When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration come out with a study having to do with raw milk, you know before even viewing the results that its going to fan the fear flames. You also know what the bottom-line conclusion will be: ban raw milk.
So its interesting to see how the the European Unions Food Safety AuthorityEurope’s equivalent to the CDC and FDAtreats one of its own studies on raw milk.
In a new study, its not as if the European agency says that raw milk is wonderful or a panacea. It doesnt. In fact, the agency is kind of negative about raw milk. But rather than a ban, one of its proposed solutions is encouragement to farmers to do better on safety.
Whats especially refreshing to this American is the difference in tone compared to studies that have come out of the CDC and FDA on raw milk. The European FSA’s main conclusion is that raw milk can be a source of harmful bacteria. Okay, Id say lots of people can go along with that. Substitute the name of a different foodground beef, chicken, cantaloupe, peanut butterand the same conclusion would be accurate.
What prompted the FSA to come to that conclusion was its study showing 27 outbreaks attributed to raw milk in the seven years between 2007 and 2013. Now, 27 outbreaks in seven years works out to four per year. The report doesnt indicate how many people were sickened. Since an outbreak could be as few as two illnesses, the number sickened could be as few as eight per year .or it could be more.
Rather than go through all kinds of extrapolations and data gymnastics, like our CDC or FDA has done to come up with headline-grabbing conclusions that raw milk is much more dangerous than pasteurized milk, the European FSA just stops with the totals, and says as much. The Panel could not quantify the public health risks associated with drinking raw milk in the EU due to data gaps. Can you imagine the CDC admitting to “data gaps”? No, the CDC’s motto is much different: If you don’t have the data to slam raw milk, you make it up. A prime example is its famous Minnesota study concluding that more than 20,000 people became ill from raw milk in the first decade of this century.
One intriguing bit of data that the FSA doesnt comment on: Only two of the 27 outbreaks it found were the result of E.coli O157:H7; most of the remainder, it says, were from the much less dangerous campylobacter pathogen. In a continent more than 50% more populous than the U.S. (with more than 500 million people), the risk of E.coli O157:H7 from raw milk seems infinitesimal.
As a point of comparison with the U.S., the CDC in another famous study, in which it concluded that raw milk is 150 times more dangerous than pasteurized milk, said that raw milk was behind 121 outbreaks over 14 years, or about eight per year. That is twice what the European FSA found.
Another intriguing point of comparison: the most recent CDC study on raw milk (discussed in a couple of recent blog posts here) found 13 outbreaks attributed to E.coli O157:H7 in the six-year period 2007-2012. That is about two per year, versus a total of two for six years in Europe (or about one every three years). So it seems as if E.coli O157:H7 is a significantly higher risk factor for illness in American raw milk than in Europe. I would guess that E.coli O157:H7 is more of a risk factor in the U.S. for most foods, likely given the dominance of factory foods.
Back to the FSA study, it has three recommendations about what to do about the outbreaks in Europe:
1. Dairy farmers should implement good hygiene practice
2. There should be “improved communication to consumers on the hazards and control measures associated with consumption of raw drinking milk. I take this to be better warning labels.
3. Finally, consumers especially worried about the risk of raw milk should simply boil it.
Amazing, the FSA believes that farmers and consumers can be responsible enough on their own to simply do better with raw milk safety. What a concept.
One more thing…and I am blushing when I type this: According to SPINS marketing data December 2014 report, OPDC is #4 ranked brand in the entire USA for natural milk category!! From zero to ranked #4 nationally in 14 years…and….being a “raw organic milk” and “only in CA”, now that is outrageously phenomenal!! That means that OPDC raw milk beat out all but 3 national brands of natural milk and we did that from “just sales inside of California!!” That is David kicking Goliath’s sweet pasteurized ass!!
This just in from Donna O’Shaughnessy of the Illinois Alliance for Raw Milk: “Raw milk update. The IDPH has decided to put their proposed rules on the back burner. In fact they were not even submitted to JCAR (Joint Commission of Administrative Rules) for inclusion in their January meeting. Might have had something to do with the fact that they received over 800 comments on those ridiculous rules from all of you super motivated Illinois raw milk consumers and producers. MORE comments than they had gotten on any other proposed rule in their history. We must remain vigilant and aware but for now…DRINK UP!!!!!!”
My guess is the IL regulators concluded they would have no official support for their restrictive rules. As reported here, local prosecutors had already refused to enforce efforts to go after dairy farmers. And then politicians likely told them they didn’t want to be barraged by voters already pissed off about many other things.
Sometimes lots of people speaking out on an issue can make a difference. Maybe this message will resonate to Washington, and they’ll begin taking their cues from how the Europeans operate on raw milk. Let it be, and encourage best practices.
