The Centers for Disease Control recently issued a statement blaming the 2014 death of a Florida woman on raw milk, specifically Listeriosis.
In its criticism of unpasteurized milk, the government agency said about its recent attack on Miller’s Organic Farm, “It was reported that both ill people drank raw milk before they got sick. The family of the deceased person in Florida reported purchasing raw milk from Miller’s Organic Farm.”
However, the Weston A. Price Foundation, which defends producers of raw milk, contends that, according to a family member of the deceased woman, the CDC’s statement is “false and misleading.”
The foundation quoted Peggy Stevenson, who provided care to the woman.
“My family member was diagnosed with and died of cancer after a week of chemo,” she said. “I am outraged that the CDC is using our tragic situation to damage and try to destroy a farm we love and support.”
The federal government has a long history of portraying unpasteurized milk as a killer.
In the March 18 report, the CDC claimed that the “whole genome sequencing of Listeria bacteria from raw chocolate milk produced by Miller’s Organic Farm showed that it was closely related genetically to Listeria bacteria from the two ill people.”
The CDC said it still is investigating.
But it accused the farm in Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania, of being the source.
“In November 2015, samples of raw chocolate milk were collected from a raw milk conference held in Anaheim, California. The raw chocolate milk was produced by Miller’s Organic Farmm. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) isolated Listeria from the raw chocolate milk and conducted WGS testing on the isolate to get more genetic information. … On January 29, 2016, FDA informed CDC that WGS determined that the Listeria bacteria from the raw chocolate milk was closely related genetically to Listeria bacteria from two people in two states who got sick in 2014, one from California and one from Florida.
The Price Foundation said the FDA has “spent years aggressively warning people against drinking raw milk with the claim that it causes hundreds more foodborne illness outbreaks than pasteurized milk.”
“Yet, there have been no cases of Listeriosis attributed to raw milk consumption going back 40 years, or more. Unlike raw milk, pasteurized dairy has been linked to several deaths in the past 10 years,” the foundations said.
“Prior to the false claim from the CDC, there have been no reported illnesses associated with Miller’s Organic Farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania,” it said.
“This recent release from the CDC is a deliberate attempt to tarnish raw milk and present false and defamatory information,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit based in Washington, D.C., with 15,000 members and 600 local chapters. “This is a witch-hunt against raw milk. This is clearly not a case of illness associated with raw milk, but rather an agency with an agenda.”
Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-consumer Legal Defense Fund, called the government’s action a “weak attempt to shut down people’s choices.”
“It shows this bureaucracy is getting more desperate in trying to stop the growing demand for raw milk.”
WND reported a West Virginia lawmaker and a few colleagues were struck with fevers after a raw-milk party, but Pat McGeehan, a Republican house delegate from Hancock, said it was just a coincidence.
“[Rep. Scott Cadle] caught me in the hallway, offered a cup to me, and you want to try to be a gentleman. I had a small sip and walked away and tossed the rest of it,” McGeehan said. “I highly doubt raw milk had anything to do with it. I don’t think it’s any riskier than eating raw oysters or anything like that. There definitely shouldn’t be a law against allowing people to do what they want within the framework of the rule of law. Just be careful.”
Local reports confirmed a stomach virus had been circulating in the Capitol in recent weeks.
WND has reported many times on the fight over using raw milk, including three years ago when Wisconsin went to court over a farm’s production there.
Vernon Hershberger was acquitted of multiple charges that he sold his milk to friends and acquaintances without a state license. He was only found guilty of a hold order.
WND reported when the Weston A. Price Foundation criticized a federal study that blamed outbreaks of illness on raw milk. The CDC report said outbreaks because of raw milk were 150 times greater than outbreaks attributed to pasteurized milk, citing statistics from a 13-year period ending in 2006.
But the Price Foundation said the results were invalid because the federal report’s authors “cherry picked” data.
Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, said the study listed an average of 315 illnesses a year “from all dairy products for which the pasteurization status was known.”
“Of those, there was an average of 112 illnesses each year attributed to all raw dairy products and 203 associated with pasteurized dairy products,” she said of the study period ending in 2006.
“The CDC’s data shows that there were significant outbreaks of foodborne illness linked to pasteurized dairy products the very next year, in 2007: 135 people became ill from pasteurized cheese contaminated with e.coli, and three people died from pasteurized milk contaminated with Listeria,” the Price Foundation report said.
And shortly before the time frame for the study, there were 16,000 confirmed cases of Salmonella traced to pasteurized milk from a single dairy, the foundation reported.
The foundation suggested that the time frame was picked by government reporters to portray raw milk in a negative light.
In another case, a judge ruled that citizens’ right to choose their food source is limited, even when they own the cows and the milk.
The judge decided in a case over families’ access to milk from cows they own that Americans “do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow.”
Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler said the families who reported they were boarding their cows for a fee and then getting the milk, instead were running a “dairy farm.”
The judge wrote:
The court denied plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, which means the following:
(1) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a diary (sic) herd;
(2) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
(3) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;
(4) no, the Zinniker plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the state’s police power;
(5) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice; and
“(6) no, the DATCP did not act in an ultra vires manner because it had jurisdiction to regulate the Zinniker plaintiffs’ conduct.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/cdc-blasted-for-blaming-death-on-raw-milk/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/cdc-blasted-for-blaming-death-on-raw-milk/
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