My two cents on the recent E. coli outbreak
By the time you receive this newsletter this will be old and almost forgotten news, but many who read about the recent E.coli scare in the papers or heard about it on the news might have ended up with the idea that E.coli is some sort of deadly bug.
People like me who focus on intestinal health know very well that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the presence of E.coli in a person’s intestinal tract is a marker of good health, while its absence is a clear indication that something is amiss.
Not only that, but if you can think back to a time preceding the current wave of “synthetic” farming, you may remember that cow manure was once a primary form or fertilization. This may not sound too appetizing, but it still reflects our history. I would bet that cow manure contained many billions of E.coli organisms per cubic inch, and yet people were not dropping dead left and right.
Obviously it was a mutant and deadly form of E.coli that was recently found to contaminate spinach and carrot juice. Where did it come from? Not from some exotic source as one might think, but from cattle that somehow contaminated the water supply upstream from the affected fields.
So how could such a deadly antibiotic-resistant superbug evolve all of a sudden? It seems highly unlikely to me that it could evolve among wild pigs, as some theorize. One reason is that wild pigs were never exposed to antibiotics. On the other hand today we raise cattle not only with hormones and a very unnatural diet for grass-eating animals, but we also give them daily doses of antibiotics, not to protect
them from disease but because it was found – pretty much coincidentally – that antibiotics help fatten them up. At the same time we are creating the perfect breeding ground for all types of new mutant bugs and incidents like this can only become more commonplace over time.
As it turns out, instead of scrutinizing these dangerous practices, the FDA and Department of Agriculture are using this event as an excuse to crack down on farmers who produce and sell raw milk. However, raw milk is completely safe if handled properly and these farms are not the ones giving antibiotics to their animals and creating the superbugs!
If you are wondering what is the need for raw milk in the first place, consider the fact that recent British research has found that raw milk and not pasteurized milk reduce children’s risk of allergy-related conditions. For more on raw milk and allergies, see
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=399520&in_page_id=1774
Read about recent action by the Department of Agriculture here: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2006/sb20061019_952010.htm.
Sally Fallon of The Weston Price Foundation has been monitoring this situation and working with farmers to develop an effective strategy se we can preserve our right to buy raw milk. For updates see http://www.westonaprice.org/federalupdate/aa2006/actionalert_092806.html
