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Showing posts with label pasteurization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pasteurization. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Despicable Reason Behind Raw Milk Bans - from Dr. Mercola


Hey everyone,
Hopefully you're not too tired of me passing along posts from Dr. Mercola... But in case you haven't noticed, he is one very intelligent, M.D. out in the world who is actually being honest about medicine, nutrition, doctors, and how foods are regulated and the horrifying reasons why they're banned... and it's not for our health, but for big business and control. It saddens me, however I find great hope in the fact that people are beginning to wise-up and doctors like Mercola are speaking out about it... Enjoy! Hopefully you'll be instilled with great hope too knowing that we are actively educating ourselves.

Here's from Dr. Mercola's website:
The Despicable Reason Behind Raw Milk Bans
Government, public health and dairy industry officials want to restrict the sale and distribution of raw milk, citing safety concerns. But small dairy farmers, organic consumers' advocates and raw milk drinkers say that safety isn't the real issue -- it's control of the dairy market.
In January, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) proposed new regulations that would ban off-the-farm sale and distribution of raw milk. Prior to making the regulations public, MDAR issued cease-and-desist orders to four milk-buying clubs.
While no one has died in Massachusetts because of raw milk, three people died in 2007 from Listeriosis from pasteurized milk.
According to In These Times:
"Considering the relative safety of raw milk and its possible health benefits, campaigns against its legalization are surprisingly intense, and not just in Massachusetts."
David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution, argues that regulation is "not about safety -- it's about protecting markets."

Sources:


Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The FDA and CDC have been particularly aggressive recently in their efforts to crack down on raw milk under the pretense of public health safety. But the truth remains that not only is raw milk a health-promoting food, it is oftentimes safer than the pasteurized varieties both state and federal governments are rallying behind.
David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution, pointed out, for instance, that while no one has died in Massachusetts because of raw milk, three people died in 2007 from pasteurized milktainted with Listeriosis.
And as In These Times reported, according to CDC data from 1993 to 2006 there were about 116 illnesses a year linked to raw milk -- that amounts to less than .000002 percent of the 76 million people who contract a food-borne illness in the United States each year!
It is very apparent that the regulatory agencies have put blinders on to these statistics as they carry on with their ruthless crusade to ban raw milk and make it illegal for you to drink it.
Why?
Because they are looking out for the interests of Big Dairy produced in factory farms.

Industrial Dairy Farmers Cannot Safely Produce Raw Milk

Raw milk has been gaining popularity for years now. In Massachusetts, the number of dairies licensed to sell raw milk grew from 12 to 23 in just two years, while the Northeast Organic Farming Association stated that dairies are selling more raw milk than they were just five years ago, and consumers call in every week looking for advice on where to find it.
The conventional dairy industry, realizing this, has redoubled their efforts to make sure that raw milk sales are not able to grow, and certainly not able to become mainstream, where they could begin to threaten their very own livelihoods.
If raw dairy really caught on, you would think that the dairy industry would simply follow suit and begin producing raw products to meet the demand. But this would be virtually impossible.
Their business depends on pasteurization, and that is why their powerful lobbyists will stop at nothing to persuade government agencies to keep raw milk bans in full force.

Only Healthy Milk, from Healthy Cows, Can be Consumed Raw

There's a vast difference between the quality and safety of milk from organically raised, grass-fed cows, and conventionally raised, grain-fed livestock. Conventional dairy farms are not typically set up to produce healthy milk, and really the very idea of producing mass quantities of milk from huge numbers of cows confined to one area is contrary to the very nature of healthy milk.
Cows that are fed grain and raised under substandard conditions will likely produce milk that is unhealthy to drink raw because grains, antibiotics, growth hormones, and filthy living conditions change the pH balance and the natural bacteria present in a cow's gut, which in turn affects the natural bacteria and pathogens present in their milk.
In order for conventional dairy farms to safely produce raw milk, they'd be forced to clean up their production practices, raise healthier cows (and likely fewer cows), and give them access to pasture. This would cost them money … lots of money, if it were even possible at all – and that is a very big "if."
This is why, when buying raw milk, it's very important to make sure you're buying milk that has been produced with the intention of being consumed raw, and not just raw milk from conventionally-raised cows that hasn't gone through the pasteurization process yet.
It also begs the question, if the milk produced by most dairy farms has to be pasteurized to remove the filth and bacteria it ordinarily contains … is it really something you want to drink?

