Reflecting on Greg Niewendorp, and the State’s Blue-Smoke-and-Mirrors Campaign
I’m trying to take stock of the Greg Niewendorp affair, and it’s not easy. The situation seems to be unfolding on two levels.
First, there’s Greg. He’s not just outspoken, he’s very outspoken. He is into both the subtleties of the regulations (agonizing over what the term “premises” really means), and the symbolism of his protest (he loves to read a tale of Irish protesters from the mid-1800s who were given death sentences, eventually commuted to life, and shipped off to Australia, where they became major political figures). When he begins talking about his property being under military occupation, well, I’m not sure where to go with that.
Yet I have to admire his bravery, his willingness to stand up to the state on behalf of a cause. It takes some guts to tell the state police to get off your property.
Which brings me to the second level, which is the complexity of the entire affair. The various comments over the last few days are testimony to that—questions about the prevalence of M.bovis, of which cattle are tested, the role of the sheriff, the possible legal options, etc., etc.
I spent some time just trying to assess Steve Bemis’ comments about whole herd testing and NAIS, and I realized how difficult it is to understand the rules and regulations about what is supposedly a simple test. The head of the Michigan Department of Agriculture posted a memo earlier this year that lays out the testing process. It explains that Michigan has three “zones” for testing: A “modified accredited zone” (which includes Greg’s county), a “modified accredited advanced zone”, and a “bovine tuberculosis free zone.”
I won’t bore you with all the details (you may want to read it for yourself), but essentially, in the modified accredited zone, “All cattle herds must complete an annual whole herd bovine tuberculosis test…,” while in the other two zones, “herds will be randomly selected for whole herd testing.”
The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) definitely fits into all of this, since the memo is prefaced with the statement, “Effective March 1, 2007, all cattle must be identified with official RFID electronic identification eartags prior to movement from a premises within Michigan, unless exempted by the director.” RFID eartags is code for NAIS. What I also read into this is that Greg’s herd must be tested, but not necessarily fitted with RFID tags, since he doesn’t move his herd from the premises.
But isn’t that part of the problem here? The regulators bombard farmers with these complex, highly restrictive, and arbitrary, regulations, supposedly based on scientific research and hard data. Yet when we go to examine the data that underlie the regulations, whether for raw milk or M.bovis, we find that our repositories of health information, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and scientific journals, contain incomplete information, or evidence indicating there’s not nearly as much of a problem as the complex and restrictive regulations would suggest. Blue smoke and mirrors, supreme.
I realize that the reason I keep listening to Greg and writing about his lonely odyssey is that he isn’t just challenging the bovine TB test and NAIS, he is really challenging basic notions of health and disease in animals and people—and making lots more sense than the state he is battling.
***
There is a nicely done small-paper article about a rally held last weekend at the farm of Mark Nolt, the Pennsylvania farmer I wrote about a few weeks back, who has defied state authorities by selling raw milk without a permit. It does a good job of communicating the sense of both support and outrage among the farmer's supporters.
The Complete Patient
in Government policy
|
6 Comments
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (6)
It is encouraging to see an individual such as Greg Niewendorp stand up for his rights. His actions are a benefit to us all. There is exceedingly too much government manipulation in our lives. The small family farm including abattoirs and small dairies etc. are being regulated out of existence.
Your statement, “The regulators bombard farmers with these complex, highly restrictive, and arbitrary, regulations, supposedly based on scientific research and hard data.” Is certainly true, yet I would like to add that their methodology is becoming increasingly coercive as farmers appose, ignore and refuse to comply with their narrow minded regulations.
Granting bureaucrats a mandate to regulate is a precarious and unconscionable method for establishing rules or regulations which caters to a top down state control form of government and is especially vulnerable to excessive extremes for which history does not paint a pleasant picture.
Once the ground work has been done with respect to a particular regulation, regulators do not want to tackle the complexities that challenge the thinking or ideology that they are trying to impose on others. Consulting the public is a mere formality and is only taken seriously in that it becomes a strategy for good public relations.
With respect to TB health officials are ignoring its complexities and should know by now that opportunistic organisms such as those responsible for TB will come and go as they please despite our attempts to eradicate them.
TB afflicts individuals with compromised immune systems and its rise just happens to coincide with immune malfunction disorder such as AIDS and the emergence of drug-resistant strains.
The World Health Organization states that TB is a leading cause of death among people who are HIV-positive, and according to its website is the single most important factor contributing to the increase in incidence of TB since 1990.
Ken Conrad
Did they stipulate how M bovis manifested itself in the children?
Ken Conrad
Ken…I posted the answer here. Others may not have followed our continued conversation.
