Charlie Syski, 7, of Brookville, Md., holds a sign at a
protest in favor of raw milk outside the Russell Senate
Office Building.
WASHINGTON — One sun-drenched August morning, armed
officers wearing sunglasses and bullet-proof vests descended
on a market in Venice, Calif., searching for illegally sold
goods. It marked the end of a year-long investigation where
undercover agents posed as customers.
Their target: raw, unpasteurized milk.
Federal regulators say it’s a dangerous and unnecessary
public threat, pointing to 143 cases of contamination linked
to still births, miscarriages and kidney failure since 1987,
the latest involving five California children. Grassroots,
back-to-nature consumers say the product strengthens the
immune system by keeping intact good bacteria that’s killed
in pasteurized milk. The choice should be theirs, the
activists say.
“These guns are being drawn on basically aging hippies,
all because of illegal milk,” said Ajna Sharma-Wilson, a Los
Angeles lawyer for the Venice market owner, in an interview.
“This is a waste of taxpayer money.”
The Aug. 3 crackdown on the Venice market has become a
cause célèbre for a growing raw-milk movement that touts the
product’s ability to strengthen the immune system and
contends the federal enforcement is overzealous. Proponents
are part of a broader raw-foods movement that touts
unprocessed and organic products as a healthier alternative
and advocates direct sales from local, sustainable farms to
consumers.
Twenty states ban raw milk sales in some form and 30
allow it, including California. Less than 1 percent of
Americans drink the product, according to the Food and Drug
Administration. The Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit
nutrition research group in Washington that works for
universal access to raw milk, estimates the figure may
exceed 9.4 million people, or about 3 percent of the
population.
The FDA hasn’t explained its involvement in the August
raid and Siobhan DeLancey, an agency spokeswoman, declined
to comment. The target, Rawesome Foods, provided
unpasteurized goat milk and related products and operated
for more than six years without a required business permit
or license, according to the Los Angeles County District
Attorney’s Office.
It’s illegal in California to sell unpasteurized dairy
without applicable licenses and permits, which require
veterinary inspections and sanitation requirements,
according to the attorney’s office.
No additional information is available on the case and
the warrant is sealed, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for
the attorney’s office, in an interview.
The FDA banned the interstate sale of raw milk in 1987.
Raw-milk advocates trying to overturn the restriction on
interstate sales have attracted the support of Rep. Ron
Paul, a Texas Republican seeking the Republican presidential
nomination, who in May introduced legislation to allow
interstate traffic of unpasteurized milk and milk products
for human consumption.
“These Americans have the right to consume these products
without having the federal government second-guess their
judgment about what products best promote health,” Paul said
in introducing the bill.
Raw-milk advocates rallying against the federal crackdown
staged a protest near the U.S. Capitol during which they
milked a brown-and-white cow named Morgan. A caravan of moms
in minivans drove across state lines with plastic jugs of
raw milk to the FDA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.,
where they drank the unpasteurized dairy product with
chocolate chip, oatmeal and ginger cookies.
DeLancey, the FDA spokeswoman, referred inquiries about
the federal investigations and raw milk safety to statements
on the agency’s website. Research shows no meaningful
differences in raw versus pasteurized milk, according to an
FDA consumer fact sheet, and unpasteurized milk is “unsafe
to eat.”
Illnesses linked to raw milk may hurt the dairy industry
if consumers fail to realize lack of pasteurization causes
the outbreaks, Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk
Producers Federation, said in an interview.
“What’s happening is bad for the image and reputation of
overall. It’s damaging,” said Galen. The Arlington, Va.-
based federation — whose members include Land O’Lakes Inc.
in Arden Hills, Minn., and Agri-Mark Inc. in Methuen, Mass.,
and produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply — is
calling on the FDA not to waver in the face of “pressure
tactics” from raw milk supporters, according to a Nov. 1
press release.
The nation’s 55,000 dairy farms earned $31 billion in
2010 for milk they sold, according to the federation.
