Well, surprise, surprise, no one came forward to take up my challenge to explore the data on illnesses from raw milk cheese during the period after 2005. In my Feb. 6 post about the big push by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to trash the minimum 60-day aging requirement for raw milk cheese, I issued this challenge: “I didn’t have a chance to explore the years 2006-2010, but I’d love to see that data. Do the germophobes have the guts to do that, and assess all the data?”
It turns out not to be a huge deal to go through the data. It’s just tedious, and you see reenforced again and again the notion that pretty much any food can cause illness–burritos, guacamole, clams, fried rice, macaroni and cheese. You name it, and it gets people sick, sometimes in big numbers. In the summer of 2008, 104 people in Alaska got sick from campylobacter in green peas–maybe celebrating the great weather…err, probably not…they wouldn’t be celebrating with green peas. But I digress.
If you’ll remember, the data I had from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control covered 33 years 1973-2005. For subsequent years, I turned to the CDC’s online database, which goes up through 2008, or another three years. (Another, more accessible resource laying out a table of illnesses that includes cheese, and goes through 2007, is available here.)
If one of the FDA’s apologists had taken up my offer, they would have been able to play a little bit of “gotcha,” because there were more illnesses from raw milk cheese during those three years than in the entire 33 years before. Interestingly, there were also a comparable number of illnesses from pasteurized cheese.
So, in considering the entire 36-year period, 1973-2008, here is what I came up with:
* Remarkably, from 1973 to 1999,a period of 16 years, there’s not a single report of illness from either raw milk or pasteurized milk cheeses.
* It’s only in 2000 that we see the first illnesses from raw milk cheese–one outbreak that sickened 18, then two outbreaks in 2001 leading to 31 illnesses, and one outbreak sickening 18 in 2003.
* Thereafter, the pace of illnesses picks up, though in sporadic fashion. After no illnesses were reported in 2004 and 2005, the data in 2006 show 121 illnesses from raw milk cheese (from three outbreaks), and in 2007, the number increased to 159 (from four outbreaks). Then, there were no reported illnesses in 2008.
* Interestingly, illnesses from pasteurized milk cheese began showing up in recent years as well. In 2006, there were 41 illnesses from pasteurized milk cheese, and 161 in 2007. In 2008, there were 45 from pasteurized milk cheese.
Pulling it all together, the CDC data show 348 illnesses from raw milk cheese over the nine years from 2000-2008, or an average of 39 per year. (If you average the number out over the entire 36-year period, the average goes down to nine per year.) While there were fewer illnesses from pasteurized milk cheeses during that same nine-year period–247–there was one death.
What does it all mean? Well, certainly the growing popularity of raw milk cheeses must have some bearing on the situation. The American Cheese Society, which was only started in 1983 and has since grown to more than 1,400 members, figures more than half of its 300 cheese producer members specialize in raw milk cheeses.
With fast growth can come pressure to rapidly increase production, and perhaps some cheese producers cut corners to get product out. The American Cheese Society is working to aggressively encourage its members to adopt HACCP plans (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) to reduce the chances of illness.
While the trend isn’t what anyone would like, in either the raw milk or pasteurized milk cheese arenas, neither seems a serious public health threat.
It also seems clear that the 60-day aging rule isn’t necessarily the critical factor in cheese safety. Safety may have more to do with the conditions under which cheese is produced. I participated in an interesting discussion on the Marler blog about this subject, in which several people made this point.
It might make sense for the FDA to replace the 60-day aging requirement with some sensible production and safety standards for cheese makers…but that assumes we’re talking about an agency run by sensible people with a true concern for safety, and without a political agenda that involves ridding the world of raw milk. That’s why it’s reasonable to assume the FDA will use the sporadic illnesses over the last few years as the basis of fear mongering, and a ban on raw milk cheese…and no action on pasteurized milk cheese.
