ICFA Members Testify at California Raw Milk Hearings

Sally Fallon - President Weston A. Price Foundation

Thank you so much, Senator Florez, for the opportunity to address you today. My name is Sally Fallon. I am testifying in my capacity as president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education foundation. As the founder of a campaign for real milk, which advocates the consumption of unpasteurized whole milk from pasture fed cows, and as secretary of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund which provides legal defense of farms engaged in raw milk production and direct farm to consumer sales. Most importantly, and I am so thrilled with the emphasis on mothers, because I am testifying here today in my capacity as a mother, and it is as a mother that I will start with three testimonials typical of those we receive almost everyday.

One comes from a physician who prescribes raw milk to his patients often with remarkable beneficial effects. One dramatic case 55 involved a nine-month old boy who had had three ear infections in three months. The child had been fed a number of formulas based on processed cow�s milk and soy protein and the mother had even tried pasteurized goat milk. With each formula, the child suffered recurrent vomiting, diarrhea, failure to gain weight and thrive and he had been ill with either viral or bacterial infections almost continuously since early infancy. After the mother switched to a formula based on raw goat milk, however, the diarrhea and vomiting ceased and the child began to gain weight. One year later, he has normal growth and is perfectly healthy.

The second example comes from a Weston A. Price local chapter leader who reported on a two-year-old boy with very serious asthma. After the mother put the boy on raw cow�s milk the child went through the entire winter without a visit to the doctor for any reason and no asthma attacks except for one, a serious attack which occurred after the boy consumed pasteurized milk while on a family trip.

The third involves an autistic eight-year-old boy who had not spoken a word since the sudden onset of autism at the age of two. After two months on raw cow�s milk, all autistic behavior disappeared and the child began to babble as a prelude to speech. The only dietary or treatment change was the switch from pasteurized to raw milk. Now, please imagine the joy and relief that raw milk has given to the families of these children; an end to suffering; an end to worry. Family life can be normal and happy again.

It is testimonials like these that make us so passionate about having access to raw milk, and so concerned about the manner in which access to raw milk has been undermined in the state of California with the stealth passage of AB 1735, a law that mandates standards so strict that commercial production of raw milk would become impossible.

Our experts here today will testify to the fact that the ten coliform limit is not only unnecessary for the safety of raw milk, but would actually make raw milk vulnerable to pathogens. Make no mistake; those who work behind the scenes for the passage of this law do not want the sickly asthmatic and autistic child to have access to nature�s perfect healing food.

Now, I was very interested that the panel before us did say that people should be able to drink raw milk. But when you read the testimony of the people in the FDA and even earlier testimony from some of these same witnesses you hear today, they have been adamant in saying that absolutely no one should drink raw milk; not the asthmatic child, the autistic child, the child with frequent infections. They do not want these suffering children to have this food.

The ten coliform standard is a test of sterility designed not to ensure the cleanliness of a farm but to verify the effectiveness of a processing facility. The pasteurized milk ordinance actually allows 100,000 coliforms in raw milk from the dairy farm. The ten coliform standard was not designed to test the cleanliness of a farm, but the effectiveness of the sterilization process at the milk processing plant.

It is inappropriate to use this test of sterility on raw milk, which is not a sterile product but a probiotic product. Non-pathogenic coliforms are what consumers are seeking when they choose a raw milk product. Coliforms protect us against pathogens and produce many important nutrients in the digestive tract. They are our friends, not our enemies and they are being increasingly used by doctors to treat everything from intestinal problems to wounds. I even read an article the other day about someone whose chronic diarrhea was only solved or cured by injecting fecal matter into her guts because these coliforms are beneficial.

Obviously, it is unscientific to claim, as our opponents do, that these same coliforms in milk are dangerous. The medical paradigm has changed and germs are no longer the enemy.

You have, of course, heard many arguments painting raw milk as a deadly poison, one that has not health benefits. These arguments can only be made on the basis of extreme bias against raw milk found in numerous articles published in the scientific literature and on government websites.

The committee needs to be aware of the double standard applied to raw milk compared to other foods. The most glaring example of this double standard can be found in the FDA PowerPoint presentation on raw milk prepared by Mr. John Sheehan of the FDA.

The Weston A. Price Foundation has presented to this committee a slide by slide response to this FDA document. In it, Mr. Sheehan cites 15 studies to support his statement that drinking raw milk is like playing Russian roulette with your health. In analyzing these studies we find found that not one of them proved that pasteurization would have prevented the outbreak. In almost half the studies, Mr. Sheehan misrepresents the conclusions in the study, and in fully 80 percent of the studies there was no valid, positive milk sample to implicate raw milk. One-third of the studies ignore other more probable vectors of disease in what constitutes clear examples of bias. In one of the studies, the outbreak blamed on raw milk did not even exist. The public deserves better from our public servants.