Who Should be Able to Limit Your Right to Unpasteurized, Unprocessed Food?

If you're thinking "no one," you're going to have to duke it out with the FDA.
Earlier this year, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) filed a lawsuit against the FDA over their raw milk ban, claiming it is unconstitutional. The FDA's rebuttal contained the following extremely concerning and outrageous statements, which make it very clear they believe you have no right to unprocessed food:
  • "There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food."
  • "There is no 'deeply rooted' historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds."
  • "Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."
  • The FDA's brief goes on to state that "even if such a right did exist, it would not render the FDA's regulations unconstitutional because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk promotes bodily and physical health."
  • "There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract."
Since when did the FDA have authority to tell you what you can and cannot eat and feed your children? Apparently they believe they've had it all along.
If you go by these assertions, it means the FDA has the authority to prohibit any food of their choosing and make it a crime for you to seek it out. If, one day, the FDA deems tomatoes, broccoli or cashews capable of causing you harm (which is just as ludicrous as their assertions that raw milk is harmful), they could therefore enact such a ban and legally enforce it.
What this means is that freedom of food choice is a myth if you live in the United States, and this simply is not acceptable.
Unfortunately, state governments have been dutifully following suit, no doubt after intense pressure from the dairy industry.
In May, for instance, after weeks of lobbying by the Wisconsin dairy industry, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle vetoed a bill that would have made sale of on-the-farm raw milk legal, stating he "must side with public health and safety of the dairy industry."
In Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources issued cease-and-desist orders to four milk-buying clubs and proposed new regulations to ban off-the-farm sale and distribution of raw milk.
In their lawsuit, FTCLDF also pointed out that the FDA is taking an unfairly harsh approach with raw milk compared to other raw foods. For instance, unpasteurized juices are sold with just a warning label letting consumers know the juice has not been pasteurized, while raw milk has been outright banned in many states.
Is it a coincidence that some of the states where raw milk sales are illegal are also among the largest dairy producers in the United States (namely Wisconsin and Iowa)?
Hardly.

Do You Want Easy Access to Raw Milk?

By joining the fight to make access to healthy raw milk a right for all Americans, you are not only standing up for raw milk; you're taking a stand to protect your freedom of food choice.
No one, and certainly not any government agency or dairy lobby, should be able to restrict your access to pure, unadulterated food. Organizations like the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund are working toward true freedom of choice for American consumers, and I urge you to get involved in their causes.
For more information, I urge you to listen to my interview with Mark McAfee, the founder of Organic Pastures, one of the largest producers of raw milk in the United States, along with this video with health and business journalist David E. Gumpert.
You can also find lots of valuable information in Gumpert's book, The Raw Milk Revolution, and on McAfee's Web sitewww.OrganicPastures.com.


Sunday, May 2, 2010

The 15 Things that Pasteurization Kills



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I used to think I was lactose intolerant. Turns out I was just pasteurization intolerant. You might discover you are too after reading the following article by Mark McAfee. Check it out. This is especially great for anyone unsure about the real difference between raw and pasteurized dairy. Please share the link to this blog with anyone you think might be interested, and as always, weigh-in below in the comments.
The 15 Things that Pasteurization Kills

by Mark McAfee
Tragically, pasteurization has killed much more than TB and Typhoid in the1800’s and covers up much more than the filth of the distillery dairy in down town Boston in 1875. Pasteurization has had massive and tragic side effects. These side effects have been ignored by the FDA and down played by industry. To accept the facts would be a surrender to a 100 Years' War indiscriminately waged against all bacteria. A 100 year war that has now turned to attack the immune system of the American that it was thought to protect. 
The FDA, instead of fighting germs, is now killing Americans.

And pasteurization has killed much more than a few bad bugs…it is killing the foundation of America.
 Here are the top 15 things that Pasteurization has killed that the FDA and Big Dairy industry refuses to acknowledge or discuss. To do so would be to surrender and to invite a marketing disaster. These are the origins of why the FDA and Big Dairy Ag processors fight desperately to suppress the American raw milk uprising and the truth that it speaks.
  1. Pasteurization has killed the family farm, jobs and the American
    Dream
     by replacing responsibly produced clean raw milk with “filth
    excusing pasteurization” which allows dirty milk to be sold as clean milk.

