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Food
Food Monday
18Dec
E.coli and Raw Milk: A Family Web of Intrigue and Resentment
Monday, December 18, 2006 at 03:35PM 
How do you respond to a parent who accuses you of aiding and abetting the company that made her daughter seriously ill? I’ve been grappling with that question for the last ten days, since I received an email from Melissa Herzog, the mother of one of the five children who became ill in California last September in cases that have been associated with Organic Pastures Dairy Co.
Since receiving the email, I have gained a further education into the complexities of tracking E.coli illness, along with the dangerous blame game that can develop after someone gets sick.
In the email, Melissa berated me for my original BusinessWeek.com article about Organic Pastures, where I quoted owner Mark McAfee as saying that two of the children who became ill had consumed spinach. (At the time the article came out, four children’s illnesses had been identified by state authorities as possibly related to Organic Pastures’ raw milk; a fifth was added later.)
“I am the mother of the 10-year-old little girl that got sick and she did NOT have any spinach,” Melissa wrote. “It outrages me that he (McAfee) doesn't have his story right and it gets into print. She, like the other 4 children, had Organic Pastures raw milk (without my knowledge) and became sick exactly 3 days later (when e-coli makes itself known). I’m not a dairy owner nor a doctor but it seems to me it is the likely reason my daughter became sick.”
She went on to say that her daughter, Lauren, had drunk the milk while at another person’s home, and had “spent two months in a hospital fighting for her life.”
I wrote Melissa twice requesting to speak with her, but she didn’t respond to my emails. I wanted to learn more about her daughter’s experience—how her recovery has gone, how much raw milk she had consumed, whether she had ever had it before, what evidence Melissa had that the E.coli came from Organic Pastures’ milk, etc.
However, I was able to locate one of the other key people in this situation—the woman who fed Lauren the raw milk. It turns out that Melissa is divorced from Lauren’s father, Peter Herzog, and their daughter spends time with both parents. Peter has been seriously involved with a woman in Rancho Mirage, CA, Chelsea Higholt.
Lauren spent last Labor Day weekend with her father, at Chelsea’s home, along with Chelsea’s two children from a previous marriage. As Chelsea recalls it, Lauren consumed a miniscule amount of raw milk—part of a smoothie Chelsea made for four of them that included strawberries, banana, vegetable protein powder, coconut milk, and one-third cup of raw milk. “We’d been drinking raw milk for three months, and we don’t drink very much,” says Chelsea.
Lauren became sick a few days later, after returning to her mother, and Melissa notified public health officials. Chelsea responded to their inquiries, providing a run-down of the foods they had consumed, and when raw milk came up, the officials wanted to know more. She volunteered the container of Organic Pastures raw milk, which was tested and found not to contain any E.coli.
“I’m really confused about how E.coli was in the milk,” says Chelsea. “Why wouldn’t my three-year-old and five-year-old have gotten sick?”
Unlike Melissa, Chelsea isn’t convinced it was the raw milk that made Lauren sick. “I’d be the first person, if it made my kid sick, to say, ‘Let’s get rid of the milk.’”
She speculates that Lauren might have become ill from a hamburger she had with her mother. She recalls herself becoming sick from hamburger a few years ago.
She also blames doctors for giving Lauren antibiotics, which appear to have made her case much more serious than it likely would have been otherwise. She adds that Lauren has recovered well from her ordeal.
But Melissa isn’t ready to give in to other possibilities. In her email to me, she added, “Most people have grown up drinking pasturized/homogenized milk and have lived normal, healthy lives. Unfortunately, there are a lot of extremists in this world. I believe that people should have the right to choose what they eat or drink, but an innocent child, that was normal and healthy and did not need to be put on any freak Organic diet, should not have been given this milk. Adults should be more mindful and heed warning labels.!!!!!!!!”
Mark McAfee is as puzzled as Chelsea. He confirms that Lauren was diagnosed with E.coli 0157:H7. But he points out again that just as no E.coli was found in Chelsea’s milk, no E.coli was found in any of his milking cows.
All the same, he acknowledges, “I cannot guarantee that there will not be a pathogen. I cannot guarantee you will not become ill.” And he adds this point: “Some consumers think they’re supposed to be guaranteed safe food. People looking for guarantees about the safety of our food system are looking for a pipedream.”
Part of the problem is that we don’t fully understand the dynamics of E.coli—why it appears when it does and why some people become ill and others don’t. A summary of an article in Science (posted by mac yesterday in comments about my FDA posting) suggests the difficulties.
