A third sizable raw dairy in the last four months has been temporarily shuttered–in addition to Organic Pastures Dairy Co. in California and The Family Cow in Pennsylvania. Lots of frustration, and unpleasant questions, are coming up as a result. The biggest question may be this: Is there some kind of common theme here?
Claravale Farm is one of only two dairies in California with a permit to sell raw dairy products (the other being Organic Pastures Dairy Co.). Perhaps most notably, in nearly 100 years of existence, it has never had an outbreak of illness.
Yet late last week, the California Department of Food and Agriculture forced the dairy into a recall of its products and a quarantine, whereby the dairy is essentially shut down, based on the discovery of campylobacter in its cow’s milk cream.
“No illnesses have been definitively attributed to the products at this time,” CDFA said in its statement. “However, the California Department of Public Health is conducting an epidemiological investigation of reported clusters of campylobacter illness where consumption of raw milk products may have occurred.” To re-open, the dairy must show two milkings of pathogen-free product from state tests.
Opponents of raw milk would certainly like us to think that an increase in the number of illnesses from raw milk is inevitable, the result of expanding consumption. Proponents wonder if other factors may be at work.
The situation isn’t helped by the reticence of Claravale’s owner, Ron Garthwaite, to make himself available to the media. He seems only to communicate with a few of his customers. One customer, who runs a buying club, said in a note to its members a few days ago: “Claravale is very disappointed as this is the first time in their nearly 100 year history that they have ever had a test come back positive for a pathogen. They take so much pride on how clean and safe their milk is.
“Claravale spent the beginning part of the week again cleaning their dairy from top to bottom with following CDFA guidelines. In order to go back into production, they have to have tests for two milkings that come back completely clean. The CDFA took samples on Wednesday, after the full clean and so they hope that they will get the all clear this weekend, and will be selling again on Sunday.”
One line of reasoning, as Mark McAfee suggests in a comment following my previous post, attributes the dairy’s problems to Claravale’s expansion into other product areas over the last year, most notably, raw goat’s milk, and pasteurized ice cream. New products require new systems, and increase complexity. McAfee also points to potential problems from the dairy’s use of glass bottles, which are re-cycled, and may not be cleaned properly.
Califarmer notes following my last post that only the cream has turned up showing contamination, suggesting the possibility of campylobacter problems with the cream separating or bottling equipment.
Finally, there is the whisper of conspiracy and sabotage. The whispers began among raw milk drinkers and distributors after there were some 80 campylobacter illnesses attributed to The Family Cow dairy in Pennsylvania. Now they have become a tag stronger with the Claravale outbreak. There was talk at one of the dairies about a disgruntled employee who supposedly made threats before departing.
As the California buying club manager stated in a message to members: “I personally would not be surprised if (Claravale’s problems) were a part of a bigger plan to try to get rid of raw milk dairies in CA and in the U.S.”
I generally don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. On the other hand, I don’t think producers of unpasteurized milk would be misguided if they increased the security around their barns and milking areas.
**
“As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don’t necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent.”
This quote is from a lengthy Wall Street Journal article that detailed a half dozen or more cases of ordinary citizens being charged with breaking laws, and then being convicted of misdemeanors and felonies, some of them very minor technical offenses. Though the article refers to the rapidly growing number of federal laws, the same thing has happened on a state level as well. I was reminded about this article, which came out last summer, by the sad events unfolding around the fraud charges against James Stewart and Larry “Lucky” Otting, of Rawesome fame.
They were long-time friends at Rawesome. As Mark McAfee noted in a comment recently, the two provided important support to his dairy when its raw milk operation was launched in 2001. Now they are ensnared in America’s criminal justice system, which is not a good place to get stuck.
I’m convinced they all had good intentions when Stewart introduced Otting to Palmer back in 2008. “We all believed in the cause” of sustainable locally-produced food,” Otting told me a few days ago. “We all wanted the best.” (Thanks to Wendy for the excellent explanation, following my previous post, from Sharon Palmer’s perspective.)
But there was the falling out over Palmer’s alleged outsourcing of food. Plus, says Otting, he and Palmer quarreled over changes she made to the property–changes he says got him, as the owner, into trouble with local authorities. Stewart continued to support Palmer, as Otting became her adversary.
Even though both men were charged with fraud-related offenses in Ventura County, their adversarial relationship has continued into the courts. Otting worked out a deal with the Ventura County District Attorney to testify against Stewart and Palmer, in exchange for having his dozen or so charges reduced to a single offense, grand theft, punishable by a maximum six months in jail.
