Always the kids: Health concerns after raw milk bill moves forward in W. Virginia

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Lydia Nuzum of the Sunday Gazette – Mail writes that for Amy Nordyke, it seemed like the right choice. After researching ways to improve her family’s diet, she stumbled across the idea of consuming raw milk.

“It was very convincing — that raw milk, under certain circumstances, could be a perfectly safe food to consume for all ages,” Nordyke said. “We just jumped right in and started consuming it.”

Nordyke, her husband and her children, who live near Fort Knox, Kentucky, had been consuming raw milk for nearly a decade when, in September 2014, Nordyke’s then 18-month-old son, Seamus, fell ill — first with bloody diarrhea, which quickly morphed into severe dehydration. Nordyke took him to a pediatrician and continued to monitor her son. When she realized Seamus was no longer urinating, she rushed him to her local hospital.

Seamus had developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a condition caused by the premature destruction of red blood cells that clog the kidneys and cause them to stop functioning properly. The condition turned out be a complication from contracting E. coli, a bacteria commonly found in contaminated food. In Seamus’ case it came from consuming raw milk.

Seamus wasn’t the only one affected, Nordyke said, three other children had been admitted to the hospital for HUS, and Nordyke recognized the parents of one from Facebook. They were also members of the food club Nordyke procured her raw milk from.

“It was hard for me to accept at first that something that I had actively sought out for so many years could have made my child sick, but after a certain point, I just couldn’t deny it anymore,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 202 of the 239 hospitalizations involving tainted dairy products between 1993 and 2006 were linked to the consumption of raw milk or raw-milk cheese. More than 1,500 people were sickened by raw milk products in that time frame, according to the CDC. The CDC has also reported that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products.

There have been intermittent cases of raw milk contaminations over the years, but large-scale issues are rare, primarily because consuming raw milk is rare in the U.S., according to Dr. Art Rubin, interim health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department.

“That’s been the problem in the Legislature,” Rubin said. “I think part of the reason these infections don’t look statistically significant is because there isn’t as much raw milk consumption, and I think if there were more, you’d start to see more side effects.”

Nordyke’s access to raw milk was the result of a loophole in Kentucky law. While the sale of raw milk in the state is illegal, there are no laws expressly prohibiting herd-sharing, she said.

“Herd-shares in Kentucky aren’t exactly legal, but they’re not illegal, either — it’s a loophole in the law,” she said. “Raw milk sales here are illegal, but you can milk your own cow, so if you own part of a cow, it becomes OK.”

Last week, the West Virginia House of Delegates voted 81-19 to allow the consumption of non-pasteurized milk in West Virginia. The Senate passed the legislation (SB30) last month, so the bill next goes to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for his signature. The bill will not allow the sale of raw milk, but will permit herd-sharing — buying stock in a cow or a herd and drinking milk produced by that cow or herd.

House Republicans noted in discussion of the bill that it was a matter of personal freedom

Despite having “one of the most severe” cases of HUS the hospital had seen, Seamus was able to make a full recovery after two weeks in the hospital, though he still receives check-ups to ensure that his kidneys are functioning as they should.

Raw milk in the same fridge as pasteurized at Banana Joe’s supermarket in Sydney

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Douglas Powell

While the Australian state of Victoria has taking steps to limit the sale of bath milk, linked to a child’s death and three other cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, the stuff was found on sale yesterday alongside regular milk in a Sydney supermarket (that’s in the state of New South Wales).

Banana Joe’s supermarket in Marrickville was yesterday selling raw milk alongside pasteurized products.

The milk, Cleopatra’s Bath Milk, retails for $8.73 for a two liter bottle and is labeled “cosmetic skin treatment only”.

Despite displaying this legally required warning, the raw milk is packaged almost identically to regular milk and was displayed in the same fridge as other milk products.

The store manager, who gave his name as AJ, had “no concerns at this time” selling the products in the same fridge as regular milk as they were not on the same shelf.

He said he had ordered the milk in at the request of a customer but added that he had only sold “one or two bottles.”

A Coles supermarket in Western Australia was found to be selling unpasteurized goat’s milk, according to an intrepid reader, which has, I’ve been told, since been removed.

UK toddler left in intensive care after E. coli O55 outbreak

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Douglas Powell

A toddler is recovering after he was left in intensive care for two weeks due to kidney failure after contracting E. coli O55 while staying with family in Dorset.

An outbreak of E. coli 055 was reported in Dorset in Dec. 2014, with 10 people confirmed as suffering with the severe illness caused by the bacterium and at least 18 sickened. Public Health England (PHE) and local environmental health officials are investigating the outbreak in a bid to find the cause.

