Last week, the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI) held its second annual Training Day. It brought together a wide range of people that would have been unthinkable three or four years ago. RAWMI founder Mark McAfee provides this account of the people and happenings of the day.
By Mark McAfee
Its not often you get raw milk producers, conventional dairy producers, public health officials, university researchers, and food rights lawyers together in one place, for constructive purposes.
The unlikely event happened last week in California, when the Raw Milk Institute in cooperation with Chico State University sponsored the second annual RAWMI Training Day October 8th at Chico State University. The Chico State organic dairy team provided good food and use of the Chico Agricultural Pavilion for the day-long event, which just so happens to be located about 50 yards south of the Chico State organic dairy, the only University-based organic dairy in the U.S. college system.
Impressive to me was that this years event attracted more than 110 attendees from all over California and from as far away as Texas and Canada, which is double the attendance of the first event, at Champoeg Creamery in St. Paul, OR. Attendees included micro dairy operators from Texas, Canada, Washington State, all around California and Oregon.
Especially notable to me was that we had health department directors, leadership from food safety agencies that work with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the university systems, local dairy inspectors, local organic dairy owners looking for a way to produce and sell raw milk, and conventional dairymen who were simply interested in what low-risk raw milk might look like for them.
We had an impressive group of speakers at this years event, who included: RAWMI board member Cat Berge DVM PhD (UC Davis alumnus); Bruce German PhD, who is perhaps the most published and peer reviewed UC Davis raw milk researcher and founder of the International Milk Genomics Consortium; Cindy Daley PhD, who spoke about on-farm testing and new rapid test technologies to identify bad bugs in raw milk. I spoke about RAWMIs role as a food safety farm tool for raw milk producers, the expanding raw milk markets, the critical need for building community and a network of producers and consumers who produce and expect high quality low-risk raw milk. The five RAWMI LISTED raw milk dairymen were interviewed on a producer panel about their operations, their specific RAMP plans (Risk Analysis Management Plan ) and how their Grass-to-Glass redress of risks has reduced their risks to near zero. All of the producers shared data about their extremely low bacteria counts, which resulted from the use of their RAMP plans.
After the RAWMI event ended at 5 p.m., there was a meeting of the Small Herd Working Group, which was formed two years ago to negotiate with California agriculture officials about guidelines for the growing number of herdshares in the state. Members gathered at the Chico State session last week to form a committee and consider legislation to exempt qualified family cow operators from CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) inspections as long as food safety guidelines are being followed.
I made a presentation arguing that when all raw milk producers produce high quality low risk raw milk and teach and educate about raw milk,” sales rise for all producers. Plus, more consumers are created than can be fed by the additional number of raw milk producers. A rising educational tide will float all raw milk boats!
Listed RAWMI dairymen shared data showing average coliform counts rarely range above 2 and are mostly 1s with some producers consistently producing lab non-detects month after month, with Standard Plate Counts rarely above 1000 and mostly below 500, with some in the 80-120 range. For those of you that do not know what this means it is amazing data. To have five producers consistently producing less than 10 coliforms nearly 100% of the time is remarkable. To be less than 2 all of the time is startling and worthy of serious investigation as to why. The answer is clear: it is the condition of the dairies and the RAMP management plans that address the conditions and management protocols.
Dr. Cat Berge pulled no punches, identifying at least four pathogen threats for micro dairies and how to manage and shut out these threats. She spoke at length about the risk of new animals and how to quarantine those animals until the threat has passed. She spoke of the human immune systems on the farm and consumer immunity in the city and the emerging threat of depressed human immunity, and how to produce raw milk in a way that helps build immunity without threatening human illness.
Dr. German spoke of how modern science had invented all sorts of genius food ingredients through chemistry and the new wonders of food engineering, but that all of these things had failed to improve human health and in fact had worked to perhaps interfere with good health. He then said that it was living biology that was needed to feed the world and not reductionist pieces of chemistry if we intended to improve human health. He shared genetic proof that raw milk had saved all human life on earth. He said no one really knows why raw milk has such a strong health effectsuch as reducing asthma and allergies–but it does. It was a political and scientific miracle and a sign of the evolving times that Dr. German could or would even be able to speak to a group of raw milk producers. All of his university grants are provided by the pasteurized milk industry and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which have in the past opposed even the mention of raw milk.
