Raw-milk-drinking safety is scientifically and empirically based

October 23, 2006

Michigan Department of Agriculture

Director Mitch Irwin

524 West Allegan

Lansing, MI 48933

517-335-1423 (Fax)

Dear Michigan Department of Agriculture Director Mitch Irwin,

I am appalled that your department obtained probable-causeless warrants on and seized dairy from one of our private clubs. You robbed health-giving raw milk and byproducts from our sibling members’, their babies’ and childrens’ stomachs. Raw milk is not harmful even though most health-department officials and employees believe that it is. The belief that raw milk is risky is unscientifically based and false. I have improved my health significantly with raw dairy products. Pasteurized dairy products did not improve my health and sometimes made me sick. I attached research proving that raw milk is beneficial and pasteurized milk is harmful and sometimes dangerous. It was taken from Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz’ (Ph.D. Nutrition) book The Recipe For Living Without Disease (2002), Chaper 31. I hope that the Michigan Agriculture Department will be open-minded to the factual issues of raw milk in the future.

Please stop harassing people who choose health-giving raw foods. Allow me and my family to choose what we have experienced is healthy for us. You are not God. Thank you for your consideration to this life-important matter.

Sincerely,

(print your name &

address)

cc: Larry Perreault, Regional Office Manager and Regional Supervisor (Fax) 989-757-7505

Elizabeth Hunt, Dairy Section Regional Supervisor (Fax) 989-757-7505
Michael Juhasz, Food Section Regional Supervisor (Fax) 989-757-7505

Katherine Fedder, Director Food & Dairy Division (Fax) 517-373-3333

Terry Philibeck, Regional Office Manager and Dairy Section Regional Supervisor

(Fax) 616-356-0622

Raw-milk-drinking safety is scientifically and empirically based.

Infant Safety, Health Benefits, Propagandized False Risks From Feeding Raw Milk, And The Harm Of Feeding Infants Pasteurized And Other Processed Milk.

Consistent with most doctors’ modern beliefs, they prescribe food and therapies for infants and children that have created disease in our children. Unscientific propaganda issues from them constantly. They say that raw milk is dangerous for infants, causing bacterial food-poisoning and death without one credible scientific experiment to support that theory. I present to you many published reports from the first 5 decades after pasteurized and processed milks were introduced to the public. They prove that feeding infants pasteurized or processed milk is dangerous and causes disease. They prove that feeding infants raw milk is safe and healthful.

In 1984, William Campbell Douglass, Jr., M.D., presented considerable clinical evidence to the world that drinking pasteurized milk resulted in degrees of osteoporosis and bone malformation, diabetes, and many other diseases. Also, he provided clinical evidence from the same sources that drinking raw milk reversed osteoporosis, bone malformation, diabetes and many other diseases. He cited the findings of studies documented at the following universities and clinics: Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Tufts, the Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Georgia Dairy Science Department, the Ohio State University School of Agricultural Chemistry, and Mayo Clinic of Minnesota.

He presented testimony confirming those findings from the following medical journals and publications: The Lancet, JAMA, World Cancer Research Fund journal, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Consumer Reports, Consumer’s Union, Hartford’s prestigious St. Vincent’s Hospital Report, Certified Milk Magazine, American Association of Medical Milk Commission Report, Milk Industry Foundation Report, and The Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Newsletter.

Colic is a concern with infants who are fed pasteurized milk. One of every five babies suffers colic. Pediatricians learned in the early 1900s that pasteurized cows’ milk was often the reason. A more recent study linked pasteurized cow’s milk consumption to chronic constipation in children. Those researchers observed that pasteurized milk consumption resulted in perianal sores and severe pain during defecation, leading to constipation. [1]

Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., MD observed several infants. They were born of mothers known to be hypothyroid. Prior to the birth of those infants, the mothers had given birth to children within three years. Each of the previous children suffered asthma, infantile rickets, and skeletal underdevelopment. In one experiment, the baby girl that had been fed formulas since birth was always sickly. The formulas included powdered milk, pasteurized milk, boiled milk, boiled certified milk and canned milk. She suffered severe gastric distress during her infancy. When she was 8-months young, she developed asthma. She was undersized, considering her parents had large builds. Contrarily, the healthy child was breast fed from birth. The mother drank raw milk and lived under excellent health-promoting conditions.[2]

Dr. Weston Price, D.D.S., proved fifty years ago that processed milk leads to disease and premature death.[3] He also showed that processed food, such as pasteurized milk, causes poor development of facial bones. Nizel of Tufts University reported that decayed teeth were four times more common in pasteurized-milk-fed babies as opposed to raw-milk-fed babies.