Now Neil Fincham-Dukes, 31, from Bath has instructed public health lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to investigate why his son, Joseph, 3, and his daughter Poppy, 1, contracted E. coli and whether the illness is linked to the recent outbreak in Dorset.

coli O55 is a rare strain of the bacteria which can have very serious consequences. Joseph’s symptoms began in early November 2014 and he suffered with diarrhea and sickness. He visited his doctor on two occasions, but unfortunately his condition worsened and he suffered a number of seizures and became disorientated.

He was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS). He spent two weeks in intensive care and required daily dialysis for a number of weeks due to the severity of his symptoms. He is still receiving dialysis three times a week and his treating doctors have confirmed that he is likely to need a kidney transplant in the future because of the severity of the damage to his kidneys.

Victorian raw milk producers lost half their business overnight due to stronger action to ban consumption

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Some organic milk producers have stopped production after Victoria took action to stop people drinking raw milk.

The death of a three-year-old boy in December last year, linked to the consumption of unpasteurised bath milk, as well as three other cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome in children under 5-years-old, prompted changes to dairy licences.

Victoria is the first state to force producers selling milk for cosmetic purposes, labelled as bath milk, to add a bittering agent to give the milk a distasteful flavour.

Manager of the Miranda Dale Dairy in south-east Victoria, Reg Matthews, said he had lost 70 per cent of his business over night because of the new licence arrangement.

“We’ll bring out a low temperature pasteurised product. Whether that can sustain us enough to keep the business going remains to be seen,” he said.

“Really what happens this afternoon, my son is waiting for me, we’ll sit down and start looking at the animals and make some decisions as to what if anything we are going to sell off and get a few dollars in the door.”

Raw milk could face national ban in Australia after recommendation from forum; raw milk cheese OKed

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Douglas Powell

A national ban on the sale of raw milk is looming after state and territory leaders agreed consumers need protection from the dangers posed by unpasteurized milk.

The Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation, attended by ministers responsible for food regulation, raised their ‘extreme concern’ about the consumption of unpasteurized cow’s milk that is sold as ‘bath milk’ with a disclaimer ‘not for human consumption’.

The forum found urgent action was required at a national level and are asking for “a joint public health, food safety and consumer law solution that will deliver a consistent approach across all Australian jurisdictions”.

Last month Premier Mike Baird vowed to work with other state and territory leaders to stop health food stores selling the potentially deadly product.

His move followed Victoria’s tough action on producers of raw milk following the death of a Victorian child and the hospitalization of four other children in December. The children suffered severe complications as a result of food poisoning sourced to raw milk consumption.

The sale of raw milk is already banned for human consumption in all states and territories but raw milk is sold as ‘bath milk’ or ‘cosmetic milk’ with a disclaimer, but it is knowingly being consumed by people who argue the bacteria in raw milk are beneficial to health.

Microbiologist Professor Michael Eyles, chair of the Food Safety Information Council, said raw milk was a dangerous product because it contained dangerous bacteria which had the opportunity to multiply during packaging, transit and storage for retail.

“It’s just irresponsible to sell raw milk and pretend it’s safe, it is not,” Prof Eyles said.

Victorians who give family members raw milk to drink face fines of $60,000 under new regulations.

As of Sunday, a strong bittering agent will be put into unpasteurized milk to deter people from consuming it, according to the state’s minister for consumer affairs, Jane Garrett.

More than 100 protesters gathering outside Garrett’s Brunswick office and vowing they would continue drinking milk in what they describe as its “purest form.”

Meanwhile, specialist cheese makers are welcoming a decision by the New Zealand and Australian health ministers to allow a wider range of cheeses to be made from raw milk.

The decision was made at a meeting of the ministers in Auckland. The new rules require that the raw milk cheese does not support the growth of disease-causing bacteria, and that there is no rise in the level of those during processing.

1 toddler dead, 4 sick, so protesters will demand raw milk be sold for drinking in Victoria

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Just weeks after health types in the Australian state of Victoria (that’s where Melbourne is) declared a three-year-old had died and four other children sickened from consuming raw milk, natural types are planning a drink-in Saturday to get even more unpasteurized milk on store shelves.

Three of the four children – all under five — developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, usually associated with shiga-toxin producing E. coli, such as E. coli O157, and the other developed cryptosporidiosis.

How many others developed milder forms of illness is unknown.

In response to the outbreak in early Dec., Victoria Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett ordered a gag-inducing chemical to be poured into all raw milk sold in stores from Sunday, ensuring no one is able to drink it (raw milk is legally sold as bath milk, side-by-side with pasteurized milk; that would be an expensive bath).

