{"id":763,"date":"2011-08-19T22:36:53","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T03:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=763"},"modified":"2011-09-14T16:50:49","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T21:50:49","slug":"dr-richard-raymond-recommends-law-banning-raw-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2011\/08\/19\/dr-richard-raymond-recommends-law-banning-raw-milk\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Richard Raymond Recommends Law Banning Raw Milk"},"content":{"rendered":"

People love to say “There ought to be a law”\u00a0and,\u00a0unfortunately, it’s\u00a0often said\u00a0based on\u00a0emotion more than on\u00a0fact.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a good\u00a0example of another overwrought, incorrect “there ought to be a law\u201d harangue: There Ought to Be a Milk Law<\/a>,\u00a0posted August 18 by Dr. Richard Raymond.\u00a0 Dr. Raymond, who was USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety,\u00a0from 2005-2009, is currently an industry consultant and food safety blogger.\u00a0 While doing a Google search on Dr. Raymond, I found an interesting comment in one article<\/a> that says about Dr. Raymond \u201che is fond of using facts, and that\u2019s too often a rarity in the usually emotional debate about our food supply.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 That statement seems at odds with his over-the-top and unsupported comments in his article \u201cThere Ought to Be a Milk Law.\u201d For example,\u00a0he says \u201cAmerica is seeing more and more outbreaks and illnesses from people drinking raw, unpasteurized milk. This phenomena has been on the rise over the last 15 years or so.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, raw milk consumption<\/em> has been on the rise the last few years, but, no<\/em>, there have not been \u201cmore and more outbreaks and illnesses.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, based on research by Dr. Ted Beals<\/a>, from 1999 through 2011 (which includes most of the last 15 years that Dr. Raymond refers to) there were only \u201can average of 42 per year [cases of illness attributed to raw milk].\u201d\u00a0 Dr Beals\u2019 research also did not\u00a0find a trend of increasing incidents of illness from drinking raw milk during that time. It is important to note that Dr. Beals used government data for his research and did not exclude any cases even when the incidents were only presumed but not confirmed to be caused by raw milk.\u00a0 If only confirmed cases are included in the calculation, the average number of cases per year falls to 18.\u00a0 Based on the current estimated number of people drinking raw milk, 9.4 million, Dr. Beals\u2019 calculations reveal that we are \u201cabout 35,000 times more likely to become ill from other foods than you are from raw milk.\u201d\u00a0 For example, a person is 10 times more likely to become sick from eating deli meat than from drinking raw milk.\u00a0\u00a0 Has Dr. Raymond ever recommended banning\u00a0truly high risk foods like\u00a0deli meat?<\/p>\n

In a gross overstatement, Dr. Raymond says\u00a0that parents who feed their children raw milk \u201cMight as well lock them in your car on a 100 degree day while you stop by the casino to try and win the jackpot.\u201d\u00a0 That is an extreme exaggeration\u2014millions of people drink raw milk with an average of only 18 confirmed cases of illness per year.\u00a0 Whereas, leaving a child in a car on a hot day while you gamble, shop, or visit friends, etc., is almost guaranteed to harm the child if left for more than just a few minutes.\u00a0 How is this a fair comparison?\u00a0 What about the parents who give their children deli meat like ham or bologna, which\u00a0is 10 times more likely to cause illness than drinking raw milk?\u00a0\u00a0Shouldn’t they be 10 times more culpable than parents who give their children raw milk?\u00a0 And this doesn’t even consider\u00a0the\u00a0potential\u00a0harm caused by the nitrates,\u00a0nitrites,\u00a0artificial colors, and other additives in deli meat.\u00a0 How can\u00a0that be safer for children?<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0misleading assertion by Dr. Raymond:\u00a0 he excuses not recommending a ban on\u00a0raw spinach where there is also a risk of illness by saying \u201cthose products do not have a proven kill step yet, and milk does.\u201d\u00a0 He is apparently alluding to pasteurization, which, however, is not really a \u201ckill step\u201d because it does not eliminate the chance of illness.\u00a0 Pasteurized milk has been the source of numerous outbreaks of illness because the milk can easily become contaminated after pasteurization, and, since the pasteurization process has killed\u00a0 the inherent anti-microbial components of the milk, the pasteurized milk has no resistance to the subsequent contamination.\u00a0 Reference: http:\/\/www.realmilk.com\/rawmilkoverview.html<\/a>. \u00a0None of these statements about risk take into consideration the benefits of consuming a true\u00a0Real Food that has not been degraded by the pasteurization, and usually also the homogenization, process.\u00a0 Real unprocessed milk has all of its vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fat molecules, and anti-microbial components intact.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I have always thought that\u00a0people in positions of power, authority, or respect should be held\u00a0to a higher standard of expectation\u00a0than ordinary people.\u00a0\u00a0Dr. Raymond is\u00a0a medical doctor, a former Under Secretary at the USDA, and now a consultant on food safety.\u00a0 He represents himself as,\u00a0and is assumed to be, an expert on the subject of food safety.\u00a0 Shouldn’t we have the right to expect\u00a0his statements to be based on thorough\u00a0and impeccable research since they are not made anonymously?\u00a0\u00a0However,\u00a0in this article he does not support his statements with facts or data and provides only one\u00a0reference to other sources of facts or data, www.realmilkfacts.com<\/a>, a website which states it is\u00a0“supported in part by Marler Clark<\/a>, the nation\u2019s foremost law firm with a practice dedicated to representing victims of food poisoning.\u00a0 The firm works actively with academia, industry, government, and consumer groups to end foodborne illness.”\u00a0\u00a0Yes, his only<\/em> reference for facts about raw milk\u00a0is to a website supported by firms whose income is derived from lawsuits over foodborne illness.\u00a0 [To be fair, David Gumpert of www.TheCompletePatient.com<\/a> says about this website: “This site does a nice job of presenting the pro-raw-milk side, in clear language, with little of the emotion common on other sites.”]\u00a0 And\u00a0Dr. Raymond\u00a0denigrates even that source by saying it’s\u00a0“For those who rely on the Internet, accurate nor not [sic], for their informed sources.”\u00a0 His statements contradict research based on government data, such as that of Dr. Beals, and the way he exaggerates the risks of drinking raw milk\u00a0even insults our common sense.<\/p>\n

Update 8\/23\/11<\/em>:\u00a0 Here’s another good post about Dr. Raymond’s unsupported stand on raw milk: “Government Protects ‘the Children’ From Parents and Raw Milk”<\/a><\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

Why You Don’t Want to Drink Pasteurized Milk<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>on CureZone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People love to say “There ought to be a law”\u00a0and,\u00a0unfortunately, it’s\u00a0often said\u00a0based on\u00a0emotion more than on\u00a0fact.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a good\u00a0example of another overwrought, incorrect “there ought to be a law\u201d harangue: There Ought to Be a Milk Law,\u00a0posted August 18 by …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,14,11,6,19],"tags":[26,25,46,24,403],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-access-to-good-food","category-access-to-real-food","category-food-rights","category-raw-milk","category-real-food","tag-food-freedom-2","tag-food-rights-2","tag-pasteurization","tag-raw-milk-2","tag-usda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-cj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}