Raw Milk's Danger Jumps Out of CDC's Report On 2006 Food Outbreaks

Americans food habits are changing. We drink less milk and eat more cheese. We drink a lot less milk than most places in Europe and more than most do in Asia.

Still, when our total annual per capita consumption amounts to something north of 22 gallons of milk, more than 35 pounds of cheese, and 2.1 pounds of butter; there is just one thing to say.  We should all toast at least one glass a year to Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and microbiologist, who invented Pasteurization to make both milk--and yes wine--safe for us to drink.

For while only a tiny fraction of the milk we consume is "raw" or unpasteurized; it is raw milk that continues to deliver a menu of pathogens including Campylobacter that are good only for making people sick, and possibility dead.

More evidence of raw milk's danger comes in the current issue of the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that looks all the 2006 data the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has collected on food-borne disease outbreaks (FBDOs) from all states and territories through the Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (FBDSS).

This report, according to CDC, summarizes epidemiologic data on FBDOs reported during 2006 (the most recent year for which data have been analyzed). A total of 1,270 FBDOs were reported, resulting in 27,634 cases and 11 deaths.

Dairy commodities, which we assume are milk, cheese and butter, accounted for only three percent of the single source outbreaks in 2006. That translates into 16 outbreaks responsible for 193 food-borne illness cases.

Of those dairy outbreak cases, 71 percent were attributed to unpasteurized raw milk. Raw milk was responsible for ten outbreaks that made 137 sick. “A wide range of bacterial pathogens was associated with the raw milk outbreaks, including Campylobacter (six outbreaks), STEC (E. coli) 0157:H7 (two outbreaks), Salmonella (one outbreak), and Listeria (one outbreak), resulting in 11 hospitalizations and one death," CDC reports.

Raw milk drinkers, say it ain't so!

Meridian Bioscience Says It Has A New Test For Campylobacter With Results In About 20 Minutes

Medical diagnostic test kit maker Meridian Bioscience, Inc. yesterday said it has obtained Food and Drug Administration clearance for its novel rapid test, ImmunoCard STAT! CAMPY to detect Campylobacter.

Campylobacter bacteria is one of the common causes of diarrhea and food-borne illness in the U.S, where about 20 million stool culture tests are done every year to diagnose Campylobacteriosis.

Meridian said that ImmunoCard STAT! CAMPY, by means of a simple procedure, could provide results in 20 minutes. The testing technique is also free from the problems associated with the presently used method of culture testing.

For more, check this out.

Chile Studies Campylobacter Contamination In Slaughterhouse Chickens

On average, slaughterhouse chickens were contaminated with thermotolerant Campylobacter 54 percent of the time, according to a recent poultry study in Chile. Two poultry slaughterhouses were included in the study. One had a 72 percent contamination rate, while campylobacter was found 36 percent of the time in the other.

"Our findings indicate that chilling process has a limited effect in the final products Campylobacter contamination because poultry enter the slaughter processing with high counts of contamination. This may represent a health risk to consumers, if proper cooking practices are not employed. The levels and frequencies of Campylobacter found during the processing of Chilean poultry appear to be similar to those reported elsewhere in the world," BMC Microbiology quoted the researchers as saying.

A copy of the provisional report can be found here.

UK Chicken Industry Looking At How To Cut The Amount Of Campylobacter In Half By 2010

When you are standing at the poultry counter trying to decide which package of chicken breasts to buy, does it ever cross your mind to think about how old the bird was when it was axed?

Didn't think so.  Well, the good folks at British Poultry are giving that a lot of thought.

The European Union wants to cut the amount of Campylobacter in chickens. That has British Poultry looking hard at the issue.

Research data shows that chicks are campylobacter free for the first two or three weeks of their life. Professor Diane Newell says one option for UK's poultry industry would be to move forward the time of slaughter for chickens, which is the current practice in Scandinavia.

Professor Newell has also found that a 30 percent reduction in the risk to the consumer can be achieved with only a small reduction in the numbers of campylobacter on chicken carcasses.

