The Complete Patient

There’s a powerful need by those opposed to consumers having free access to raw milk to say, “I told you so.” Each time there is a report of illness potentially associated with raw milk, these people go ballistic. It’s the old “gotcha” routine.

The latest example comes from a situation in Connecticut in which four children who consumed raw milk from the state’s only organic dairy became ill over the last week. (A few comments following my previous post refer to it.) “I have been blogging about raw milk for awhile – I am busier than ever,” chortles germ lawyer Bill Marler on his blog, reporting on the Connecticut situation.

Because these cases often are pretty well divorced from reality by the time people like Marler get hold of them, I called the farm, Simsbury Town Farm Dairy. It turns out it’s not a conventional farm, but is instead owned by the small town of Simsbury and operated by a nonprofit organization known as The Friends of Town Farm Dairy.

Bill Dryden, president of the organization, told me that the town has owned the farm since 1883, when it was “deeded to the town for the benefit of the poor.” People who couldn’t make ends meet could come to the farm and earn their food and shelter at the farm by working there.

That approach ended in the late 1940s as the move to cities and the demise of farming gained speed. Too bad—it might help a lot of people being put out into the streets by the subprime mortgage mess. Since then, the farms been leased by various farmers.

As far as raw milk is concerned, the dairy was formed 22 years ago, according to Dryden, and consumers would come to the farm with containers and make purchases. But a year ago, The Friends decided to begin bottling milk—both pasteurized and unpasteurized—for sale via retail outlets, since retailing of raw milk is legal in Connecticut.

I should note at this point that Dryden didn’t know anything about the controversies swirling around raw milk in California, Pennsylvania, New York, and other states. His day job is that he’s a management consultant, and he sees his involvement with The Friends as part of an effort to help the farm serve as a local resource for education and conservation. 

Dryden confirmed that the dairy has, at the state’s request, discontinued sales of raw milk. But he said this isn’t an open-and-shut case. Since the state notified The Friends of the illnesses a week ago, no E.coli 0157:H7 has been found in the milk or on the farm. “The initial test (of milk) came back negative. There’s no link except the circumstance” of the children becoming ill.

He says the dairy has received a few calls in the past when children have become ill, and the illnesses turned out to be from other causes. “One turned out to be the day care center…The knee-jerk reaction is that this must be raw milk.”

Now, on the other side, today’s Hartford Courant has what seems a reasonably reported article in which it says the farmers who had been running the dairy departed as of July 1, and that since then, the dairy has been run by volunteers. An official of the dairy is quoted as saying there might have been some let-down in procedures that could have led to contamination of milk.

If that turns out to be the case, then it seems The Friends have a challenge to fix the problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Beyond that, it seems clear is that this particular milk production model isn’t your typical model, and that there is a desire by those involved to make sure any problems are resolved.

There’s still a good ways to go before the Simsbury Town Farm Dairy is convicted, though.

In the meantime, I’m still not sure where this need to demonize raw milk continues to come from. Perhaps from the fragility of the opponennts’ case? From their need for control? From their desire to profit? From their ideology that factory farming is inherently cleaner farming? Ego?

As someone who favors consumers having the freedom to access raw milk, I want the product to be as safe as possible. I don’t suggest that people don’t get sick from raw milk on occasion, any more than I suggest they don’t get sick from ribs and sushi and jalapeno peppers and hamburger and salami. The Hartford Courant article reports that in Connecticut between 2001 and 2007, there were 282 E.coli cases reported in the state, of which three possibly involved raw milk, since “three of those people reported consuming raw milk before they got sick…” That means that at least 279 E.coli cases came from other foods. 

I don't oppose methodologies that will improve safety, a la SB 201 in California, and many other raw milk advocates feel the same way. There's just something terribly misguided about the knee-jerk reaction to any report of possible illness from raw milk that it is a significant public health hazard.

Bingo! The U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks it’s finally found the culprit in all the salmonella cases, and it says it’s jalepeno peppers.

