MDA: “One Farmer Is Holding Back the TB Program”; Niewendorp: "I'm Not Blinking
The slow-motion drama swirling around Greg Niewendorp and his refusal to participate in Michigan’s bovine TB testing program, may be picking up speed.
Greg said he heard rumors today at the East Jordan Coop Feed Mill, where local farmers buy bagged feed and have their grain ground, that, “They turned my case over to the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and federal marshals.” The rumors, he said, “are reliable enough…they sent the message through one of their minions.”
He says he never heard back from the Michigan Department of Agriculture about a hoped-for meeting with its officials this Wednesday, to follow up on the visit by an MDA agent and two state police officers last week.
A spokeswoman at the MDA, whom I reached today, said that while she isn’t permitted to talk about particular farmer cases, there is no federal involvement “to my knowledge” in any farmer situation. She added, “We have no meeting scheduled” with Niewendorp on Wednesday, or any other day.
From the sounds of both players in this drama, any meeting would have to bridge a huge chasm.
Greg’s overall goal is to confront the legitimacy of the MDA’s bovine tuberculosis testing program and, indeed, the entire Michigan Animal Industry Act, under which the program operates, with USDA funding. He argues that bovine TB isn’t highly contagious, as the MDA contends, but rather is a disease that strikes animals or people whose immune systems are run down. Animals that have “the proper mineral terrain” are at little risk for catching bovine TB.
The bovine TB testing program “is an industrial operation…hence, the Animal Industry Act,” he says. “I’m talking about a different model, based on...real food, for the restoration of our health.”
In the view of the MDA, though, the bovine TB testing program represents a challenge for Michigan farmers in the northern lower peninsula to overcome on their way to gaining clearance to be able to sell their products worldwide. The spokeswoman indicated that Greg is the first farmer to resist having his animals tested in the ten years of the program.
Indeed, she cast Greg as a spoilsport, and indicated that the MDA’s patience with his refusal is wearing thin. “This is a human health issue as well as an industry issue,” she said. “If we can’t test (any animals), we assume they are diseased. We want to protect the animal industry…it affects the entire country” in terms of reassuring overseas buyers of American beef, she said.
How long can Greg sit with his farm under quarantine? “What we have in Michigan is free-ranging deer picking up disease from cattle…Not only is that endangering the marketability of cattle, but it also endangers free roaming deer.” In other words, because Greg’s cattle haven’t been tested and are assumed to be diseased, they are assumed to be infecting deer, which pass the disease around among cattle on other farms.
“It cannot go on indefinitely,” she said. “There are 1,000 (cattle) farms and only one farmer is holding back the program.”
The program’s goal is to get the region of the northern lower peninsula declared TB-free by the USDA, she said. “We need to have everyone participating in the program in order for that to be done.” Typically, a region has to experience a five-year period with no positive TB cattle herds for it to be declared TB-free, she said.
Greg isn’t sure what the MDA’s next step might be. He could be arrested, or his herd could be confiscated. Whatever happens, he says he is prepared to confront the MDA, as he has done all along—with his refusal to have his animals tested, living under quarantine, escorting the MDA agent and police off his property, and contemplating an invoice for trespassing. In his view, the invoicing idea wasn't any more quixotic than the other steps he has taken.
He also wants to encourage supporters to help both the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the NonCompliance Relief Fund, described in a posting last March.
“The whole world is watching,” he said. “And I’m not blinking.”
The Complete Patient
in Government policy
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Reader Comments (12)
First a little history:
• In the 17th and 18th century, TB was called the White Plague.
• By 1995, only .02% of cows had TB
• In the past few year, this disease has emerged in deer and cattle in Michigan (deer is the cause)
• If a farm is found to have a cow with TB, it looses its TB-free status for 5 years and can’t sell their product out of state (this is probably the motivator for the TB vaccine)
• Raw milk can pass M.bovis
So, 1995 was 12 years ago. How many people have recently become ill from M.bovis?
I found an article called, Human TB caused by M.bovis—New York City 2001-2004. During these four year, there were 4,524 cases of TB, of which 35 cases (1%) were caused by M.bovis. 26 of these patients required hospitalization and one boy died. Guess what they all ate? Raw milk from the United States? No? They ate raw milk cheese from Mexico. This is the same cheese that caused so many bacterial illnesses listed on the CDC’s latest report.
