In its 730-word press release yesterday on the status of its investigation into five illnesses tied to raw milk, the Kentucky Department of Public Health spent most of its verbiage warning of the dangers of raw milk. It said almost nothing about its most vexing investigative challenge, which is to figure out how five children from a single food club served by MRM Dairy of Hodgenville, KY, became sick, when two other substantial groups served by the dairy showed not even a hint of illness.
As Kentucky health officials suggest, the fact that all of the children consumed unpasteurized milk is key epidemiologically. It is the smoking gun, the circumstantial evidence, of where the illnesses originated. Such epidemiological connections are as key to helping unravel this cluster of illnesses as they were in 1854, when John Snow identified tainted water coming out of the Broad Street pump in London as the likely source of an ongoing cholera epidemic, and ended the epidemic by shutting the pump down….and effectively establishing the field of epidemiology. (The Ghost Map, is a highly engaging account of Snows detective work; this paper by Michele Jay-Russell provides an introduction to the science and art of epidemiology.)
But the fact that raw milk is linked epidemiologically to the Kentucky outbreak is not an open-and-shut indictment of the dairy that produced the milk or, indeed, of raw milk itself. And thats where the states ongoing investigation comes into play.
The state DPH devotes only a few sentences to the actual investigation. DPH has been working with local health departments, hospital and the provider community to investigate the outbreak, it says. Confirming a direct link to a given source of food or milk that causes an outbreak can be difficult, especially in situations where exposures occurred over a brief window of time. Laboratory testing has not yet definitively identified the source of the recent illnesses.
What the press release is saying is that, despite intensive testing of dairy equipment, cow manure, the facilities, and milk itself (reportedly including even milk consumed by one of the sick children), the DPH has been unable to isolate a single cell of E.coli O157:H7 from MRM Dairy. This fact, along with the dairys very clean conditions, and the absence of coliforms in its milk before, during, and after the illnesses are all in the dairys favor.
Left hanging is the main riddle confronting the Kentucky health investigators: how only one of three groups served by the dairy could be hit so hard by illnesses.
The dairy bottles milk twice weekly for three different constituencies. On Sunday, it bottles about 120 gallons, of which about 60 gallons are delivered to the Heartland Whole Life Buying Club (from which the five illnesses originated) and 60 gallons are delivered to another group of private customers. On Thursday, it bottles about 120 gallons for the Louisville Whole Life Buying Club.
There is nothing different about any of the milk that goes to these three groups, according to Derek Morris, the dairys owner. The jars are all sanitized by the dairys dishwasher. Ice for the coolers all comes from the same source. Theyre all delivered in the same truck.
Since the illnesses appear to have occurred over a period of about three weeks in August, each of the three groups would have had three milk deliveries. If there was a problem with the milk when it left the dairy, you would think that illnesses would have come from two or even all three of the groups.
Morris says he sent out emails to all recipients of his dairys milk as soon as he learned of the first illnesses, telling them to immediately stop drinking the milk. But aside from the illnesses among families at the Heartland Whole Life Buying Club (the five hospitalized and reports of three others with much milder symptoms), there wasnt an indication of anyone else experiencing even the slightest symptoms from the milk among the other two constituencies.
All of which raises any number of questions about the milk delivered to the Heartland Whole Life Buying Club. Was some or all of a batch inadvertently allowed to sit unrefrigerated between the time it was delivered and before it was picked up by members? Were jars handled by someone carrying the E.coli O157:H7 pathogen? Did one or more children attend an independent event, like a petting zoo, where they contracted the pathogen, and perhaps passed it around by touching milk bottles? Did some children consume a different food that was tainted?
I hope the DPH investigators are seriously exploring this aspect of the case. I worry that they may not be when I hear how intensively they have investigated MRM Dairy and see certain phrases in the DPH press release, like these: Unpasteurized milk is not safe for consumption. Do not purchase milk unless you can verify that it has been pasteurized. I have not heard reports of extensive interviews taking place–the kind that would be necessary to answer the questions posed above, and others.
My concern is that if the KY DPH goes at the investigation holding the belief that raw milk is inherently dangerous, then it may see no need to solve the riddle that is this case. Why try to figure out where certain milk became tainted if you believe its impossible to produce safe raw milk under any circumstances?
