Two county children among those sickened by raw milk

Raw Milk and Spinach: The Double Standard California agriculture and public health officials took completely different approaches to concerns about health problems at a California raw milk dairy and farms producing contaminated spinach.

Two points related to the California raw milk dairy shutdown and tainted spinach fiasco: 1. Just a day after my article about the shutdown of a California raw milk dairy appeared on BusinessWeek.com, California's Department of Food and Agriculture lifted its quarantine of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. I'd like to think my article played a role in the sudden turn-around by the state regulators. Only yesterday, the department's head of public affairs was telling me that it was in the midst of tests of Organic Pastures' raw milk that could take five to ten days. He kept using the term "until further notice" when I asked how long the farm would be shut down--a bureaucratic euphemism for a long time.

I suspect also that the decision by Mark McAfee, the farm's owner, to go public with his frustration over the state's shutdown of his dairy had something to do with the quick change of heart. There's nothing bureaucrats hate more than the bright light of public scrutiny. It tends to expose their tendency toward being arbitrary, especially with smaller businesses.

2. While a small raw milk dairy was shut down for a week by California authorities when four children who had drunk its milk became ill, none of the nine corporate spinach farms suspected of producing E.coli-tainted spinach that has poisoned nearly 200 people around the country has been shut down, or is even threatened with being shut down. When I inquired today with California public health officials as to the status of the nine California farms, I was referred to a phone press conference sponsored by the California Department of Health Services.

The public health official answering the questions kept referring to "systemic problems" at California vegetable farms that lead to periodic E.coli outbreaks. One California newspaper reporter asked the obvious question of public health officials: "Why not prevent (the nine farms suspected of triggering the current mess) from shipping till they get rid of the problems?"

The California Department of Health Services official answering the questions basically refused to answer this question. "At the Department of Health Services, we are reviewing all of our options," he stated. "Good agriculturual processes must be in place." End of discussion.

Yes, it certainly seems a lot easier to pick on a small dairy farmer than on large corporate spinach growers.

I imagine it is easier politically to shut down a small dairy farmer, but I imagine it's also a lot easier to grow e-coli in a dairy that does not use pastuerization compared to a grower that does use a washing phase.

Other than cold temperatures, there isn't any treatment of the milk to remove harmful organisms. They could reside anywhere, but especially holding tanks were they to be infected. The produce gets washed which reduces the possibility of contamination before shipping. Also, don't these growers and processing plants ship more than just spinich? I imagine they process other greens that weren't contaminated in the way the spinich was, so a complete shutdown would likely be just as politically motivated.

It makes sense to scrutinize the dairy farm more since its production could result in a huge bacteria soup compared to the produce farms.

Your logic makes sense, but the reality of production is somewhat counter-intuitive. As I understand it, part of the spinach problem, what California Department of Health Services officials refer to as "systemic problems," is that large amounts of spinach are washed together in huge vats, allowing bacteria from just a few leaves to spread around. The raw milk dairy has built in safeguards against e.Coli-type problems, such as feeding cows grass rather than grains (reducing likelihood of certain diseases in cows that could be passed on to humans), and following strict cleanliness standards in the milking process, where contamination could also occur. There are all kinds of good bacteria in raw milk, which it's healthy to ingest, and which get killed off in pasteurization. After hundreds and hundreds of tests at the Organic Pastures Dairy, no pathogens, or bad bacteria, were discovered, in holding tanks, barns, or even in the cow manure.
What I'm suggesting is that the spinach growers might be more motivated to eliminate the systemic problems if they knew they'd be shut down. Thanks.

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