Dr. Daley said simply, I love raw milk and the students here at Chico deserve to know about raw milk and how to produce it safely! Everyone laughed when she recounted that when she attends meetings of the conventional dairy industry, it is a Geritol moment with the average age of dairymen now 60 years old and over. She then said that there is value and hope with raw milk when all the raw milk meetings have young passionate engaged people. Her presentation borrowed many of the RAWMI concepts for raw milk food safety design, but then she went on to add advanced technology for consideration with regards to rapid testing. She showed the group a machine that can genetically identify a pathogen from a sample of raw milk in just a few hours and even tell you how many of the bad bugs are present in multiple samples.
One of the most impressive discussions of the event included the moderated panel discussion with: Charlotte Smith, Alice Jongerden, Shawna & Jacob Barr, and Aaron McAfee ( Christine Anderson is very pregnant and could not attend ). The panel was moderated by Ajna Sharma-Wilson, a food rights lawyer who works with the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, who has worked on criminal cases involving Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger and California food club owner James Stewart.
Sharma-Wilson expressed appreciation for the good feelings at this meeting, but she also advised owners of microdairies to remain alert to potential legal challenges that may arise from CDFA and local district attorneys. A number of dairies have previously been hit with cease-and-desist notices when they established herdshare arrangements, and while negotiations have been ongoing with CDFA to develop guidelines for herdshares, there is no guarantee they will be implemented, she noted. In the meantime, know your rights, she said.
The panelists each described the joys and challenges of raw milk and all the unique little things that only they experience by milking cows and selling raw milk to their connected and beloved consumers. Audience questions ranged from how much they receive for their raw milk to what the most important advantages of becoming listed might be for them as producers.
Shawna Barr stood up for transparency, even putting together a web page for any nosy or interested CDFA raw milk investigators or inspectors. Her transparency was juxtaposed to the fear that was outwardly expressed by several of the California micro dairy operators who were concerned about the risk of exposure to outside identification or a visit by CDFA or other agencies. Barr said she wanted to sleep at night knowing that her raw milk was safe and very low risk. She became listed by RAWMI to assure that all the risks in her food chain were identified and managed and that the data and testing reflected that low risk.
At one point in the question and answer period, Michele Jay-Russell, DVM, PhD, of UC Davis, gave her opinion on how to best use and interpret CDC data, and said some of the illness data is an estimate and may not be accurate. This insight was very much appreciated by the attendees, especially considering that Dr. Jay-Russell works with the director of WIFSS (Western Institute for Food Safety and Security that is funded partially by FDA grants at UC Davis.) How things change. Dr. Jay-Russell is no fan of raw milk, but she said that she knows demand is rising and if there are going to be raw milk producers and consumers .the milk better be safe.
Afterward, she commented, There is a craving in the community for information on how to best care for the animals and also be safe producing food on a small farm. I thought the training included good information on modern day pathogens carried by dairy animals (Campylobacter, E. coli O157, Listeria moncytogenes, Salmonella). Although I consider raw milk a high-risk food and recommend pasteurization of dairy products (especially for children), I appreciated the opportunity to attend the meeting hosted by Chico State Universitys organic dairy program.
This was one heck of a history-making event. The evidence is clear and the science is supportive of the biology behind raw milk and its healing qualities. Raw milk for human consumption can no longer be something that is just raw milk under the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. The old PMO standards have virtually no regard for safety and allow any number of pathogens. The sole remedy is the pasteurization kill step. An entirely new set of conditions and controls must be utilized to produce safe raw milk for the many immune-depressed American consumers. RAWMI bridge building will continue. This is just the beginning, but what a start!