Remember that Americans are getting sick from things like Apples. Who would have ever thought Apples would sicken anyone. An apple a day is supposed to keep the doctor away….instead 32 people sickened from listeria and at least 5 or more deaths. See caramel apples. Apples and listeria??http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm429689.htm.
What really pisses me off is that the CDC still says raw milk is a risk for listeria !! When their own data bases show no illnesses associated with listeria and raw milk. Instead….pasteurized milk and listeria are directed associated with listeria and illnesses and or deaths ( mostly a contamination issue ). That’s just plain corruption with huge bias…a less kind observer would call them liers.
In other words when products are consumed in different forms they have different risk profiles. For years and years the dairy industry has blamed raw milk for all of their illnesses and post pasteurization contaminations…. One look at the CDC data and even Cornell risk assessment of high temp pasteurization says it all. Raw milk may have a detected listeria every once in a while, but it does not result in illnesses. The CDC data says this clearly, however, change the conditions to post pasteurization contaminations and wow…plenty of sick and or dead people.
That is why fresh raw apples that were NOT dipped in caramel were NOT associated with illness and the hot dipped caramel treated ones WERE associated with illnesses.
This is also why fresh raw apple juice has been associated with pathogens ( Odwalla etc and FDA rules for warning labels on raw apple juice but not on whole apples ) but raw apples in whole form up to now have not been associated with illness or pathogens.
CONDITIONS MATTER!!
Can you believe, at this prime teachable, yet tragic moment, Food Safety News never once mentions that this is pasteurized cheese! (You have to be a Sherlock Holmes and read the label in the picture for that) Instead, they (intentionally?) mislead unsuspecting, trusting consumers to believe that the cheese was raw by delivering a pointed warning about the dangers of unpasteurized milk and cheese!
You would think some truly concerned food safety advocates would sue them for potential harm caused by misleading journalism. Im serious. Some Mom tonight is going to carefully read the label of the soft cheese in her refrigerator before giving it to her dear little girl as a bed time snack. After all, as the trusted Food Safety News says, she wants to be doubly sure its pasteurized cheese so its safe.
Dont forget, this death is like the 4th of 5th death from listeria in pasteurized dairy in the last 12 months alone so I wont buy the line that listeria is really rare in pasteurized milk thats why they didnt mention it.
To try to get your head wrapped around how warped and even criminal this kind of junk journalism is. Imagine the pasteurized milk industries law suits if raw milk were to kill from listeria and a national food safety journalist failed to clearly identify that the milk was raw. And on top of that, they (intentionally?) mislead by highlighting that listeria in pasteurized dairy has killed repeatedly in the last year!
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/01/1-death-two-hospitalized-in-wa-state-listeria-outbreak-linked-to-soft-cheeses/#.VLnKIUfF98E
There are some steps everyone can take to reduce the risk of acquiring a Listeria infection such as avoiding unpasteurized milk or foods made from unpasteurized milk (including cheese)…
In Maine, food activists are taking a similar tack to those in Illinois. In this case, just pretending the legislators and judges don’t exist. Going about doing what their local towns have said they can do, what they’ve been doing for generations–trading food with neighbors and friends. Excellent article on how many people are doing what their communities sanction, and expecting the lawmakers and judges to catch up in their own due time.
Yes, Ed, the rule is clear: when raw milk sickens people, FSN and its compatriots yell it as loudly and frequently as possible. When pasteurized milk does the same (or even kills, as in these recent incidents), you avoid any mention of “pasteurized.” Why do these places conform with “the rule”? I can only assume that not conforming means you get kicked out of “the club”–the FDA/CDC/public health/medical elite that are committed to serving the interests of the Big Dairy cartel. What do they get from Big Dairy that keeps them so committed? Hmmmm.
As Tolstoy says, and I loosely quote There are few men, even men at ease with problems of the greatest complexity who are able to accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
But the question remains: Why don’t other concerned consumer food safety advocates call out FSN on their dangerously misleading journalism?
Blessings,
Edwin
I am going to write to Dr. Michele Jay Russell and Bill Marler and complain about this misleading reporting directly. The listeria deaths come from Pasteurized cheese but the advice says…avoid Raw. That’s insane. That’s also highly misleading and a disservice to the public. A retraction and apology to the readership is in order. Especially because the CDC has zero illnesses in their database for listeria and raw dairy….zero!!! The last ten deaths from dairy have been listeria and pasteurized cheese or milk!!
Dr. Nicole Martin at Cornel is looking more right every day. Her peer reviewed studies and predictions that listeria is a killer in pasteurized dairy is coming true.
Edwin, good point about ego and entrenchment. I can understand the FDA/CDC connection to Big Dairy. Future jobs, career paths, budgets. But the public health and the medical professions don’t have the same obvious incentives to play ball. For some, who might speak out, I think there is the fear of being ridiculed by colleagues…to the extent that they lose influence in the profession, even lose research dollars. For some it goes back to their educations–they have been educated in institutions heavily supported by Big Ag, where part of the mantra is that raw dairy is deadly, and to be eliminated at all costs. As a result, they have convinced themselves they are saving lives by working to ban raw milk.
