Andrew Schneider??? of the Seattle P-I, writes in a decent raw milk piece this morning that consumers almost always link arms with government public health agencies banning the sale of food believed to contain dangerous pathogens. But that spirit appears to vaporize when the consumable is raw milk. Below are some excerpts:
“Although the number of cases nationwide is low, contaminated raw milk can contain a strain of E. coli that sometimes causes hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that can cause kidney failure and death.
It took a 2005 outbreak of E. coli in raw milk that sickened 18 people in Washington and Oregon and put two children on life support to get all the players — the dairy and raw milk communities, lawmakers, the state agriculture and health departments — together to try to figure out what to do, Gordon said.
Last week, the owners of the dairy that sold the tainted milk, Michael and Anita Puckett, pleaded guilty in federal court in Seattle to the charge of distributing adulterated food.
Claudia Coles, food safety manager for the state Department of Agriculture, agreed that something had to done, that "in these outbreaks, it is almost always the children that become the victims."
The state’s options for trying to control the sale of raw milk products were limited. In other states where it was banned completely, a black market flourished. So the question facing regulators is whether public health is better protected by regulating, testing, licensing and inspecting the raw milk or just by banning it so it goes underground with no oversight.
Doug Powell says he’s not surprised that government health officials denounce the dangers of raw milk then turn around and license the sale of the same milk.
"In part, it’s because of the almost evangelical way people talk about raw milk and that America is founded on consumer choice," said the associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.
"The numbers of illnesses from outbreaks caused by unpasteurized milk are not that high. You could very easily make the cases that ‘Wow, maybe tomatoes should be regulated a whole lot more than we do now because the numbers of cases of salmonella saintpaul are up to 550 now,’ " said Powell, who is also scientific director for the International Food Safety Network.
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"I don’t care if people drink raw milk. What I’m particularly concerned about is them then imposing their choice on their kids, because they’re the ones who get sick. People have the right to sell a product, but if it makes people sick, they have a right to sue."
Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler is up to his neck in many of those lawsuits. He grew up drinking raw milk on the farm "because that’s what my dad wanted us to do," he said. He has tried injury suits stemming from most of Washington’s raw milk outbreaks and is now handling similar cases in California and Missouri.
"The entire raw milk debate is so emotionally charged that there’s no common ground at all," Marler said. "The reality is if you poison a little child by selling a product that could easily be pasteurized, you’re going to have to deal with the legal issues surrounding that," he said.