A ban would serve the FDA’s likely true concern, with is more about money and market share. From that perspective, Steve Bemis, a member of the board of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, may have put it best when he wrote last fall about the financial threat posed to the agribusiness cheese industry by fast-growing sales of raw milk cheese: “FDA tactics now emphasizing cheese can mean only one thing: The ante is upped; we’re talking many millions of dollars simply for more cheese on pizza, in a total milk market measured in multiple billions. For an industry built on the altar of fractionalizing and homogenization, requiring pasteurization, the bottom line is simple: cheese is serious, and must be protected at all costs from the ravages of raw products that thumb their noses not just at homogenization, but at the economic lynchpin, pasteurization.”
Even an easy-to-remove label would educate a few dozen consumers each day before they could take the labels down. Seven consumers pasting labels once a week in each neighborhood? Priceless.
We may not be monied, but we are many. A box of 3000 address labels is what – $10?
A 10-minute visit once a week to the local grocery chain store? Easy. We can play this game in our own neighborhoods.
-Blair
like maybe a new brand of cleaner became available – like antibacterial soap.
It's so tempting to speculate.
"WARNING! These cows were fed GMO corn, soy, and alfalfa. Pasteurized, homogenized milk may contribute to severe allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, and ADD/ADHD) – and surreptitiously pasting them in the dairy case at your local phood store. "
http://www.safe-food.org/-issue/dangers.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14570
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects <~~Bet this would scare a hellofa lot of men
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_51/b3712218.htm
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Long-Term-Health-Consequences-of-Pasteurized-Milk-Laws&id=5293406
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/food-science/food-science-what-is-pasteurization-065384
The CDC changed the standard for collection of illness data in the late 1990's. Prior to this time, the data base and reporting were different. As best I can recall, these changes occurred with Jack in the Box and Odwalla in the 1990s'.
In the 1970's ourtbreaks were reported differently and no central computerized database was kept like it is now.
The American Immune system has become a virtual "welcome mat" for all the bad bugs that have morphed to survive and live after they have been assaulted by:
The heat of pasteurization.
The repeated and abusive use of Antibiotics
The increased use of preservatives in the American diet and foods.
Sterilzed foods which have displaced living or fermented foods as good bacteria sources
GMO and GE foods…God knows what that has done??
Couple this with FDA's John Sheehan admonitions and brain washed fear mongering about all bacteria. The FDA Fight BACT kid bacteria Phobia compaign and enhanced collection of data that now only requires to Two Sick People to become an outbreak ( sickness is not defined for the most part…just a reported illness by a doctor and that is enough ).
You got FOOD INC data magic…..that is what is really going on at the CDC where they conveniently mix up data and combine all raw milk and raw cheese illnesses….and combine thermalized cheese and truly raw cheese together. The CDC data becomes worse than meaningless. It becomes a political tool for those in power that enter the data and miss use it at the CDC. And….if a real person complains about this, then the CDC tells us that Pasteurization is the only Guarantee of food safety and refuse to post the deaths from pasteurized milk or other pasteurized products.
I guess Guarantee of Safety also means Death in CDC mingo. That makes sense….the FDA believes that all their drug approvals are safe…yet they kill hundreds of thousands per year.
Sick and Twisted for sure. I vote for Egyptian Style FDA Food Revolt with Bands of Foodies placing stickers on SOY, Pasteurized Products, GMO Crap and other poisons in our American Stores. Who is going to order and design the Stickers???
I want to order the first 50,000
Mark
Do it!
We need to start putting warning labels on commercial pasteurized milk! AND SOY MILK!!
(note: I do have a soft spot for minimally pasteurized cream-line milk from grass-grazed cows, so be nice to those processors)
OV is going to get it with their ULTRA-pasteurized totally sterilzed 280F milk!!!!
Warning! This item may be adulterated.
It is Phood – tampered with by industry for optimal
profits;
Optimal health begins with real FOOD.
Know Your Farmer
The following webpage could have been Nazi-infested FDA Destroys America:
Nazi-infested FED Destroys America
http://www.hoaxofthecentury.com/FedNazis1.htm
Clinton's FDA commissioner David Kessler is believed to be a foreigner.
I don't think this is directly related to the conspiracy of flouridation of water. That has more to do with the chemical-military-industrial (agriculture) complex.