Stewart and Palmer, in the meantime, are still charged with dozens of felonies and misdemeanors that could lead to jail terms of thirty-plus years. Stewart is understandably bitter. “I sat there watching the hearing for three days,” he told me a few days ago. “There is no justice…The whole thing is so insane.”
“Lucky has millions of dollars. Sharon and I are broke and looking at jail terms.”
America has long boasted the best system of justice money can buy. But more to the point, the system has ever more ways to ensnare people who may simply be trying to do good things for their communities. When the authorities want to come after you, it’s increasingly easy for them to find some legality or another to trip you up on. And once they have you, there are all kinds of technicalities and potential deals that only those with top lawyers can handle; plea deals in which friends testify against each other is just one such arena.
The food rights movement needs to face up to these ugly realities as well. As much as many want to pretend Stewart doesn’t exist, or cast him out as collateral damage, they need to face up to the possibility that what happened to him could happen to others. The case against him has much less to do with fraud and much more to do with derailing the availability of privately available food.
Here’s another way of looking at it, pointed out by lawyer Bill Marler on his blog. It’s been three years since Peanut Corp. of America sickened more than 700 and killed nine with tainted peanut butter, yet charges were never filed against its CEO. And James Stewart, whose food never made anyone sick, faces two trials in which he could be sentenced to possibly 40 years in jail–all for distributing food on a private member-only basis. I know life is unfair, but this unfair?
It does seem strange that after so many years without problems, to now have a positive test . Thee is no trust in the govt entities so the conspiracy theories will be strong, and there may very well be truth to them. I think they’ve always used glass bottles. Is different machines used for cream and milk? I never saw Claravale cream in the stores in Sacramento, only whole and skim milk. Disgruntled employees/former employees have been know to contaminate things.
Why do we have all these cases in the last while.
I do not buy the official version. Tooo many lies, too many hidden agendas, too dirty intentions.
These “statistic boosting” outbreaks are tooo obvious.
Reminds me off the scenario in Nazi Germany where the Parliament was torched by insiders of the regime. That event triggered radical legislation beyond imagination. The rest is known very well.
So my friends conspiracy or not, we are in serious trouble.
Excellent coverage of these historically significant events. I must agree with Bill Anderson. America has been sold to the richest cheater, the highest bidder.
Reminds me of what I learned from some dairymen l last week that were part of a group from Pen State. On the 44th floor of a building that overlooks the Dallas Fortworth Airport, executives that work for Deans Foods are paid millions per year to keep dairymen as serf. They are paid to keep CWT pay prices dirt cheap.
Little does anyone know that the national CWT pay price is set by a couple of huge corp cheese buyers in total cahoots with a milk seller at the Chicago Merchantile Exchange ( CME ).
America is a highly corrupt place with regulations that serve to protect the rich.
Mark at the time stated What we find very puzzling is that the milk that the cream came from tested negative for campylobacter
I have read that there was a mix up at the CDFA that caused the bad test at Organic Pastures.
CDC states “Unpasteurized milk can become contaminated if the cow has an infection with Campylobacter in her udder or the milk is contaminated with manure.” Claravale has a closed herd so it is not probable that it is coming from a cow, if all the cows are still in the herd. And if it was from a cow it should show up in the milk testing. So it must be in the processing of the cream.
Once more, why a total quarantine on all of Claravale’s milk products including goat milk?
It is my understanding that at Your Family Cow the problem was with the water heaters not cycling to 180 degrees. So the equipment was not being properly sanitized.
I wish the folks at Claravale a quick solution.
Does the equipment have gauges or some type of alarm to alert you when this happens?
CIP is “Clean In Place” or automatic cleaning systems that allow for cleaning of equipment without disassembly while they are in place. Saves lots of time and labor. These cleaning activities will show up on the temp recorders.
COP is “Clean Out of Place” or cleaning of equipment generally in a sink after manual dissassembly of parts or equipment.
As more and more people seek out and drink raw milk, expect the immune challenges to continue. Farmers and those connected more closely to animals have different immunity…..it is generally better and stronger immunity. Campylobacter is a sign and symptom of the ever increasing distance between the farm and the consumer. Consumers consciously seek out the immunity that has been lost on the farm.
With each passing recall…more consumers seek out farm bacteria.
