Now, if Mark McAfee can just tell us how much raw milk and cream correlate with how much Viagra…Talk about a wonderful way to get the regulators and raw milk producers on the same page. (If you can’t figure what I’m talking about, take a look at the comments following my previous post, wherein Mark discusses how raw milk helps porn stars perform like…porn stars, and An Observer, Amanda, and Concerned Person pour gasoline on the fire.)
Maybe we could push for a Pfizer-Organic Pastures alliance: In their directions for use, Pfizer could advise men to wash down their Viagra with a couple glasses of OPDC raw milk, for a little “leverage” in a de-leveraged society.
We’ve sure given the gals over at The Haphazard Gourmet Girls a boatload of entertainment value (and I love their illustration—was racking my brain to come up with something, and they stole the show.)
All right, enough of the humor, at least for now. Until Mark produces a new category of case histories, we’ll have to continue focusing on real-life cases, like this one from Jason Sauer, a Las Vegas dad. He lost his supply of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. colostrum when Mark decided to “surrender” to the FDA and quit supplying the stuff out of state. Jason just wrote this letter to the FDA:
“I recently tried to buy raw colostrum from my local grocery store (Whole Foods) here in Las Vegas, NV. I was told that it is no longer legal to ship unpasteurized colostrum from Organic Pastures in California to where I live in Las Vegas. Can you please tell me how I am supposed to obtain this healthy drink for my family and myself?
“I am not an ignorant consumer; I have researched this topic extensively, I grew up on a dairy farm for 20 years…I know first hand the restorative effects of these healthy foods now that my family and I are recovering from allergies and asthma. I know that certain parties would rather see my kids hooked up to a breathing respirator an hour a day for the rest of their lives on synthetic drugs with a slew of undesirable side effects just so they can line their pockets.
“My two-year-old used to scream and cry every time I had to give her breathing treatments, not because it was uncomfortable or loud, but because sometimes it would make her nose bleed and because always, it would make her irritable, restless and worst of all, distant and detached. And she had only been on these treatments for a few months; I cannot imagine the harmful effects these treatments would have brought in the years to come.
“It brings tears to my eyes, but at the time, I didn’t know any different. Since my family has started drinking raw colostrum and kefir (and we would love raw milk), our breathing problems have ceased. We are sleeping better, we have more energy, we don’t get sick anymore, and we are once again functioning as a healthy family. I know this sounds unbelievable or coincidental but the improvements in our lives are undeniable.
”Why would the FDA decide a product that has a perfect record (and other raw milk products that have records that are grossly better than thousands of other foods and drugs that have deeper pockets) is not legal for interstate trade? I know why, because it doesn’t make my kids sick and doesn’t make the aforementioned ‘parties’ rich. Thanks for protecting us consumers from a healthy food… thanks for nothing.
“I apologize for the hastily written format of this message, but I am extremely sickened by what has happened to our freedom in this ‘free’ country of ours. What are you people doing to our society??? I used to think this kind of evil was only in the movies and in uncivilized portions of the world, but now I know better.”
Jason seems to understand that his experience is “anecdotal” and thus doesn’t really count. His two-year-old may have gotten better, but the fact that she got better after drinking OPDC colostrum is just a coincidence.
That’s definitely the attitude of the American medical establishment, most recently expressed by the American Academy of Pediatricians, which just issued an academic paper, apparently in response to the growing popularity of raw milk, that concludes “there are no documented health benefits associated with ingestion of unpasteurized milk or milk products.” It cites FDA data—the same data used in the federal suit against Organic Pastures and Mark McAfee—that documented seven deaths of children between 2000 and 2005 from raw milk “queso fresco” cheeses, and concludes: “Raw milk has no benefit that would justify any increase in risk to children.” It is particularly concerned about California raw dairy products, where “stringent inspections of unpasteurized milk production have been used to try to reduce risks of disease, but outbreaks continue to occur.”
These people are masters of deception. They refuse to even acknowledge the growing body of research indicating raw dairy’s beneficial role in asthma reduction. They know the risks of childen suffering and dying from raw milk are miniscule compared with real problems like asthma, auto accidents, and parental abuse, yet they continue to distract parents with lies. Doesn’t all that make them dishonest?