Wait, didn't Eisenhower warn us about that "complex" in 1961? Welcome to America!
The "upward trend" is a combination of increased small-scale artisinal production of raw milk cheese, combined with increased government surveillance.
There is a pressing need to educate small-scale raw milk cheese makers to recognize contamination of their cheese without the need for expensive laboratory tests, but FOOD INC. is pressing very hard to prevent FDA/USDA to keep funds from the raw milk movement. Their goal is to keep us in the dark… very dark forces we are up against.
Agree.
"but FOOD INC. is pressing very hard to prevent FDA/USDA to keep funds from the raw milk movement. Their goal is to keep us in the dark… very dark forces we are up against."
Do you really think you're going to get funding by calling the scientists nazis, fascists, and foreigners?
Very dark forces are upon those who feed and welcome them.
Do you really think you're going to get people to listen or trust by calling them names? Or behaving as hitler et al did? get real.
Consider these quotes,
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. Sigmund Freud
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Winston Churchill
Bill is referring to FDA officials who are about as far away from a true scientist that one can get and I doubt very much that name calling will sway them from their current agenda. Yet, if it causes the hair to rise on their backs and for them to further dig in their heals and abuse their power for vindictive purposes, then such action is a mere reflection of their stubborn immaturity.
Ken Conrad
As a result of exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides the above Institute of Science In Society article 11/02/11 states,
In 2009 the decline in Midwestern North American bumblebee was documented and large scale agricultural intensification implicated as the cause [2]. A 2010
report showed that the relative abundances of four species have declined by up
to 96 percent and that their geographic ranges contracted by 2387 percent
within the last 20 years [3]. It also showed that declining populations have
significantly higher infection levels of the microsporidian pathogen Nosema
bombi and lower genetic diversity compared with co-occurring populations of the
stable (non-declining) species. It concluded [3]: Higher pathogen prevalence
and reduced genetic diversity are, thus, realistic predictors of these alarming
patterns of decline in North America, although cause and effect remain
uncertain.
History has demonstrated that rather then deal with the above toxic chemical (a chemical by the way which they have approve for release into the environment) the powers that be will continue with their systematic warfare against organisms such as the microsporidian pathogen Nosema bombi by ensuring that all bees are fed a generous supply of antibiotics and if that fails to work incinerated them en masse.
Ken Conrad
FDA is not interested in science, except when they can use it to serve the agenda of their corporate masters. FDA is more interested in criminal prosecution and policing food than they are in food safety. We have the means to improve the safety of raw milk using science and education, the problem is that TPTB want to keep it as dangerous as possible. They WANT outbreaks because it gives them a rationale for going on their police-state rampages.
Mussolini, the first fascist dictator, described fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. That is precisely what we witness time and again with raw milk — the authoritarian police state carrying out the will of corporate interests. It has nothing to do with food safety when raw milk suppliers who have never caused illness are targetted for raids and criminal prosecution (such as Vernon Hersberger was targetted in WI for daring to churn raw butter on his farm — butter, btw, is less than 20% moisture and cannot support the growth of pathogenic organisms, at all). It has to do with protectionism of the dairy processing industry.
Yes, it is fascism.
Let me know Lykke, when the scientists will get the courage to speak out about the need to properly fund good research and education for raw milk and raw milk cheese producers. As far as I can tell they are either complete cowards, or are active participants and conspirators in the fascistic (merger of state and corporate power) agenda.
Pasteurization is not the only route to food safety in dairy products. If someone purporting to be a scientist tells you that pasteurization is the only route to food safety in dairy products, I would seriously question who they are getting their money from.
It does not matter to me if they are foriegn or not. In fact, the most informative dairy expert I have ever met was from France. American scientists are either to cowardly or too bought off by TPTB to question the established institutional dogmas.
The science, technology, and understanding exists today to ensure the safety of raw dairy products. The French have been doing it for decades. The problem is that TPTB don't want it, and so raw milk continues to be criminalized and driven into black markets where it is inherintly going to be a higher-risk product.