Morris certainly hopes they figure it out. When the 54-year-old former aircraft mechanic first learned of the illnesses, he was ready to close up the dairy, which he launched in 2008. Had they found I was at fault, I would have gone to the parents (of the children who became sick) and said I was done. We would have shut the doors the next day. We were putting together a contingency plan for shutting down, and putting the land up for sale, and on and on.
He adds: “Thats not why we got into this. We got into this to help people, not hurt them.
But now, he says, I cannot connect the dots to us. Indeed, now that it appears his dairy wasnt at fault, he is preparing to fill out the 190-question form that is part of applying for membership in the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI), and doing other things to upgrade operations. Milk being bottled tomorrow will go into plastic disposable jugs. And beginning tomorrow, his new lab will begin operating, allowing the dairy to test for coliforms and standard plate count.
Also, on the previous post someone asked about what consumers should be seeking in a raw milk farmer, but now the comment is buried. This article by Charlotte Smith is very helpful: http://champoegcreamery.com/2013/01/find-safe-raw-milk.html
I doubt the DH will further investigate to find out why or what caused those kids to become ill. It is way to easy to point at raw milk. Case closed. When they spout garbage like the Russian Roulette guy, you know their minds are closed and nothing can convince them to open their eyes.
As usual, they have no proof it was caused by raw milk, yet they implicate it.
Thanks Shawna, for this info from Charlotte Smith.
Yes, Derek was testing less often than now–three or four times a year. Coliforms were nearly always zero–highest reading was two. And yes, my understanding is that he has consulted with Edwin Shank on the testing.
All the more cause to become beyond reproach. This is an unjust world. We must emerge, rise above and pursue excellence with out assistance from the establishment. We only get support from our community of mentors and consumers! I will say that Penn State PHDs and others are beginning to assist as best they can. This is tough. We are challenging supposedly settled science.
Attendees at the popular conference were from 42 states, Canada, Mauritius and Costa Rica. The local health department learned of the illnesses not from the organizers of the event, the convention center, or the caterer, but from calls by attendees to the citys 311 service.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/09/c-perfringens-in-c/#.VC0sYRby0xR
I wonder why no one is going after these people like they do raw milk… no organizers here contacted anyone, they didn’t even know they had a problem… no quick communication it seems, no nothing…
I challenge Marler et all & Dr. Michele Russel etc, to publish a solid story about the benefits of raw milk. They can start with quoting Dr. Bruce German and the content of his interview found in the Modern Milk PBS Food Forward episode. http://www.organicpastures.com/news/
Then they can follow up by interviewing Dr. Cat Berge at RAWMI about her data risk assessment of RAWMI Listed dairies and their relative risk verses raw milk intended to be pasteurized or other non Listed dairies etc.
More than once I’ve posted in this blog information about the government’s long ugly history of devious tactics to derail movements they don’t like. Reading the comments in the last article here, I see most remain clueless about what they are really dealing with with raw milk.
We know the government does not want us to have access to raw milk. (For example university professors have posted in this very blog more than once, that they risk being fired or having their grant money cut off if they publish pro-raw milk findings. Farmers have posted being fined 8000 dollars for posting mothers’ testimonies of their children being healed of life threatening asthma with raw milk…)
Common sense tells us the government is going to use all the tools in their toolbox. It’s really sad, reading comments here, how so many assume that the government and media cartel and posters here are legitimate, and begin there discussions based on this premise. I hate to say it but it looks like raw milk is doomed as long as 99 percent of the populace walks around in a dreamland like this. As I’ve said before, if you want to know about raw milk, go out in the real world and talk to real raw milk drinkers about there experiences.
And it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to understand why government agents and the media cartel and academia are so intent on removing this ancient superfood from our diets. If raw milk were to go from 10 million drinkers to 20, 50, 100 … million, this would absolutely WREAK HAVOC with the revenues of the pharmaceutical cartel and others arms of the Sickness Industry (the biggest industry today). So many diseases would be healed and prevented.
Here’s an interesting line from David’s last article:
“And the mother of at least one child with HUS reported on Facebook that investigators were unable to find any E.coli O157:H7 in her sons stools…”
Is there anything you people wouldn’t believe if the government tells you it’s so? As I recall from the posts of Aajonus (before his “freak accident” death), there were never any allegations of HUS being related to raw milk until heavy antibiotic use entered the picture in “treating” illness).