UK 's poultry and meat sector is tackling campylobacter with a target of halving it by 2010 in British retail chicken.  For more on how the UK broiler industry is dealing with the future EU targets, go here.

Follow-Up On Green Party's Campylobacter Expert Candidate: She Lost

Sarah Svensson, the Ph D candidate who is an expert in Campylobacter and who was running as a Green Party candidate in British Columbia, lost.

She received 854 votes with a total of 12,731 ballots being cast in Columbia River-Revelstoke. The district easily re-elected the NDP's Norm Macdonald to his second term. He bested BC Liberal Party candidate Mark McKee, 7,043 to 4,834.

Ms. Svensson, according to the Green Party's website "is currently completing her doctorate in microbiology at UBC, where she studies the molecular biology of Campylobacter, a food-bourne bacterial pathogen. She hopes to continue researching infectious diseases that are the by-product of environmental and social change - complex diseases with difficult solutions."

We wish her better luck with that than she had in her short political career.

British Columbia (BC) Green Candidate Is Ph D Candidate In Molecular Biology Of Campylobacter

We do not usually follow politics on this blog.  Nor are we any kind of experts about elections in British Columbia.   Who has a chance, and who does not---well, those are questions you are going to have to get answered elsewhere.

Nevertheless, we think its worth noting that one of the Green Party candidates running in the upcoming May 12th BC elections from Columbia River-Revelstoke is an expert in Campylobacter.   

The candidate we speak of is Sarah Svensson. The Green Party website says she "is currently completing her doctorate in microbiology at UBC, where she studies the molecular biology of Campylobacter, a food-bourne bacterial pathogen. She hopes to continue researching infectious diseases that are the by-product of environmental and social change - complex diseases with difficult solutions."

Whether she is serious about running for the job in Victoria is clearly on the mind of the local newspaper in Revelstoke. It reported:  "The Times Review has made several attempts to contact Svensson starting on April 21, including phoning numbers provided on the Green Party of BC website and by email, but was unable to reach the candidate by press time."

Ms. Svensson might also be focused on that Ph d about now!  We will try and let you know how she does come election day.

The BC Greens can be found here, and the Revelstoke Times Review story here

New Zealand Studies Its Most Prevalent Notifiable Disease--Campylobacter

New Zealand's South Canterbury is on many dream vacation lists. The area between the Conway and Waitaki rivers and what New Zealand calls its Southern Alps to the west, the area's many attractions are anything if not inviting.

The tourist brochures for Christchurch and other places in South Canterbury, however, do not mention the fact that this big area of New Zealand has more than its share of Campylobacter.   The Timaru Herald reports:

Campylobacter continues to be the most prevalent notifiable disease in South Canterbury and there is a study under way to find out why.

Statistics from South Canterbury District Health Board show in March there were seven cases of campylobacter in Timaru, three in the Mackenzie district and two in Waimate.

There have been no known outbreaks or obvious connection between the cases, medical officer of health Daniel Williams said.

New Zealand sees 10,000 cases of Campylobacter each year.    Three years ago, 970 hospital admissions were attributed to the disease.  Williams said the long incubation period often makes it difficult to link to the cause.

For more from NZ, go here.

Raw Milk Is Giving People Campylobacter On Colorado's Western Slope

Raw milk has struck again, this time in western Colorado where at several people are suffering campylobacter poisoning. The Kinikin Corner Dairy in Montrose, CO has been ordered to cease and desist from distributing raw milk to the public, including its so-called "shareholders."

Raw milk traced to Kinikin, where the poison-producing cows come with cute little names, has made at least eight people sick, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The state says 10 of the 11 confirmed cases of campylobacter since March 30th are linked to drinking raw milk, and eight of those have admitted their raw milk pusher is the Kinikin Dairy.

The diary was order to stop sales late yesterday afternoon.

Campylobacter is often spread through cow feces and if contaminated fecal matter gets into water or milk, humans can get sick.

