The recent raids of private buying clubs–notably the one of Rawesome Foods in Venice, CA, last month– have drawn even more media inquiring about raw milk, and there was quite a lot of media attention prior to the first of this month.
While the main focus of the articles up until now has been on safety, two major media items on National Public Radio suggest an effort to provide additional nuance to the subject. One on Sunday used interviews with Rawesome members to explore the perceived benefits of nutrient-dense food, and the dangers of factory food.
The report observed: “But there’s a lot of nutritional value raw foodists say they get from raw meat and milk, too. Omega 3 fatty acids, for example, which promote brain and heart health. Certain ‘friendly’ bacteria that promote immunities, too. Pasteurization destroys that bacteria, plus a lot of the vitamins and proteins raw foodists want.”
Then on Tuesday, I was interviewed for a segment on raw milk on the NPR program “Here and Now”, by Robin Young, a knowledgeable journalist and skillful interviewer. (To access the segment, scroll down to the photos of raw milk, and click on “Listen”.) Once again, there was some serious attention paid to the subject of the nutritional benefits of raw milk (in addition to questions about safety). I pointed to a major European study published in 2006 concluding that raw milk likely reduces the incidence of allergies and asthma in young children.
For the record, that study says, “In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate that consumption of farm milk is associated with a lower risk of childhood asthma and rhinoconjunctivitis.” It adds: “A deepened understanding of the relevant ‘protective’ components of farm milk and a better insight into the biological mechanisms underlying the reported epidemiological observation are warranted as a basis for the development of a safe product for prevention.”
When I brought up the study during my interview Tuesday, Robin Young said that Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and a prominent writer about food nutrition and safety, has expressed doubts about the scientific validity of the study (and about the nutritional benefits of raw milk in general). I said that at a minimum, that large study warranted additional experimental work. Think about it: If a pharmaceutical company said it had come up with a pill to reduce the incidence of asthma and allergies by 25%, don’t you think everyone would be all over it?
But for some reason, when it comes to raw milk, the germophobes won’t hear of the possibility that raw milk could improve the health of drinkers. When hundreds of people testify at legislative hearings about how their health improved from drkinking raw milk, it’s labeled “anecdotal.” When a huge study comes out supporting the nutritional benefits of raw milk, it’s flawed. And the ultimate opposition fallback position is that it would be “ethically” irresponsible to use people as research subjects, given raw milk’s “dangers” (they’ll say this in deep serious tones, as if the drug companies don’t test their new drugs, which really are dangerous, on humans). Dependent as these scholars are on government and Big Pharma and other such grants and consulting contracts, the answer is always the same: get rid of raw milk.
Maybe all the media people trying to figure out why there’s so much consumer interest in raw milk might try questioning the opponents who revel in every hint of illness possibly attributable to raw milk as to why they don’t back real research. Maybe these opponents are afraid of the results.
The germophobic University educated nutrition PhD’s that are the "Go To Quote Experts" on nutrition only know what they have been taught in school. The grant support at these schools have zero interest in an unprocessed, organic, direct from the farm food taking over and displacing their highly processed proprietary technology products. These farm fresh products can not be created by industry….they are a deadly threat….not to the consuming people but to industry and their markets.
It is as if the scientific community, industrial community, regulatory community and the political community is intentionally putting on the blinders….they can not open their eyes and see what is before them in CA with state inspected delicious safe raw milk being ragingly popular and consumed by more and more people and their kids. They can not bear the results of that peek at the truth. Not looking at the truth is critical…a peek at the truth will loose them their jobs…
They are humming and singing ( horrible humming and music I might add ) ever louder and louder as they try and drown out the every increasing intensity of the truth that is being spoken by the moms…
I have said this before many many times….this is a grass roots movement of the moms that shop and the moms that are "completely done with sitting in Pediatricians offices" with sick kids….they are done with this sickness.
It is every bit all about the money….and the protective corporate culture that created this cheating and malnourished paradigm.
So teach… teach… teach… and dollar vote the sickness out of existence…
The fat, diabetic, asthmatic Emperor is naked as hell….he is in his last throws of denial. next comes embarrassment and trying to recreate living foods through high tech….you will see efforts to use cloning, GMO or some other weirdish thing to try and replicate raw milk….you watch. They would rather do that than put cows on pastures and clean up their act.
Teach today…teach everyday. I have 14 Share the Raw Milk Secret presentations scheduled this month….even more next month.
Grass Roots and Moms…..dollar voting and change through economics and truth telling. Future predicted prices of conventional pasteurized milk markets show further erosion….this is going to get very ugly very soon. 100 suicides of dairymen nationally already….the CDC must count these as death by pasteurizer!!!
Mark
Lets all praise the moms that breast feed. When breast feeding is done…what is next??
More raw milk!!!
Mark
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-discuss-mothers-milk-on.html
Hello Terri,
I am looking at the first paragraph of ATCP 69.02, as you suggested, and it is simply referencing WI 97.17(1) as its base definition, which contains the very clause I am talking about.
"This section shall not affect a person making up a product on the person’s farm…"
And I still fail to see the connection between ATCP 80.02 and WI 97.17, which Cheryl is trying to draw. There is no connection or reference between them whatsoever in any of the footnotes or references. It is just an arbitrary and unfounded interpretation being made by Cheryl.