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Ive been reading a history written in 1880 of the Grange movement, in preparation for a Grange event Im attending this weekend. I love the subtitle: The Farmers War Against the Monopolies. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The event is a pig roast in the birthplace of the food sovereignty movement, Blue Hill, Maine. There will be an auction, lots of good food, and Ill be speaking and signing copies of my book. Stop in if youre in the area.
Thank you David,
if you want to make some serious change happen in CA with the Small Herd local raw milk systems, please attend the docuemtary on October 23rd in Santa Clara..it is all about the Small Herd and the war that broke out 5 years ago. The part of the documentary that is probably not told, is the relative peace that was negotiated by the Small Herd Working group after Pattie Chelseth backed off the legal begals at CDFA and engaged the CA Sec of Ag in talks that lasted a year. From those talks came a set of food safety guidelines supported by CDFA and others!
If this new law is going to pass…you will also need the support of the NFU. The NFU adopted policy that is now in print that supports responsibly produced raw milk. See the raw milk policy changes on pages 17 and 126. It is a profound statement for all farmers in America. I am proud to say that it was Pennsylavnia and CA delegates ( me ) that got this done in March of 2013.
It is wonderful time for raw milk, but we must engage and use the political tools we have created and earned to cause this change. The CA Dairy Campaign is the NFU org in CA and counts 250 conventional dairymen in their membership. You will need this support if you intend to offset the negative crap from the Farm Bureau and big dairy processor support and maybe the FDA and others. http://www.nfu.org/images/stories/final%202013%20policy_clean%20copy.pdf
Show up, Stand up, and Speak up….there is truth to be told and people to be tought!!
It used to be folks talked about the probiotic benefits of raw milk and how the native flora had protective affects. Has RAWMI bought into the germiphobia line? At what point do you become too clean and sterile?
That’s not a baseless question. In the EU they’ve had to dial back on the cleanliness as it was compromising the quality of the raw milk cheese. Granted cheese is not fresh drinking milk. But the question still stands.
Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o’-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half-truths.
René Dubos
Ken
Raw milk cleaniless is a great question. Raw milk that comes out of a clean teat on a healthy cow is exactly what we are bottling under RAMP programs. Nothing else. The other stuff found in PMO and dirty raw milk is added ( by exposure ) by man and his management of the raw milk after milking the cow.
Regulatory reality speaks one thing very loudly….clean or none. That is the rule we must follow if we intend to change the checkered history of raw milk.
By the way…if you want dirty raw milk that is easy…go out and get some manure and add it back in. Your question and concern is answered.
Fresh clean and low bacteria count low risk raw milk contains the full biodiversity of great bacteria, just at very low levels. Low bacteria count raw milk also has great flavor and long shelf life. Ferment it or leave it out and guaranteed the counts will be in the millions in one day.
I do not see any issues with answering your concern. You can make clean raw milk dirty anytime YOU CHOOSE…but the inverse is not possible.
We see these results regularly with our members. Now we just need someone to do a study and verify this hypothesis.
Wayne Craig
So real milk, promoted as an immune-healing probiotic, is an important part of the health aspect of the community food movement, which must be synergistic with the movement against GMOs and industrial “food” in general. That’s true politically, and is a good personal health strategy as well.
I do know that when we started making raw cheese, that a world class award winning cheese maker taught us how to make our cheese. He said this: “your raw milk is so different than what I see out in the market place, you can do all sorts of things that others can do with it”.
Does not seem like very high quality raw milk is a problem….it is just an exception.
Is being exceptional a problem???
I totally agree with the being too clean issue and the related immune depression. However, if faced with a challenge, do you give up and fail to create new markets with very clean and very safe raw milk or what?
If the FDA shuts down producers that make high bacteria count raw milk….are you saying that I should make dirty raw milk and get shut down or rise up and face the challenge?
If immune….I agree, you drink pathogens and not get sick. That is not America as it exists today.
One thing that our herdshare members are concerned about is the use of toxic chemicals to achieve “cleanliness.” For many, there is more of an aversion to chemicals than to bacteria. Is that what you are refering to? Because if so, I can agree that cleanliness can come with a high price, and chemical-induced sterilty is certainly not our goal. We avoid poisons on our farm, and opt rather to use old fashioned elbow grease, soap and hot water, and lots of other good practices such as giving our cows lots of space, deep bedding, etc., to keep things “clean.”