This information is taken from an article published in the medical journal Pediatrics Vol. 105 No.6 June 2000, p e79. The article was titled, Mycobacterium bovis as a Significant Cause of Tuberculosis in Children Residing along the United States-Mexico Border in the Baja California Region. There were a total of 61 children who contracted TB from the M boivs bacteria in contaminated raw milk cheese. Here’s the breakdown of how each of the children were affected.
3 Pulmonary
31 Adenitis (lymph nodes)
3 Central nervous system
12 Abdominal
5 Bone/joint
5 Miliary (in organs or the brain)
2 Other Variety of things
This is taken from the summary:
“M bovis accounted for 55.2% of all culture-positive patients with extrapulmonary disease. The strong predominance for gastrointestinal related organs without any associated pulmonary foci observed on chest radiograph, cervical lymphadenopathy, and abdominal disease highlights the oral route of transmission for this pathogen. These figures are reminiscent of the experience with this species as a cause of childhood TB in the early 1900s. In our earlier review of the historical significance of this organism, M bovis disease in previous endemic regions of the world, the virtual eradication of this pathogen from the milk supply in the United States for the last several decades, and the data reported here demonstrate the continued presence of this organism in unpasteurized dairy products from the Baja region of northern Mexico. Its impact on the expression of tuberculous disease in the pediatric population of San Diego region has been substantial”.
Now I understand why there was such a heavy focus on raw milk Mexican cheese on the March 2007 CDC PowerPoint presentation on the dangers of raw milk. Both New York City (2001-2004) and San Diego (1980-1997) had a significant increase in the number of Hispanic children and adults contracting TB from M bovis bacteria. The common variable was raw milk cheese made in Mexico. I don’t have the data in front of me, but if I remember correctly, 50-55% of the illnesses (TB, Salmonella, Listeria) on CDC PowerPoint were the result of eating contaminated Mexican raw milk cheese.
According to statistics, TB continues to kill some 3 million people a year, more than 95 per cent of them in developing countries, and numbers are climbing. One-third of the world's population, mostly in Asia, is infected with M. tuberculosis. And while the infection is dormant in most of those people, in the coming decades the spread of HIV is expected to reactivate TB in millions of them, causing a sharp rise in the number of cases of disease and death.
In reality, the people at greatest risk from TB are those who have always been most at risk: the poorest and most marginal groups, those with suppressed immunity and unfortunately it is these very people who are singled out for the BCG vaccine.
Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is a live mycobacterium from cattle (m bovis), which has been supposedly weakened in the laboratory by passing it through cultures until it is apparently incapable of causing disease.
According to a Health Canada statement on BCG they state, “A review of adverse events associated with BCG vaccine in Canada has recently been completed by the Agency's Advisory Committee on Causality Assessment (ACCA) subsequent to case reports of disseminated BCG infection identified by the IMPACT (Immunization Monitoring Program-Active) system of hospital-based surveillance(10, 11). IMPACT identified 21 BCG vaccine-related adverse events between 1993 and 2002, which were reviewed by ACCA; 15 of these were designated as serious (patient died or was in hospital for 3 or more days). The serious cases were six cases of disseminated BCG disease (five in First Nations and Inuit children; all of whom subsequently died), two cases of osteomyelitis, five abscesses and two cases of adenitis. In assessing causality, 14 of the 21 cases were deemed very likely-certainly associated with the vaccine (including the six disseminated cases), five were probably associated with the vaccine, one was possibly associated with the vaccine and one could not be classified. An additional fatal case of disseminated BCG was identified in 2003 and assessed by ACCA as very likely-certainly associated with the vaccine”.
Could this presumed harmless bacterium cause problems in people whose immune systems have been destroyed by HIV? Some scientists argue that it is hazardous to vaccinate all babies in areas where large numbers of women are infected with HIV and are passing the virus on to their offspring. Most researchers however, argue that there is no evidence of widespread BCG disease in children in populations heavily affected by HIV, so who do we believe?
The above Health Canada statement states that, “the rate of disseminated BCG in First Nations children is much greater than the highest global estimate which suggests that Canadian First Nations children are at higher risk for this complication of BCG vaccine than children in other parts of the world. Since disseminated BCG infection is a known complication of the vaccine in immunocompromised persons(18-19), the high rate suggests that immunodeficiency states may be more common in First Nations children”.
Ken Conrad
I would also add what is so "brave" about disallowing the Mi State Patrol from entering your land? You simply say no..which Niewendorp did. Later they simply came back with a warrant and entered anyway. I fail to see what was so significant about his action as apposed to doing something more sustaining.