It is the prerogative of the division of food safety to have this matter clarified through the proper channels if you wish to have the meaning of the exception within 97.17(1) restricted to on-farm cheese making for personal use only, and cross referenced with 80.02(2)(a). It would seem to me, however, that it is not the Department’s place to arbitrarily interpret that meaning into either 80.02(2)(a) or 97.17(1), however. You would have to go through the proper channels if you wanted that done.
-Bill
Your link says it all. The question is this…if we love our children why would we ever not breast feed or provide them raw milk???
Is greed that blinding? Are the corporate needs of Nestle and Carnation that sick?
Mark
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=U0&Dato=20100401&Kategori=GPG0601&Lopenr=401001&Ref=PH
(You’ll have to click through to the entry for April 8 or number 18 out of 24. If anyone knows of a direct link please post it.)
That expose was published just weeks before the governor killed the Wisconsin raw milk bill. Coincidence?
And, undoubtedly, there will soon be a science-based, fact-filled documentary released with the title "Kefir Madness". (Kefir, in this instance, rhymes with reefer.)
We’re already seeing that very situation with the super-processed products such as Activia that are full of sugar and additives. The annoying ad jingle & images of Jamie Lee Curtis discussing regularity is seared into my brain unfortunately. In addition to the over-hyped Activia product, at the "natural foods store" there are all sorts of highly-processed convenience food products in the dairy section with added probiotics, too, especially those marketed towards kids & women.
I suspect the adding of proprietary probiotic bacteria into common processed convenience foods will escalate rapidly in the next decade, as the medical literature is exploding with recent research that is highly suggestive that much of our health (or lack of health and chronic inflammatory diseases) is dependent on the health and condition of our gut bacteria, without which we could not live.
Watch out for fecal bacteria transplant therapy, too. It’s already being done in an experimental setting when drugs and other therapies have failed.
Swiss physician Thomas Rau rejects medical status quo
Dr. Thomas Raus biological-medicine approach builds up the bodys strength.
[ he will be speaking on this topic in Vancouver June 18 ]
Swiss physician and alternative-medicine guru Thomas Rau isnt afraid to utter the unspeakable.
The main message is chronic diseases are curable, the medical director of the Paracelsus Clinic says on the line from his office just outside of Zurich.
Rau, author of The Swiss Secret to Optimal Health: Dr. Raus Diet for Whole Body Healing, maintains that several chronic diseasesincluding multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimotos diseasecan be successfully treated by strengthening intestinal membranes and microorganisms in the gut. He even claims to have had success treating cancer patients in this way.
We should be proseptic, not antiseptic, he says.
At the Paracelsus Clinic, which employs 92 staff and treats 300 patients per day, staff conduct comprehensive stool analyses, examine fatty-acid profiles, and conduct environmental-toxin tests on patients. According to Rau, the goal is to determine the degree to which the patients body has degenerated.
Louis Pasteur, a 19th-century French chemist, is credited with discovering how bacteria cause disease by invading the body. Antibiotics work on the premise that by killing bacteria, the patient will be cured.
Rau turns that notion on its head by maintaining that a deteriorating human body provides fertile opportunities for outside pathogens to flourish. But if the body is sufficiently upgradedand, according to him, 80 percent of the immune systems T cells are in the gutthen these outside agents will not pack nearly as much punch. So he practises biological medicine by focusing attention on building up the bodys defences.
We work for the body rather than against the bacteria, Rau says.
He mentions that testing has demonstrated that a large number of Swiss residents of the Rhine Valley carry the spirochete bacteria that cause Lyme disease in their bodies, but show no symptoms. They were all positive for Lyme, but they were as healthy as can be, he says.
Rau also claims that neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimers and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, are linked to an imbalance between the bodys deterioration and its capacity to rebuild itself. ALS is, of course, not my favourite [disease to treat] because there is not a real cure, he concedes.
The physician and author is also a staunch critic of antibiotics because he feels that these drugs destroy the intestinal microbes. He rejects the use of anti-inflammatory medications, and says the worst are probably the anticholesterol remedies.
We always have to integrate the intestines in all the healing processes because when the intestines are good, the upbuilding forces get better, he says.
Last month, the Straight highlighted the research of UBC microbiologist Brett Finlay, who pointed out that a person carries 10 times as many microbial cells as human cells. At the time, Finlay cautioned that researchers have not determined which microbes increase or alleviate the risk of developing autoimmune disorders. Researchers in his lab have demonstrated that transferring fecal material from healthy mice to rodents with asthma or infectious diarrhea has had an impact on these conditions.
Earlier this month, Baylor University College of Medicine assistant professor of molecular virology and microbiology Joseph Petrosino told the Straight that researchers there are investigating whether theres a viral trigger, such as an enterovirus, for Type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease.
In North America, it appears that theres a growing interest in studying the role that intestinal microbes play in disease, but most mainstream medical practitioners are not linking these bugs in the gut to chronic conditions. And that means a significant number of people are still willing to travel across an ocean for treatment at the Paracelsus Clinic.
About half our business is created by non-European patients, Rau says.
by Charlie Smith on Jun 13, 2013 at 3:00 am