What Mark is really saying is that we have to assume some responsibility for what we consume. If food preparers don’t wash their hands and pass on illnesses, then the preparers are responsible. But as we’re learning from one contamination outbreak after another, the culprits aren’t always so easy to identify. We can do the best we can to reduce the odds by trying as much as possible to eat food from known and proven sources and to keep our own immune systems as strong as possible. And accept that we could become sick.
Otherwise, it’s too easy to play a blame game that really goes nowhere—whether we blame an unseen government or friends of family.
Reader Comments (25)
If you look up the research paper behind the article in Science that mac refers to,it is clear that the presence of e coli 0157:H7 in the colon is not necessarily a problem.At a normal colon ph of 7 the e coli 0157:H7 can't compete well enough with the other bacteria so it doesn't increase in number enough to cause trouble. To make a person sick e coli 0157:H7 needs the right environment to flourish. That would be a ph of 6 or less or 10 to 100 times more acid than normal.In a cow, they show that the presence of undigested grain is enough to create this ph.What the increased acidity does is slow down the competeing bacteria. Since the 0157:H7 is not slowed by acidity it becomes competetive.Anything that inhibits the normal colon bacteria will give e coli 0157:H7 the same advantage.Antibiotics,chlorinated water, bacteriacidal cleaning agents,drugs,food preservatives,hard to digest food that ferments in your colon... its a long list.Our corporate food producers are waging a war on bacteria,from the soil ,to the animals digestive systems,to our own digestive systems.Our health ,the animal's health and the soil's health all depend on creating the right environment for those bacteria that normally keep the troublemakers from taking over. When spinach is rinsed with a chlorine solution just before it is packaged ,the intent is to eliminate the bacteria. The result is to eliminate the bacteria that compete with the acid resistant bacteria and also the residue on the spinach will eliminate some of the bacteria in you when you eat the spinach.
The germ theory of disease says that we need to find the germ that causes a disease and kill it,but in this case what we need to do is to NOT kill the bacteria that keep 0157:H7 from causing us harm.
I wonder what Melissa feeds this "innocent child"? Since she's clearly averse to a "freak organic diet," I suspect that said diet is probably loaded with preservatives, chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, and other FDA-approved "safe" items.
The child recovered: bless.
The difference between writers like David and the official health agencies, is that they pursue until they find a possible explaination (not necessarily the truth) Raw milk is not only on the short list, it is near to top. So when an official pursues the source of a posible foodborne illness, they call, start at the top of the list and keep saying: did you eat this, drink that..... And when they make a hit...they stop. A HA! When you write you keep asking just what did happen.
So lets try to make some sense from what we do know about the pathobiology of E. coli 0157:H7. Ogranic Pastures cows are probably the least likely source of 0157:H7 in a dairy herd. (I commented before). Three children shared the same smoothy prep. It is unbelievably unlikely that if there were 0157:H7 bacteria in the raw milk, that it didn't mix equally in all 3 portions drunk. We do know about making smoothies. Some of the critical differences between the one child who developed diarrhea containing 0157:H7, and the others that didn't. The two probably have a more nutritious general diet, that includes raw milk. So the essential microflora in the two was more established and probably less susceptible to colonization with a new pathogenic strain. Their immunologic preparidness was undoubtly more likely to retard any new bacterial introduction (certainly including small numbers of a pathogen). Even if some 0157:H7 stain bacteria did make it into their colons, the two could well have intestinal lining that was less likely to be damaged by the pathogen, and likewise any endotoxin that might have been produced. (thats why some of us believe eating health food is important, not just because if tastes better, it does, but because it makes us healthier.).
Thats just one small window into the complexity of the pathobiology of E. coli 0157:H7. We can talk about some of the others sometime. But each new revelation about such a well understood example of this cluster in Calif. should be an opportunity to examine more carefully the critical factors that reduce the risks of eating food.
Thank you David. Keep pushing to get the truth and not being satisfied when the answer we get fit our own personal agendas.
Ted Beals, MD
Are we only talking about commercially produced raw foods (meat, vegetables, fruit) or is it all raw foods? This isn't meant in an insulting way, I just don't understand and would like to. I am one of 11 children and we ate a "ton" of raw food to include vegetables from our large garden. We ate them right while we picked them (beans, carrots, lettuce, radishes, cherry tomatoes, even potatoes) and we never got sick. We ate eggs and meat from our chickens (butchered right in our yard) and drank nothing but raw goat and cow milk year-round (unless all the milkers dried up early in dead-winter).