    The prices now paid for raw milk that is sent to be pasteurized is so low
    that it does not cover the cost of production. There is nothing that a farmer
    can do to increase the milk price in this system. His work is for nothing
    and he is desperate. For every load of raw milk that he sends off he sends
    more and more of his farm equity and his blood sweat and tears.

    Pasteurization does not create clean milk it just kills filthy milk.

  2. Pasteurization has killed the dairy markets.   

    Twenty to 50% of the American population do not drink pasteurized milk
    because of either mal-digestion or lactose intolerance, but yet those same
    Americans can drink raw milk because it is whole with all of the enzymes
    and beneficial bacteria present.

    America has become pasteurization intolerant. Only 14% of CAFO fluid
    milk produced in California is actually ever bottled for fluid use….most
    gets made into dried powdered milk or processed cheeses.

    Today truck loads of milk intended to be pasteurized is dumped down the
    drain and is never processed. This is the absolute proof of the disconnect
    between consumer and farmer. The farmer does not even know what
    becomes of his food and or how much to produce.
     
  3. Pasteurization killed “the connection between the farmer and the consumer”.

    Some farmers that produce pasteurized milk have no-trespassing signs at
    the edges of their property that say….”Trespassers will be shot and
    survivors will be shot again”.

    They have no reason to visit with a consumer about selling their dairy
    products. They get paid by a processor, not a consumer. All of their fluid
    milk is sold off to a common processing plant to be commingled with all
    other dairy milk in a commodity market system.

    The farmer now has no idea that he is “over producing” and making the
    wrong products. The farmer has no idea that people do not drink
    pasteurized milk because of lactose intolerance. If the farmer could ever
    talk with a consumer….they would not do what they are over-doing.
  4. Pasteurization kills farmers.  

    In January, dairy farmer Dean Pierson of Copake New York entered his
    barn with his rifle and plenty of ammunition, killed all 51 of his precious
    milk cows, then tragically took his own life.

    There have been many suicides of dairymen in the last two years with two
    in California last year. The incidence of dairyman suicides follows the
    prices paid for pasteurized milk in the heartless disconnected pasteurized
    dairy market system.

    When prices fall, suicides rise. This is because there is absolutely nothing
    that a dairyman can do to change the market price by working harder to
    sell better tasting or higher quality milk.

    The pasteurizer has covered-up and masked all of these possible value
    added possibilities. He gets what he gets and that more often than not… is
    an economic roller coaster ride from FDA CAFO hell.

    The universities tell the next generation to “get big or get out” and provide
    no classes on value added ideas to break away from the “Milk Pool” and
    the PMO. There is no hope.

    The far better message is “get green, get clean, get local, and get
    consumer connected”.

    A university professor speaking these words would be like… “entering a
    Catholic Church and screaming There Is No God in the middle of Sunday
    morning mass.” Grants are given to Universities to study and support
    claims from Monsanto and antibiotic manufacturers for Big Dairy. The
    fastest way for a professor to be removed is to object to Big Dairy projects.
    The result, all of the dairymen’s sons and daughters are taught to “get big
    or get out.” The next well-educated generation has no hope either.
  5.  Pasteurization killed Antibiotic effectiveness for all of us.  

    By creating a commodity dairy market system that relies heavily on
    antibiotics, fed in feed at CAFO Mega dairies to support massive milk
    production, the antibiotics now used in American hospitals for humans no
    longer work.

    Tens of thousands of Americans now die each year because of superbugs
    created by CAFO antibiotic abuse.

    MRSA and VRA drug resistance is now a major cause of death and there
    are fewer and sometimes no antibiotics left to kill the bad bugs and save
    real human lives. The FDA refuses to ban or limit use of antibiotics in
    CAFO’s feed and instead testifies for the CAFO industry (Senator Dean
    Florez SB 362 Sac CA in 2009).
  6. Pasteurization killed the digestibility of milk and its delicious milky reputation.  

    Now milk is no longer a food with a good reputation and the dairymen do
    not even know it. It causes or triggers gas cramps, allergies, diarrhea,
    asthma attacks, mucus production, constipation, gastric cramping and so
    called “Lactose Intolerance”.

    This has caused the dairy industry to lose many consumers to SoyMilk,
    RiceMilk, AlmondMilk and even HempMilk. None of these fake milks come
    from mammalian animals with teats.

