Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Anti-Vaxxers Are Spilling Over

You all know who the anti-vaxxers are, they are the ones who are refusing to be vaccinated and are basically anti-science. Well now they are on another kick… Pasteurization. It has become a four letter word to them.
How milk became the new culture war dividing America
Telegraph
By Tony Diver
June 22, 2024


For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous.

The US dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year heating its product to 70C before sale, to kill microorganisms that can make people ill.

But a growing number of consumers would rather they left it alone. No longer the preserve of farmers and hippies, “raw” milk is now on sale in corner shops and trendy health food stores across America.

Its proponents argue that it helps with weight loss, gut health and lactose intolerance. Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and a longtime promoter of unorthodox health advice, takes it in her coffee every morning.

“I think there are schools of thought that drinking raw milk is better because once you process it and everything, that’s when the dairy becomes harder to tolerate,” she said in a recent interview.

Okay, first of all I drink pasteurized but non-homogenized milk. With the cream floating on top. I like it much better than homogenized milk it has a richer, creamier taste. However, it is pasteurized.
Pasteurisation, once a consensus issue, has become the latest frontier in America’s never-ending culture war.

Public health officials say that drinking the milk is dangerous, and could lead to a spike in potentially deadly bacterial and viral infections.

But market data suggests there has been at least a 20 per cent increase in demand for raw milk in the last year nationwide, and state politicians are facing demands to liberalise decades-old food safety laws.

This week, the latest bill to repeal an outright ban on raw milk hit the governor’s desk in Louisiana, after similar efforts in West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia and North Dakota.

Politicians were heard mooing in the state legislature as the bill passed.
I am old enough to remember buying food before the USDA inspections and all the food laws that were passed. You know there were reasons for those laws.

My mother used to make shoe leather out of any meats… medium rare steak, forget it! Thick juicy steaks and hamburgers had red-flags on them, common illnesses from meat are E. coli from ground beef, BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis) from beef cattle, Trichinosis from pork, and Salmonella from poultry. And for raw milk it is uberculosis, brucellosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, Q-fever, and Scrapie from lamb and mutton. And then we have the small wiggly microorganism things like, Campylobacter, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Yersinia enterocolitica.
The FDA and another federal agency, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued recent warnings that drinking raw milk could lead to the spread of bird flu.

Both agencies are widely distrusted by Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) wing of the Republican Party – some of whom are committed anti-vaxxers.

Others simply think that the Government has no business in demanding their milk be pasteurised – and that raw milk bans are the product of big dairy industry lobbyists operating in the “swamp”.

“Our citizens have the right to buy those products even though they have risks associated with them,” said Kimberly Coates, a Republican state representative, during the passage of Louisiana’s recent bill.
Yes but… but those diseases and microorganism are highly, highly contagious! As usual, the right-wing conservative Republicans it is all about me! Me! Me! They don’t care about others, it is all about ME, just like their candidate for the presidency.

An unvaccinated person came into the office where I was volunteering at the Health Collective with Mumps, you know the type “It is my god given right not to be vaccinated!” well I had to be. We all went to check up on our immunity and mine was low so they recommended a MMR shot.

So this AH who doesn’t believe in vaccines caused a crisis in a medical office where everyone in that day had to be tested, including all the patients (Many of whom were immunocompromise with with weakened immune systems.).
Far-right media outlets like InfoWars and The Blaze have been promoting raw milk, arguing that the pasteurisation process is a government conspiracy and that it is safe for consumers to drink.
I had a friend who drank raw milk, touted its benefits, but he started to be tired all the time, run down, no energy. They tested him for all types of medical diseases… finally after many months of testing and doctor’s visit they found out that from the raw milk. They went down their list… have you been out of the country lately? Have you had any blood transfusion? Have you had any unprotected sex?… Finally way down on their list because they usually find the diseases before then… “Have you had any raw milk or cheese?” Bingo!