Also, from 1980-1997, 34 % of TB cases in San Diego County (next the Mexican border) were caused by M. bovis after eating raw milk Mexican cheese.
Does anyone else see the obvious theme between bacterial illnesses and Mexican raw milk cheese?
All I found about Michigan and M.bovis was the one cow and between 23-29 deer were infected in 2002.
Just remember Mad Sheep and the Faillace's run in with the USDA. I'm worried for Greg if MDA has turned his case over to USDA. They are like the zombie monsters in our childhood nightmares that won't stop tromping forward, wrecking everything in their paths.
David, an effort to legalize raw milk sales here in Vermont is just beginning. As it stands now, a farmer can sell 24 qts of raw milk off the farm each day but cannot advertise it. No raw cheese or butter or cream is allowed to be sold at all.
So I became curious about my first question and did some research. I discovered that M.bovis is rare in US livestock and is close to eradication. In industrialized nations, human TB caused by M. bovis is rare because of milk pasteurization. For example, in the 1930s, 40% of cows in the UK were infected with M.bovis and there were 50,000 new cases of human M.bovis infection every year.
In 2006, there were 13,767 reported cases of tuberculosis (all types) in the US. Foreign-born persons and racial/ethnic minority populations continue to be affected disproportionately. For the third consecutive year, more TB cases were reported among Hispanics than any other racial/ethnic population. Seven states (California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas) reported 500 cases each. Combined, these seven states accounted for 60% of all TB cases.
Illegal immigration is causing many problems, one being TB in the US. M.bovis TB is also being documented as a problem and thrown in with US data on raw milk. In December of 2005, the CDC produced a PowerPoint presentation on TB and presented facts about 35 cases of M.bovis TB in the US. It was not clarified that the source was soft Mexican cheese produced from sick cows in Mexico, not the US. Also, between 1980-1997, 563 children in San Diego County were infected with M.bovis. 90% of these children were Hispanic.
I found an article that stated 17% of cattle sampled at meat-processing plants in Mexico were infected with M. bovis. This food (raw milk cheese) is coming into our country and making people ill and then being presented, by omission, as if our American food supply is causing the problem. The PowerPoint presentation presents the data in an unfair manner. This helps make the case that drinking US produced raw milk, by healthy cows is dangerous.
What seems to be dangerous is contaminated raw milk cheese from Mexico.
Maybe Greg could come to a compromise and have his cows tested for TB (like he has for the last 6 years), but refuse for them to be tagged. This way Michigan can received their TB-free status and Greg can be left alone.
No, there can be no compromises, Mary. There isn't anything that can be compromised, anyway. Would you compromise your right to have property? The whole TB-free status, same as the Scrapie free status, is a ruse to control people, not disease. It is unrealistic to expect to live a life free from disease, to have animals and nature be free from disease.
And, as I understand it, since Greg has had his cows tested before their blood is going to test positive for TB. They will then take his animals and kill them for having positive results even if that is from having been tested before.
Or are you worried this would be a retaliatory act because he has refused to cooperate—that they would kill all of his cows.
The point of all this with respect to NAIS, is that the TB eradication program has a very specific, and well-understood science and technology of prevention and control. To overlay the one-size-fits-all technology of NAIS on Michigan (or other) cattle is to swat a fly with a sledge-hammer. So, the disease can be isolated and controlled, and we don't need NAIS to do it, nor (as I understand all this) would a controlled and closed herd like Greg's pose any significant risk in the scheme of control of the disease. In fact, maintaining closed herds is one of the accepted methods of controlling TB. Slaughtering a carefully-developed closed herd based on a "reactor" test, which shows only that an animal has an antibody to the disease (and not that the disease is active), is surely one of the concerns since the philosophy of control is to slaughter the herd and not ask for specifics. Many of us probably would show positive on a reactor test, which would simply confirm that our immune systems have been doing their work.
In my post I stated that 563 children had TB from M bovis. That was incorrect. 563 children, with the median age of 4.1 years old, had contracted TB. 10.8% of these children were infected with the M bovis bacteria. That’s about 50 children in a 17 year period.
Considering M bovis TB in humans is almost none existent in the US, this many sick children is a significant enough to publish an article in a medical journal.
Did they stipulate how M bovis manifested itself in the children?
Ken Conrad
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.