Pasteurization

  • 21 sick from raw milk in Oregon; again ‘people missed the boat on one of the great advances in public health – pasteurization’

    Posted: May 1st, 2012 - 1:09am by Doug Powell

    Oregon health officials suspect two more illnesses are part of a raw milk outbreak traced nearly three weeks ago to a farm near Wilsonville.

    William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health, told Lynne Terry of The Oregonian the two adults had both consumed raw milk from Foundation Farm, including one person who continued to drink it after being warned about the outbreak.

    Keene said one was sickened by campylobacter, the other by cryptosporidium, making 21 likely cases in the outbreak. Nineteen others were infected with E. coli. One of the worst foodborne pathogens, E. coli O157:H7 was on rectal swabs from two of the farm's four cows. Milk and manure from the farm also tested positive for the same bacteria.

    State epidemiologists did not test for campylobacter or cryptosporidium so they don't know for sure that the two new cases are linked to Foundation Farm milk, but Keene said it's likely.

    Cryptosporidium and campylobacter repeatedly turn up in raw milk, he said, along with other harmful bacteria.

    Four children who drank the milk were hospitalized with acute kidney failure, which is associated with E. coli O157:H7. As of Friday, they were still in the hospital, Keene said.

    Two of the patients -- 14 and 13 -- are Portland area middle schoolers. The others are 3 and 1 years old.

    A fifth child from Lane County, who drank the milk while visiting relatives in the Portland area, was hospitalized and released.

    "We've documented yet another unfortunate incident where people missed the boat on one of the great advances in public health -- pasteurization," Keene said.

    A table of raw milk related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/rawmilk.

     

    Your rating: None (2 votes)
    Bookmark and Share
    Raw Food  |  0 Comments
    food safety, Foundation Farm, keene, Oregon, pasteurization, raw milk
  • Ontario’s real raw milk hero

    Posted: October 2nd, 2011 - 11:02pm by Doug Powell

    As a child driving past the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless memorial in St. George, Ontario, just north of my Brantford home, I had no idea who she was and why she had so many names.

    But more than a century ago, after her youngest son, John, died from drinking contaminated milk as an infant, Hoodless embarked on a campaign to have all milk heat-treated — pasteurized — to kill potentially harmful bacteria, making her one of Canada’s earliest food safety proponents.

    Tracey Tyler of the Toronto Star writes that Hoodless grew up on a farm in St. George, near Brantford,and is sometimes described as one of the country’s most effective but least-known social reformers.

    After her son’s death in 1889, she devoted herself to educating women in the “domestic sciences” and giving them the institutional backing they needed to protect their families.

    Her work led to the formation of Women’s Institutes, home economics programs in schools and the creation of the Macdonald Institute at the University of Guelph.

    Toronto passed a bylaw in 1915 requiring all milk sold to be pasteurized and that became mandatory across Ontario in 1938. The Star was a prominent advocate for pasteurization, and remains so today, with the publication of an editorial insisting there is no sound scientific evidence supporting the claim that raw milk improves people’s health, but a mountain of data showing it can be dangerous. It’s especially risky for children, pregnant women and the elderly.

    Your rating: None (2 votes)
    Bookmark and Share
    Raw Food  |  2 Comments
    Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, food safety, pasteurization, raw milk, Toronto