Pasteurization, which heats milk to kill pathogens, was
first developed in 1864 by Louis Pasteur and destroys
organisms responsible for diseases such as typhoid fever,
tuberculosis, and diphtheria, according to the FDA. Bacteria
in raw milk may be especially dangerous to pregnant women
and children, according to the agency’s web site.
“We know there is a real risk with raw milk,” David
Theno, chief executive officer of Del Mar, Calif.-based Gray
Dog Partners Inc., a food-safety consultant. “Is it OK to
feed your kid vodka? It’s less risky than giving them raw
milk.”
California on Nov. 15 issued a statewide recall and
quarantine of raw milk products by Organic Pastures Dairy
Company in Fresno County due to suspected E. coli
contamination after five children were infected, according
to the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture. All drank
raw milk from the dairy, the department said.
Kaleigh Lutz, a spokeswoman for Organic Pastures, said
tests the company performed on its product showed no
contamination and that there may not be any link.
Organic Pastures was connected to an earlier outbreak
that sickened four children, according to a 2006 press
release from the state agency.
“It was hell, and all because he drank some milk,” said
Mary McGonigle-Martin, 52, a high school guidance counselor
in Murrieta, Calif., whose seven-year-old son, Chris, fell
ill and wound up in a pediatric intensive care unit on a
ventilator. A 2008 lawsuit filed by the family in Fresno
County Superior Court was settled out of court and the child
recovered, McGonigle-Martin said.
Organic Pastures admitted no wrongdoing in the outbreak
and the company’s insurer settled because of concern a trial
would lead to bad publicity, Lutz said. She said the company
would have won its case.
Pasteurized milk is less healthy because it destroys good
bacteria and raw milk builds the immune system, according to
the Weston A. Price Foundation. The elderly,
immune-compromised, children, and pregnant women are the
very consumers who most need raw milk, the group said.
“If raw milk is so dangerous, where are the corpses?”
Deborah Stockton, of Tazewell, Va., executive director of
the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association,
which promotes direct farmer-to-consumer sales, said in an
interview. “They’re going after distributors the way they go
after drug dealers.”
In another action, the FDA is seeking a permanent
injunction against Daniel Allgyer, an Amish farmer, to bar
him from interstate distribution of raw milk, according to
an April 19 complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In 2010, FDA officials
came to his Rainbow Acres Farm, a dairy operation in
Kinzers, Pa., to conduct an inspection.
The visit followed a nearly year-long investigation where
FDA investigators using aliases to join an online group
where they placed orders for unpasteurized milk, according
to the complaint. They placed orders on 23 occasions, picked
up the milk at private homes in Maryland, and analyzed some
samples in labs to confirm they weren’t pasteurized.
Allgyer didn’t return a call seeking comment.
“I’m for regulation, but why is the FDA doing this?” said
Marion Nestle, New York University professor in the
Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, in
an interview. “Here’s the FDA in hazmat suits taking on the
little farmer with 20 cows. This is an Amish guy trying to
make a living.”
An earlier enforcement action in California against
Rawesome Food provided fodder for a segment on Comedy
Central’s “The Colbert Report”, with the Rawesome market
owner saying “it’s right to get dysentery if I want to.” The
August raid was documented by jeering bystanders in
dreadlocks and baseball caps with smart phones, who posted
the agents’ search on YouTube.
Food-safety experts applaud the actions, however. Raw
milk is so dangerous that it should be against the law to
purchase it for consumption by children, said Richard
Raymond, who was undersecretary for food safety at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture from 2005 through 2008, in an
interview.
“To buy this food and feed it to your children?” Raymond
wrote in an Aug. 18 article in Food Safety News, an online
food safety publication. “Might as well lock them in your
car on a 100-degree day while you stop by the casino to try
and win the jackpot.”
What is it that you people don't understand?? The
government knows what is best for you.
Obama 2012!
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