The question every person should be asking about the debate over the illegal sale and consumption of unpasteurized milk is very simple: How could this possibly be happening in the 21st century? To be blunt, there were no "good old days" when it came to the harm that raw milk inflicted on thousands of people.
After 16 years in family medicine, I went into public health because I could no longer bear seeing people come to my office who were sick or dying of diseases that could have been prevented. Pasteurization prevents just such misery and death.
Durham County dairy farmer Michael Schmidt has been flaunting the laws of Ontario, illegally selling and distributing raw milk. Insisting on the right to sell unpasteurized milk amounts to demanding the right to inflict a health risk on Canadians.
As recently as last April, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Sheela Basrur, announced that another person was being treated for E. coli potentially linked to drinking raw or unpasteurized milk. That case involved a seven-year-old girl, and was the fourth in the Barrie, Ont., area alone.
Let's put this issue into perspective, without the rhetoric about free enterprise and back to nature as espoused by Mr. Schmidt, his supporters, a number of media outlets that should know better and, to my great dismay, Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara, who openly admits to owning a cow in an illegal production facility as an "investment."
In 1938, Ontario premier Mitchell Hepburn's Liberal government brought in a law to mandate the pasteurization of milk. All provinces now have this legislation, which was the end result of a crusade started by one of the founders of the Women's Institute -- Adelaide Hoodless, of Hamilton, Ont. In 1896, her 14-month-old son died of drinking contaminated milk. At that time, more than 10 per cent of all childhood tuberculosis was caused by unpasteurized milk. After the legislation was passed, tuberculosis rates and the rates of many other milk-borne diseases in children plunged dramatically.
Mr. Sorbara talks about the establishment of a "safe distribution system for raw milk." There never was, and cannot be, such a safe system. Unpasteurized milk has been one of the most dangerous sources of food poisoning since recorded time.
Dairy cattle get many diseases that can cause illness in humans: tuberculosis, brucellosis, listeria (which can trigger abortions in pregnant women), salmonellosis, diseases from E. coli (O157:H7, the same bacteria that killed seven people in Walkerton), campylobacter gastroenteritis, and staph and strep infections, to name a few. Cow's milk is not safe when it comes straight from the udder. These diseases are all passed through the cow and into its milk. No amount of clean animal husbandry can prevent this. We know this because, in the U.S. states that allow the sale of raw milk, disease and deaths from its consumption regularly occur. Some of those states are aggressively pursuing legislation to mandate the pasteurization of milk.
Is cow tuberculosis no longer a threat in milk? No. Every year, some dairy cattle in Canada test positive for tuberculosis. All TB needs to make a comeback is to have a lapse in preventive methods. Pasteurization kills the tuberculosis bacteria.
Unfortunately, new bacteria have found their way into our farms and food: E. coli O157:H7 is one of them. It first appeared in 1984 and is now found in at least 10 per cent of the cattle in Canada. It can be passed on by their feces contaminating other foods, milk and water.
This is not a matter of personal preference, where an adult's choice only harms that person. The outbreak in Barrie is only the most recent case in point. In 1981, a Peterborough couple headed home with the glowing reassurance that their babies -- a newborn boy and girl -- were healthy and normal. Within nine days, their girl, Stephanie, came down with salmonella muenster, a pathogenic bacterium frequently associated with raw milk. Stephanie died of salmonella meningitis. She had never drunk raw milk. It was learned that the mother of another baby in the nursery had drunk raw milk during her pregnancy; clinical tests showed that this mother was a carrier of salmonella muenster, although she herself showed no symptoms. She had transferred the infection to her infant, also an asymptomatic carrier, and the salmonella had passed from that baby to Stephanie.
The ongoing tragedy is that there are many stories like Stephanie's. Drinking raw milk puts others at risk. Because of public-health prevention, today's consumer doesn't see or experience the dirty diseases that we had 75 years ago. Therefore, many may be led to believe that all food is safe and secure. Nothing could be further from the truth. The recent experience with spinach and carrot juice demonstrates that no food, including organic food, is safe without proper screening.
And let me clarify: "Raw" milk is not the same as "organic" milk. The latter still has to be pasteurized to be legally sold.
This is not an anti-farming issue. My father sold farm machinery in Alliston, Ont., where I grew up and had my first summer jobs on dairy farms. The backbone of Canadian life is farming. This is a medical and public-health issue. I fully support the concerns and recent statements of Ontario's medical officers of health, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and other citizens and health-care professionals.
To bring in legislation to allow the sale and distribution of raw milk would be tantamount to manslaughter and taking Ontario back to the Dark Ages.
Murray McQuigge was the medical officer of health for the Grey Bruce Health Unit during the tainted-
water crisis in Walkerton, Ont.
He is now in private practice.