Unfortunately, consumer food safety advocates, like so many in our society, look up to the medical profession as nearly representative of the deity. They still see doctors as they are cast on TV, as all powerful, savers of lives. So, if the docs say raw milk is poison, it must be so.
The club as you put it, is based on the childish, unscrupulous, ego driven financially motivated rule, you scratch my back and I will scratch yours; to hell with common sense, truth or freedom!
Ken
Your comment reminds me of a couple of statements made by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, Medical students are further softened up by being maliciously fatigued. The way to weaken a persons will in order to mold him to suit your purposes is to make him work hard, especially at night, and never give him a chance to recover. You teach the rat to race. The result is a person too weak to resist the most debilitating instrument medical school uses on its students: fear. If I had to characterize doctors, I would say their major psychological attribute is fear. They have a drive to achieve security-plus thats never satisfied because of all the fear thats drummed into them in medical school: fear of failure, fear of missing a diagnosis, fear of malpractice, fear of remarks by their peers, fear that theyll have to find honest work… Doctors are given one reward for swallowing the fear pill so willingly and for sacrificing the healing instincts and human emotions that might help their practice: arrogance. To hide their fear, theyre taught to adopt the authoritarian attitude and demeanor of their professors. This sounds like brainwashing to me. Doctors are themselves victims of their chosen faith.
Again he states, Despite the tendency of doctors to call modern medicine an ‘inexact science’, it is more accurate to say there is practically no science in modern medicine at all. Almost everything doctors do is based on a conjecture, a guess, a clinical impression, a whim, a hope, a wish, an opinion or a belief. In short, everything they do is based on anything but solid scientific evidence. Thus, medicine is not a science at all, but a belief system. Beliefs are held by every religion, including the Religion of Modern Medicine.”
Ken
My problem with modern journalism is excessive cutting and pasting. The article in FSN wasn’t written by anyone in FSN. The original itself was probably assembled by cutting and pasting (at least in part). This approach perpetuates both facts and fictions……..
John
I Agree with your assessment. Listeria and corn or hay silage is a well known milk risk association. These are the cheap feeds used broadly in conventional dairy systems. In franc these types of feeds are actually restricted at certain times of the year for this very specific risk associated reasons.
I also agree that the “warning & avoid raw advice” portion of nearly all CDC, FDA, and FSN news pieces are cut and pasted from the same quoted erroneous, misleading, biased and errant garbage seen every time that pasteurized milk or processed cheeses kill or cause illness. In my heart, I truly believe that these industry protective organizations believe that the public is stupid and will believe anything if repeated enough times!! To quote a Phd from UC Davis….”processed milk is associated with listeria…raw is not associated with listeria”. That is the truth. That is what the data shows as well.
A recent NIH $6 million dollar grant was just awarded to UC Davis milk researchers to study bio active elements found in milk. These “Glycans” are found in the protein fraction of milk and inhibit pathogens and do all sorts of wondeful things with bacteria in the gut. guess what? These precious bioactive elements are raw!!! As raw milk producers and our consumers… we enjoy these beneficial elements already. It turns my gut to see industry attempting to exploit natural elements found in raw milk in pursuit of some new patent to put greed first instead of simply cleaning up their act and showing due respect for 100 million years of mammalian evolution and the perfection that is already evident under Gods very own living natural patent found in breast milk and raw milk !
Their action is bacteria protective, they feed and facilitate beneficial bacterial gut colonization and they are pathogen inhibitive.
Can you say…raw milk!!!
$6 million of tax payer money is going to….try and attempt to extract a bio active part out of raw milk and put it back into very dead milk!!! Dead milk is still very allergenic. Dead milk is still non digestible. Phd researchers are so narrow lensed and will do anything for a paycheck. They may be able to add back some good stuff….but the consumer will still suffer allergies and lactose intolerance. For very smart people….that’s pretty dumb.
You are undoubtedly a pioneer considering the current status quo.
If I may however Id like to paraphrase your statement, I would rather be a healthy happy unconventional maverick than a sick obese diabetic mainstream lemming!!
Ken
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher. Ambrose Bierce
A delusion is defined as an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. That defines us, do you not think?
Were all probably perceived as lunatics by the mainstream lemmings , for its been said and I cant figure out who said it that, When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.
Ken
What do you call crawly creatures that walk the moons at night?
Lunar ticks
http://grooversity.com/
Have a nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpvHCWHEKiY
Quote from MrJohn: “The original itself was probably assembled by cutting and pasting (at least in part)” What makes you think so?