I will continue drinking my “untested” raw milk, continue to let it sit out for days, full of the microbes that live in our world, keeping my system enriched and acquainted with them, preventing not only “food borne illness”, but other things like cancer, ms, arthritis, asthma, tooth decay, joint degeneration, diabetes, …
For those of you that think raw milk increases rather than decreases the risk of serious illness, I’ve got some ocean front land up for sale in Kansas.
I’m tempted to repost here some simple ways you all can prove that the government and media cartel are run by organized crime, by simply checking things out directly in the real world. But I’m tired of doing that. I guess people wake up when they are ready to wake up.
I am not optimistic that your question will be answered. This particular situation, does, however show the limitations of intermittent (or follow up) testing. In my mind the risk of contamination potentially varies with each milking, which to me means all milkings should be tested. Therefore, I am really encouraged that the leading raw milk producers appear to be adopting such an approach. Kudos also to Mr Morris for his prompt response in this regard. Let’s hope this idea spreads quickly to many more raw milk farms.
John
Thanks “Mr John” for the insights.
Mark, I am aware of one article/study from Bill Marler about the benefits of raw milk. It was published in 2008, and contains lots of ifs/ands/buts….but it is the best effort I am aware of from his camp to publish that story you seek about raw milk benefits.
Mr. John, I agree, there is the testing challenge, really a quality-control issue. But there is also a political challenge, and I think that is what you are referring to when you say you aren’t optimistic my question will be answered. In retrospect, it seems KY HD took the approach of focusing exclusively on finding pathogens at Derek’s dairy, so they could pin the blame on him, and shut down his dairy. The idea was to gather evidence for punishment, not to help the farmer learn from this episode so he could do a better job in the future. Farmers are on their own for that, because, as the press release suggests, KY HD wants to rid the state of raw milk. So it would prefer the farmers fail.
And that means they want people to become sick. They are truly pathetic.
David’s article here says your dairyman bottles 240 gallons of raw milk a week. If people drink a quart a week each (which wouldn’t be much), that gives us roughly 1000 raw milk drinkers. David’s previous article says at least three of this group developed HUS. That’s a rate of 3 cases per thousand drinkers, or 300 cases per every 100,000 drinkers.
As I recall, David says there are roughly 10 million raw milk drinkers in the US, and 50 to 150 illness are blamed on raw milk by the government annually. That works out to be about 1 illness per 100,000 drinkers.
The establishment encyclopedia Wikipedia says there are 2.1 cases of HUS per 100,000 people annually, and they attribute it mainly to “undercooked meat”.
So, using their own numbers, 2.1 cases of HUS for the general population per 100,000, 1 illness per 100,000 is blamed on raw milk (of which a tiny percent are HUS).. How come your tiny group is showing an astronomical rate of HUS, a rate of 300 cases of HUS per 100,000? Even if we spread that over say 5 years, it’s still 60 cases of HUS per 100,000. Check my math, adjust accordingly.
How do we explain these bizarre numbers? Bad luck?
John, you are part of the tiny percent of people that publically speaks out against raw milk suppression, not to mention your other activities in support of raw milk with your club. I’ve posted more than once information in this blog about how the government has historically dealt with grassroots movements they don’t like, such as environmentalists, anti war groups, native rights groups, etc. Dirty tricks is standard operating procedure. If you know history, it would be extremely odd if they weren’t using them against raw milk.
Punch the numbers and then ask how your little group there gets such bizarre astronomical numbers. Bad luck, random event, or a business as usual stunt by the secret government?
The establishment says 2.1 out of 100,000 people get HUS every year.
Your group is getting HUS at the rate of 60 people per 100,000.
The govt claims raw milk causes 1 illness per 100,000 raw milk drinkers annually.
What’s wrong with the picture? (Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive)
You may well be correct in this case. But for me, the bigger political challenge for raw milk supporters is to get raw milk off the ‘go to’ list of probable suspects when an E coli 0157 cluster is being investigated. Currently, I see that as unlikely in the wake of other, relatively recent occurences where 0157 in raw milk was traced as the cause of illness in young children in the USA ( I think accurately, but some might disagree). What I’d like to think is that the widespread adoption of testing every batch (plus the associated attention to hygiene and education of producers about the relevant microbiology) might be enough to largely prevent similar situations. If such information (with low counts) had been available in this case in Kentucky, then the HD might have been forced to investigate other avenues. Seems like a win, win.