The Montrose dairy farm gives all the details of how it gets around those little legal prohibitions against selling raw milk to the public on its website here.

 

One of Nation's Top Dietitians And Authors Says Raw Milk Is NOT Safe

 Raw milk can be a host to a wide array of pathogens, including but not limited to, staphylococcus aureus, campylobacter jejuni, E. coli, listeria monocytogenes and yesinia enterocolitica. The incidence of infection varies worldwide and not all cases of illness are serious enough to be reported. Since 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 831 illnesses, 66 hospitalizations and 1 death associated with raw milk. As recently as January 2009, a research study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Disease stated unpasteurized (raw) milk is a continued public health threat.

The writer is Jo-Ann Heslin, the dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with 12 current titles and sales in excess of 7 million books.  Her words are found on HealthNewsDigest.com where she responds to the question: Is Raw Milk Safe To Drink?

Ms. Heslin does not mince words, answering: "In a word, no."   Go here and read it all.

Poultry Litter War Sees Battle In Denver; Remains Unsettled

Above the bench in the Tenth Circuit Courtroom in Denver where a battle was fought this week between the State of Oklahoma and the poultry industry are the words: “Reason is the soul of all law.”

The “poultry litter” war being waged by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson and the mostly Arkansas-based chicken companies originally caught our attention because of its possible impact on campylobacter incidents in the Illinois River watershed.

It was also a colorful dispute at the trial court level. We got some laughs out of the quotes we were reading in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, where reporter Robert J. Smith has a knack for covering mouthy attorneys.

AG Edmondson wanted Judge Greg Fizzell, the trial judge, to grant Oklahoma’s motion for an emergency injunction to stop further application of poultry litter in the Illinois River watershed. Last September, however, Fizzell denied the injunction. He found that cattle and human waste (from failing septic systems) were contaminating the Illinois, but left the poultry litter pollution issue for trial.

When Fizzell ruled, the town of Locust Grove, OK was reeling from an outbreak of E coli 0111, a rare strain, that eventually killed a Pryor, OK man and sickened 313 others. About third of those ended up in area hospitals. All who became ill were linked to the popular Country Cottage restaurant.

After Oklahoma’s Department of Health failed to link the 0111 to any food or water source, the state’s investigation appeared to be at a dead-end. Then last month, AG Edmondson raised the possibility that the E. coli 0111 came from private well water contaminated by poultry litter.

Locust Grove is some distance from the Illinois River watershed, but the AG’s fingering poultry litter brought the chicken companies down on him in the 0111 outbreak investigation.

All of which made for high drama in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals this week where AG Edmondson went seeking to over-turn Fizzell’s denial of the emergency injunction.

Edmondson, a Democrat who may run for Governor of Oklahoma, in 2010, was there with attorney Fredrick Baker of the South Carolina-based law firm of Motley Rice.

Edmondson brought Motley Rice into the case because Oklahoma needed the resources they brought to the table, the AG told us. He says they’ve brought $24 million to the investigation to date. That’s the only way Edmondson could effectively combat a courtroom full of chicken company attorneys and their PR men.

Edmondson knows that its an uphill battle to get an appellate court to overturn a trial court judge on a ruling out of a emergency or preliminary injunction hearing.

Oklahoma’s problem is some of the original research commissioned for the trial court has yet to get through the “peer-review” process to be published in an acceptable scientific journal. At the same time, the chicken attorneys can say no one has ever proven bacteria from poultry litter has ever made anyone sick.

Meanwhile, the AG forced the state Health Department to begin testing wells in the Locust Grove area, finding almost one in five is producing a "dangerous to humans" bacterial stew, but no finding yet of that always rare 0111.

And near the town of Hogeye, south of Fayetteville, the Illinois River begins in Arkansas. It becomes a scenic river in Oklahoma before being dammed to form Tenkiller Lake near Tahlequah. It empties into the Arkansas River.


Reason might mean doing something to clean it up. What the law requires is up to federal Judges Paul Kelly, David Ebel, and Michael Murphy.