What did children eat 150 years ago? Was the food always cooked for children or did they eat raw food and many of them died from disease of which I'm simply not aware? I know there were terrible plagues at times, were some of these food related? Maybe as the one reader posted, the abrupt introduction of raw food to an otherwise processed diet really did make the child sick? Slightly akin to switching cows from dry hay all winter to lush spring pasture (without a regulated transition) can make the cows terribly upset.
I guess I'd just like to understand the seemingly misplaced fear of raw foods, or at least non-commercial raw food.
This is Chelsea here...I just found out that I was in the article and that a Michael had replied to it by saying some things that the same person named, Melissa Herzog has said to her friends and her family...same exact things, so Michael...this is for you...Please refrain, just as my attorney said, from slandering me. I have test results that hold up in a court of law against your constant slander and immature conduct. There was no e-coli in my milk and I still consume raw milk today and so do my children, friends and other family members. Mark MacAfee knows what he is doing and I trust him and his company. I have met his whole family and I toured the dairy and it is amazing and ingeneous! Mobile milking stations...that is science and that is top notch if you ask me in regards to safety.
Michael is not a doctor just as Michael/Melissa stated in her e-mail to you, David...but she always wants to know what my cridentials are to do something- i.e. drink milk.
Lauren's father was serving Lauren raw milk as well. We bought the milk from two different stores, yet she called the store that I bought my milk at, not his and I know this because I called the store that Peter Herzog shopped at, and the milk was still on the shelf. The whole thing was a vendetta against me. She told her daughter, son, family members, friends and even people on the street who she barely knew, that I gave Lauren raw milk on purpose to KILL her and she called security on me in the hospital for no reason and I was not allowed to visit Lauren while her daughter cried and told everyone how she wanted me there. I have never hurt Lauren, I have only loved her.
It was her failed attempts to make her children hate me and to ruin the good relationship I had with her ex-husband, whom she still apparently has feelings for or she would have not made this whole story up, if there was not jealousy and anger since she still continues this nonsense today.
Michael, might want to think about what he said, educate himself and come to the realization that if I was guilty of anything, I would have never written out what I had given Lauren and gave it to Melissa and I would have never gave my milk over to the State Dairy Dept. for testing. I knew the milk did not get her sick and I have a guilt-free conscience. Maybe if Melissa had taken her daughter to the hospital/doctor in a timely fashion like Peter asked her to instead of making her daughter wear a maxipad since she had such bad rectal bleeding, but we won' go there since Melissa's social schedule and date with her boyfriend was more important.
I am going to school to be a health counselor and I know damn more than Michael does. I have a college degree and graduated Cum Laude. I wonder how intelligent Michael is? Did he even go to school? Does he even have a job right now? Does he even have the right to pass judgement on me? I believe that ignorant people who post threads on the internet should also re-read their posts and see how rediculous their post sounds including grammatical mistakes. Clearly Michael reacted so fast with anger like Melissa did with her post to you David, that she forgot to at least seem intelligent with her statements, but that would be asking a lot from someone who just does not have the capacity to do so. I have to reply to this thread, David, because Michael's statements sound too much like Melissa and my attorney warned her to please stop making such rediculous statements. Lauren was not put on a FREAK organic diet...last time I checked, people who ate whole foods and foods that did not containe GMO's, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides or herbicides are people who are health conscience and normal. Obesity, diabetes, cancer and on and on are caused from people who don't care about what they ingest. I do not serve my children junk food...chips, candy, etc. Does that make me a freak? What is wrong with the world today? 60 years ago people didn't eat this stuff, so they were freaks? 100 years ago people did not eat this stuff, so they were freaks? 5000 years ago people did not eat this stuff, so they were freaks?
The people who are freaks are the one's that don't care about what they give their children. To me that is called neglect. If I fed my child chips, soda and foods that were DEAD all day long, that had no nutritional value whatsoever, then I would be normal...well, if that is normal, then I guess I am a freak and I am proud to be one! My children are healthy, smart and vibrant. They love their raw and organic food, just ask them. I think a lot of other people around me feel the same way and if we take a look at the trend today...the market for organic food is growing so much, Target, Walgreens and other stores want to monopolize on the huge growth.
