study. We need people like him.
I think Pottenger was an M.D. but why drag his name through the mud?
What about commercially available food? Fast-food for example?
In N Out Hamburger and Wendys both make the point that their beef is never frozen.
Have a nice day,
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Many feel this way about raw milk, cookie dough (homemade), eggs, etc. I don’t want someone else’s beliefs pushed on me. I certainly do not push mine on others.
No connection but saddest song ever:
Before I go away – Rubber Rodeo
https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEVjVNdDZV2QUAsp8nnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=when+i+go+away+rodeo&tnr=21&vid=0F899B0D54ABB2E728970F899B0D54ABB2E72897&l=346&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DWN.r6wh94QHf0R6vdZqbtbixw%26pid%3D15.1&sigi=11v7s01gr&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC189K1h0hH0&sigr=11bemjasd&tt=b&tit=Before+I+go+away+-+Rubber+Rodeo+%28Lyrics%29&sigt=1181fjf8a&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dwhen%2Bi%2Bgo%2Baway%2Brodeo%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-003%26hspart%3Dmozilla%26fr%3Dyhs-mozilla-003&sigb=13juf69i0&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003
So the gov AND the company knew for 5 years yet continued to allow people to get sick and even die? And they shut down Claravale and any other raw dairy? WTF! (Pardon my French, it pisses me off)
http://news.yahoo.com/blue-bell-creameries-issues-recall-products-022223073–finance.html
Breaking news! For the first time on planet earth, OPDC in cooperation with FSNS will be using a 24 hour PCR BAX rapid test for campy in raw milk. All previous tests have been at least 48 to 56 hours under any AOAC approved protocols. CDFA testing takes a week!! Evidently, there is an approved test used for chicken that if the load of bugs is low….it can be used with results inn24 hours! All previously approved tests would not allow 24 hours but needed the 48-56 hour time because loads were high. With very clean raw milk we qualify for the 24 hour protocol. This is huge. !! Clean raw milk can contain campy and that is a challenge to be addressed. Campy can come from mastitis….one cow can screw it all up for the entire herd and shock the farmer and consumers with a recall. Not good,.
I sent an email to the chief of dairy food safety at CDFA today. The email requested that the latest technologies be used to test campy. Claravale has been subject to 8 day turn arround testing when 48 hours was available. I told asked CDFA to please start “driving cars to town and instead of riding horses” and join the 21st century of testing technology. This kind of delay basically is a doomsday scenario for any regulated raw dairy and it is not acceptable!!
OPDC will sign the agreement to utilize and test this protocol with FSNS and start campy 24 hour “Test & Hold” later this week. Knowledge is power and surprises suck for raw milk. We can not invest enough in prevention and testing. Claravale is a living example of the alternative and it is unacceptable !! Even though CDFA will refuse to use our data from our testing…we will know our numbers and be far ahead of CDFA…that seem to insist on riding horses when a corvette is waiting to drive to town.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/04/15/cuba-future-farming/ESYROGF8WARyyRv3lmgNHO/story.html
“A few years ago we had a very long and spirited debate on this blog about the dangers/benefits of GMO crops. People I trust were on both sides of the issue so in the end, I wasnt sure if Im for or against them. Like most things, there are likely good and bad elements to the practice.”
http://bizarrocomics.com/
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DILtXfD7S0A/VTO9SZt6kNI/AAAAAAAAMOQ/pesSkC9teL8/s1600/Bizarro%2B09-07-12%2BGMOweb.jpg
http://thepolkadotapron.freeforums.org/post8449.html?hilit=*Cuba#p8449
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feds-urge-eating-expired-food-even-if-18-months-past-throwaway-date/article/2563422
But find a little Campy in raw milk, and shut the producer down for weeks. SMH
Has anyone suggested FTCLDF to Claravale? Even if they couldn’t represent Claravale, maybe they would be able to offer some advice or tips, for a SMALL fee. Just a thought.
Imagine that.
Wilhelm Reich explained why people such as you’ve proven to be, over the time on this forum – with the emotional plague – derive their thrills from hanging around disease and death. Every animal has it’s niche in an eco-system. Even vultures.
Buckminster Fuller taught us that “human beings can learn at any age.” Your track record on this forum demonstrates what we call one who refuses to learn in the face of evidence contradicting an opinion = a “bigot”
Some of the most well-informed experts in the world on the topic have contributed to this forum overwhelming evidence that raw milk – produced / handled properly – is far safer than most foodstuffs. ESPECIALLY, the par-boiled [ Pasteur-ized ] stuff.
as the Great Carpenter put it “take the beam out of your own eye, before you fault someone else for the mote* in theirs”.
* speck of sawdust
Dig up the numbers on how much of the Claravale milk was purchased and consumed regardless of where and how they got it I can’t do that but I bet you could if it suited your purposes. Then find out how they handled the milk after buying it. I’m listening and so are many others here and everywhere. Do you ever or brother Bill ask those very basic questions of the people making these claims before suing big time to shut down an entire farm operation?
Just theoretical numbers on my part, but let’s say 100,000 people consumed it and one got sick how flimsy is your case based on percentages. Another absurd theoretical, let’s say they mix a little aspartame or Wheaties with their raw milk and then got sick, who do you sue?
Begs the question, I shook your hand and kissed your little sister then got slightly sick, can I have a stool sample from both of you so I can sue you?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/30/is-organic-food-safer-and-healthier-the-guy-in-charge-of-u-s-organics-wont-say/