The Best And The Brightest Have Led America Off A Cliff. Chris Hedges
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/12.08/brightest.html
One thing is for sure….Americans like to talk about our sexuality. Perhaps we can now enjoy some sexual functionality by allowing raw milk and other whole foods to be a part of our lives and diets.
By the way… Hap Haz Gals….Raw milk is 100% legal in California and OPDC would be more than happy to donate a case of raw milk and perhaps a case of raw cream to the winners of your "name the sexiest raw milk by-line contest". Call 1-877 RAW MILK and give us the winners name and we will deliver.
As far as the FDA is concerned…we are settling both cases with them. No more distractions of litigation. My goal coming out of these settlements is to focus on CA marketing and to have several US Attorneys and even an FDA person drinking raw milk. They are humans too and from what I see and hear they have horrible stress, huge bowel challenges including ulcers and could use lots of raw milk.
Humor is a great thing….nutrition and humor is even better. Nutrition, humor and sexuality….sounds like that combination takes the prize completely.
Glad to see some happiness and joy in the blogs!!
Merry Chrismas….
Mark McAfee
What is happening in Reno and Las Vegas is tragic and this blood is on the FDA’s hands.
I hope that children crying at night from ear infections keep the FDA from sleeping at night. I will not sleep well ultil a solution is found to nourish kids all over America with healing food. The FDA rememedies are lethal. This will be exposed soon by the moms and dads that will not take this anymore.
Perhaps I am not taking the correct approach. If I can not beat them I should join them.
There is such a thing as a "citizens petition" to the FDA. I should apply for a raw milk drug liscence with the FDA and make a huge list of claims on this petition. Then submit a huge list of citizens on the petition.
The FDA would be hard pressed to not allow these claims. If not…I would appeal and hold hearings were everyone can come and share testimonials about near death from FDA drugs and how healing foods help so much.
Perhaps this is the future with the FDA….take it to them and stick it in their face.
We have not done that yet….lets take back America using the system. Put the statistics upfront and show how drugs kill hundreds of thousands per year along side immune depression. Speak truth to power and demand…not just ask for…. our rights.
Show them how corrupt their use of statistics is…how combining raw cheese ( not really raw but partially pasteurized and called raw for marketing ) deaths with raw milk statistics will not be tolerated.
Mark McAfee
Couldn’t miss me, I was the only "chair" in the room. I know how frustrating this must all be for you, your family, your business, but please don’t give up, and let all of us do what we can to support our right to whole foods. I will testify (I don’t have a speech impediment), sign petitions, ect. What ever it takes to secure our freedom and access to whole, nutrient dense foods. BTW, (this comment is for Jason in Las Vagas, NV)…please don’t give up finding some raw dairy for yourself and your family. All of these barriers thrown up in our faces will make this movement go "underground." But it’s worth it when you find a supplier of raw dairy (don’t dismiss goat’s milk). I know, because my mother drives 3 hours one way for our raw goats milk that she freezes. It’s out there, we just have to be willing to go hunt for it, using some common sense along the way. Do your own inspection, ask relevent questions on animal husbandy practices. Usually if the farmer is transparent about his operation it’s a good sign that the source is reputable.
Alyssa Pellicano
I am not ADD…at the Weston A Price conference in SF last month… I had very important messages coming though on my BlackBerry ( on vibrate mode ). When you own a dairy and creamery and 10 trucks and 35 emplooyees, 30,000 close customers the messages never rest, it owns you!! It just seems ADD.
That blond I was sitting next too…that was Christine Chessen, a MBA Columbia graduate and founder of CReMA the California Real Milk Association.
If the HAP HAZ Gals really want to rock they need to join the raw revolution and start nourishing their bodies whole….with some OPDC raw milk!! Poly Pastuerized needs to "get cultured" ( in the raw commuity that means bacteria and life ) and add some life back into that enzyme depleted and biologically baren life. I do not think Poly would be so proud of being called Poly Pasteurized if she knew that 90% of the human form by cell count was made up of bacteria….Only 10% is biologically and genetically human. If we were pasteurized we would die immediately.
My invitation….spend the weekend at our home at OPDC….you will be changed forever.