At the RAWMI training, I was very pleased to find a huge emphasis placed on herd health as a primary means of producing quality milk. Keep your cows healthy, and maintain their immune systems. Buy them from a reputable source and be smart about testing for disease. Practice good husbandry. Feed them well. Avoid antibiotic use. I LOVE that Dr. Daley talked about the connection between grass-feeding and low pathogenic ecoli. These good practices result in safer, cleaner farms…although they are certainly not bacteria-free farms.
For the small herd, keeping manure out of milk is relatively simple. It doesn’t take fancy equipment or special facilities. If RAWMI training focused only on keeping poo out of milk, then it would have been a very short day. And while I appreciate manure-free milk as much as the next person, I find that practing good farming that does not breed virulent bacteria in the first place is much more challenging. Our clean, quality milk starts with healthy land and healthy cows.
I applaud your effort to produce healthy raw milk. You have an excellent protocol.
You state, For the small herd, keeping manure out of milk is relatively simple.
Although true, your statement is misleading. You may be able to keep the visible signs of manure off of your cows and out of your milk, however is this indeed a true indication of clean healthy milk?
It may be cleaner however when one considers this ongoing era of toxic and invasive manipulation of our food, body, and environment by the powers that be, cleaner may not be clean enough!
As I see it, manure of all sorts (goose, duck, seagull, pigeon, dear, moose, raccoon, etc.) are all millennial, natural and unavoidable sources of the various microbes that frequent soil, water and plants, including the pasture that your cattle use, on an ongoing basis. That is, until the equation is changed by Natural Resources when it decides to airdrop its genetically engineered rabies vaccine all over the country side, or when pesticides, herbicides, and genetically engineered bacterial soil inoculants and plants are distributed on crops and planted on farmland on ongoing basis.
Placing the emphasis on the farmer to produce healthy raw milk is merely a stopgap measure that will fail to address that which truly ails our society. As far as Im concerned a little manure on a cows flank or teat is a non-issue. What truly concerns me is all this manipulative, bullshit used by industry and government at large in order to control everything and anything.
Ken
So it seems here that there’s a disproportional emphasis on how clean the small farmer allegedly needs to be (but may really be more of an emphasis on arbitrary hoops the farmer needs to jump through in hopes of satisfying the corporate state’s notion of “food safety”), and not enough on resisting the criminal system itself.
Now, I understand that the farmers themselves may not feel they’re in a position to resist (though some, like Hershberger and Schlangen, have been willing). In that case we ought to recognize that there’s a natural division of publicity responsibilities within the Community Food movement. Farmers may need to be more conservative in their advocacy, while active citizens take the lead in advocating and fighting for full food freedom. Citizens also need to support farmers every step of the way, from buying real food direct from local farmers, to organizing to fight the food police when they threaten our farmers.
But in that case, farmers also need to refrain from undercutting this movement by seeking to cut deals with the state which would help enshrine anything less than full economic and political freedom for Community Food. It’s just like how the GMO labeling movement needs to reject any upper-level policy which would pre-empt lower level, more democratic policy.
There are no deals cut with the state…. as producers, the deal we make is with our consumer families.
The deal goes like this….as a farmer we provide nourishment and prevent disease through improved immune status, and try are very best to never cause illness. On the consumer side of the deal,the consumer tells everyone about their experience, builds the market and pays the farmer well… that is the whole deal.
In CA the state is under funded, understaffed and could care less about raw milk unless….the farmer screws up and some immune depressed person gets sick. Now, industry may be a different story. They do not like raw milk becuase it robs them of market share and that is a deal I could care less about. That is their own personal problem to address.
As raw milk supporters…lets support Shawna and all others like her. Her model is a model that I love, her consumers love and I rejoice in.
Russ, you tend to bitch and moan and even moan and bitch. What Shawna and all of us are doing is action and that means teaching and mentoring others to produce exceptionally high quality raw milk.
