9UNP0426SD_Scott Rankin_WordPress

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- Deb Nelson: Good morning. Welcome to today's second Day on Campus: Food Summit lecture. My name is Deb Nelson. I serve as the senior director for US chapters and volunteer training at the Wisconsin Alumni Association and once again WAA is pleased to be partnering with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It is an extremely popular program that was inspired by UW's common book program, Go Big Read, and its inaugural book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." We're excited to welcome Dr. Scott Rankin from the Department of Food Science at UW-Madison. Dr. 

Rankin earned degrees in food science from Brigham Young University and Oregon State University. He's currently an associate professor at UW-Madison where he chairs extension programs in dairy foods manufacturing and conducts research focusing on the flavor and color of dairy foods. He's the recipient of the 2004 ADSA Foundation Scholar Award and the 2006 ADSA Food Specialties Award. He's been a judge at the World and US Cheese Championship contests. That sounds fun. And has also judged at the American Cheese Society cheese competitions. He's a member of the American Dairy Science Association, the Institute of Food Technologists and the American Chemical Society. Please join me in welcoming Professor Rankin as he presents his presentation, "Raw Milk Consumption." Professor Rankin. 
(applause)

- Scott Rankin: Thank you and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you today and to present on this particular topic. I'm going to walk around a little bit if that's okay. Does my mic pick up all right? Still can hear me all right? 
- 
(inaudible)
 
- Rankin: Very good in the second row, that's good to know. 

Can you hear me in the back all right? Okay. I'm kind of a walker, I guess it's just my nature. So please bear with me in that regard and I'll keep the focus guy busy back there with the camera. So let's see, raw milk consumption. It's certainly been a topic of a lot of attention for the last few months here in Wisconsin and really over a century, perhaps centuries old in terms of a topic. We've been heating milk and drinking raw milk for as long as cows have been around, and well, mammals have been around, perhaps. So I'm going to go through this and I have to admit, my opinions on the topic have matured over the years. Coming out of school, you've learned a great deal about microbiology and one of my minors is in microbiology and you learn about some terrific diseases. In fact, one of my first calls when I took my first position at the University of Maryland was from a Navy SEAL. 

Do you guys know what a Navy SEAL is? 
- All: Yes. 
- Rankin: These are these Rambo types that are out there, frontline, and he called me and asked me where he could get a source of raw milk because that was the basis of his great strength and virility. 
(laughter)
 So from cutting my teeth on that to the bill that passed this morning about 3:00 AM, a lot of different ground has been covered in the topic of raw milk and milk pasteurization. So at the outset I want you to understand, and I do as well, that this is a controversial topic. There is no debating that as such. It is perhaps some common ground that we do agree on. It is very polarizing. There are people who are, "Over my dead body will we allow this. 

Over my dead body will I give up that." So some very, very polarizing opinions on the topic. So I recognize that. It's also a very, very complex one. And I'll, in the next hour or two, no hour, I promise, will go over some of these things, but some of them we just won't touch in the context of this hour. This phrase, "know the facts," guess which side is proclaiming "know the facts"? 
- Both. 
- Rankin: Yeah, both sides are proclaiming that very, very thing. So I've stood up and proclaimed the gospel of microbiology and diseases and terrible outcomes only to be confronted with, "Scott, you need to know the facts about raw milk and how good it is." So you recognize that that phrase, that platform is being used by both sides. 

And indeed over the last two decades there's a terrific movement on the topic of allowing raw milk sales here in the US. There is a small risk, small rate of illness from raw milk. That is a, what I would proclaim, my understanding, my knowing the facts, I believe both camps would be in agreement with this. There is a small risk. And I'm going to present data that will demonstrate that very thing. The illnesses are not inconsequential and not inexpensive. If you're a dairy farmer, look at your assets very carefully. Look at your assets very carefully. And understand how they might be encumbered in a large lawsuit. Be cautious with the application of science. 