Lately, we have seen many reports in the media about outbreaks attributed to raw milk. On inspection, we find a clear pattern of bias, double standard and possibly even fraud regarding these reports. The modus operandi to build a case against raw milk is as follows: One thing they do is when testing raw milk to use cultures to promote pathogen multiplication and very highly sensitive milk testing techniques that find pathogens in extremely small numbers, levels that would not cause illness. And I need to stress that any substance you test will show pathogens if the test is sensitive enough, because these pathogens are everywhere. And we now have the technology with these very sensitive tests and they�re being used to make a case against raw milk.

Another is new rapid testing techniques developed for the food industry which err on the side of finding false positives. This method is currently being used in Pennsylvania to harass raw milk dairies. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture then issues an inflammatory press release which is not retracted when the dairy�s own appropriately carried out test come back negative.

And I really want to stress in your proposed legislation that you make sure that the testing procedures that you mandate are appropriate and are not giving you a lot of false positives.

Another technique: When there is an outbreak used food questionnaires that leave out likely vectors of disease but always include raw milk. To give you an example, in Pennsylvania a person got sick and reported receiving a call from the Health Department. The Health Department wanted to know whether she had drunk raw milk. She replied that she hadn�t but she suspected undercooked chicken from a local restaurant. Suddenly the Health Department wasn�t interested in her case anymore. Not interested in tracking down the chicken. They only wanted to know if she had drunk raw milk.

Another technique: When there is an outbreak, test raw milk products first and test them in the home setting rather than from the shelf. If a person is in infected and has handled a raw milk product, the product will test positive for the organism. Then you omit testing other foods or raw milk products on the shelf but report a positive lab result for the raw milk product. This is the method that has been used to implicate Mexican style raw milk cheese in numerous reports.

Another method: Omit subjects who got sick but did not drink raw milk. In a 2001 Wisconsin outbreak cited on the CDC website, there�s a good example of this. People who got sick but did not drink raw milk went to the hospital; were asked whether they drank raw milk; when they said no, they were sent home. Those who said yes were admitted to the hospital and became part of the official record.

Another method: Ignore equally likely or more likely sources of infections such as visit to a farm or petting zoo, tap water or other foods. Then when you�ve done all these things and kind of hand picked your data by leaving out people who didn�t drink raw milk, you then can get a statistical association with raw milk. And then what they do, is assume that that statistical association constitutes proof. It is very easy to create a statistical association of disease with raw milk using these techniques. And the vast majority of reports cited by the FDA and by Dr. Payne, use these techniques.

Then, we�ve seen this in the east coast and also in California, they issue inflammatory press releases accusing raw milk of causing disease and these are not retracted but left on government websites when the dairy is exonerated. Thus, the industry and government agencies have used these techniques to make raw milk the whipping boy for outbreaks caused by other foods. It is clear that in recent months, government agencies are making a well coordinated effort to blame some of their most serious problem, such as listeria and E-coli 0157H7 on raw milk.

The fact that only raw milk was officially quarantined during the 2006 spinach outbreak is an excellent example of these biased tactics. And I think you can understand from this why we are suspicious and untrusting of government officials and the reasons they give for going after raw milk.

Meanwhile, problems with pasteurized milk tend to be glossed over or underreported. Recently, three people died from listeria and pasteurized milk in Massachusetts. None of our former panels mentioned this today.

On February 24, 2006, Wal-Mart in Vidalia, Georgia pulled pasteurized milk from shelves due to a foul odor. At least one child was seriously sick. We only knew that from a personal report. It was not reported in the media. A voluntary recall was announced three days later. There was no sense of urgency. In fact, Wal-Mart was applauded by the commissioner. There were no government recalls, no warnings to the public to avoid drinking pasteurized milk. More of the double standard.

In 2006, pasteurized milk caused illness in 1,300 inmates in 11 California state prisons but did we hear an outcry to remove dangerous pasteurized milk from the general market? No we did not.

Another example of the double standard comes from the Center for Disease Control website which warns against raw milk as a source of salmonella. Yet, a few points later the same documents states that unpasteurized milk in the form of breast milk is the safest food for infants and that raw breast milk prevents many health problems, including infection by salmonella. Everything that we have learned about the health benefits, immune support, probiotic qualities and antipathogenic components of raw milk over the last 40 years applies equally to the raw milk of other species. Studies showing that babies given pasteurized breast milk have more infections, more health problems, and do not grow as well compared to those given raw breast milk apply equally to the milk of other species.

The FDA calls drinking raw milk risky behavior. A 1999 FDA survey involving almost 20,000 adults in eight states found that 50 percent consumed uncooked eggs, 20 percent consumed pink hamburgers, 8 percent consumed raw oysters, while a mere one percent consumed raw milk.