    The dairy industry did this to themselves because the processing industry
    runs the dairy industry. A processor loves a dairyman in desperation. It
    allows for dirt cheap pricing….and so what if the processor does not bottle
    milk. The dairy processor can bottle water, soy milk, rice milk, almond milk
    or hemp milk. All the processor cares about is processing “throughput”.

    Last year, the processors spoke about the new emerging dairy product
    category called… “branded bottled water”. Dairymen have not spent
    enough time in the market and have delegated to the “processors” the
    most important thing that they can do….connect to consumers and tell the
    consumer their story and listen to feedback.  Now the fat Fox has eaten
    their chickens.
  7. Pasteurization has ruined our water supplies.

    Whereever a mega dairy CAFO is located there are huge lagoons. These
    manure and chemical filled lagoons often leach into underground aquifers.
    It is nearly impossible to keep these lagoons from leaching into the
    underground water supplies. The best new technologies do protect from
    leaching but their plastic or rubber lined lagoons are extremely costly and
    older dairies are not required to install them.

  8. Pasteurization has damaged our air quality. 

    Cows that are kept in CAFO system confinement and fed huge amounts of
    grain produce massive amounts of methane gas. These gasses are not
    good for air quality, earth health, cow health or human health or the dairy
    industry reputation for stinking downwind.

    Some dairies now capture this methane gas as a resource to be sold for
    energy. 99.9% of dairies do not. There are 1.9 million cows in CA that live
    on 1800 dairies. Few of these dairies use pastures to feed their cows
    (nearly none), aside from a few organic dairies.

    When cows are fed pasture, their production of methane gas is a minute
    fraction of what is produced in CAFO systems. Pastures also allow the
    sequestration of carbon and recycling of manure directly back to living
    plant-life.  Really good for the cows and the earth. 
  9. Pasteurization has killed individual responsibility for milk quality and even how the dairy looks.

    When no one cares about how the dairy looks because no one ever
    comes to visit…the dairy can start to look pretty darn horrible. Calves in
    dirty hutches, cows deep in manure, nothing painted, nothing clean and
    nothing green.

    The milk quality will not matter either. It is customary that a dairyman with
    poor quality milk just adds some chlorine bleach to the bulk tank to kill the
    bacteria and pass the inspectors test sample.

    This is something that the “consumer connected” raw milk dairymen would
    never ever do.

    Some pasteurized milk producers would never do this either. However,
    that does not matter….his good milk gets commingled with all the other
    milks and his individual quality is now irrelevant.
  10. Pasteurized milk kills jobs and is economically, nutritionally and socially killing America.  

    In Economics 1A….the first thing the professor says is that all new money
    in our American economy is created at the start of the food chain with
    mining, fishing and farming.

    America has outsourced much of its food chain to China and other
    unwatched places and with that, all the beginnings of new money to
    excite, stimulate, locally feed and fund America is gone.

    Whenever raw milk is produced and consumed for human consumption,
    life springs forth, there are jobs and there are healthy happy cows and
    people.

    Raw milk brings new immune strength, new economic life in the economy
    and new hope for a better world. Consumers give farmers feedback about
    flavor and animal treatment. Pastures are green and farmers are well paid
    and loved.
  11. Pasteurized milk kills asthma sufferers and as a result doctors prescribe a diet without pasteurized dairy products.  

    Milk triggers asthma by destabilizing MAST cells that release histamines
    that cause inflammation, mucus production and bronchial spasm.
    Pasteurized milk is a partial food product that is missing digestive
    enzymes and nearly all of its beneficial bacteria.
    Pasteurized milk (with rare exceptions) comes from cows fed a ration
    based on corn not pastures and forage. This changes the fatty acid
    profiles. These corn based fatty acids have low omega 3 and high 6 and
    no CLA.

    These are the bad cholesterols found in the American diets today.

    Raw milk is the opposite and heals and prevents asthma by stabilizing
    MAST cells and reducing inflammation as shown by dramatic lowering of
    “C reactive protein levels”.

    Raw milk rebuilds immunity by allowing the safe consumption of
    biodiversity in our diets. These bacteria then re-colonize the gut and
    become our immune protective and digestive ecosystem armies.

  12.  Pasteurized milk kills bone density.

    It has long been known by doctors that low fat pasteurized milk is a real
    problem when considering bone density and osteoporosis.

    The test for pasteurization is called the negative Alpha Phosphatase test.
    When milk has been heated to 165 degrees and pasteurization is
    complete the enzyme phosphatase is 100% destroyed.

