Friday, May 11, 2012

E.coli 0157:H7 Survives in Raw Milk! No Way!


Sally Fallon-Morell of the Weston A. Price Foundation would have you believe that raw milk kills pathogens...to the point that it renders raw milk completely safe to drink? I don't know. She doesn't clarify that last part, but she certainly has said it kills pathogens a lot. In my last post I showed how she still claims this as of 2011 and exposed the network she has created to carry this message.

This subject was covered extensively almost 3 years ago on the Ethicurean blog

Click the link here and download the latest raw milk e.coli news coming out of Oregon, and tell me you want to feed your young child raw milk again. I certainly don't. When that mother's voice describes her daughters hospital trials, and breaks up and trails off at the end...you know she has shed many tears for her daughter. I cannot even fathom the agony and the heartache. It probably will not end when her daughter eventually leaves the hospital, however. HUS, unfortunately, can cause a lifetime of health problems:

"Among survivors, at least five percent will suffer end stage renal disease (“ESRD”) with the resultant need for dialysis or transplantation. But, “[b] ecause renal failure can progress slowly over decades, the eventual incidence of ESRD cannot yet be determined.” Other long-term problems include the risk for hypertension, proteinuria (abnormal amounts of protein in the urine that can portend a decline in renal function), and reduced kidney filtration rate. Since the longest available follow-up studies of HUS victims are 25 years, an accurate lifetime prognosis is not really available and remains controversial. All that can be said for certain is that HUS causes permanent injury, and it requires a lifetime of close medical monitoring." http://www.marlerblog.com/legal-cases/the-e-coli-o157h7-bacteria-and-hemolytic-uremic-syndrome-hus/

Then flip to the uninformed statement that many raw milk supporters keep saying and keep believing, despite lack of peer-reviewed scientific evidence to support their claims.

On The Bovine blog today they posted a video:


39 seconds in, a woman says, "E.coli can't even SURVIVE in, uh, raw milk. It can't."

If you think raw milk can kill pathogens, and that e.coli can't survive in raw milk so that raw milk is completely without risk to drink, then please read this excellent paper by Dr. Amanda Rose: www.rawmilkwhitepapers.com

From the Amanda Rose:
"Like a whole lot of other foods, raw milk can be contaminated. The temperature of the milk and the type of pathogen both matter to the discussion. The research is really not as simple as advocacy groups would suggest.
And then there is the FDA. The had a FAQ with the question “Does raw milk kill pathogens?” Their answer: “No.”

Life and research should be as simple as these two sides suggest.

I got heckled by one side at a symposium. Then my little white paper was just weeks old when a surprising review of it appeared in the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation written by Ted Beals, M.D. [PDF]. I actually had a lot of respect for Beals’ testimony here in California a couple of years ago and recommended him as a speaker for the aforementioned symposium, so I was surprised first to read his review. I wrote a detailed response to his review at the Rebuild blog.

I have continued to be surprised that he has not backed up his review with citations from the scientific literature. I write this update about one year since I first asked for citations. In the concluding paragraph of his review of my white paper, he essentially accuses me of cherry picking and argues that “raw milk does kill off pathogens in realistic real-life situations. That fresh raw milk has the properties to kill off pathogens is no urban legend, it is proven science.”

If you see Ted Beals at a raw milk conference, you might ask him for the citations that support his conclusion because I have had no luck. The “proven science” remains locked in the WAPF chambers in Virginia."

Before you go on to send Dr. Rose hatemail, read what she says here. She staunchly defends a consumers right to purchase and consume the food of their choice. She firmly believes, however, as do I, that the consumers need to have information that is correct when making the decision to buy and consume said food.


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Sally Fallon-Morell, The Weston A. Price Foundation, and Raw Milk



Sally Fallon-Morell, above: "The funny thing is we now know a lot about raw milk and raw milk will actually get rid of bad bacteria by itself. There are a lot of components in raw milk that kill pathogens."

This is an attempt to tell my friends on Facebook why I post so much about Raw Milk. It is also an attempt to not make myself go insane with rage when raw milk supporters and leaders of the movement make themselves look foolish when they callously disregard the illness of a two year old who drank raw milk (more on that later) like they do here in the comments section.