Dr. A. F. Hess wrote in his abstracts that pasteurized milk was an incomplete food. He proved that many infants developed scurvy on a diet of pasteurized milk. The form of scurvy took some months to develop and was termed subacute. He considered it not only the most common form of scurvy but also the one that passes most often unrecognized.[4] The infants were cured of scurvy when raw milk was substituted. Regarding his tests, he stated that, taken in conjunction with the fact that they fed the same number of infants on raw milk as pasteurized milk, cases of scurvy did not develop in infants on raw milk. He stated that their test-results were sufficient to warrant the deduction that pasteurized milk is a causative factor in infant scurvy.

Dr. Pottenger proved there is deficiency disease similar to Vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) that can be cured by giving an endocrine product that contains no Vitamin C. He proved that raw milk naturally contains that endocrine nutrient and that pasteurized milk does not. He proved that raw milk reversed and prevented scurvy.

Stefansson, an anthropologist working for the U.S. government, reported that an Arctic sea-captain who ingested high amounts of Vitamin C did not reverse his scurvy. After the captain ate raw meat for several days, he completely healed.[5] It was reported in 1942 that grazing cows produced as much Vitamin C as does the entire citrus crop, and that most of it is lost as the result of pasteurization.[6]

In Berlin prior to 1901, rarely was there a case of infant scurvy. In 1901, a large dairy established a pasteurization plant in which all milk was raised to a temperature of about 140° F (60° C). After an interval of months, infantile scurvy was reported from various sources throughout the city.[7] Neumann recorded that he and two other doctors had seen only 32 cases of scurvy from 1896 to 1900. He reported that the number of cases suddenly rose to 83 cases in 1901 and 1902. An investigation was made as to the cause. Pasteurization was discontinued. The number of cases decreased as quickly as they had increased.[8] Neumann also reported that the cases of infantile scurvy were marked by susceptibility to infection, abdominal cramps, nasal diphtheria, furunculosis of the skin, and pneumonia in advanced cases.[9]

Dr. Hess reported that milk-pasteurization that was intended to prevent humans from getting diseases that cows sometimes develop was a waste. He further reported from his observations and tests that infants fed pasteurized milk easily developed common diseases. He stated that deaths from those common diseases should have been attributed to the defective nature of pasteurized milk.[10] Humans do not get bovine undulant fever nor does it naturally transmute into human undulant fever. There is no credible data that proves otherwise.

Dr. J.E. Crewe, from the Mayo Foundation, Minnesota, reported the therapeutic uses of raw milk in 1923. He stressed, from his experiments, that the key-factor was the feeding of raw milk. He stated that while raw milk is widely used and recommended as an article of diet, physicians seldom use it as an agent in the treatment of disease. For 15 years, he employed the raw-milk-diet treatment in various diseases and obtained “uniformly excellent” healing results. Dr. Crewe witnessed rapid improvement in his patients with advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis when he utilized raw-milk therapy. That was ironic, considering that tuberculosis of the time was blamed on raw milk. Hippocrates used raw milk to cure tuberculosis.

Research by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland found that raw milk contained 2½ times more lgG enzyme than pasteurized milk. In the presence of higher levels of lgG, rotavirus that cause diarrhea in infants is not produced.