And where would we be in all this attention given to foodborne illnesses, without a word from Bill Marler, the lawyer germ chaser. He’s filed a suit on behalf of a couple that apparently got sick at a Georgia rib joint. What’s interesting to me is his call for more legislation.

In a press release, he says, “Where is the legislation to prevent these illnesses?…These people should not be in ICU, fighting for their lives, just because they went out to dinner.  We have the ability to legislate, regulate, and eliminate E. coli from our food supply, and we need to see Congressional action.”

I’m not sure what legislation he’s talking about that would prevent such illnesses. Maybe the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)? But would NAIS prevent such illnesses, by enabling regulators to track cattle and pigs back to the source?

Michigan lawyer Steve Bemis, a board member of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, tried to put a damper on that thinking in connection with the organization’s suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Michigan Department of Agriculture: "It is important to realize, that NAIS is not about food safety--the program supposedly is to track animals for issues of animal health, and besides doing this poorly or not at all...NAIS in fact would stop all tracking at the point of slaughter. And, as we have learned in many recent meat recalls, what happens after slaughter when meat may be contaminated and comingled is where the problem lies. NAIS would offer nothing, even if it were fully implemented, to assist in such food safety concerns. Food safety, as the meat and tomato recalls illustrate, is a far different problem. There is one commonality, however--the small diversified farms which will be harmed by NAIS, are the same farms which bring locally grown meat and produce to local farmers' markets. Damaging these small farms economically IS a food safety issue, since local food is demonstrably some of the safest food which Americans can count on, as against the current broken system which corporate agriculture offers."  

(The suit is in the process of being filed--it's official filing has been delayed by some judicial technical issues, which should be resolved any day, says the FTCLDF.)

If there's one thing Marler has right, it's that there has been an increase in outbreaks of foodborne illness cases involving E.coli 0157:H7. But if you look at the evidence about how E.coli 0157:H7 originates--some of it per Sylvia's links in her comment following my posting of July 16--much of it has to do with how cattle are fed in the factory food system, and can be improved with pasture feeding. Why don't people like Marler talk about that?

I’ve had a hard time buying pastured chickens over the last couple years. The only place they seem to appear in my experience is at a Vermont farmers market I frequent, and it seems whenever I find a farmer who sells them, he or she has just sold out or is taking orders for two months out, when I’m not sure I’ll be at the market.

So last time I was there, in June, I took the name of a farmer who said he’d begin having them by July 4, and today went to contact him to see about reserving a couple for when I go by the market tomorrow.

I see on its web site this note: “All of our produce starts are grown in Vermont Compost Co. potting soil. Karl Hammer does an unparalleled job of meticulously blending raw feedstocks to make a compost-based soil that is fertile and weed-free. Karl is currently facing a regulatory challenge to his small local business that could shut it down.”

It turns out the state is making life very difficult for Vermont Compost Co. and another local producer of compost.

An article in a local publication, “Seven Days”, lays out a tale of seemingly arbitrary regulatory enforcement that sounds a lot like the experiences of raw milk producers over the last couple years. In this case, it seems a politically connected neighbor complained about Vermont Compost and, faster than you could say “Vermont regulators,” the wheels of regulation began turning…in the wrong direction for Vermont Compost.

Of course, for every action, there is a reaction, so now some number of farmers committed to producing nutrient-dense food, like my hoped-for chicken supplier, are in danger of losing an important part of their soil enrichment.

If the regulators want to cripple sustainable farming, there’s certainly no better way to do that than to go after the soil. From the sounds of this article, the authorities don’t really appreciate the impact of what they are doing. In a system that doesn’t acknowledge differences in food quality and nutritional values, compost is simply dirt, a building product to be regulated along with concrete and plumbing.

As long as we’re on the subject of natural feeding, you’d think something as simple as “pasture fed” would be easy to define, and pretty straightforward to carry out.

But when everything related to food and agriculture needs to be sized, adjusted, and regulated to accommodate an industrial system, well, things get complicated, much like adding formula into the infant-feeding mix.