    Guess what….this is the enzyme that is critical to the absorption of
    minerals and calcium!!

    Raw milk contains as its third highest level of enzyme the phosphatase
    enzyme and those people that drink raw milk enjoy increases in bone
    density.
  13. Pasteurization killed scientific integrity in America.  

    The FDA and the dairy industry have begun to loose all credibility for
    integrity in science and telling the truth to Americans as a direct result of
    protecting industrialization and its market sectors.

    Now it is a matter of fact that the FDA refuses to be quoted and
    interviewed in Raw Milk and food documentaries that expose the lies and
    deception.

    The FDA refuses to acknowledge their own NIH websites that make
    reference to the missing beneficial bacteria in our diets that historically
    have come from Kefirs and “Ancient” milk.

    ‘Ancient milk’ is politically correct FDA lingo for ‘raw milk prior to
    pasteurization’. Instead, the FDA makes war on all bacteria through their
    sterilized, anti-life, pro-drug concept of health. Universities will not study
    raw milk because of the pasteurization protective grant systems put into
    place by corporate America and Monsanto.
  14. Pasteurization kills cows and green pastures.

    Seventy-five years ago, there were friendly cows on green pastures all
    over America. Pasteurization has effectively paved the pastures and now
    forces the cows to be fed soy protein concentrates and 40 pounds of grain
    per day along with antibiotics and hormones.

    These CAFO dairy feeds increase milk production to numbers never seen
    before in the history of earth. It is not uncommon for some CAFO dairy
    cows to produce 150 pounds of milk per day (20 gallons) and be crowded
    into pens deep in manure with thousands of other cows.

    The stress of being milked up to four times per day and laying in artificial
    rubber beds shortens their lives to just 40 months.

    A cow on pastures will produce much less milk (4-5 gallons per day) and
    live ten years or more, easily, in true happiness and health.

    Raw milk from pasture-raised cows is rich in beneficial fatty acids,
    beneficial bacteria, rare and essential enzymes and CLA something that
    CAFO cows cannot brag about.

    None of the CAFO raw milk can be used for human raw milk consumption.
    It contains the wrong kinds of bacteria and must be pasteurized.

    Pastures, natural feed and sunlight are critical to the safety of raw milk.
    There is no fooling or tricking mother nature. Raw milk producers make a
    pact with nature not war against her.
  15. Pasteurization is racist.  

    The dairy industry time and time again claims that if you are black or if you
    are Asian that you have a deficiency. You have something wrong with you.

    The fact of the matter is that the Maasai in Africa and the Chinese outer
    Mongolians have drunk raw milk for thousands of years….without Lactose
    intolerance. There are virtually no human babies on earth that reject their
    own mother’s breast milk. That breast milk is raw milk. The same goes for
    nearly all grown or growing humans.

    All people can drink raw milk if given a chance because the enzymes and
    lactase producing bacteria that re-colonize the gut are found in raw milk.

    Raw milk is food for all people. It is color blind unlike pasteurized milk
    produced by corporations seeking answers to the deficiencies found in
    their processed dead partial milk.

    What people are is “Pasteurization Intolerant”.   











But, there’s still hope. 
Pasteurized milk did not, however, kill the will of a small group of pioneering farmers and their consumers to fight and expose the truth.
This brings great news….Raw Milk for humans is the solution and has exactly the opposite effect on farmers, the cows, the earth, the consumer.
Raw Milk is now rapidly emerging as a farmer to consumer connected market.
Things had to get really shockingly bad for the people and the farmers to see what really bad was.
Now new life comes forth and there is new hope and health and it is local and it is grass roots. It will not be easy….the FDA and Big Dairy will fight to protect what they took from us, the earth and the cows for the last 100 years.
Keep your cameras ready and blog the truth of your raw milk experiences.
Nothing like a little truth therapy to bring some light into the darkness of the last 100 years of lies and false promise. Not to mention serious gas cramps and diarrhea.
Good riddance to dead milk and the FDA 100 Years' War against all bacteria.
We must stop thinking that killing everything will make us well. Our immune systems depend on biodiversity and the wholeness of our foods and so does our social conscience and everything else good on God's green earth.

I thought this was informative and while sometimes rabbel-rousing, still really good to know, since a lot of this stuff falls under the radar of most non-farm folks.

Enjoy & leave comments!





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