News

Groups says CDC raw milk report “flawed”

A group that supports the sale of raw milk says the new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) on illnesses caused by raw milk is flawed. In a news release, Sally Fallon Morrell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation says the CDC cherry-picked data to make a case against raw milk. She says consumers need to know that the incidence of foodborne illnesses from ALL dairy products – pasteurized or not – is “extremely low.”

The CDC says it reviewed data from 1993 through 2006 and found the rate of outbreaks from raw milk and milk products was 150-times greater than outbreaks linked to pasteurized milk.

Fallon Morrell questions the CDC choosing data only up through 2006 – saying in 2007, 135 people became sick from pasteurized cheese contaminated with E. coli and three people died from pasteurized milk contaminated with listeria. She says the CDC’s decision to start the review of data in the 1990s – following significant outbreaks in the 1980s from pasteurized milk – and cutting the data short raises questions about their bias against raw milk.

Fallon Morrell says the CDC also chose to focus on “outbreaks” instead of “individuals” who become ill and accuses the agency of obscuring the study by “failing to document the actual information they are using.”

CDC finds raw milk disproportionally responsible for illnesses