Here’s the most important point in a column written by long-time Toronto Globe and Mail medical reporter Andre Picard:

The trial of Ontario raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt has garnered media coverage far beyond its importance.

Oh, and the outcome is largely irrelevant.

It seems somewhat absurd to jail a man for selling a product that clients desperately want and which, on the surface at least, seems harmless. But, hey, it happens to pot dealers every day.

What is not harmless is Mr. Schmidt's attack on pasteurization and on food-safety regulations more generally.

Under the guise of civil liberties and freedom, he and his supporters have uttered all kinds of nonsense and portrayed themselves as martyrs for pure food. …

Farmer Schmidt and his acolytes can suckle the milk from the teat of a cow, a goat, a cat, or any other lactating mammal to their hearts' content.

Their rights and freedoms are in no way compromised.

What the law restricts is the commercial sale of raw milk.

Mr. Schmidt tried to circumvent this fact by selling "cow shares" and arguing that his clients were actually proprietors and free to consume raw milk from their own cows.

Whether that little manoeuvre exempts him from the law is up to the courts to decide. But it seems unlikely. After all, bar owners tried this technique to sidestep anti-smoking laws, selling "shares" in their establishment and arguing that patrons were smoking in a private club. Judges saw through the subterfuge. …

Another argument is that meat - which can also contain pathogens - is sold raw, so why not milk? The practical reason for this is obvious. It is easy and efficient to pasteurize milk; it is not practical to cook meat before selling it, but its refrigeration (designed to minimize the growth of bacteria) is mandatory and regulated.

I try and take baby Sorenne and the dogs out every day for a three-mile walk. The dogs get to run off-leash on the trail, and I get to work on burning off that baby weight.

Sorenne usually conks out after 15 minutes of walking, and then I catch up on phone calls. It’s my kind of multi-tasking.

A reporter called a few days ago while out on one of these walks. She asked me about raw milk, I said I don’t care, it gets far too much attention and that public health folks have better things to do.

I also told her I had baby brain and was having trouble articulating. There’s a reason people have kids when they’re young -- like I did with the other four – and not when they’re 46. Ah but it’s fun (see the video clip below – and I do compost).

The Canwest News Service story reporting that interview showed up tonight, and has the usual raw milk stuff, with me saying it is difficult to change the minds of people who hold "hocus-pocus scientific theories about the nutrient benefits of raw milk."

Amy laughed at that.

"From a public health point of view, it's a no brainer, don't drink it," Powell said. "From a consumer point of view, why not make raw sprouts illegal because there is the risk of Salmonella or E. coli?"

Powell said he doesn't take issue with adults choosing to drinking raw milk, but it's usually children who get sick because of their parents dietary choices.

What I would have added is that with sprouts and other foods, there’s no simple control like there is with raw milk – pasteurization.

A table of raw dairy outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/articles/1138/Raw_Milk_Outbreak_Table.pdf

And here’s an op-ed Brae and I wrote a couple of years ago that predated barfblog.com. But the video at the end is far more interesting.

About Choice

Michael Schmidt, Ontario’s raw milk lord along with his evangelical disciples, maintain that their crusade is about choice.

Choice is a Good Thing.

But the 19th century English utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, noted that absolute choice has limits, stating, "if it [in this case the consumption of raw unpasteurized milk] only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself."

Excused from Mill’s libertarian principle are those people who are incapable of self-government – children.

In September, two children who drank raw milk from a Whatcom County dairy in Washington State became ill with E. coli O157:H7. At the same time, four children, including two eight-year-olds in San Diego County, Calif., were hospitalized with E. coli infection after consuming raw milk products.

In December 2005, 18 people in Washington and Oregon, including six children, were infected with E. coli O157:H7 after drinking an unlicensed dairy's raw milk.

Two of the kids almost died.

In April 2005, four cases of E. coli linked to unpasteurized milk were reported to Ontario health officials -- in this case, from an individual who routinely sold raw milk from the back of a vehicle parked in the city of Barrie. Dozens of other outbreaks are listed at: http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/articles/384/RawMilkOutbreakTable.pdf

Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara can obliviously insist that "raw milk is safely distributed in parts of the United States and Europe" but politicians are expected to spin facts.