In five years lets measure the progress made by bitching and moaning against the progress made by high quality low risk producers and see who has made more progress, built more market and mad more healthy happy people. I know my bet.
There are so many things I cannot control, such as the those you describe and more…GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, Fukishima fallout, industrial farming practices that lead to superbugs….all out of my control.
However, there are conditions on my own little farm, in my own little corner of the world, over which I do, for the most part, still have decision making power. And I, along with my community of co-producers, are going to make those decisions the best we can, given the information that we have. And we’re going to self-education and learn more every chance we get.
We nurture conditions that should indeed make “a little manure on the flank or teat a non-issue” because we are not supporting the proliferation of ecoli O157H7 and other super bugs. Our goal is to have benign manure on our farm. We are keeping healthy cows. We are feeding them grass. We cull animals that are not resistant to disease. That IS my responsibility as a farmer. To do the best I know how for my land, my animals, and my beloved community.
And then I’m going to make the effort and clean that flank and teat anyway. It takes about 2 minutes. Because we think that manure on the garden is great, but manure in the milk is gross. 🙂
Yes indeed, we’ll see where things are in five years, and where the various collaboration and GMO “co-existence” schemes, to the extent they’re carried out, lead us. (Wasn’t this tour the same one where you played host to Monsanto cadres? Why’d you leave that name out this time?) I know my bet too.
GMOs suck….let me be clear. I was one of the Prop 37 poster boys in CA. I have no use for them and they have no place on earth that I can appreciate or raionalize. I have no agenda to try and ever meet with industry.
I do have an agenda to try and make peace with the FDA and regulators. The more that they understand the rationale for the raw milk markets we have built, the safety we create in our products, the less they will fight us and the more they will become nuetral and or even appreciate us. Progress is made when people listen and look at things rationally. They want to see data….at RAWMI we have data flowing like a river right now. It is now our challenge to build a bridge to share that data.
When the dairy industries have basically given up and surrendered their fluid pasteurized milk sales….it makes the job that much easier.
Peace bro….peace.
Tara did not want to poop in a colostomy bag for next 65 years of her life so she became educated and raw milk ( and raw milk kefir ) cured her….yes…cured her crohns.
Perhaps the greatest thing you can do is to make her video go viral. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans and Canadians that suffer Crohns or IBS and everyone of them would be healed by raw Kefir or fermented raw milk. It is the ultimate in gut healing and immune rebuilding foods.
Please send this link to everyone you know. We together can take back America and our out of control pharma-medical industry. An industry that has very few tools in its tool box and with a straight face….suggests a colostomy as a great way to run your life. What a tragedy.
Rejoice in Taras story and send it to everyone….please. She and people just like her are the very reason that raw milk demand has gone crazy in the country and many others. By the way…the treatment she recieved was OPDC “RAWMI LISTED” fermented raw milk Kefir….so much for clean does not work.
She is exactly why I am passionate about raw milk.
low/no bacteria = safe milk huh?
Tell me again, how many E-coli cells was it that it takes to make someone sick?
I remember back when you were saying safe milk came from its beneficial bacteria. And before that you were saying because it was 100% grassfed. But I guess that was before it was revealed your 100% grass-fed advertising was fraudulent. And before that because it was raw.
Which way will the winds of profit be blowing tomorrow Mark?
If the FDA shuts down producers that make high bacteria count raw milk….are you saying that I should make dirty raw milk and get shut down or rise up and face the challenge?
Would love to know more about high bacteria count raw milk making some kinds of cheese??? never heard of that. ”
Wow you are out of touch. Its all black and white with you isn’t it. For Mark or against him.
This is the problem with MARKETERS and their self inflated egos.
Notice I never said anything about dirty milk or high count milk. Just asking about being too clean and having too little bacteria. Its a long time known issue in artisan EU cheese circles. After-all, it is the bacteria that separates it from DEAD milk.
Tell me Mark, whats the udder/teat cleaning procedure at your dairy? What teat dip chemicals are you using at milking? Dry-off infusions?
