The California raw milk situation is on the verge of becoming as dire as the state’s two producers predicted it would since they learned about AB1735 at the end of last year.
Now the stage is set—Wednesday afternoon, 1:30 p.m., in California’s San Benito County Superior Court in Hollister—for a judge to hear a request from Organic Pastures Dairy Co. and Claravale Farms to issue a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of AB1735 and its coliform standard.
The farms are seeking the TRO after Organic Pastures had its cream taken off the market for failing its third straight test, limiting coliforms to no more than ten per milliliter.
In an affidavit filed along with the request, Mark McAfee states, “On February 28, 2008, I failed my third test and have had to stop the sale of cream products. This action will cost me $10,000 per week in lost cream sales.”
He adds that he’s on the verge of having to discontinue raw milk sales: “Since January 1, 2008, I have failed two raw milk tests for AB 1735 coliform bacteria levels and passed two. If I fail a third test for my raw/whole milk, I will have to cease selling raw/whole milk and my business will collapse.”
Ron Garthwaite, owner of Claravale Farms, says his situation is only slightly less dire: “To date, we have been tested twice and our whole milk met the requirements of AB1735 once and failed it once, yet our cream and non-fat have failed it both times. A third failure for our cream and skim milk would force us to stop selling those products.”
Also submitting an affidavit in support of the TRO request is Ted Beals, the Michigan pathologist, who states, “The purpose of the coliform test is not to detect the presence of pathogens that cause illness to humans.” Rather, he says, “A coliform test is more of a quality analysis/quality control general monitor for changes in the extent of contaminants.”
He concludes “that the standard for coliforms in AB1735 is arbitrary and does not protect human health” and “lacks the necessary scientific foundation to be supportable as a requirement for food safety.”
The court filings by Organic Pastures and Claravale also include a request for a preliminary injunction. According to Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, if the judge grants the dairies’ request for a TRO, AB1735 will be stayed until the court schedules a hearing on the preliminary injunction. If the court denies the TRO request, then the dairies will proceed to a preliminary injunction hearing—but until that is scheduled and heard, AB1735 will remain in effect.
It’s a high-stakes game here for California’s estimated 40,000 raw milk consumers. As the request for preliminary injunction states: “Although Plaintiffs will be forced out of business, the State of California will not suffer any injuries by restoring the status quo.”
California’s Attorney General’s office will be arguing against the request for a TRO, and its simple presence in front of a judge reduces the odds for success. Lots of people will be holding their collective breaths.
And then, at some time in the distant future, there could be a trial over the actual suit challenging AB1735, which I described in a previous post.
In the meantime (this being short notice once again), there is not much the average raw milk consumer can do about the infamous AB1735, but I suggest that all 40,000 OPDC & Claravale customers call Nicole Parras office tomorrow and ask her to call Jerry Brown. (Nicole Parra is the Chair of the State Agriculture Committee). She publicly admitted that the two dairies got rolled by the CDFA; the least she can do now is call Jerry Brown herself and give him a good kicking.
Nicole Parra: (916) 319-2030
California State Attorney General Jerry Brown has a voice mail message at his office, which specifically states that he would like to hear from us and is particularly interested in our comments and opinions.
Jerry Brown knows damned well that CDFA personnel carried out actionable criminal offenses to sneak their Big Dairy anti-raw milk bill through the legislative back door. Now hes ratifying their crimes!
It would be a good start to call Brown tomorrow and tell him what we think about his rat-ification of the CDFAs AB1735 crimes.
Jerry Brown: (916) 322-3360
(Press 1 for Englishin my caseand then at the end of the menu you can press 0 to speak to a person).
These public servants have gone to a lot of trouble on our dime to make us suffer. The least we can do is return the favor.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8472500?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1
Fresh raw milk products offer Americans a future of Hope and Change. Hope that their future health will change for the better. Change that their current immune depression will be eliminated and replaced with a strong and robust health that resists disease. Fresh milk offers this real Hope and this real Change. Change that is realized within weeks of consuming living unprocessed fresh milk.
In America today, foods are processed to death. They are dead! The living foods of our grandparents are now processed into enzyme depleted and bacterially inert, long shelf life, sterilized stuff that looks like food and is sold as food but gives no nourishment.
The Thursday San Jose Mercury News article was not a message of Hope or Change but instead a message of dread, dogma, bacterial paranoia, ignorance and CDFA protection of the dead food industry.
The Article starts out asking the wrong question: Should raw milk meet the same safety standards as pasteurized milk? Safety is measured by testing pathogens not coliforms. Did you know that pasteurized milk is never tested for pathogens!! Pathogens are found in pasteurized milk routinely. These include Para TB, viruses, bacteria and spores that survive pasteurization. This is something that the dairy industry and CDFA will not share with you. These bacteria do not exist in raw milk for human consumption. They are eliminated by specialized testing of raw milk cows and by other sanitary methods not used on conventional dairies.