Here is my response to a raw milk supporter who says there are no real raw milk leaders in the raw milk movement.

First of all, let's state the obvious: is it possible to have a movement without leadership?

chirp... chirp...

Second, and watch out: Here comes my Sally Fallon-Morell (from here on out Sally Fallon) rant about raw milk. Which will one day be followed by how Sally Fallon Makes Her Money (still gathering the evidence, not yet angry enough to post said evidence, but man do we have one good heck of a page turner on that one)

Sally Fallon-Morell says "Cheese!" at her state of the art cheese making facility that she makes from the raw milk from her state of the art milking facility that comes from the cows on her newly renovated farm. Whew! Read all about it here. By Jill Nienhiser for Farm Food Blog

The Weston A. Price Foundation, with it's leader Sally Fallon, advocates raw milk formula for babies. Her baby, WAPF, grew out of her desire to evangelize the nutrition info disseminated in "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Dr. Weston A. Price. Nowhere in that book does Price mention feeding raw milk to babies. She was a board member of PPNF, The Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, for twenty years before she left that organization to pursue a more politically active role in the food/nutrition arena. I'm not making this up.

Since its inception in 1999, WAPF has been espousing the health benefits of raw milk for mothers and babies. It runs a chapter based organization. How do you think a majority of people find their raw milk herd shares??? These chapters help connect raw milk seekers with raw milk producers.

David Gumpert's blog, The Complete Patient, is quoted in Wise Traditions, WAPFs pseudo scientific quarterly journal, as a source for raw milk news. He writes the occasional article for them in their raw milk update section. He also wrote, Raw Milk Revolution, the top selling raw milk book according to Amazon.com

Mark McAfee, "owner of the largest raw milk dairy in the world" has a symbiotic relationship with WAPF. He boosts raw milk and so do they. A friend from my past involvement in WAPF-LA recently titled he and his wife: "Mr. and Mrs. Raw Milk" and I think that's an apt description of how WAPF members view him.

Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm: Would you deny that he's not a leader in the "Real Food Movement"? Star of such tomes as Pollan's The Omnivores Dilemma and the movies Food Inc. and Fresh. He calls Mark McAfee his raw milk hero in his most recent book, Folks, This Ain't Normal". Joel is a card carrying WAPFer and I doubt the two would have connected without WAPF. Salatin also wrote the forward for Gumpert's Raw Milk Revolution.

Search "raw milk" at Amazon.com and see what comes up. First, as mentioned above, is Gumpert's venerable Raw Milk Revolution. Second, a little book called The Untold Story of Raw Milk by Ron Schmidt. Who is the publisher of that book? Sally Fallon's Newtrends Publishing, Inc.

Lest we not forget the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, WAPF's legal arm. They've got their knees deep in raw milk litigation, no?

A lot of arrows in the Raw Milk activism world point to Sally Fallon's WAPF that she created to promote her political agendas, and the ones that deviate most from Weston A. Price's teachings and writings are raw milk and anti-soy.

If you would like to take a peek at what she advocates:
http://pediatricalternatives.com/sally-fallon-morell.html

I was at this talk and had my Nourishing Traditions book signed by Sally Fallon-Morell herself.

She devotes more than enough time to raw milk, but here is why I do not think she should be a leader of any movement, no less one that advocates feeding raw milk to babies:

FIVEFOLD PROTECTIVE SYSTEM IN RAW MILK
1. Destroys pathogens in the milk.
2. Stimulates the Immune system.
3. Builds healthy gut wall.
4. Prevents absorption of pathogens and toxins in the gut.
5. Ensures assimilation of all the nutrients.

PROBLEMS BREASTFEEDING?
Use our homemade formula based on raw milk
Added lactose and whey to approximate human milk
Added cod liver oil to ensure adequate A and D
More Info: www.westonaprice.org/faq/320-faq-homemade-baby-formula.html

In the video above she spins her tale: "Raw Milk will actually get rid of pathogens itself

The End.