Go too far down that cleanliness is godliness path and you affect the native beneficials. The subtle, rich flavors of raw milk cheese come from its diverse bacteria. If my understanding is correct the milk inside the udder is supposed to be sterile, it only gets its probiotic goodness as it leaves the udder. It is those areas, these bacteria reserves of beneficials in and on the teat that we affect. The typical US dairies’s approach is one of trying to get sterility on the teat in order to achieve cleanliness may actually be counterproductive. Or at least you can go too far.
Here is but one example of what I reference, from the October issue of Graze..
“Comte is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) entity under European Union rules, which means that its brand name is protected from duplication as long as approved practices and procedures are maintained within a limited geographic area. Comte has been around since the 1950’s and earned French recognition as a protected identity in 1963.
Comte farmers deal with a long list of requirements in making the milk that goes into this cheese. Grazing is required in season and forages must account for at least 75% of the cow’s diet year-round. Fermented feeds and GMO grains are not allowed. All forages fed to cows are supposed to be produced on that farm, with each Comte supplier required to have at least 2.5 acres per cow available for forage production.
Farmer Jean-Francois Marmier, who milks 50 cows, said most of his peers have more than the required acres to provide a bad weather cushion. Comte members can use fertilizers and antibiotics, but must keep detailed records and make them available to government inspectors who administer the regional identity program.
Comte requires Montbeliardes and the breed accounts for 95% of the cattle genetics, with some Simmental blood also being milked. The rules prohibit washing of udders at milking, and Jean-Francois said he will do just a bit of wiping when needed. “The less we touch the teat, the better it is,” he remarked…
The cheese factories also follow some rules. All cheese must be ages at least four months , with eight months the rough average. Milk must be collected daily within a 16 mile radius of the plant. The cheese making process must be initiated within 24 hours of the oldest miking. And bulk tank milk temperatures, both on-farm and at the plant, is supposed to remain at 12 degrees Celsius, or 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Indeed Comte’s rules prohibit milk from being stored below 10 degrees C. (50 degrees F.). While the farms and the cheese factories are required to follow strict sanitation rules, try getting that one past U.S. inspectors!
All the above are supposed to ensure that Comte is a unique cheese. The words “respect the microflora” are important throughout the association’s processes, from soils to cows to cheese factory to aging cellar. Whether its avoiding teat dip or storing the milk at temperatures far beyond the commercial U.S. norm, the Comte rules are designed to ensure that the bacteria, yeasts and molds in raw milk are nourished and preserved in the final product.
These bugs are the source of Comte’s terroir, the French term tat signifies the relationship of food and the place and people of its origin. The theory of terroir, which began with the French wine industry, is that soils, plants, people and practices within an individual area are capable of producing foods with unique flavors, textures and aromas.
What’s interesting here is that while claiming to be a single identity, Comte cheeses are anything but homogeneous. The cheeses made by its factories and affinages vary greatly despite the strict production rules…
The Comte people said that factors such as soils and plants at various elevations (ranging from roughly 600 to 4500 feet), season of the year and the management of different cheese makers and affineurs (people who ages cheese) created the differences. Because of this variation, the people running the aging caves do a lot of sorting, and the Comte marketing staff do a lot of education in selling their cheeses.
For more than 20 years the association has been researching these issues, and they have produced results indicating that there is sound evidence that the microflora populations present in milk being shipped to one factory can be very different from those in the milk supplied to another factory with different farms and environmental conditions.
Comte also funds a “terroir jury” that has trained some 50 farmers, cheesemakers, affineurs and cheese marketers in identifying flavors, aromas and textures.”
Thats because Mark is not here to discuss and he can’t take criticism. He is a relentless self promoter. He wants to drive this movement. One does that by being seen as the go-to guy on a given issue. The expert, the one to turn to. So its all about image and constantly pushing himself out there and marginalizing anyone who would get in the way of that.
Which is why rather than discuss substantive issues which may cast him in a less than perfect light he demolishes straw men and turns nasty against those who would question him and his aims. If he hasn’t heard of it it couldn’t possibly be true you know?