Mark MacAfee won't complain to you either since he just got interviewed by Katie Couric last week...pretty impressive. I will support Mark and have with his campaign to raise 500k to support the Raw Revolution.
The butter, the cream, the Quifor, the chocolate colustrum, the milk, the cheese, YUP, we eat it all. We are still alive and kicking and so are thousands of other people too. Mark has top quality products and I pay top dollar for that. They are #1 in safety and if we were to see how the standards for safety have dwindled for other companies, we would understand why almost all of the e-coli outbreaks in the last couple of years have been from non-organic companies and big companies that also pastuerize and wash their products. Standards have lowered for them and now people are getting sick. For companies to be organically certified, they pay more, they make less and they do it because they know it is the right thing to do.
I have a friend who's family owns an organic asparagus farm. Why organic? Because the father got cancer from working in fields that were not organic because of the spraying of the pesticides, so he decided to never ingest anything that was not organic or never to grow anything that was not organic. Plenty of people who have had cancer eat organic, they don't want their cancer to come back...this all makes sense...oh, but they must be freaks too.
David, take care or yourself and I am glad that you wrote your article. People need to stand up and fight for what is right.
Michael, find a hobby or something, since you have nothing better to do than show your ignorance and stupidity and judge me and my decisions on how my family should eat. Here is something done on purpose. My son Xander, is allergic to nuts. My boyfriend, his children and other people knew of this. One day at a basketball game, a person tried to give Xander peanuts, and was well aware that he had allergies. I told the person not to give the peanuts to him. 10 minutes later Xander had an allergic reaction, broke out in hives, got irritated, lathargic and then I had to leave the court to settle him. The person who gave him the peanuts after I told her not to, is the same person that should keep her mouth shut from making such strong statements and accusations. I still don't know how she snuck him the peanuts...must have done it when I turned my back!
People like that are the people you have to watch out for. They are the people who have no conscience and no guilt by trying to make an almost two year old sick because they don't like their mother.
Oh, the ingestion of the raw milk had been going on for a while before Lauren had gotten sick. So, it was not new to her system at all. She wasn't even over at my house for two months prior to her having been at my house that weekend. So, a lot of the raw milk drinking was done at her dad's house, not mine. Melissa also fails to tell people that her son, Brandon, had over a glass of the same raw milk at my house the next morning after I split the smoothie between my family and Lauren and he did not get sick at all either and he had more than any of us!
I know that people can have a reaction to something, don't get me wrong, but we all drank the milk. If it was the milk, the person who should have had the worst reaction is the child who's immune system is not very strong or less developed, which was my son, Xander, who at that time, had just turned 3. Or, it would have been Brandon, since he had so much more milk than all of us. Melissa can argue whatever she wants, but I have negative results and Lauren was the only one who got sick and she was at her dad's and mother's house before and after she was at my house. When a person puts the blame on another person and is wrong, that person should apologize, but she is too good and in such denial that she refuses to do that. Instead she still continues to slander me in threads where she has to disguise her name as Michael!
Supporting all the Freaks out there,
Chelsea Higholt
Chris and Lauren Herzog were in the same PICU at Loma Linda's Childrens Hospital. Both children developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. The toxins from the e-coli destroy the red blood cells and shut down the kidneys. Words can not really describe what we experienced watching our son hooked up to machines that allowed him to live as his body slowly recovered.
He was on a ventilator for a total of 9 days and kidney dialysis for about two weeks. He had tubes coming out of both sides of his chest for two weeks to drain fluid that had built up in his body. On the right side of his his upper chest was a central line for feeding him, drawing blood and injecting medication. On the left side of his chest was a catheter for kidney dialysis.
Imagine that your child is in this condition with his arms tied to the bed so he can't pull the tubes out of his mouth or nose. This is what could happen if your child is contaminated with the e-coli bacteria.
I gave my child raw milk because I believed in it's health benifits. Would I ever take the chance and give my child raw milk again.....NO! I believe that Organic Pastures runs a great dairy. Mark McAfee takes great pride in the product he produces. He makes his dairy as safe as humanly possible. Despite all of these efforts, my child still became contaminated with the e-coli bacteria. Something to think about before you give your children raw milk.
On a side note, after the story about my son was run in a LA times magazine, I had a parent contact me whose childen contracted e-coli in the summer of 2005 from drinking Organic Pastures raw milk.