So are lobbyists. Thus it was that the Toronto contact for an organization strongly advocating raw milk successfully passed himself off in the National Post this morning as a food safety researcher.

Schmidt, celebrity chefs and the wannabe fashionable can devoutly state that grass fed cattle is safer than grain-fed by spinning select scientific data, except cattle raised on diets of grass, hay and other fibrous forage do contain E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in their feces as well as salmonella, campylobacter and others.

Poop happens, especially in a barn, and when it does people, usually kids, will get sick. That's why drinking water is chlorinated and milk is pasteurized.

From Kansas, this looks like an awfully familiar clash of science and faith. But it's not so simple as natural is good, and science -- in this case pasteurization -- is bad. Science can be used to enhance what nature provided; further, society has a responsibility to the many -- philosopher Mill also articulated how the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one -- to use knowledge to minimize harm.

There are lots of other foods that make people sick. On the one-year anniversary of the Ontario salmonella-in-sprouts outbreak that sickened 650 people, raw sprouts are widely available and no one seems to notice. After being banned for three weeks, raw mung bean sprouts were back on grocery store shelves and being placed ever so gingerly on gourmet, supposedly healthy sandwiches.

This fall, it was spinach, lettuce and tomatoes sickening hundreds across North America. So why aren't Ontario government-types, who treat an outwardly eco-friendly and holistic health product like raw milk as a major biohazard, setting their sights on fresh produce?

Part of the answer is that the risks associated with fresh produce have only been recognized in the past decade; the risks associated with raw milk have been recognized for over a century. Further, unlike fresh produce, there is a relatively simple and benign solution for producing safe milk: pasteurization.

And perhaps that is why health officials are adamant that a ban stay in place: there simply isn't the resources to manage all the microbial food safety outbreaks that strike down 11-13 million Canadians each year, let alone someone proselytizing the virtues of raw milk while flaunting the law.

The only things lacking in pasteurized milk are the bacteria that make people - especially kids - seriously ill. Adults, do whatever you think works to ensure a natural and healthy lifestyle, but please don't impose your dietary regimes on those incapable of protecting themselves … your kids.
 

With disease outbreaks linked to unpasteurized milk rising in the United States, a review published in the January 1, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases examines the dangers of drinking raw milk.

Milk and dairy products are cornerstones of a healthy diet. However, if those products are consumed unpasteurized, they can present a serious health hazard because of possible contamination with pathogenic bacteria. An average of 5.2 outbreaks per year linked to raw milk have occurred in the United States between 1993 and 2006—more than double the rate in the previous 19 years, according to co-authors Jeffrey T. LeJeune and Päivi J. Rajala-Schultz of the College of Veterinary Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. …

Raw milk advocates claim that unpasteurized milk cures or prevents disease, but no scientific evidence supports this notion. Testing raw milk, which has been suggested as an alternative to pasteurization, cannot ensure a product that is 100 percent safe and free of pathogens. Pasteurization remains the best way to reduce the unavoidable risk of contamination, according to the authors.

The Owen Sound Sun Times has had enough of raw milk evangelist Michael Schmidt.

The Ontario paper  correctly observes that the Ontario government does not have the capacity to ensure that unpasteurized milk is safe to distribute and Michael Schmidt does not have the right to pick and choose which laws he wishes to obey.

Schmidt's raw-milk operation may be the most sparkling-clean in all of Ontario. His methods of storage and transport may be beyond reproach. His milk cows may be grass-fed, free-range, pest-free and of above average intelligence. For all we know they may produce wonderful abstract-expressionist paintings in their off hours.

That does not change the fact that drinking raw milk brings with it a heightened risk of salmonella, E. coli and Listeriosis. Nor does it change the fact that pasteurization saves lives.

Anyone who doesn't believe this should ask someone old enough to remember the days before pasteurization was introduced.

If selling raw milk were legal, it would in short order become a big business. The Ontario government, knowing the statistical risks of raw-milk distribution, would be legally and morally responsible for ensuring that no one got sick as a result.

That is a chance no responsible, reasonable government can or will take.

Therefore, Schmidt's crusade will fail. It should fail.

One man, however impassioned, cannot set health policy for all Ontarians, in the face of medical evidence that doing so would put people at risk.