The move has apparently infuriated food activists, who are now planning a protest on Saturday to demand that the unpasteurized product be made available for drinking.

“The government’s approach so far has been a very knee-jerk reaction,” said organic food store owner Rebecca Freer, who is planning the “drink-in” outside the minister’s Brunswick East office.

“I think they’re in denial that there’s a large subculture of raw milk drinkers, who are well-informed, educated people.”

The Australian Raw Milk Movement is encouraging people to “BYO cup” and drink raw milk outside Garrett’s office.

Supporters of drinking unprocessed milk like Ms Freer dispute the product’s link with the child’s death and instead stress the supposed health benefits from consuming a natural product.

But they never mention the other kids who developed HUS.

“It’s our consumer right to define what we eat and drink,” she said. “Australia is really backwards on this issue.”

After being contacted by Guardian Australia, Freer posted to the Australian Raw Milk Movement’s Facebook wall that she had been contacted by journalists and that “the fight is on.”

“I think it is fair to say we are in the midst of a violent resistance,” she wrote.

Nutritionist Arabella Forge, who will speak at Saturday’s protest, said current food safety laws could be amended to get raw milk on store shelves without compromising food safety.

“What we’re really asking for is a system of regulation that supports safe, raw milk,” she said. “People should have access to this product.”

CSIRO research microbiologists Narelle Fegan and Edward Fox, who have studied raw milk safety on Victorian farms, have both warned against drinking raw milk, even from farms with the highest of standards.

“When the milk comes out of the animal it should be sterile, but then it’s immediately contaminated by its environment,” Dr Fegan said. “When things go wrong they can go wrong pretty badly with people getting seriously ill.”

Dr Fox said there was no evidence that raw milk was more nutritious – a common claim made by raw milk supporters.

“Pasteurised milk is as nutritional as raw milk and it has, due to the pasteurisation process, a lower associated risk,” he said.

Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr Rosemary Lester, has also stood behind her recent raw milk health warnings.

Ms Garrett defended her decision to add a bittering agent to raw milk on Thursday, saying it’s meant to prevent illness and death.

“The actions we have taken are designed to stop people from putting themselves and their children at risk,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Adelaide, South Australia, a court heard a temperature rise in samples taken from a farm owned by a couple being prosecuted for selling unpasteurised milk to when it was tested would have caused a “marginal” rise in bacteria readings.

Moo View Dairy owners Mark and Helen Tyler, who on Wednesday brought a cow to the front of the court building, are contesting charges of breaching the food act by selling the raw milk commercially.

The couple have been operating a “House Cow Share Scheme” where people can buy shares in one of their cows which entitles them to a percentage of the milk produced by the herd.

The raw milk was also found to have higher than the legally acceptable amount of bacteria — leading to one of the two counts of selling food in contravention of the food standards code against them in April and May, 2013.

In cross examination on Thursday, SA Dairy Authority general manager John Crosby said that rise would only have had a “marginal affect” on the milk’s bacteria count.

Mr Tyler and shareholder Rachel Tyson, who on Wednesday came to court dressed in a cow suit in a sign of support for the couple, are expected to give evidence on Friday.

Claire Harvey: Raw milk is deadly ‘mooshine’, and nobody in Australia is bathing in it

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Claire Harvey writes in The Sunday Telegraph that just before Christmas, a Victorian three-year-old died and four more children were in hospital with life-threatening illnesses after drinking unpasteurized ‘raw’ milk, commonly sold in health food stores.

The Victorian government responded quickly, passing a regulation that meant all milk manufactured in Victoria must be either pasteurized, or be rendered undrinkable with a bitter-tasting agent.

NSW Premier Mike Baird says only national action will work and the Government can’t stop health food stores selling this stuff. I think that’s nonsense — Jim Beam isn’t manufactured here, either, but the Government certainly regulates that.

I’d be happy to escort Mr Baird or any of his Cabinet to the myriad ‘health’ stores where raw milk, imported from other states, is being sold with misleading labels declaring it to be ‘cosmetic’ or ‘bath milk.’ Worse, it’s displayed in dairy cabinets, right next to the regular milk and cheese.

Here’s why I think the Government must immediately order all milk to be pasteurized.

Nobody’s bathing in it. Hello. Does our Government really believe people when they say raw milk is for bathing? It’s almost sweetly naive that anyone would actually believe that claim — let alone the health authorities. If it’s for bathing, why does it need to be kept in the fridge? And please don’t say ‘to stop it from going off’. The ‘cosmetic’ raw milk label is a deliberate wink-wink way to get around the law — dreamt up precisely so parents who think they know better than biologists can give this stuff to their children. Anyway, you’d have a very shallow bath on a two-litre bottle — unless you diluted it into homeopathic raw milk. Yeah, right.

