Youve probably noticed by now that things look a little different here. The blog hosting company upgraded its software, and in the process, forced its blogs to adopt a new look. I wasnt unhappy with the old look, but if I wanted access to additional new features, I had to change over to a design that is part of the upgrade. More technical changes to come, hopefully of the beneficial kind.

Lots of people seem to be upset with me with my take of the Chris Martin YouTube tape. As if Im somehow making light of that familys suffering.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have long expressed sympathy with the Martin family. No parent can look at the video of Chris Martin and not be upset about what the family went through.

That being said, I am at odds with the use to which the video is now being put. The Martins understandably want to reduce the chances that other parents will have to go through what their son went through. The problem comes with the method they have chosen to accomplish that task.

They really had two obvious choices, if they wanted to use their misfortune to affect change. First, they could have tried to promote more understanding of what makes a few people get very sick in outbreaks from pathogens. If raw milk was at fault (not a given), why did six kids get sick, and 30,000 other people not suffer any illnesses? We can ask the same question with regard to illnesses from ground beef, spinach, lettuce, peppers, etc.

I actually had a good discussion with Bill Marler about this topic. He said there is some thinking in the medical community that certain kids have specialized receptors on their kidneys that make them especially susceptible to pathogens. But we dont really know for sure. Why not promote more research in this area, where theres such a dearth of data?

The second choice the Martins had was to seek retribution against Organic Pastures and push for laws and legislation that restrict access to raw milk. That is the path they chose. As part of that path, they decided to turn a sad and upsetting video of their son on life support into a piece of propaganda supporting a political agenda and a political machine. (As just one other example of that machine, every time there is any kind of suspected illness from raw milk, I immediately receive an email from Bill Marler, and Im sure other media people receive the same email, as if to say, See, whatd I tell ya!). The Martins made that choice, I didnt.

Once you make that choice, though, you enter a different realm. Your story of tragedy or accomplishment is now held up as evidence for a particular ideology. Those of you who can remember back to the Cold War will recall that there were high-profile citizens who sometimes left the Soviet Union for the U.S., or vice versa. Once they made that switch, they were held up by their new country as prime evidence that its ideology was superior.

The struggle over raw milk and the larger struggle it symbolizes over nutritional freedom may not be the Cold War, but it is evolving into a bitter and intense ideological struggle. I understand that video camera dates can get turned off or batteries go dead.

The problem comes when you are using powerful symbols like video of sick children, not to try to rectify the problem of foodborne illness, but rather to try to sabotage a vital and thriving farm business, and restrict the access of millions of people to a food of their choice. I think I am entitled in that situation to demand that the other side have its ducks in a row.

The California Department of Health Services did a sloppy report on the illnesses. It wasnt clear exactly how many children became ill from E.coli 0157:H7 and whether a boy or girl got milk from a friend, and whether they all consumed raw milk, among various other problems. The Marler/Martin video of Chris is sloppily edited, suggesting that things happened on days when they likely didnt happen.

Normally, these kinds of things would be minor. But when youre trying to destroy people and take away peoples rights, I dont think you are entitled to that kind of leeway.

Part of the problem is that our government and public health authorities have been able to get away with half-truths and propaganda and sloppy reports for a long time in this struggle. Judges in California, New York, and Pennsylvania have expressed their distaste for examining serious and precise evidence on the other side, preferring instead to simply accept the party line expressed by the regulators. So its no surprise that the regulators and their supporters like Marler are sloppyno one makes any demands on them to do otherwise. And the authorities love images like Chris Martin, since it makes their jobs much easier.

Part of what is going on here is that the real victims in this warowners of small dairies and people who want access to nutritionally dense foods of their choice–have begun turning things around. Instead of sitting back and accepting all the lies and half-truths and sloppy documentation, they are fighting back with the other side of the story.

A prime example is the Weston A. Price Foundation. It has just added to its web site two documents refuting Bill Marlers examination of the scientific literature on raw milk. (Go to www.realmilk.org, and scroll down; there’s no direct link to the documents.) These analyses do a thorough job of explaining how research on food-borne illness is accomplished, and why raw milk gets the blame more often than it should. They are clearly written and make for educational reading. These refutations follow up on the WAPF’s excellent response to the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations slide show blasting raw milk.

To those who feel there are much bigger food and farm problems than the seemingly endless debate and discussion about the Martin illness, your points are very well taken. All I can say is that sometimes large political struggles are encapsulated by particularly emotional incidents and legal caseswitness the Dreyfus Affair in France and the Scopes Monkey trial in the U.S. Its not a pleasant business. But the outcomes of these situations can have wide ripple effects.