In 1923, at St. Vincent's hospital in Philadelphia, concern arose for the high death rate among infants from gastroenteritis. Dr. Paul B. Cassidy, M.D., recommended raw milk instead of pasteurized milk. The raw critics panicked, predicting a catastrophic increase in infant deaths. The death rate in infants from gastroenteritis quickly fell by 94%, from a high of 89 in 1922 to less than 5 per year.[11]

Destin was a child who developed asthma as an infant on baby formulas, suffered near-fatal attacks yearly, grew frail, weak, underdeveloped, extremely small for his age, and was on regular medication. Dr. Douglass treated him, at the age of nine, by feeding him raw milk. In six weeks, Destin stopped wheezing for the first time in his life. Destin grew rapidly on the raw-milk treatment, living a normal life thereafter.[12]

A Dutch chemist, Willem J. Van Wagtendork at Oregon State College, proved that pasteurized dairy creates calcification and stiffness. He found that guinea pigs with calcification of the tissues could be relieved with raw cream but not so with pasteurized cream. The active health-giving factor is transmuted and rendered ineffective by pasteurization. John Fowler, M.D., Worcester, Massachusetts reported that raw-milk therapy relieved muscle cramps in pregnancy.

There has never been an epidemic proved caused by raw milk. All epidemics from milk were proved to be caused by pasteurized milk. The following list reveals that pasteurized milk products are dangerous. As Dr. Lee explained, pathogens enter unhealthy cells. Pasteurization kills milk cells. Pathogens multiply rapidly in those cells. If someone eats a product that is full of pathogens, the bacteria will proliferate in a body full of unhealthy cells.

Some Outbreaks Attributed to Bacterial Food-poisoning from Pasteurized Milk products

· 1945¾1,492 cases for the year in the U.S.A.

· 1945¾1 outbreak, 300 cases in Phoenix, Arizona.

· 1945¾Several outbreaks, 468 cases of gastroenteritis, 9 deaths, in Great Bend, Kansas.

· 1978¾1 outbreak, 68 cases in Arizona.

· 1982¾over 17,000 cases of yersinia enterocolitica in Memphis, Tenn.

· 1982¾172 cases, with over 100 hospitalized from a three-Southern-state area.

· 1983¾1 outbreak, 49cases of listeriosis in Massachusetts.

· 1984¾August, 1 outbreak S. typhimurium, approximately 200 cases, at one plant in Melrose

Park, IL.

· 1984¾November, 1 outbreak S. typhimurium, at same plant in Melrose Park, IL.

· 1985¾March, 1 outbreak, 16,284 confirmed cases, at same plant in Melrose Park, IL.

· 1985¾197,000 cases of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella infections from one dairy in California.[13][14]

· 1985¾1,500+ cases, Salmonella culture confirmed, in Northern Illinois.

· 1993¾2 outbreaks statewide, 28 cases Salmonella infection.

· 1994¾3 outbreaks, 105 cases, E. Coli & Listeria in California.

· 1995¾1 outbreak, 3 cases in California.

· 1996¾2 outbreaks Campylobactor and Salmonella, 48 cases in California.

· 1997¾2 outbreaks, 28 cases Salmonella in California.

[1] Iacono G, Cavataio F, Montalto G, et al. “Intolerance of cow’s milk and chronic constipation in children” N Engl J Med 1998;339:110-4.

[2] “Clinical and experimental evidence of growth factors in raw milk”, Certified Milk, January, 1937.

[3] Nutrition and Human Degeneration, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, La Mesa, California.

[4] Infantile Scurvy. III. Its influence on growth (length and weight), Am. J. Dis. Child., August, 1916.

[5] Harper's Magazine, November/December, 1925 & January 1936, from the Stefansson Collection, Dartmouth College.

[6] Proc. Nat. Nut. Conf. for Defense, May 14, Federal Sea Agency, pp. 176; U.S. Government Pat. Off., 1942.

[10] Hess, A. F., “Recent advances in knowledge of scurvy and the antiscorbutic vitamin,” J.A.M.A., April 23, 1932.

[11] Annual Convention, Certified Milk Producers Association, Hotel Roosevelt, New York City, February 8, 1938.

[12] The Milk Book; How Science Is Destroying Nature's Nearly Perfect Food, Wm. Campbell Douglass, Jr., MD, 1996, Second Opinion Publishing, Georgia; pp. 204.

[13] Ryan CA, Nickels MK, Hargrett-Bean NT, et al. “Massive outbreak of antimicrobial-resistant salmonellosis traced to pasteurized milk”, JAMA 1987;258:3269-74.

[14] “CDC. Outbreaks of Salmonella enteritidis gastroenteritis -- California”, 1993. MMWR 1993; 42:793-7.