Sincerely,
Mary Martin
Do you drink raw milk - milk that has not been pasteurized to destroy germs that can make you sick? Milk is a highly perishable food product and is an excellent medium for transmitting a variety of diseases.
How is raw milk different than pasteurized milk?
Raw milk is unprocessed milk that is drunk just as it comes from the cow, goat or sheep.
Pasteurized milk, on the other hand, is heated to kill all disease-causing bacteria that may be found in raw milk.
Raw milk can make you sick
Raw milk usually comes from farms that have not been approved or inspected, and which are not monitored by government for drug residues such as antibiotics.
Some people say they grew up drinking raw milk and never became sick from it. However, public health authorities know of many cases where people got sick from drinking raw milk. While mandatory pasteurization of milk has virtually eliminated large outbreaks of milk borne disease in Canada, occasional cases still remind us of the hazards of raw milk consumption.
For example:
In Chilliwack, 5 members of a family became ill with Salmonella from raw goat's milk.
On Central Vancouver Island, 9 out of 13 kindergarten children became ill with Campylobacter after drinking raw milk while on a school visit to a local farm.
In a separate outbreak, also on Central Vancouver Island, five children from different families were diagnosed with an infection of E. coli 0157:H7 after drinking raw goat's milk from the same farm. Two of the children had to be hospitalized. Samples of the raw goat's milk were tested and found to have the same strain of E. coli 0157:H7 that caused the illnesses.
In Vernon, a number of cases of Campylobacter were traced to the consumption of raw milk.
In the Kootenays, a 35 year old woman needed surgery and a long stay in hospital due to Brucella infection. She had previously drunk raw milk from several sources.
On the Queen Charlotte Islands, 2 people developed Toxoplasmosis after drinking raw goat's milk.
Have you been told that raw milk is better than pasteurized milk?
There are a number of myths about this. For example
Is raw milk better for you?
No. There is no evidence that raw milk is better for you than pasteurized milk.
Does pasteurized milk contain additives or preservatives?
By law, vitamins A and D must be added to pasteurized milk. Nothing else can be added to milk.
(Vitamin A helps you see better in dim light, and to tell colors apart. Vitamin D helps your body take up calcium, and reduces the risk of osteoporosis.)
Does raw milk help keep you from getting sick?
No. There is no evidence that raw milk makes you more resistant to disease.
Does raw milk help develop teeth better than pasteurized milk?
No. There is no evidence that raw milk helps your teeth develop any better than pasteurized milk.
What can you do to protect yourself?
Anyone can get sick from the disease-causing agents which may be found in raw milk, However, infants, children, the elderly, and people with certain chronic diseases are at more risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk because they are more vulnerable to infection. Infants and children are at even higher risk because they usually drink a lot of milk.
Only buy your milk products from proper stores. Milk that you buy from grocery stores or other reputable commercial stores must be pasteurized and packaged in an approved dairy plant.
For more information on raw milk, please contact your local environmental health officer.
One argument made by raw milk advocates is that pasteurization kills “good” bacteria and enhances growth of harmful bacteria. While it is true that pasteurization destroys bacteria, that is precisely the intended benefit. Bacterial species such as E. coli, Salmonella and even Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, reside in the gut of cows. These microorganisms, harmless to cows, can contaminate raw milk and cause serious infection in humans. Pasteurization eliminates these pathogens. The counterpoint - pasteurization destroys beneficial bacteria - is worthless. Bacteria are everywhere in the environment - found in soil, water, most foods and even on the outer layer of human skin. Due to the universal nature of bacteria, people are almost constantly ingesting microbes, which then colonize the gut. The only way to eliminate the normal flora (bacteria that normally grows in the digestive tract and protects humans from opportunistic pathogens) is long-term antibiotic treatment. Drinking pasteurized milk will not have any diminishing effect on the normal flora of human intestines.
Another nugget of disinformation raised by raw milk proponents is that pasteurized milk increases the risk of diseases such as cancer and osteoporosis. These advocates state the fact that cancer rates were much lower before pasteurization was mandated. This argument is inherently misleading. There are many causes of cancer, involving complex interactions of genetics and environmental factors. Regardless of what precisely triggers cancer, the increase in various malignancies is largely due to the fact that humans live much longer lives than they did 100 years ago. Prior to the 20th century’s advancement in food production, sanitation and medicine, the life expectancy was only 40-50 years of age and the most common cause of death was infectious diseases, primarily tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza and diarrheal illnesses. Cancer, heart disease and stroke are now the three most common causes of mortality for the simple reason that people in developed countries often live into their 70s, 80s or beyond, thus giving time for chronic diseases to take hold. Pasteurization of milk has little, if anything to do with this trend. As for osteoporosis, vitamin D is required for the absorption of calcium from the gut. Humans produce their own vitamin D from sunlight, as well as receive it from processed milk, which is fortified with this nutrient. Raw milk does not contain vitamin D, therefore, less calcium absorption occurs from drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk.
