Raw milk a ’serious health risk’ — Perry Kendall
January 8, 2010 by Lynn Knell
Filed under Feature stories, Food, Safety
Consumption of unpasteurized milk can pose a health risk if it comes from infected cows, or even from healthy cows if the consumer is unhealthy. (Photo by USDA / Wikimedia Commons)
BC’s Provincial Health Officer and CDC say raw milk consumption hazardous to health.
The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) is advising British Columbians to discard any unpasteurized dairy products from the Home on the Range raw dairy in Chilliwack.
As part of an ongoing investigation by public health officials, the BCCDC Public Health Labs recently tested products from Home on the Range raw dairy, which distributes through a variety of outlets in the Lower Mainland. Products tested included unpasteurized raw milk, yogurt, cream, butter and cream cheese. Of these samples, five tested positive for fecal contamination.
By law, all milk sold or distributed in B.C. must be pasteurized – a process that raises milk to temperatures high enough to kill harmful bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter plus others. This is not a new public health protection idea. Commercial pasteurization of milk was first introduced in 1895, after Louis Pasteur discovered that the process inactivated spoilage organisms.
Dr. Perry Kendall, BC’s Provincial Health Officer warns that drinking unpasteurized milk can result in illness, long-lasting serious diseases, or even death. “It is important that all British Columbians be aware of the serious health risks associated with consuming unpasteurized milk”, he says. “Any perceived health benefits of drinking raw milk are most certainly offset by the serious risks of contracting disease”.
According to the BCCDC, young children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to the bacteria, which is found in the bowels of cows and on the hands of those processing the product. They suggest that consumers purchase milk products from only grocery or other commercial stores. Milk that you buy must be pasteurized and packaged at an approved dairy plant.
For more information on unpasteurized milk, and food borne infections, please visit:
• www.bccdc.ca
• http://www.healthlinkbc.ca/healthfiles/hfile03.stm
Google the name of the farm, get some details on how this farm operates, and perhaps even get a view of how our government is looking after us – what a pile of garbage!
The people consuming this product are shareholders, they are choosing to consume these products by ownership. This article doesn’t say what levels were found, how those levels compare with factory farms, and implies the presence of e-coli and other dangerous bacteria when none were found. Nobody wants to think of fecal matter on their food, but unfortunately it is there, and industrial farming practices create the need for killing any organism, even those beneficial for health. Our health authorities would have people believe we can have health with dead food, and of course there are many medications to fix the resulting problems….
Anonymous, whether or not I or anyone else thinks raw milk is better than pasteurized milk (and I definitely do), the major question here is, what do the Canadian courts say about our rights to drink any kind of milk we like?
In doing a bit of my own research about this present situation with Home on the Range Dairy, it appears to me that this operation has become too successful to suit the suits, and they, having the notion that they have the power and the clout to stomp out any opposition to their antiquated ideas about health, have decided that they have to do something now or too many other people will find out that live milk is better than dead milk.
This smells a whole stinking lot like Codex Alimentarius rearing its ugly head, where nearly everything we put into our mouths is going to have to be thoroughly dead or it will be illegal. And those who use live products with all their enzymes and other nutrients intact will be prosecuted as criminals.