So, again, both parties, know the facts. But I have to be a scientist here. And I've said in many, many committees, many, many presentations where people have criticized my science, and I have to extract my ego from that, hear their comments and perhaps my science is better now. So it is a practice that that is what science is. It is where we proclaim publicly what is out there, we make our best efforts, but to have a contradictory statement is not to be taken personally, it is to be taken in the context of improving our understanding and the application of science. So be cautious of the application of science. Just an outline, a little bit of historical detail on pasteurization, food law climate. A little phrase IFP, should I take credit for that? I don't know, but, what the heck, I will today, IFP. We'll go over that. 

I'll talk the pro-raw camp, the pro-pasteurized camp, science and inference and how we'll use that, the big bills and where do we go from here. A little bit on the history of pasteurization. I'll just sort of zing through this. I teach several courses, short courses on milk pasteurization. In order to pasteurize milk in Wisconsin legally you need to be certified to do so. You have someone who is skilled in the art at the pasteurizer in order to legally operate. And I teach the certification class for the industry on the topic. So I know a little bit about the history here. And we go back time wise. 1824, very early scientists, very early microbiologists were recognizing the role of heat treatment of milk. 

And back in the day it was, hear this phrase, tendency to decompose was diminished in the milk. So you heat it and the milk is just going to last longer. And you look at that old, old literature. And this was a very popular topic to write upon. We weren't getting sick because of raw milk. This was before germ theory. And the reason we got sick is because our family had a curse. We didn't go to church twice on Sunday. I lied. And now the penalty is I'm sick now. 

So our understanding of how illnesses existed was not in place then. So why were we heating the milk? To preserve it. To make sure it lasted longer. Because, indeed, raw milk or any milk had a very short shelf life. And if you look at, read some of those old documents, they're talking about after all this work, we're very successful, the milk could last 24 hours. A shelf life of 24 hours, what a great accomplishment. And that was there, so this is pre-refrigeration, this is pre- a lot of germ theory and sanitation and so forth. So recognize back in the day why we were heating milk. You should recognize this name. 

Sweetened condensed milk. That product was a patent about how to preserve milk. That's really what it is for, it was preserving milk. 150 years ago. So we still see his name right on the Eagle Brand product. Louis Pasteur and a colleague in 1862. This was an era where the germ theory, that phrase germ theory, was a hypothesis. And it was starting to gain a foothold on the world of science. We were starting realize that, you know what, it wasn't about a curse on our family or this or that, it was because, you know what, the cows are not healthy right now and, boy, we're not so healthy either. So they started to make links like that and Pasteur was one of the ones that really provided, contributed some science that really pushed that over the edge. 

It went from a theory to really, you know what, this really sticks. And that was really Louis Pasteur's great accomplishment, great contribution on that front. -- these are names that if you've ever had a course in food science, in food analysis, you might recognize those names. They were scientists of the day. And their names are tied with a lot of current tests that we use. So as the topic matured we started to recognize it wasn't just stability but it was also disease. We used a method called flash pasteurization. It was simply, get the milk real hot and cool it down. It was just, boom, done. And that was the method of pasteurization. 

First commercial system, again, over a hundred years ago. And Denmark, in this era, was pasteurizing around these temperatures, and 85 degrees Celsius was a Dutch requirement. So if you were in a processing plant, the milk had to be heated to 85 Celsius, end of story. So it was kind of our first regulation in terms of how milk was handled. 1893, in US, first commercial pasteurization system was installed. So again, over a hundred year history in the US. And the controversy really started to take flight. Again, during this era, just going down the timeline, milk-born diseases are noted. So now we're starting to put cause and effect together. Specific illnesses with specific diseases, specific outcomes. 