Raw milk that is sold raw for human consumption in CA is tested thousands of times per year. No pathogen has ever been found in thousands of raw milk tests performed in the many years of testing at OPDC and Claravale. Safety is our very highest priority. There is no higher priority. Dead milk offers no hope or change from our current paradigm of immune depression and ever worsening illness. Pasteurized milk triggers asthma when raw milk heals it. Pasteurized milk aggravates ulcers and raw milk heals it. Pasteurized milk creates lactose intolerance and raw milk does not cause it. Raw milk is filled with nutritional hope and great change and this scares the hell out of CDFA and big dairy interests.
CDFA is not interested in anything other than protecting the establishment and its dead products.
On a point by point basis we have addressed the Mercury News Article:
In one cream sample taken from Organic Pastures on February 6th the overall bacteria count was 250,000 per gram, with coliform bacteria numbering 1500.
This CDFA test was illegal, the temperatures for lab test samples was higher than allowed by law at 44 degrees. All samples must be less than 41 degrees or else they are rejected by the lab. Instead CDFA released this data to the public. This is highly inflammatory, biased and illegal. Yet is it part of the case and the article. Furthermore, none of these bacteria are any different than what would be found in yogurt.
The agriculture department spokesman, said previous tests at both dairies last year suggested that the standard is attainable
The testing performed by CDFA in 2007 which serves as a basis for this statement was raw milk tested from the farm bulk tank and not finished products. Raw cream is a further processed product. We have found that raw milk that tests as less than 1 coliform in the bulk tank will test as 35 coliforms in the resulting raw cream. The act of spinning and separation concentrates the coliform bacteria in the raw cream. These facts are evident in the scientific literature. CDFA is now acting to ban raw cream based on arbitrary standards that have nothing to do with safetybut they say that it is related to safety. Out here on the farm we call that.bold faced lying. Coliforms are not a safety issue. Pathogens are a safety issue. Any other statement is false. CDFA can not find bad bacteria in raw milk so they are now seeking to eliminate raw milk by eliminating the good bacteria in raw milk. They want raw milk to be like pasteurized milk. They want it to fit their dead food paradigmit will not fit. It can not fit. It is like trying to perform an autopsy on a live person. Dead is dead and living is living.
Organic Pastures in particular has been beset by potentially harmful bacteria in its raw milk in recent years, in 2006 five children were infected wih ecoli bacteria linked to OPDC.
This is absolutely incorrect. No pathogens have ever been found in OPDC raw milk. Not one ever. CDFA and the Mercury News infer that pathogens have been found in OPDC milk. This is a bold faced misstatement of the facts. The children that became sick in 2006 all had consumed spinach and their illnesses had an onset at the very peak of the spinach crisis. Not all of the kids drank raw milk. Some had drank raw colostrum that was not even from OPDC. Not all of the children shared the same pathogen. None of the OPDC raw products that the kids drank tested positive for a pathogen. There was no connection and even Steve Lyles of CDFA said this in his quote on the front page of the Fresno Bee in September 2006. The CDFA settled a damages claim with OPDC and signed a release of liability waiver so that they would not be blamed for the false recall of OPDC products. OPDC has not been beset by harmful bacteria ever. This statement is false and highly inflammatory. It is a lie.
Reports of a campylobacter bacterial outbreak that sickened five people who drank OPDC raw milk.
This is news to us. We have never been told or notified of any such outbreak or association with campylobacter. Yes it is true that the state tests our products for campylobacter, and they do this every month. They did not find campylobacter in any products. We have been told that these five consumers had several different strains of campylobacter and did not have a common strain among them. So how could a single source be the cause. No report has been given to us about any of this. This all appears to be more of the same biased sterilized food dogma. The same old fear based ideology. Keep consumers fearing real living food and that way they will keep consuming dead food.
Dr. Gil Chavez our message still is that consuming raw milk carries a risk.
Dr. Chavez is kind of right .well sort of. We are not able yet to determine the risk, because we have not yet to been able to find a pathogen. Right now it is about 85 million servings of raw milk and no pathogens detected in eight years of testing. There may be a risk but it is extremely small. Certainly the benefit to healing asthma is much greater. Asthma kills 5400 people per year but yet raw milk heals asthma. So Dr. Chavez needs to look at the much bigger picture.
