The press release about listeria contamination of the farm’s raw milk has been posted online and sent to local newspapers. The calls have gone out to the three customers who purchased the milk, warning them to dispose of it. The farm has “voluntarily suspended” raw milk sales. Within a few weeks, New York’s Department of Agriculture & Markets can be expected to impose a $300 fine on the farmer.
But this, the fourth New York state raw milk dairy to test positive for listeria monocytogenes in the last eight months (a fifth was cited for camphylobacter), vows not to just be another statistic.
“We have no intention of paying the penalty,” says Lori McGrath, owner with her husband, Darren, of Autumn Valley Farm in Worcester, NY. (A few of the farm’s 44 cows are pictured grazing above.)
“I don’t intend on letting them bully us,” she adds. If her farm loses its raw milk license as a result of its refusal to pay the fine, she and her husband will consider organizing cow share arrangements, which are used in many other states to distribute raw milk. “There are no regulations (in New York) about cow shares. They’re going to end up spiting themselves.”
In the meantime, says Lori, the three customers who purchased the milk are as upset as she is. Not only have none of them gotten sick, but, “They said they would come back tomorrow and buy more milk from us…We have an immaculate farm.”
Like Dawn Sharts, the New York farmer whose upset with the authorities I described in a recent BusinessWeek.com article, Lori is convinced there is no danger from her milk. “I have no concerns at all about the milk being contaminated.”
Lori and her husband have operated the 160-acre dairy for six years, and have had their raw milk license for eight months. “We gave up our entire (professional) lives six years ago to be farmers…We worked too hard to let them take this away.”
Like many raw-milk producers and consumers alike, Laurie wonders why no one has become ill from the supposed pathogens. She also wonders why the state isn’t investigating the problem further. “You’d think they’d wonder if there’s an epidemic,” since so many cows are turning out milk with listeria monocytogenes.
Lori feels the state is simply trying to sow fear, based on its own fears. “The raw milk demand is exploding, and they don’t know what to do about it.”
New York’s raw milk dairy farmers are clearly becoming tired of what they consider to be government harassment. If Lori McGrath is any indication, not only are they becoming tired, they’re not going to take it any more.
Another very technical article (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ebam/bam-10.html) on the detection and enumeration of L. monocytogenes in foods suggests that multiple Listeria strains may be present in samples, and that care must be taken in isolating counts for pathological strains from counts of non-pathological strains. Although the article also indicates that with the FDA’s current zero-tolerance for L. monocytogenes, specific enumeration isn’t always necessary since even one colony-forming unit is enough to declare a sample to be contaminated!
It’s also important to note that the detection process involves enriching and incubating the sample for a period of days, in order to grow a detectable amount of bacteria. That is, they produce conditions favorable to the growth of the specific bacteria they are trying to detect and introduce media that discourage the growth of competing bacteria and fungi. In other words, the sample may have a few of the Listeria bacteria but finding them would be virtually impossible. Therefore, they change the rules and make life much easier for Listeria but much harder for everyone else, wait a bit of time and see what happens.
So, it’s possible that the NY state laboratory may be finding detectable levels of Listeria after "enriching" the sample and culturing it in a foreign environment that specifically encourages the growth of that particular bacteria. I’m willing to bet that you can play this game of "gotcha!" with virtually any fresh food in the grocery store and claim some level of contamination. Under normal conditions, a low level of Listeria colony forming units would be out-competed and held in check by the probiotic bacteria and other defense mechanisms present in clean raw milk, which explains why no-one gets sick from this so-called "contaminated" milk.
Sincerely,
Don Neeper
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ebam/bam-10.html
http://www.ecolab.com/PublicHealth/Listeria.asp
Sincerely,
Don Neeper
It would be interesting to know if feeding silage increases the chance of having this bacteria in the milk.