Real Raw Milk Facts
This is a fascinating little website, built by lawyers who specialize in food poisoning cases. Its intriguing that one of the cases they refer to regularly, the one in California in 2006, where six children came down with E. Coli 157 poisoning, is also the one where they never found the same strain of E. Coli on the farm where they all got their milk. If you read the CDC case on the incident, you will also notice that they never confirmed that any of the patients became ill from raw milk- just that they had all consumed raw milk in the past week (as did the rest of their families, so very odd that they were the only ones in their families to fall ill).
I’m not going to deny that there can be contamination in raw milk. There can be. There can be contamination in anything though. The issue is that the FDA and CDC are not always able to establish linkages- in fact, in a lot of cases, the families come forward and say they are pretty sure their children got sick from something other than the milk- but those cases are still used to keep raw milk illegal. The association is enough for them. If I go out for dinner tonight, and get food poisoning tomorrow, chances are they would claim I had gotten sick from the raw milk I drank for breakfast this morning (rather than from the restaurant last night). There is a predisposition to blame raw milk for all ills.
My other big problem with this website (but don’t say I don’t show you the other side!), is that they seem to claim raw milk is inherently dangerous because farms are inherently dirty. No fricking shit. Farms have dirt on them. Farms with cows have manure! My god! How could such a thing be? How could we be allowed to come into contact with such things! The horror.
As always, decide for yourself. I know I’m looking forward to a nice big glass of raw milk when I get home, however…
Thanks for the shout out. If you ever want to go through all the data on all the outbreaks that we have listed there, I am happy to do so. They were caused by raw milk.
You can download my summary of the outbreak and excerpts from expert reports:
http://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/organic-pastures-dairy-e-coli-o157h7-raw-milk-product-outbreak-2006/
Since that outbreak OP has been a leader in the raw milk industry. I hope to never see them on the other side of a case again.
Well, the lawyer on the other side of the raw milk industry on a case is going to have to say it was the raw milk, isn’t he? I’m still for people deciding for themselves. Know where your food comes from! Just because something has been “proven” in court don’t make it so…
I’m all for people eating healthy, which means eating whole, unprocessed foods. In other words, food that we ate 100 years ago. However, in this movement to eat natural foods, raw milk has been thrown in the mix. We don’t consider other foods (vegetables, meats, cakes, pies, & casseroles) that are baked, boiled or steamed as processed, so why is milk that is boiled considered processed and not natural?
My son almost died from drinking raw milk. It is not worth the risk. The udder is too close to the ass.