The explanations and opinions of the California public health food regulator I’ve quoted in my previous two posts may not be very satisfying, but they provide at least the possibilities of dialogue…and progress. The wide variety of insightful comments and suggestions show once again how deep and complex the subject of raw milk, pathogens, and contamination really is.
Following on all this stimulating conversation, I read an article sponsored by, of all places, Harvard Medical School, and I had my head turned, yet again, as to how far the public health and medical communities have to go on the matter of raw milk and pathogens.
Here’s a sample: “Which symptoms someone gets after drinking raw milk depends on which bacteria are in it. The more common problems are vomiting, diarrhea, belly pain, fever, headache and body aches.”
And another: “There are parents who believe raw milk is more nutritious than pasteurized milk. Research has shown this is not true.”
This author makes the California regulator I interviewed sound nearly like a raw milk groupie. Aside from the ignorance of this Harvard physician, there is the equally troubling matter of the financial circumstance of this article.
It is put together by Harvard Medical School and then sold by a private company to places like msn.com. The revenues are then divided between the private company (StayWell) and Harvard. So Harvard not only uses its upscale “brand” to sell its expertise, but it profits off of such ignorance. StayWell claims such articles reach “hundreds of thousands of consumers daily…”
So this isn’t just Harvard babble into empty spaces. This is Harvard babble being read, and taken seriously, by hundreds of thousands of consumers.
The other side of this craziness, of course, is that if you were to challenge the Harvard people to argue that raw milk really does have important health benefits, they would challenge you to prove it via controlled-group research. I spent seven years at Harvard as an editor at the Harvard Business Review, and I can tell you from experience that not only would they challenge you, they would be quite condescending about their challenges.
Yet here, the Harvard people talk about research, and cite not a thing. (Thanks to Alexis Bogue for alerting me to the msn.com article from Harvard.)
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The head of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture as secretary of agriculture? Let’s hope this report on The Daily Kos is totally misguided, and that this speculation about PDA chief Dennis Wolff being named to a high position in the U.S. Department of Agriculture by President-elect Barack Obama is just that–idle speculation. His PDA has been a one-man, or maybe two-man, wrecking crew for many raw milk dairies, not to mention his strong stand against labeling milk for added hormones Certainly some Pennsylvania dairy farmers (like Mark Nolt) would just as soon see him go–just not to USDA where he can do his thing nationally.
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I’ve been in Europe a little over a week and I continue to be amazed at how much tastier the food is than what is generally served around the U.S. (I’ve been in Germany for Holocasust-related events, and now am in Denmark for some unrelated business.)
I expect such differences in France and Italy, where gourmet is an everyday thing. But Germany isn’t known for as an epicure’s delight, yet even at ordinary places like hospital cafeterias and Thai restaurants, the food is much tastier than what I’m accustomed to.
At the major medical center that now sits over the Darmstadt synagogue remains I wrote about last week, the cafeteria offers fresh beet and carrot salads along with cole slaws, to go with traditional German dishes like pot roast and potato salad. It all tastes fresh and wonderful. At a Thai restaurant in Frankfurt near the train station, the vegetables, fish, and duck are similarly scrumptuous. At the hotel breakfasts, the egg yolks are a deep orange, like the pastured eggs that are starting to become
available at farmers markets in the U.S. And I have yet to see a piece of iceberg lettuce. (Raw milk is pretty scarce in supermarkets, though available at a few on a hit-or-miss basis).
I can only think that it must be a matter of less factory food, and more support for small farms overall (though that’s been a contentious issue in Europe)–and more of an expectation that food will be of a certain quality level. Plus, they emphasize breads and cheeses and salads and fresh veggies cooked right. Is there more that I’m missing?
It really bothered me because msn.com is where I get most of my news (when I feel like looking at news) mostly I just keep to myself and worry about my immediate family.