Proponents of raw milk also argue that pasteurization of milk destroys enzymes that aid in digestion of foods. One website even claims that drinking pasteurized milk “puts a strain on the pancreas,” (which secretes many digestive enzymes). This could not be further from the truth. Enzymes found in raw milk are bovine enzymes, which, as foreign proteins, are destroyed naturally by the human digestive tract. Humans are incapable of using bovine enzymes to aid in digestion. Only enzymes produced by ones own salivary glands, stomach and pancreas are useful for humans.
In conclusion, people have the right to drink raw milk if they think it better suits their taste. However, they should be forewarned that much of the information promoting the benefits of raw milk is overblown or worse, patently false. Research conducted by credible scientists and organizations, including the FDA, overwhelmingly argues in favor of pasteurized milk’s benefits versus raw milk. So before anyone chooses to switch to raw milk, they must be properly educated on the facts, then they can make a truly informed decision on what goes into their body.
I am confused... isn't gramatical spelled grammatical?
Is my spell check wrong, or is the dictionary wrong, or does this woman have no clue? Grammatical comes from the word grammar, which apparently she never took in school on top of the English and spelling!
I love the way she revives herself from the truth. Mary and I talked quite a bit in the hospital and almost half of the information she got about the milk, test results,(since I sent her the copy and so forth) came from me! She acts in her post like she has no idea who I am. I bent over backwards to get her the information she and her husband wanted in regards to Mark and the testing. All Mary kept telling me was that her husband was angry and blaming her, now all of the sudden she is angry and blaming Mark, wonder how it was to have been her then? Her husband had previously bought raw milk for their son at the same store and got very upset one time, when it was not on the shelf! Guess Mary felt really bad the whole time in the hospital and now it is Mark's turn to feel bad now, right? Or in Melissa's case...it should be my turn to feel bad since she stated that I put the e-coli in the milk myself and poisoned her daughter. Still don't hear her defending anything I said and it has been a year later. I got some more good one's to tell as to why Melissa never opened the door while Lauren was sitting outside on the floor banging on her mother's door when she first got sick. Her mother locked her door and would not open it...wonder what was so important that she could not open the door to find out what was wrong with her child in the middle of the night. People...please. We know what Melissa is all about...herself. This is a blog so that everyone can feel sorry for Melissa and that is it. We should feel what they felt, what about what Lauren felt and had to listen to...her mother torturing her and filling her with lies and calling the police and security and telling her lies about her father. All the while, poor Lauren is trying to get better.
All she wanted was blood, still wants it apparently, but from Mark now...not me. Hey Melissa, got an apology for me yet? Got that letter still? What is the date on it anyway? Coming up on a year, I think too! It is never too late to say, "I am sorry!"
David...this is the first time I have logged on since March, a friend Googled my name and told me more comments and articles had been written since then and I had no idea what you have been posting. Just so you are aware...my life has changed a bit over the last year. I still eat OPD'S butter and lightly salted cheese but as for the other products, I have not had any in a long time. Reason being, is because it was clear to me from going to nutrition school, that we can live without a large amount of animal products. Ingesting too much milk, meat or eggs, really is not the best for certain people, but on a whole, the world needs to cut back on how much animal protein and fat we eat. We were hunters back in the day and yes we still need protein, but we have other sources that are not so high in saturated fats, cholesterol and calories on a whole. I would still drink a glass of milk, no doubt, (I would drink the raw over the pasteurized) but for my body-type, I have found I am more a vegetarian and because I am a Yogi, it goes along with my practice.
Mark does more than just sell Milk...we all should do our research and find out what and why people do what they do. I think he is in the hot spot all day long and there is a reason why he does it and a reason why his children do it and their spouses. It is a family run establishment and I only felt more comfortable after going there and seeing the dairy. That was one of the reasons I went to Fresno. The other reason was to let everyone know that my results were negative and still are negative. I knew it then and I still believe it now!
You can't change hard evidence no matter how much you wish or hope.