A couple of gentlemen here, Koplix and Strauss, a pediatrician. So in many cases these milks were presented and were certainly recognized as a great source of nutrition. And many of these were going to orphanages where the milk was not handled very well. And mortality rates in these orphanages was like 30% back in the day. Extremely high. And so pediatricians of the day, including this gentleman, were in that front line trying to understand why, how, let's prevent this in the illness. So pediatrician and a philanthropist who had the money and said, you know what, we're going to solve this problem, we have no need to have this. And this is in New York City so certainly their vim and vigor towards attacking this. So heat milk before feeding to infants was a real theme of the day. And they had the establishment of these milk depots where they put the milk in bottles, they heat it up to very hot temperatures and free milk or very inexpensive milk for the masses. 

Great source of nutrition and we weren't causing any disease. The raw versus heated milk debate starts heating up, and, even in this era, very little of the milk is actually being pasteurized of all the milk that's being consumed. In the early 1900s, Park and Holt published a study, and this is before human subject committees are in place. So they have two pools of infants. One group is getting pasteurized milk, one group is getting raw milk. And they clearly demonstrate, this was a controversial study that showed kids who drink raw milk, very high rate of illness. Kids who drink pasteurized milk, very, very low rate of illness. And that is, again, this foothold that just kept pushing and launching more efforts on the pasteurized side. So 1902, previous to this study, about 5% of the milk is pasteurized. So very little. 

After the study and a few other accomplishments, high 80s. So because of these types of studies that really demonstrated the role of pasteurization. The hold method began, so in other words we have temperatures up until this point and they started to recognize that killing bacteria in milk was a lot like earning interest in a bank account. Had to be a rate, had to be there for some time too. So in terms of pasteurizing milk, has to be at a temperature, but it has to be held at that temperature for a certain time to affect the right lethality. And we even now, standing here, looking back, the microbiologists of this day and era look back and say, great accomplishment. Of all the accomplishments in the food industry and the food science realm, food microbiology, we look back and say we really had a big impact on human health, human illness and so forth, i.e. the application adoption of pasteurization to milk. A couple other details, a New York milk committee appointed national committee on milk standards and they embraced the 145 for 30 minutes which is the time and temperature we have today. A federal group that still exists today surveyed, so this is 1920, surveyed 4200 milk processing plants and found that none of them really did the job properly. 

In other words, there was so much variation, how they were designed, how they were operated, who's doing what. They found that, you know what, none of them really met standards. So that promoted this idea that they needed to come up with some standardization. This temperature and time was also, they kind of pulled it out of the air a little bit. Not a great deal of science behind that. And so entered what was called the famous Endicott experiment. This is the Manhattan Project of the dairy world. The Endicott experiment. And it is also in New York. So Crank, who was a researcher with Borden and a public health official, got together and crafted this study and said, you know what, we need to figure this out. 

We need to know the temperature and the time to really provide some definition to that. So they did just that. So they had about 25 microbiological experts, several different pathogens, thousands of guinea pigs. There's a story that they were doing most of this work on Mycobacterium tuberculosis at the time, and they were dumping all their experiments in the river and everybody downstream was getting ill. But that's another side of the story. Nonetheless, they came up with the first real definitive time and temperature for heat treatment of milk. 142 Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. And it was just, here is a number, here is the data, end of story. And it's a basis, it's really based in math. And some behavior of how bacteria die when they're exposed to heat. 

So now regulatory authority starts to increase. I've had the chance to travel a lot in my day, and you go to some countries where the regulatory surveillance is once a year, somebody shows up, we hand them a basket of yogurt and milk and we never see them again. Not here. And not in Wisconsin. Regulatory authority is extremely high. These gentlemen walk around with badges. If push comes to shove, all of a sudden, federal marshals are showing up. Your plant is closed, you're in jail. So they have an enormous amount of authority. HTST appears. 

This stands for "high temperature, short time." And this is most of the milk we process is processed via this technology. And I'll talk a bit about that. 1937, Coxiella burnetii is first described, Q fever, and the idea that this microorganism is more heat resistant than Mycobacterium tuberculosis. So they repeated those types of studies and came up with the idea that this microorganism is more heat resistant. So it went from 142 to 145 Fahrenheit. And that's what we have today, 145 Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. We also started to understand the influence of milk components. In other words, if it was fluid milk versus ice cream mix. And ice cream mix has lots of milk fat, lots of solids. 