MrJohn,
While that would be nice, it is not reality. The Ky HD has placed the consumption of raw dairy right along side the guy that thinks it is no different that Russian Roulette. With mindsets like that, they don’t want to see things different. They strongly imply that they would want the dairy farms to make people sick, just so they fail. Now that shows what sick minds they have.
“… the FBI went a step beyond this with its Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which was originally designed to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections” … The program quickly came to target many more groups … and by the 1960s was going after:
civil rights groups generally, and Martin Luther King, Jr. specifically; antiwar groups, including many student, church-based, and veterans groups; national liberation organizations, such as the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement.
The intention was to discredit and disrupt these groups and many illegal dirty tricks were used. Methods included infiltration and provocation, misinformation and forgery, planting false stories in the media, intimidation through government investigations such as tax audits and spurious criminal charges, violence through proxy goon squads and local police, as well as continuing black bag break-ins and electronic surveillance.
Additionally, the now huge “national security state” of dozens of federal and military intelligence agencies conducted similar acts, sometimes coordinated with and sometimes competing against COINTELPRO. The names of these operations sound like something from a 1960s spy show, like “The Man From Uncle”: Operation CHAOS, Projects RESISTANCE, MERRIMAC, MINARET, and SHAMROCK.
Through such programs, the government electronically eavesdropped, operated a dozen mail opening programs, monitored and collected all telegram traffic coming into or leaving the U.S., and created “watch lists” of hundreds of thousands of “subversives.” It also acted proactively to “disrupt,” often violently, the legal political activity of U.S. citizens via its arsenal of dirty tricks and blackmail files.
Local police agencies, such as New York City and Los Angeles, compiled their own blackmail files…
“Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter.”
In the past two years, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched dozens of investigations into domestic spying activities in more than 20 states on behalf of more than 100 organizations, the latest inquiries based on the DOD document. Numerous earlier Freedom of Information Requests by the ACLU have also revealed surveillance by local police, the FBI, and JTTF of thousands of domestic activists from groups such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Food Not Bombs, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and dozens of local peace groups around the country.
In just one example from the many cited on the ACLU website: “The FBI responded to a June records request from the MCLU with revelations that it has intercepted and collected past communications from members of the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice.” The investigations and (heavily redacted) government documents forcibly made public by the ACLU are mostly initiated and maintained under the guise of “counterterrorism,” even information about pacifist groups like the Quakers’ AFSC. The documents reveal both active surveillance and databasing of groups, and point strongly to undercover infiltration of the groups…”
taken from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Subverting%20_Democracy/US_Surveillance_History.html
Some people today talk about a “new world order” and fear a global government. They don’t know history. There has been a global government long long before you were born. This is not a theory. People that call this a conspiracy “theory” are simpletons.
What’s needed with raw milk drinkers is a critical mass of people to understand real history and real current events. The secret government does not want us to have real milk because they want Sickness. There is a fortune to be made off the mineral deficiencies of the standard American diet. I posted the revenues of the top pharmaceutical corporations here before: over half a TRILLION dollars a year. Who do you think controls the boards of these transnational corporations?
Who controls the secret government (the CIA, NSA, etc)? Do you? Do the American people? You aren’t even allowed to know what it is doing. Do elected officials control it? If you think so, read Barry Goldwater’s autobiography. He was a “powerful” long term US senator, headed arms committees, etc. For over 20 years he tried to find out what was going on on an Air force base in his home state, Arizona, because many citizens had reported strange happenings there. He was never allowed to know what was going on. Elected officials are not allowed to know what the secret government is up to without permission.
Do presidents control the secret government? Realistically you couldn’t get elected without the blessing of the secret government, if you understand the power it has. Even if elected, how would a president have any idea what it is doing? It’s designed to be un investigatable. (so “the other side” doesn’t know “our” secrets). And it was around long before the president was born.
The only group in a position to be controlling the secret government (the NSA, CIA and these other horrible organizations) is the global government. And this is the case in each “nation” on the planet, so in other words the KGB, Mossad, British Intelligence, … are all arms of one organization, even though most of the idiots working in these arms don’t know this.
Again, people who call this a theory are simpletons who know nothing about real history or real current events. Raw milk farmers and drinkers need to resist attempts by the secret government to scare people into thinking that the thousands of years of evidence for the safety of raw milk doesn’t exist and we somehow need to reinvent farming. There is no reason to take seriously the recent hyped up “disease outbreak” stories re raw milk, such as Mary McGonigle Martin, Foundation Farm, the Family Cow, etc. These are government stunts.