With him its all Us vs. Them, I’m right and you’re wrong, naked demagoguery.
Correction. This isn’t ‘artisan’ but mainstream. From wikipedia…
“Comté has the highest production of all French AOC cheeses, around 40,000 tonnes annually.”
RAWMI would be great if it was proving that raw milk is safe. Proving it could be safe is not the same thing. Because Mark did not deny that cleanliness is bad we can assume he agrees that it is.
You cant have it both ways with raw milk kefir. In 2011 you had an E.coli 0157:H7 outbreak at your dairy and 5 children developed HUS. One family made kefir with the raw milk and you blamed that mom for the illnesses because she made milk into kefir. So which is it? Is kefir a miraculous healing food or a deadly concoction of bacteria if it is contaminated with E.coli 0157:H7?
I have a friend I have been trying to convince for years to remove dairy from her diet all together. She suffers from allergies and sinus problems. As few months ago, she decided to try the Paleo diet. She removed all dairy and guess what, no more allergies or sinus issues. She didnt use one drop of raw milk.
My understanding (and granted it is a limited understanding..so feel free to further enlighten me) is that cultured dairy, such a cheese, have such high numbers of desired and beneficial bacteria colonies that they actually compete with other forms of bacterias that would take up residence, including pathogenic varieties should they be introduced.
However, fluid milk that is yet uncultured is less discriminating as to what kind of bacteria would colonize it. That is why we are careful about introducing envirnomental bacteria, especially from sources that could contain varieties harmful to humans (eg. poo), into our raw milk that is intended to be consumed fresh.
We also keep that milk really cold to slow the development of all bacteria, including the benign varieties. This keeps our milk “sweet” for longer….which or us serves a practical purpose beyond just safety; our member want to milk to remain unsoured for at least a week or more.
But I will tell you that while our cold milk may have a very low SPC count just leave it out of the fridge for a while, and that will change fast. So, there are certainly bacterium present in the milk, just in low quantities prior to warming up. Our milk changes from sweet milk to cheese in about 12 hours, just by allowing it to sit at room temperation. And it is also delicious.
So perhaps the intended use of the milk….fluid uncultured or cultured….does effect appropriate procedures. We actually tell our share members this. We are often asked if we offer dairy products such as yogurt or cheese, and the answer is no. We do fluid, uncultured raw milk, and do it as well as we are able. Producing cultured dairy products, for us, would require a different model.
As to Mary’s remarks, Tara’s experience was her experience. I worked with her prior to, a little during and now after her terrible bout with Crohns.
Perhaps you can experiment and provide us all a real story about Crohns healing with UHT milk. Have fun with that… UHT milk will not culture or ferment.
Raw milk is a living biosphere and it is destroyed by heat. Ask the UC Davis researchers. Ask E. Von Mutius about this science. It is raw milk that provides powerful immune effects, and not pasteurized milk. That is the peer reviewed published science. That is also the gut felt experience of Tara. Tara does not have a colostomy bag hanging off her body.
As far as the Five HUS patients in 2011, only two were hospitalized. Those two were from the same family and made some kind of home brew kefir. The mom and I have spoken about this bad out come and it would appear that the ph was never dropped and the pathogen scrubbing systems never became active. Also, why were the 2011 illnesses spread over four months with all tests negative for Ecoli pathogens. ??? This is a question we will never understand. When the investigation of the 2011 illnesses was completed, there were 47 other illnesses in 7 other states that matched the same pathogen DNA as what was found in the CA group. In other words, pulse net did not find the five set in CA to be unique. It was part of a greater group.
That data came out three months after the head lines raged with blaming of OP. never saw that additional data ever in the headlines did we??
My instincts tell me that what happened at Gort’s dairy, in Salmon Arm British Columbia last summer, was an outright “poisoning of the airshed” by persons yet to be ascertained, for a malicious purpose : just too easy to do. Put that alongside the fact that the guy who had the “dirt” about criminal corruption by the Egg marketing Board and was getting that scandal out to the media, “just happened” to die – at age 45 – a week before the Gort’s thing broke.