Posted: January 27th, 2012 - 9:19pm by Doug Powell

Six people were infected with campylobacter linked to raw milk from the Family Cow dairy store in Chambersburg, Pa., including three in Maryland, the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said Friday.

The implicated milk comes in plastic gallon, half gallon and pint containers and is sold directly to consumers on the farm and at drop off points and retail stores in Pennsylvania. It's illegal to sell unpasteurized milk in Maryland, though some consumers have reported getting it anyway at pre-determined drop off points.

In yet another entry into the we’ve-been-doing-it-this-way-all-our-lives-and-no-one-has-gotten-sick sweepstakes, Edwin Shank, a fourth generation owner of the Family Cow farm told the Baltimore Sun he's never heard of a customer becoming sick from his milk, and no one on the farm has been sickened; through five generations his family has been drinking raw milk from their cows "for 100 years."

“We're disappointed that this is being made to look definite when, one, the testing hasn't been completed, and two, the test they did do came from an open jug of milk in one family's refrigerator.”

Shank said that he has a good relationship with the health department and wants customers to know that he disinfects his pipes after every milking and sends samples of milk for testing six times as often as is legally required. He's been selling organic milk for six years and added raw milk three years ago because of strong demand.

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