All foods carry a risk. Pasteurized milk killed three people in MA last year because of listeria. So do not believe for one minute that dead foods means zero risk. Raw milk is one of the safest foods available. There have been no deaths associated with raw milk intended for human consumption in the last 30 years. The CDC data that is quoted includes pasteurization failures and raw cheeses. This is not data related to raw milk tested and labeled and regulated for human consumption. Raw milk is tested and then retested again and again for pathogens. We can not even get pathogens to grow in raw milk in lab conditions. They die off rapidly. Pathogens love to thrive and live in pasteurized milk. This is because pasteurized milk has no enzymes or beneficial bacteria to control pathogens that can enter pasteurized dead milk after processing. Raw milk is alive with good bacteria that kill bad bacteria and the environmental conditions that prevail in a raw milk creamery have been shown to be free of the harmful bacteria found in sterilized pasteurization creameries. In one study, it was shown that 60% of the creameries that pasteurize milk in Australia had listeria found in their environmental tests. No pathogens have ever been found in a creamery environmental study at OPDC in eight years of intensive testing. Not one pathogen ever.
It is part of nutritional change and our hope that in the future living foods will be accepted into the mainstream. Until that time, we must all accept that OPDC and Claravale will disrupt that mainstream. That disruption will look and sound just like the Mercury News Article. These are the sounds of progress as things change and power is pulled away from old dogma.
The grass roots know better. Our sales grow even faster when hope turns to change in your personal health. We will expect even more of this as we go forward. Consider it reactive back wash from a dead paradigm that has no hope and can not change. Raw milk on factory farms has pathogens when tested. So they can not serve this emerging market. That is a threat to CDFA, they will do anything to protect its dead GOT MILK products.
We expect to have raw cream back on the shelves soon. Until then we are making butter from the raw cream. A legal restraining order is being sought on Wednesday March 12th . Hopefully this restraining order stops CDFA from further coliform testing until the law can be changed.
Assemblyperson Nicole Parra, Senator Dean Florez and Assemblyman Tom Berryhill have all committed to introducing bills that protect raw milk during this session of congress.
You are the change when you drink raw milk. If sales are any determinant of progress. we are winning. People love living fresh food and that means raw milk. So we must all put up with the harassment in our briar patch. But its our briar patch and our future could not be brighter.
All the best,
Mark McAfee
Founder OPDC
Mark, you are in a unique situation in California with tens of thousands of raw milk consumers. The rest of us throughout the country don’t have those kinds of numbers ready to stand behind us. Most of us have customer lists that number in the dozens or, at best hundreds. We don’t have what Gary Cox termed "critical mass" for non-violent civil disobedience when I spoke with him two weeks ago.
You DO have those numbers in California. You CAN use non-violent civil disobedience effectively. You DO have the numbers to create Gary’s "critical mass" making that civil disobedience possible…just as your father did.
We ARE in a war folks, and the only way to win a war is to be willing to fight, to be willing to suffer for what we believe in…the RIGHT to make our own nutritional choices.
I don’t have those numbers in Georgia…I wish I did…but I’m willing to hang it all out…I just wish more were willing to chance it as well. The alternative is to be sheep.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Those willing to sacrifice a bit of liberty for security neither will have, nor deserve, either."
Bob Hayles
Thornberry Village Homestead
Jasper, GA
Thornberry Village Homestead…a small goat dairy owned by God, managed by Bob and Tyler.
I didn’t know pasturized milk wasn’t tested? What would happen if you bought a gal of pasturized milk from the local store and ran tests on it? Pasturized cream? Etc.. And posted it on the web? How about using national brands? Gee Mark, if they put you out of business, you can always occupy your time testing and posting what the comsumers will be stuck with…I’m with Bob
Mark, hang in there. Rest of us: I guess this isn’t the kind of hearing to stack with tons of noisy supporters – but those of us who can make it to the courtroom would be in a good position to observe closely what happens and report back here – as well as showing support, for what it’s worth in a legal proceeding.
Calling Nicole Parra and Jerry Brown is a great suggestion! Thanks, Dave. I’ll even repeat the numbers:
Nicole Parra: (916) 319-2030
Jerry Brown: (916) 322-3360
ALL THE FIVE CHILDREN DID NOT CONSUME SPINACH!! I WISH YOU WOULD PLEASE STOP STATING THAT. ITS A LIE!!!!!!
Bob Hayles
Thornberry Village Homestead
Jasper, GA
Thornberry Village Homestead…a small goat dairy, owned by God, managed by Bob and Tyler.
P.s. Are y’all angry enough to start throwing tea in the harbour yet?
we need to start a fund that buys and tests grocery store dairy products and posts the results on the web (everywhere)
maybe even a public service commercial on tv… fight fire with fire.
mr. mcafee, have you ever tested pasturized milk? store bought cream etc. (or the cheap stuff, or the stuff near it’s expiration date. i’m sure the results would be telling.
could we compel the state to perform these tests also? maybe under the guise of proving how "pure" pasturized products are?
hugh betcha!
thanks.
we already have a fund, it’s call the farm-to-consumer legal defense fund. i would encourage everyone who supports mark mcafee and ron gathwaite in their efforts to join the fund so that we can continue to defend mark and ron in their efforts.