My wife and I would love to have you as our guest. Call me 1-877 RAW MILK we can go feed the calves together. Seriously!!
Mark
Observations can be criticized for being anecdotal. However, in the search for greater scientific objectivity, the habit of curiosity, once the very quintessence of medical discovery, may be lost.
The current inability (unwillingness?) of modern medicine to acknowledge the great and terrible big picture of modern population’s increasingly failing health indeed shows that the very quintessence of medical discovery has been lost. That vast empty hole has been filled with a dogmatic closed-mindedness, evidenced by blind trust ineven worship ofnarrow, double-blind, controlled-variable studies. The trees have truly obliterated the forest.
Randomized studies can be valuable, but they are emphatically NOT all they are touted to be, especially when driven, as they undoubtedly are, by a near religious faith in early detection and medical management with drugs and surgeries as a solution for bad health.
Jason Sauer’s anecdote on its own ought to be at least a springboard for innovative medical thinking. Combined with the many, many other extant anecdotes alike in tone and content, it ought to be considered a valid base for critical decision-making.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/idso-ump121608.php
Quoting a horrifying statistic, "An average of 5.2 outbreaks per year linked to raw milk have occurred in the United States between 1993 and 2006more than double the rate in the previous 19 years." My God – the rate has increased from 2 to 5 incidents per year, in a national population of some 300 million people! This is most definitely the dawn of a new Armageddon, and we are incredibly lucky that the I.D. Society is there on the ramparts warning us of the one in sixty-million chance we run of becoming sick from raw milk each year!
The I.D. Society also claims that there is no scientific evidence supporting the claim that unpasteurized milk cures or prevents disease, which is a blatant lie but who can trust those effete Europeans and their so-called "studies" and socialist EU-funded "research"!
However, the various machines of our society are poorly adapted to deal with chronic problems – things which happen bit by bit, over time, and accumulate in their impacts. It’s hard to prove this kind of stuff in a court of law. This is why alleging food poisoning from a discrete occurrence has a chance in court, whereas chronic poisoning from malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, etc. has much less of a chance in court. I challenge the plaintiff’s bar to shift its focus to the chronic issues if it really wants to make new law and have huge impacts. Sure I’m dreaming.
Because western science has a blind spot for how chronic conditions (good or bad) impact the society, it seems that anecdotal evidence should have a role to play. Of course rigorous science is ill-suited for long-term study; this should be the reason to supplement its limited results with more qualitative inputs provided by anecdotal information. It is illogical to say, gold-standard science can’t answer such questions arising from chronic causes (or doesn’t want to answer such questions, for the more cynical among us), and therefore we throw up our hands and don’t utilize other, very persuasive forms of proof. Anecdotal evidence, particularly in aggregated form, can offer help as we try to figure out these bigger questions.
He apparently doesn’t have the best track record with GMOs and similar issues anyone know how open he is to reason and dialogue?
Assume for the sake of argument the annual rate of "outbreaks" (a description which regularly has included outbreaks in "suitcase cheese" production) doubled from the 19 previous year period (1973-1992) to the 13-year period they cite (1993-2006).
If the number of raw milk drinkers also doubled in the same two time frames, then the annual rate, normalized for the population drinking raw milk, was in fact flat with no change.
If the number of raw milk drinkers increased four-fold between the 73-92 and 93-06 time frames, which in my experience is probably conservative, then the normalized rate of "raw milk outbreaks" in fact was cut in half.
Given, that the data on outbreaks is consistently over-reported, and often includes improperly pasteurized "raw milk" cheeses, then the numerator is suspect. And since we don’t know how many raw milk drinkers there were in the two periods, the denominator is also a guess.
Maybe Mark could give us an educated guess what the raw-milk drinking population was in California during the two time periods?
I’ll bet this little game of statistics could yield some interesting results.
Our best guess in CA for the total number of raw milk drinkers is about #35,000-40,000 per week. This is based on per family consumption assumptions and the total amount of raw milk being sold. We took a random sample of our OPDC consumers and got a figuer that helped us make this calculation.