I showed it to a friend of mine who is serving in the military right now. I was met by a stream of curses. He told me that his mother would be calling him and telling him not to drink raw milk anymore. I was suprised he knew what raw milk even was, most people I talk to couldn’t tell you the difference between raw and pasteurized and homogonized. But he told me about how his grandmother has a cow or two, how he’s grown up on the stuff and just loves it. He also told me that his mother is the kind to take any advice from any supposed ‘expert’ and follow it like gospel, weather or not it contains any actual cited facts.
Maybe they are testing for it?
-Blair
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/surveillance/ongoing_surv_results.shtml
compare to Canada, and remember that US has about 7X more cattle.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/heasan/disemala/bseesb/surv/surve.shtml#num
On another note, I’m reading "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" by Stephen Harrod Buhner. Fascinating book, and his writings about traditional cultures help explain, in part, the difference in perspectives between the pro raw milk crowd and the con raw milk crowd.
"Oh, sweet spontaneous earth…how often has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty?" -e e cummings
"Soon we realized that these men…they were mad. They wanted the land; they wanted to carry away the wood; they were also searching for stones. We explained that the jungle is not something to be tossed over your shoulder and transported like a dead bird, but they did not want to hear our arguments." – Isabel Allende, The Stories of Eva Luna
He writes about the indigenous mind, that " the livingness of rocks is not an "idea" at all but a real, everyday experience. It is no wonder, then, that it has been so hard for indigenous peoples and technological peoples to communicate with each other. They live in different worlds in which the basic assumptions are very dissimilar. Each perspective is to the other somewhat insane..".
"just now
A rock took fright
When it saw me.
It escaped
By playing dead."
-Norbert Mayer
"Mayer captures something that many of us intuitively know to be true- that there is more to our world than inanimate matter and human beings, that there is a livingness in nature."
"…There is an embedded assumption in evolutionary theory that the human race came from some pre-human source and through natural selection is heading someplace incredible, some peak of evolution that is our ultimate destination. This belief naturally engenders the perspective that the human achievements of the past were all right for our ancestors, but in the here-and-now are obviously primitive and hopelessly old-fashioned. Too, where we are now is better, though not as good as where we are going. There is thus an inescapable disrespect for the cultures of the past, an inherent though subtle denigration of our present state, and a desire to get where we are going so we can finally be of worth, finally be evolved, that affects nearly all Western perspectives. This Western acceptance of the truth of evolutionary theory inevitably leads to its application in the human cultural realm. At its most basic it means a simple denigration of older or nonindustrial cultures. At its worst it becomes culturally sanctioned ethonocentrism or racism. As a result, any knowledge of the universe gleaned by our forefathers that comes from systems of information-gathering other than the universe-as-machine model is routinely ascribed to our ancestors’ lack of evolution and summarily dismissed and discredited…"
He also cites Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez and Edward Abbey as eloquent and passionate believers in the livingness of the world.
He says that traditionally fermented beers, made with (amazing, by the way) honey, herbs and natural yeasts was real food, and cured all sorts of ailments – contrary to the modern brews that are pasteurized, mass-produced and detrimental to our health.
It is this spiritual connection with nature, and faith in sustainable farming, that our Health Departments unknowingly intend to control, pasteurize, standardize, in the name of safety. I suppose it’s a stretch to ask them to embrace this concept, but it would be decent if they respected it.
-Blair
The Bloomberg article stated that it was Canadas 15 case of mad cow disease.
This is from 2007, as far as I can tell it has not changed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924801
It’s all about money for the big corps, so much for the govt entities "looking out" for Americans.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13970287/
http://foodconsumer.org/7777/8888/L_aws_amp_P_olitics_42/082910112008_U_S_appeals_court_says_testing_of_mad_cow_disease_is_a_diagnosis.shtml
I’m not understanding how they come to the conclusion that diagnosing is part of treatment. I thought they were two separate interventions. You can have a diagnoses and opt out of being treated. I see nothing wrong with that meat producer wanting to test all his beef. I applaud him. I would pay the extra to be assured the beef is safer. Shame on the govt for bending over to the beef industry.
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=269579