from the Washington dairy list re deaths from pasteurized milk

[Guest guest]

The report is just breaking.

On the best report that I have seen so far several things are clear. The farm has about 300 cows, they pasteurize at their own plant, bottle in glass, sell at their own two retail stores, apparently to a select group of customers and they have several "brands" of pasteurized milk.

On the TV interview the Health official almost sounded apologetic to the farm trying to find some reason other than failure of their manufacturing process. Also notice of interest to those of us that watch these public announcements, it has been months since the people became ill, and two died. No mention of what caused the deaths.

Also reported that one woman that became ill, was pregnant, but no statement about the status of her pregnancy, nor any warning about incidents of abortions associated with this illness.

They did positively fingerprint match the bacteria from the hospitalized people and the milk from the farm. In this case they apparently isolated the bacteria from the milk, but didn't remark that the reason they were successful was probably because the milk was pasteurized.

It is a remarkable example of the difference of public announcements about illness when documented from processed milk, and when thought to be associated with unprocessed milk. In addition to the soft tone of the announcement, this farm was told to recall the product, not stop all operations until the source of the contamination was determined. And I didn't hear anything about not drinking pasteurized milk because you might become sick.

Ted

From: Alan Shank Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 12:21 PMTo: dairydiscussion@...Subject: RE: [DairyDiscussion] Intro

Has anyone noticed the news about Whittier Farms and the deaths from listeriosis. Evidently this is pasteurized milk. I saw no references about raw milk in any of the news services. The story is carried by the Seattle P I among other news sources.

The opponents of raw milk always make it sound as if drinking pasteurized milk is risk free.

Alan Shank