Milk is for kids. Toddlers are by far the greatest drinkers of milk across the entire population: more than 83 per cent of children aged between two and three drink milk every day. In fact, dairy products are overwhelmingly toddlers’ most commonly consumed foods: an average of 96 per cent have some dairy product every single day, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. So what’s the possibility that tiny children will end up consuming the raw milk in health-food shops? I’d say it’s almost guaranteed.

Little tummies are fragile. Under the age of three, the immune system is far too delicate to cope with the bugs that adult guts can process. Bacteria like listeria or E. coli might give an adult a few days of unpleasant toilet time, but they are potentially deadly for children and can cause lifelong neurological disorders. That’s what happened to at least one of the children hospitalised in Victoria. Doctors say one of the greatest risks associated with food poisoning is severe dehydration _ and dehydration is a killer of infants and small children.

Kids don’t read labels. They just charge up to the fridge and grab the nearest bottle. Even the ones who are old enough to read are highly unlikely to say: “Hang on mum, this one says ‘cosmetic purposes only’,” as it sploshes over the biodynamic spelt flakes.

Endangering children is nobody’s right. Libertarians say if people want to drink unpasteurised milk, they should be allowed to do so — just like if you want to go without a seatbelt or a bike-helmet, you should be a allowed to risk your life. My view is we need to find the balance between individual liberty and protection from the idiocy of others. Everyone has a God-given right to make bad decisions for themselves, so long as it doesn’t endanger anyone else (and particularly any children). If that makes us a nanny state, I’m all for it.

It’s what parents do: ‘Superhero’ UK father gives son a life-saving kidney

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Douglas Powell

A father has given his son a life-saving kidney as an early Christmas present.

Zac Stanley was just two when he contracted E .coli, causing permanent damage to his kidneys as the bacterium attacked.

His condition got worse until his kidney function was 11 per cent.

Dave Stanley, 36, stepped in to donate Zac, now eight, the life-saving kidney just in time for Christmas.

Mr Stanley said: “Giving up your kidney or an organ for your child is just what parents do.

“Afterwards, just seeing him sitting there being his cheeky self eating a banana was amazing. I couldn’t ask for any more, it is amazing to see him so well.”

Zac had to stay in Alder Hey children’s hospital in their home town of Liverpool for five months as a toddler, having dialysis for chronic kidney diease caused by the E. coli bacteria.

Nikki Berg, 27, said: “We were told he wouldn’t need the transplant until he was a teenager, but because his kidney function has deteriorated over the years he needed it sooner.

“It was a shock but such a relief when we found out Dave was a match.”

Going public saves lives: E. coli kills child in Italy

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Douglas Powell

My Italian food safety friend provides the following:

Last summer, Apulia, a region in Italy’s south, was hit by a hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) outbreak with 20 cases; it was eventually linked to dairy products.

When two children came down with HUS in July,2014, authorities insisted that “there was no alarm.”

It is possible there has been no outbreak and no reason to alert the public, but a 18-month child has now died of HUS and it seems that the main reason was that doctors were slow to consider HUS as a possible diagnosis. Perhaps downplaying the issue to the public, including health professionals, has not helped.

E. coli connection in Oregon? 3-year-old girl also gets sick

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Douglas Powell

After seeing reports on KATU TV, the family of a 3-year-old girl who got sick from E. coli is convinced that the case is connected to another case of E. coli that killed 4-year-old Serena Profitt on Monday. Both children were in the same general area just before they got sick.

Serena swam in a section of the South Santiam River in Linn County. Then Aubrie Utter had her birthday at Waterloo Park about 20 minutes away and a few feet from a section of that river. They used a water fountain to fill up water balloons.

Aubrie’s birthday party was Saturday, Aug. 23, and her mother, Katie Hendricks, said her daughter was sick that very night.
“During the middle of the night, she woke up crying (that) her stomach hurt. She had diarrhea,” Katie said.

She brought her daughter to a clinic in Albany and just like with Serena she said they thought it was a minor virus and sent her home. But she just kept getting worse, and her mother brought her back in and demanded they do a blood test.

Two hours later they confirmed Aubrie had E. coli, and she was rushed to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, just two doors down from Serena. Aubrie was hospitalized for a full week and underwent five blood transfusions. She recovered but Serena did not.

Now, Katie has a message for other parents.

“I want the public to know,” she said. “You got to push doctors. If they tell you, ‘No, go home,’ – push it, ask for blood work, because my daughter wouldn’t be here today if I wouldn’t have done that.”
A KATU reporter called the Linn County Health Department to see what it is doing about this possible connection. The reporter was told that this was the first it had heard about it.

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