A 2008 study of almost 5,000 young college students reported that 53 percent consumed raw cookie dough; 33 percent consumed eggs with runny yolks; 29 percent consumed raw sprouts; 11 percent consumed raw oysters, clams or muscles; and 7 percent consumed rare hamburger. The study did not report consumption of raw milk. Yet, none of these common risky behaviors has prominence on the FDA�s website for food safety. Only raw milk is singled out. And there are no pasteurization requirements for these risky behavior foods. You can still purchase raw cookie dough.

Government officials also insist that raw milk provides no health benefits compared to pasteurized and ultrapasteurized milk. And I do want to point out that most of the milk today is ultrapasteurized. And this is a process that takes the milk above the boiling point, which you actually cannot do unless you have very special equipment. It�s a very unnatural process.

The evidence for the superior health benefits of raw milk comes in the form of scientific studies published in peer review journals and it corroborates the hundreds of testimonials that we have received on the benefits of raw milk from young and old, some of which you will hear today.

Opponents of raw milk have been uniformly condescending towards individual testimonies, dismissing them as anecdotal. Yet, for the individuals and families involved, these testimonials are pure science, objective conclusions drawn from before and after observations of conditions incumbent on a single variable�the addition of raw milk to the diet.

The second document that we have presented to the committee is a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the Weston A. Price Foundation which addresses the safety, health benefits, and the economic considerations of raw milk. The document is fully referenced and contains all the scientific studies we know about. In it we provide the math for that $64,000 question�what is the safety record of raw milk versus pasteurized milk and versus other foods on a per serving basis?

In a recent document published by the Centers for Disease Control the agency estimates that on a per serving basis one is ten times more likely to become ill from listeria by eating deli meats than from consuming raw milk. And this estimate is based on the exaggerated and biased reports that I�ve talked about which blame raw milk but do not prove that it actually caused an illness.

Here we have yet another example of the double standard applied to raw milk. Where is the FDA�s charges that deli meats are inherently dangerous and should not be consumed? Where is the FDA�s exhortation to everyone charged with protecting the public health, to prevent the sale of deli meats to consumers which are obviously inherently dangerous?

By our calculations, pasteurized milk is 1.1 to 15.3 times more dangerous than raw milk on a per serving basis. Even using government statistics that inflate the danger of raw milk, it is easy to calculate that one is over 2,000 times more likely on a per serving basis to contract illness from other foods than from raw milk. In fact, the only way to reduce the risk of food-borne illness to zero is to stop eating and die of starvation. Or, to consume raw milk on a regular basis to ensure immunity to pathogens.

Our PowerPoint presentation details the health benefits of raw milk in studies going back over 80 years. Raw milk is superior to pasteurized milk in building strong bones, preventing tooth decay, supporting normal growth and development, preventing asthma and allergies and providing protection against infectious and chronic disease.

The latest study comes from Europe where investigators found in a study of almost 15,000 children, that consumption of raw milk was the strongest factor for reducing the risk of asthma and allergy whether the children lived on a farm or not. The benefits were greatest when consumption of raw milk began during the first year of life. About five million children in this country are afflicted with asthma and there are 5,500 deaths from asthma every year. About 1,250 people in the U.S. die from food-borne pathogens from all sources with virtually no deaths from raw milk. Thus, the risk of dying from asthma is over four times greater than the risk of dying from food-borne pathogens, from all sources; and infinitely greater than the risk of dying from raw milk. Yet, defenders of pasteurization or detractors of raw milk insist that children should not have the right to consume raw milk, even hinting that parents who love their children enough to give them raw milk are guilty of endangerment. Our opponents today will insist that raw milk is inherently dangerous and there is no way to make it safe. Actually, they did not insist that, but that�s what FDA insists; there is no way to make raw milk safe, they say. These arguments are based on 40-year-old science and a discredited medical paradigm. Raw milk is inherently safe. It is safer than any other food and we have the technology and knowledge today to get safe raw milk to children in every part of the country. And it is not using the ten coliform limit. That�s a way of putting these dairies out of business.

Our opponents will insist that raw milk has no health benefits compared to pasteurized. They will omit mention of many studies which show that pasteurization destroys the vital qualities of milk, reduces nutrient assimilation, and renders it allergenic and difficult to digest.

In summary, I urge the Joint Committees to work towards overturning AB 1735 and doing everything in their power to support raw milk in California. Opposition to raw milk is illogical; it is unscientific; it is expensive; and it is heartless and cruel. The child who benefits from raw milk, perhaps even whose life is saved by raw milk, may be your own child or your own grandchild or even a child or grandchild of our opponents. Our efforts are dedicated to all children.

We have the knowledge and technology today to get safe raw milk to every child who needs it. And we ask that you work with us and not against us to achieve this important goal.

Thank you. Read:

Liz Reitzig Testimony - VICFA

Sally Fallon Testimony - President Weston A. Price Foundation

Dr. Robert Irons Testimony - Nutritional Immunologist - MOICFA

Dr. Ted Beals Testimony - Pathologist