Why do the Republicans want us dead?
In January, an Amish farm in Pennsylvania drew national attention after it was raided by police who suspected, correctly, that it was selling unlicensed raw milk and eggnog.

Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son, waded into the debate.

“Imagine what law enforcement could accomplish if they went after oh I don’t know, say, members of elite paedophile rings rather than farmers selling to their neighbours???” he tweeted. “Can I be the only person sick of this s***?”
The left wing Rolling Stone writes,
Why Are People Promoting Raw Milk?
Influencers are encouraging their followers to drink unpasteurized milk, but experts say it’s inviting bacterial infections — or worse
Elizabeth Yuko
June 19, 2024


EARLIER THIS MONTH, the sound of mooing rang out in the chambers of the Louisiana capitol when the House unanimously voted in favor of a bill legalizing the sale of raw milk in the state. HB467 also passed in the state Senate, and if Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signs it into law as expected, Louisiana will join the vast majority of other states, where unpasteurized milk can be bought and sold legally — provided the label warns that it’s “not for human consumption” and potentially contains “harmful bacteria.” But, as Louisiana lawmakers have pointed out, the label isn’t going to prevent raw milk enthusiasts from drinking it anyway.

If anything, there’s been a recent surge of raw milk evangelism among conservatives, anti-establishment figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the tradwives and homesteaders on social media, and their patron saint, Gwyneth Paltrow — who says she drinks raw cream in her coffee every morning. While their unapologetic espousal of unpasteurized milk isn’t new, the debate — unlike the unprocessed dairy products — has been particularly heated since the H5N1 avian influenza virus was first detected in US dairy cows back in March, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to issue warnings against drinking raw milk.

[...]

According to James Fitzgerald, PhD, associate professor of security studies at Dublin City University, whose research focuses on conspiracy-led violent extremism, “post-truth” politics, and disinformation, the consumption of raw milk is the latest in a long line of social and political markers that sets the extreme right apart, “giving it a distinct identity as an alternative way of seeing — and raging at — the world.” Other examples include alternative diets, self-help, and bodily improvement trends.
I think that it is also… “Anything that the Democrats hate, we like!” syndrome.

Meanwhile the far-right National Review writes,
Raw Milk Isn’t Right-Wing
By Luther Ray Abel

June 21, 2024


Rather, it’s veganism for the dairy-devoted, which is to say, it is insufferable for everyone who has to hear about it constantly. Pot-heads, raw-milkers, wine snobs, cross-fitters, and cyclists all share a monomania, the idea that their “thing” is the most important movement on God’s green earth and that it is their duty to proselytize in favor of their favorite substance or activity until the heat death (pasteurization) of the universe. Whatever their peculiarities, just because some folks take things a bit far doesn’t mean that we should ban the sale of elephant-dung coffee, those weird biking speedos, or raw milk. Almost any passion is gross at its extremes.

[…]

When it comes down to it, there are 760 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations associated with consuming bad dairy every year. Ninety-six percent of those events are the fault of ingesting raw dairy — this out of millions of dairy users (lactosers). While additional caution should be considered when H5N1 avian influenza is affecting some cows, I find it really difficult to care.

As some Mennonites remarked to me in a recent story about America’s Dairyland, one can buy socially and physically destructive consumables like alcohol and cigarettes at any corner store — but no raw dairy? The farmers had lived their many decades eating and drinking the stuff (yes, survivorship bias), but the data reaffirm the notion that, like the extreme phobias instilled in American youth about raw cookie dough (and quicksand), the threat has been grossly overstated because we have nothing better to fear than differences in string-cheese production.
So once again it Me, Me, Me! Do you know why drinking raw milk is different from alcohol and cigarettes? It is communicable. You all have seen cruise ships that have a Listeria outbreak? Can you imagine in an elementary classroom a child who drank raw milk developers Listeria infection and passes it around in a classroom. There could be students there who are immunocompromise and getting Listeria could be fatal!

But to the Republicans it is me, me, me!

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