Country Saturday does the public a disservice in their credulous / false balance / uncritically couched Takaka Village Milk story this morning. Below is an open version of the mail I wrote to Carol Stiles @ RNZ Country Saturday. radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/countrylife The report this morning on Village Milk is woefully unbalanced. The uncritical platflorm given to dairy farmer Mark is, as ever, generous to a fault. But as the shows journos do on your show any time your well told stories brush up against controversial New Age woo and pseudoscience, and its intersection with country lives, you fail the public by couching these stories uncritically. History shows that the uncomfortable truth is that the sale of raw milk has always, will always pose a threat to public health that cannot be mitigated unless people pasteurise it before use. To pretend otherwise is bloody irresponsible to say the very least. To fail to clarify this fact in the story is at the very least unbalanced and at worst shows a reckless disregard for the public health. Frankly to claim offering raw milk in Takaka today is groundbreaking is sheer nonsense, and in the context of the facts of the disease causing history of raw milk and the public health, mighty close to political spin. Its almost as though your show has / is promoting an ideological agenda. Giving Mark an uncritical platform to promote his obscurant views on the production and sale of Raw Milk and how the issue intersects with public health does him (and his interest in promoting raw milk) a service and gives the public health no regard whatsoever. Prior to the introduction of pasteurisation, milk was one of the major sources, of severe human infection due to pathogenic bacteria. Therefore pasteurisation is recognised worldwide as one of the public health greatest achievements of the 20th century. Nevertheless, current trends towards consuming natural food led to an increasing interest in raw milk consumption. —From the microbiological-risks-assessment-consumption-of-raw-milk pdf linked to in the post. According to a 2009 review, milkborne disease outbreaks made up approximately 25% of all food and water contamination disease outbreaks in 1938 (in the US); pasteurization is largely credited for a dramatic decrease in milkborne disease outbreaks, which made up less than 1% of food and water contamination disease outbreaks by 2005. [1] What are the risks of drinking raw milk relative to pasteurised? In case you have doubts that raw-milk is really more risky than pasteurized, heres a statistic that really stands out. Raw milk constitutes 1% of milk consumption, but 56% of milk-borne disease outbreaks since 1973 in the US. Thats 126* times as much as we would expect if they were of equal risk. Fortunately, the number of people affected is much lower because, as in New Zealand, the raw milk can only reach the small number of people who have arranged for it. [2] *{(56/1) / (44/99) = 126} My raw milk drinking friends are affluent, urban dwelling, alt-med promoting, Big Pharma fear mongering, anti-vacc hipsters who have promoted raw milk to me as an edible medicine, claiming it prevents everything from allergies to cancer, with hand-waving arguments that pasteurisation wrecks milks nutritional value and unfounded claims that homogenised milk makes you sick. In the manner of the post-rational coterie I know who are adamant anti-vaccers part of the appeal of Raw Milk is the counter-culture edge of being rebellious against the paranoid delusional Big Med / Big Pharma / Corporate Establishment conspiracy to keep us all sick. On balance Raw milk is a risk not worth taking individually or as a society. On balance the potential benefits just dont outweigh the risks or the costs. Raw Milk does not have any measurable health or nutritional benefit compared with Pasteurised (that we do not already obtain from a balanced diet), and the slight impact on vitamins due to pasteurisation is largely because there are additional vitamins found in the contaminating, disease causing bacteria raw milk contains. As it stands, the only benefits are flavour, which is a matter of personal taste and cant be gainsaid, and the assertion of personal liberty, the claim that you *should* have the freedom to drink Raw Milk if you like. Conversely, not being free to drink it is framed as a restriction of freedom in the irrational manner of those who protest that the seatbelt wearing/motorcycle helmet wearing laws restricting your freedom to expose yourself to significant known risks. The cost is the risk of disease or death which ramps up in seriousness for the young, the elderly, the immune-compromised and pregnant women. So the most vulnerable in society are worst affected by Raw Milk. The facile benefits for a few misinformed rebels just dont outweigh the risks or the costs to the rest of society, especially the most vulnerable. Our society has a primary duty to protect the most vulnerable, through rational, science-based public health regulations. The Raw Milk polemic is well presented in this video, complete with citations and sources of information: https://youtube/watch?v=6VbwYqV4Eog&feature=youtu.be [1] JT, Rajala-Schultz PJ (January 2009). Food safety: unpasteurized milk: a continued public health threat. Clin. Infect. Dis. 48 (1): 93–100. doi:10.1086/595007. PMID 19053805. [2] cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-index.html [P.S. The meme is my proposal for proper, true to contents, branding and labelling of raw milk for public sale. To pretend or obscure any of the unique selling benefits (USPs) Ive highlighted aren’t the whole-truthflul and most relevant to the consumer, and instead use bucolic illustrations of cows and flowers, blue skies and rainbows is obscurant and deliberately misleading codswallop designed to mislead the public. To claim in the marketing of raw milk that it is more nutritious or better for you with obscurant hand-waving claims that it is more readily digested is bullshit.]
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:57:34 +0000
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