For your feasting eyes:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/column/phil_hands/article_588b5780-7656-11df-b115-001cc4c03286.html
He loves raw milk!!!! He also said Americans do not know how to get pissed off. He said that unless we do we will lose the next generation to illness and disease.
Lykke. Your ongoing negative crap was not at the farmers market today when Jamie and I spoke. That is the difference between you and I. I act and go out and make collaborative relationships and educate. All you do is blab your old worn out dogma as John Sheehans mouth piece.
The future belongs to those that act.
By the way David. I got many compliments to forward on to you aBout this blog. Many people at the FM read it and learn from it. Good job.
The link to Jamie kicking ass on processed food and loving raw milk will be up tomorrow
It was good to see Maurice at the market
Awesome!!!!!
Mark
And Lykke said,
"Do you really think you're going to get funding by calling the scientists nazis, fascists, and foreigners?"
Lykke,
At least you have admitted how FDA makes these important decisions –
So it is in fact about the money, politics and well, now we can add name calling to the list. LOL.
Ok folks, here's our new strategy. We disguise ourselves as Food, Inc, stick out our tongues, put our thumbs in our ears and shout nannybooboo at the FDA.
They will get mad and or cry, pick up their toys and come be on our side.
Thanks, Lykke, for helping us understand the strategy of this game a little better….
***********
Congrats Mark!
And they won't march on Washington or take to the streets until it threatens their access to food directly. That will take a few farmers getting arrested. If our farmers are willing to risk all to feed their customers then the customers just might do the same to see them freed.
Pete, this is where education comes in. If people are made aware of how the foods are grown/processed, etc, they will begin to to balk at the system. Yes, it is a slow process, make them aware of the heath issues with the adulterations of the phoods, the illnesses that are attributed to the environment of the plants and animals and how it affects their bodies and the health of their children. If something is repeated enough then it will eventually sink in.
For cheeses with a standard of identity, these are not even allowed ingredients. Plus, the processors are not putting these ingredients on the ingredients label.
And somehow we are being told that raw milk is adulterated dangerous food?
FOOD INC at work in our government!
It appears that cheese yields are increased by several pounds per hundredweight of farm milk through the use of these protein concentrates.
With respect to sodium lactate crystal formation on cheese, certain articles suggest that the formation of these crystals is enhanced in large part due to the addition of the above concentrates, hence the need to add sodium gluconate to the curds in the vat to prevent excess formation of these lactate crystals.
Since as you say the above ingredients are not listed and that cheeses with a standard of identity are not allowed to use such ingredients, how is a consumer suppose to know the difference? Would it be possible for manufactures of standard identity cheeses to indicate on their packaging that the above ingredients are not used?
Ken Conrad
"how is a consumer suppose to know the difference? "
*************
"Here I come to save the day !!!!" ….. (Mighty Mouse theme song for those who are too young to recognize)
This is the intent of the new food labeling army.
I've been pondering what the label should say for days. I've come to the conclusion that short and sweet is best — skull and crossbones.
Love it…skull and cross bones… it is….
For Soy…add "Men,….if you want Tits and Micro-Balls…Drink This and become a SOY BOY!!"
For UHT Milk…"Super Dead White Cereal Lubricant",
For GMO junk…"If you want kids with fish eyes, gills and six corn husk ears eat this".
You get the idea….this is the Food Revolution at its best. The only problem with this is that the stores have surveilance cameras and it will land us up in FDA food bashing PETA jail.
How about this…lets just bankrupt the PMO CAFO FOOD Inc bastards by education and consumer "dollar voting". It is more painful and All American. After all, Jamie Oliver did tell me that we are the land of whimps and "do not know how to get pissed off " or revolt very well.
Mark
Yes, Mark, you are right.
We would likely all be singing kumbaya in Guantanamo –
crime: terrorist labelers
But it's so fun thinking of the possibilities!
Soylent green was made out of people.
Whose genes are in your GMO corn?
Fish? Bug? Howard from HR?
The people demand to know!
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/15/133650263/budding-calif-cheese-industry-gets-grilled-by-fda?uidt=1297878098#commentBlock
Hope the converse works. All the omments are also interesting.
Chris RL