Quote from MrJohn: “This approach perpetuates both facts and fictions……” Yes, just like your assumptions.
drawn from within their own inevitably limited personal reading, writing and professional experience, except me I’m still an amateur at pretty much everything and conduct my own experiments so call me Frankie Steiner cause it tastes good no matter how bad it may be from the inside out.
And then there’s raw milk and them cows that have babies so you can have more. It’s getting smoky in here must be the bear.
Th headlines read…RAWMILK recalled after Campy found. No illnesses mind you!!
Last week when Pasteurized Cheeses killed at least one and severely sickened many….no mention of the word Pasteurized in the headline or nowhere in th article.
Bill….so much for sound reporting or unbiased writing. Your Food Safety News is nothing but a political arm of Big Ag Dairy Processors, the NCIMS and FDA. You established Food Safety News as a resource supposedly to be fair and unbiased. Please reassess your initial mission and premise, you have gone astray….putting it in the kindest words.
As I understand things, the Net Neutrality road would go to the destination wherein what you write here at TCP would have to be FDA approved before posting or commenting. Or else.
Would you like to be in that environment?
Bearing on this matter are Philip Hamburgers Is Administrative Law Lawful (2014) and the Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey A. Silvergate (2009).
The former is briefed for us by Hamburger courtesy of Scott Johnson at powerlineblog dot calm under the Specials category, Administrative State.
See if you can keep it.
All the best,
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
as for the dis-information campaign : old PT Barnum said “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right” More people base their view of the world on Portlandia, than pay attention to Mister Marler’s propaganda outfall. More people will be drinking REAL MILK next week, than ever, after watching the latest episode :
Portlandia Gets Raw as They Expose the FDAs Lies
Things are about to get raw on Portlandia.
In the words of Candace and Toni: If youre not outraged, youre not paying attention to the lies that the FDA is feeding you about the joys of raw milk. This week, Brendan (Fred Armisen) and Michelle (Carrie Brownstein) were feeling lethargic, sluggish and generally under the weather until they discovered that raw milk is a miracle cure-all. A miracle that the FDA is trying to prevent you from enjoying! Check out this clip as they storm a doctors (Ed Begley Jr.) office to spread the truth about raw milk:
Portlandia airs on IFC on Thursdays at 10pm
The URL for a clip of the segment is :
http://www.ifc.com/shows/portlandia/blog/2015/01/in-portlandia-raw-milk-is-the-future
The constant drum beat of anti-raw-milk propaganda from FSN, along with CDC, FDA, American Academy of Pediatrics, etc. is having an effect, unfortunately. According to a national survey out of Oklahoma State, 59% of those surveyed support a ban of raw milk, more even than support a ban of marijuana. Time Magazine is playing it up. I would venture that that support isn’t very deep–the “anti’s” rarely attend public forums to express their views. But it certainly reinforces the old adage: You repeat a lie often enough, and eventually people believe it.
Perhaps at some point in the future Canada will be more amicable to the sale of raw milk as is the case in California and many European countries. And if it ever gets to that point it will be because of both, unorganized and organized efforts.
I would like to think ..that persistent truth pays off in the end despite the old adage David referred to above.
Ken
Shelly D & others in a pessimistic frame of mind = you’re ready to consider what Louis Beam had to say ‘back in 1983, about Leaderless Resistance : at URL < http://www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm >
“It is clear, therefore, that it is time to rethink traditional strategy and tactics when it comes to opposing a modern police state. America is quickly moving into a long dark night of police state tyranny, where the rights now accepted by most as being inalienable will disappear. Let the coming night be filled with a thousand points of resistance. Like the fog which forms when conditions are right and disappears when they are not, so must the resistance to tyranny be.
How droll that, a third of a century since his brilliant essay … just milking a few cows to feed ourselves will getcha profiled as a “domestic terrorist”… You think I’m kidding? See the excellent item atop TheBovine.Wordpress. com, today, wherein Michael Schmidt interview himself!
What a novel idea, huh?
They even said….” Pasteurization is the devil ” and… “The FDA lies ” ( one of the statements on a poster) and “raw milk is the future !! ” When mainstream tv takes on raw milk as subject matter…these are signs of raw milk evolution taking place. Got to watch the episode!! It was great.
I would suggest that coalitions and such work best when there is an immediate crisis. That kind of organizing worked especially well to counter the efforts to “lynch” farmers Vernon Hershberger and Alvin Schlangen. The opposition learned from its defeats, and has shifted to flooding the marketplace with misinformation. Hence, the “studies” we see purposing to “prove” that raw milk is inherently dangerous. As the Oklahoma State survey showed, such misinformation campaigns can work. My inclination is to answer the misinformation with truthful information. As I said in an email I sent out to bloggers here last week, I have a new book in the works that hopefully will begin to set the record straight. More information on the book, and how everyone here can help in getting its message out, upcoming very shortly.