I’ve just been learning over the last few weeks about the ongoing controversy about U.S. Department of Agriculture standards defining what grass-fed means—something that’s been going on since 2005, and came to a head late last year, when the agency issued standards. It’s akin to the controversy over defining “organic.”

I can’t pretend to be an expert on these matters, because they get very involved (there were 19,000 responses to the USDA's development of grass-fed standards, but the pattern seems to be that the standards not only get watered down, but that qualifying for an official stamp of “organic” or “grass fed” becomes expensive because of all the regulatory record-keeping, paperwork, and audits required.

There’s now even an association, The American Grassfed Association, which is fighting the USDA’s standards, arguing they allow feedlots to feed animals forage, while also giving antibiotics and growth hormones…and label them “grass fed.”

All this becomes important, of course, because it’s gradually becoming accepted that, surprise, milk and beef from grass-fed animals is healthier. And once that claim can be made, then there are “business” considerations that enter into the whole equation.

So it’s not a huge surprise to learn that there’s research to develop genetically modified pasture. The business/marketing wrinkle is that it’s supposed to reduce the methane cattle put out, and thus be environmentally attractive.

Expect to see many more such “solutions” to food and energy “problems”—solutions that wind up creating ever-bigger problems. (Thanks to Lisa Imerman, a Michigan lawyer, for the info on the GM pasture.)

***

The California Assembly's Appropriations Committee unanimously passed SB 201, which substitutes HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) plans and pathogen testing for the current coliform testing of raw milk. Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., reports there was only one opponent to the legislation--a representative of the state's Finance Department, who testified that enforcement of SB 201 would cost the state $450,000 annually. The argument obviously didn't fly--the state's two raw milk dairies are paying to develop the HACCP plans--but it indicates that opposition to the new approach lurks within the state's bureaucracy.

The legislation's next step is a vote before the full Assembly in a few weeks, followed by a vote in the California Senate, and a signature by the governor--all likely to be completed sometime in September.  

Mark also reports that California's Department of Food and Agriculture resumed testing for coliforms the day after the temporary restraining order expired in mid-June, It also put into play four tests done during the time the TRO was in effect, two of which OP had failed. While OP's milk passed the June tests, Mark notes the state's results differed slightly from those he had done privately by a state-certified lab.

Finally, Mark says he's had no luck getting officials of the CDFA to sit down and discuss with him implementation of the HACCP requirement due to pass shortly. "I want to get their input on how we should proceed. But they've been mute."

The discussion on my previous post about registering nursing moms and pasteurizing mother’s milk may not be as far fetched as they sound.

The agriculture regulators in places like New York, Pennsylvania, and California have been stung by the court actions and protests to their cavalier ways with raw dairy. Like good bureaucrats everywhere, they won’t deign to re-consider their positions, but rather focus on trying to plug holes in their existing regulations. I can just hear them:

“If they want retail sales of raw milk, we’ll give them retail sales of raw milk, heh, heh. By the time we finish regulating the dairies, they’ll wish they had never heard of retail sales of raw milk.”

The solution will be to create more “air-tight” regulations that savvy lawyers like Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund can’t poke holes in. Then back them up with cries of, “For the sake of the children.”

So, if consumers want raw milk, well, then every cow needs to be registered. And what the heck—it all fits together with the National Animal Identification System.

That old idea of keeping a family cow or two, that will be termed a relic of another age that just doesn’t fit in with today’s super clean and super-efficient society.

So, there must be a baby somewhere who became ill after nursing—considering all the mothers who nurse and all the babies who get a sniffle or whatever—so who’s to say it wasn’t the mother’s milk that made the baby sick?

I happened to be listening recently to a recording from last December’s ACRES U.S.A. conference, and heard a cattle consultant talk about how most calves are taken from their mothers within hours of birth, and fed powdered (pasteurized) milk. That helps explain why butterfat content in whole milk has been progressing down. But if calves can be protected with pasteurized powdered product, why not humans?

This is America, after all, and anything is possible.