PRESTO! FROM 21 RAW MILK ILLNESSES TO 20,000-PLUS, CDC MATH CARRIES DARK MESSAGE FOR THE RAWMI SAFETY AGENDA

David Gumpert's pictureby:David GumpertThu, 12/12/2013 - 20:02posted in:
Raw Milk,Food Safety,Regulation,

FDA agents Diana Guidry (left) and Audra Ashmore, at Morningland Dairy in Missouri, in September 2010.

The public health profession has its marching orders from the dairy industry and its puppet U.S. Centers for Disease Control: We need higher numbers of illnesses attributed to raw milk. Use every means you can think of to stir up fear, even if it means making up illnesses.

More significant, once you have established the precedent of concocting out of thin air statistics that have no basis in fact, you are then free to regularly report phantom illnesses from raw milk, even if the actual officially tabulated number sinks to near zero, which is the goal of the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI). We create money out of thin air, why not cases of food-borne illness?

You think I am exaggerating when I accuse the CDC, via the Minnesota Department of Health, of making up illnesses? After all, it is quite a serious accusation, that serious scientists would fabricate their numbers. It is, in the academic world, a reason for invalidating the research, and dismissing tenured professors..

But what else can you conclude when the Minnesota Department of Health, concludes, after mind-bending statistical acrobatics, in a research paper (available at the bottom of the Minnesota Public Radio page I linked to) published (and bankrolled) by the CDC yesterday--it “estimated that up to 20,502 Minnesotans, or 17% of raw milk consumers, may have become ill with enteric pathogens during the study period after consuming raw milk. This finding suggests that outbreaks represent a small number of the illnesses associated with raw milk consumption and that the risk for illness associated with raw milk consumption is far greater than determined based on the occurrence of recognized outbreaks.”

Those 20,502 supposed illnesses grow out of a handful of recorded illnesses in Minnesota during the decade 2001-2010--five outbreaks that resulted in seven hospitalizations and one case of hemolytic uremic syndrome--a total of 21 illnesses over ten years. How was the Minnesota Department of Health able to turn 21 reported illnesses into 20,502?