Must drive the FDA crazy and the processors NUTS!! Love it!! How does the FDA fight or educate a consumer that wants contact with a biodiversity of bacteria and living food??? They really can not.
Mark
“The company, meanwhile, will develop a strategy for rebuilding business and addressing what Letch called misconceptions about the beef the company makes.
“We feel like when people can start to understand the truth and reality then our business will come back,” he said. “It’s 100 percent beef.””
As said in previous posting…they will come back as something else, still adulterated and misleading the people.
There’s a very interesting commentary in today’s NY Times about a corporate-based lobbying organization pushing for more privatization of prisons and criminal justice system, so it becomes more of a corporate profit center. Wonder if eventually the FDA and state ag enforcers might get bonuses for putting away food club managers and raw dairy operators.
“Yet thats not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its life preserver.) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether its exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizonas draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.
“Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesnt just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
David
Very deliberately.
Not sure anything can stop this train now.
The biggest problem I can see is there are so many (too many) *arms* – and different guberment agencies – involved with the control and safety (a complete oxymoron in my estimation) of our food “system”, that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is really doing.
Admidst that confusion is planned chaos designed to look unplanned. IOW, deliberate, as I stated earlier.
Then you toss in the DOJ and you’ve got another agency, rife with criminals, making decisions about things which are so far above their heads it’s laughable that they’re even attempting to make rulings.
———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 2:57 PM
Subject: Valparaiso Law Invite to Monsanto Lecture & Campus Tour
Dear
The Dean and faculty of Valparaiso University Law School invite you to attend the 2012 Monsanto Lecture on Tort Jurisprudence.
Monsanto Lecture on Tort Jurisprudence
What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?
by Professor Scott Hershovitz
Friday, March 30, 2012
4:00 p.m.
Wesemann Hall – Benson Classroom
Our guest speaker, Professor Scott Hershovitz, will defend the claim that tort law aims to do corrective justice, but not in the way that it is ordinarily assumed to do it. Professor Hershovitz graduated summa cum laude from the University of Georgia with an A.B. in political science and philosophy and an M.A. in philosophy. In addition to a J.D. from the Yale Law School, he holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He currently teaches jurisprudence and tort law at the University of Michigan Law School.
Reply YES to RSVP for an exclusive personal tour of Valparaiso Law at 2:45 p.m, before the event. I will personally introduce you to Wesemann Hall and our Legal Clinic and Lawyering Skills Center–Heritage Hall. If you are unable to attend, I look forward to working with you in the future and invite you to visit us on another date.
Sincerely,
Mike
unsubscribe
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6075/1428.summary
“The idea that exposure to microbes can be good for usby tuning up our immune systems and preventing overreactions like asthma and autoimmune diseasesis catching. Now, a new study of this provocative notion, known as the hygiene hypothesis, suggests that microbes furnish some of their benefits in an unexpected way.”
http://naturalsociety.com/scientists-confirm-bacteria-is-essential-to-proper-immunity/
“The new research, which simply enforces what has been known for centuries, shows that problems can arise when your exposure to germs is decreased. In fact, it could make you sick.”
Great links….keep them coming. This is the science behind why raw milk rocks!!
No, not possible, if tptb were to actually be for the people, they would require the cafo’s, mega farms adulterated foods,etc to change….There is way too much money involved and tptb are owned completely by the big corporations, etc.
When science and truth become inconvient… Houston we have a problem.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/361307/october-06-2010/rawesome-foods-raid
Please keep up the excellent journalism, David. I grieve for the country the United States is becoming, and I hope we the people can keep responding to the increasing repression.
– Shana Milkie
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Ken Conrad
Here’s what I meant in my previous comment where I mentioned that the planned chaos is meant to look unplanned, IOW deliberate. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that’s exactly what’s happening, although the words “soft kill” weren’t in my previous post. If you don’t want to view the vid in the link above (it’s Alex Jones and some people don’t care for him) at least read the wealth of information in the article itself. I don’t always agree with Alex Jones and his voice gives me turkey marbles, but he may have a point this time.
and features our own David as well.
Isn’t it illegal to represent yourself as a judge when you are not one? I’m glad the organizers are suing. It is illegal to call yourself a nurse if you are not a licensed nurse.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie and thus by extension …. the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state”
who said dat? not exactly at the pinnacle of his popularity, laterly … but, if the Devil himself tells you that 2 + 2 = 4, then how much is two plus two?