We did not count the several additional dairies that are now inspected by CDFA and sell raw milk farm direct from the bulk tank. CDFA is now allowing consumers to buy direct from farmers and fill their own containers. These on farm sales must pass the same test standards as OPDC. Less that 10 coliforms, less than 15000 SPC and zero pathogens. I am delighted to finally have more farmers selling raw milk to local families. This is awesome. Tests are taken from the bulk tank by CDFA.
With 40 dairies going bankrupt in our local area….raw milk can make the difference between survival and BK. In Kings County just south of OPDC, they just changed the local ordinance to allow production of raw dairy products. This is all showing the trend. Connect to the consumers or die.
Dr. Natasha McBride told me last year…."there is nothing more blind than the double blind".
When the outcome of a science experiment is bought and paid for…we call that "UC research". This kind of research results in black box warnings being issued years later after the lie gets exposed and people and kids start dying.
At Rutgers University the buildings are all named for the company that sponsored their construction and presumably the research that happens inside of them. This is commericial truth….yuck…the same kind of exclsuive sleezy money process that the FDA lauds and caters too.
I just started a FDA Citizens Petition process to request an excemption from CFR 1240.61 for retail tested, state inspected,labeled, authorized raw milk.
My argument is simple….physical location of tested, legally sold, retail raw milk does not change its safety. If it is safe and pathogen free in LA it would be safe and pathogen free in Las Vegas or Reno. It is the same raw milk.
What makes raw milk potentially less safe are the "underground blackmarkets", moooooshine runners ( bless their souls ) selling untested raw milk and the… accompanying raw milk FDA oppression.
The commingling of true raw milk illnesses with pasteurizer failures and raw cheese illnesses will statistically exposed in the petition. One by one we will show that very few illnesses and no deaths have actually come from tested retail approved raw milk.
Conversely…pasteurized milk has killed many and sickened hundreds of thousands
( CDC ).
I will keep you updated on the process.
What will be really revealing is… the response I get when good science is used and the OBAMA FDA team has a chance to review it. Very interesting.
Watch for the Al Roca Food Network special on Raw Milk being shown January 3rd on national TV. It exposes the work being done by Mooooshine runners back east and the thousands of nornal people they serve. Across state lines.
Talk about "Raw Milk in Your FDA Face".
Mark McAfee
‘
It sounds like you are in favor of regulating raw milk and milk products. That’s interesting to me since you have your colostrum line that’s unregulated. In fact, I suggested an amendment to SB201 to shore up the outsourcing language and it focused on requiring the same standards for colostrum as for the rest of your product line. You didn’t seem to be in favor of that suggestion. I wouldn’t think most dairy farmers would want the regulations nor would I be concerned about it in the case of most.
Amanda
Dear Mr. Sauer: It is not legal to ship unpasteurized milk, to include
colostrum, over state lines. You might see if there is a source in NV
for you.
Jeannine Ertter, A.S.C.P.
Consumer Affairs Specialist
Communication and Coordination Staff
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
I responded, but I don’t expect anything beyond another canned reply:
Dear Ms. Ertter,
Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, I cannot purchase raw milk products in Nevada. While the sale of these products is in fact legal, there are no "county milk commissions" to issue regulations concerning raw milk.
So as I understand it, tobacco – which has killed over 100 million people in the 20th century, and could potentially kill 1 billion people in this century, and alcohol – which kills 100,000 people each year, and even aspirin, which kills 7,600 people per year, are all legal for interstate trade… but raw milk, consumed by over 500,000 people and has only been responsible for 2 deaths in the past 10 years, is prohibited from interstate sale because it is dangerous?
According to:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01576.html
About 1,000 people got sick from raw milk between the years of 1998 and 2005. Statistically, that’s one in 4,000 raw milk consumers.
According to:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/files/foodborne_illness_FAQ.pdf
Over 76 million people suffer foodborne illnesses every year, that’s 1 in 4. So by the CDC and FDA’s own data, the risk of getting sick from raw milk is 1000 times less likely than eating other foods.
Forgive me if I fail to see the rationale behind the actions of the FDA. Strike that, the rationale is clear.
Once again, thank you for your time.
Jason Sauer
I know my facts may not be perfect (or my grammer for that matter), but I do not believe that I am that far off. Also, thank you all for your support. In the meantime, I need to map out a route to the nearest store in California that sells OPDC products.