That ice cream mix provided some insulation, some protection for the bacteria so we had to ratchet those numbers up. These standards that were established in the '50s still hold today. You can look up these numbers in the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and other documents. And they're fairly well-adopted globally. So you go to another developed country, they have very similar standards in terms of time and temperatures. Here's the legal definition for pasteurized milk. It says, "the process of heating every particle of milk to a legal pasteurization temperature and holding it continuously at or above that temperature for at least the specified legal holding time in equipment that is properly designed and properly operated." And I've been a in a lot of courtrooms giving testimony that have this basis and this very, very simple sentence that holds a tremendous amount of weight in terms of, did you meet pasteurization? Here's a little schematic of what a pasteurizer looks like. I'm just going to zip through this in the interest of time. 

Here's a little pasteurizer we have here on campus in Babcock Hall. Here's our pasteurizer, kind of what it looks like. They are fairly complex systems. So properly designed, properly operated, does not come with an hour's worth of exposure. You really need to understand some of these systems, and they are, in fact, very, very complex. A little bit on the food law climate. Pasteurization requirement for most finished dairy products in interstate commerce. So all it says is, in the US finished dairy foods have to be pasteurized if they're going across state lines. So the federal government says if you're processing something in Wisconsin, it's going to Minnesota, it has to be pasteurized. It's not a state product anymore, it's a federal one now because it's crossing state lines, and the requirement is, most dairy foods have to be pasteurized. 

There are some exceptions on raw milk. So if you're making a raw milk cheese, rather, that has certain compositional standards, certain aging standards. So the best example of this is parmesan cheese. Parmesan is relatively high acid, lots of salt, very dry, aged for two years, so it's a very, very tough environment for pathogens to survive in. So there is an allowance for such products. Cheddar cheese is another product. If it meets the standard of manufacture and aging requirements, it's another cheese type that can be allowed to be made in a raw fashion. There's an allowance that says if you own the cow, you can drink the milk. So if you own Bessie, you can get right out and squeeze to your heart's content and drink as much as you want. And that occurs. 

That's what most, probably safe to say that a large majority or a large minority, if not a majority, of dairy farmers in the US do just that. Increasing press and popularity of raw. So you look back 10 years, raw milk is popping up more and more, and right now in Wisconsin it's a real hot topic. 29 states right now allow some form of raw milk sales in interstate. So they allow some form of, go to the farm, buy raw milk. 29 states have some fashion, some law that allows that. We also recognize that there are a lot of under-the-radar sales. You don't tell, I don't tell. I sound like Bill Clinton. 
(laughter)

 So recognize that everybody understands that. Everybody knows that those types of practices do occur. And from a regulatory standpoint, that's a challenge. So now we're starting to gain the attention of those who have tremendous authority when those types of occurrences happen. Not only regulatory, those charged with insuring safe food, those in charge of extracting taxes, so Department of Commerce becomes a player here. There are some creative practices, bartering. You can have all the raw milk you want and you come by and fix our fence, this type of thing. There are cow share programs. So the idea is, you own your own cow, fine. So I live in the suburbs, a cow wouldn't be very popular on my front lawn, so what I can do is buy a share in a cow on a farm and own a part of that cow and have all the milk I want and there's a monthly handling fee. 

So understand that kind of law exists. There are also what are called pet food sales. So you go to the farmers market and they have quarts of raw milk for sale for Spot. You feed this to Fluffy. So they recognize that that occurs too. So pet food sales is another venue where that occurs. And also under the climate we're navigating the waters and implications of raw milk sales. So as a regulatory agency, as a Department of Commerce agency, as an academic institution, as a society, we're navigating these waters because of the interest in the product. So again, recognize strong regulatory authority, there's also a terrific political component to this if you haven't noticed over the last few months. Understand that in the eyes of US food law, this is like, go back a hundred years in Russia. 

You're guilty until proven innocent. You're guilty. So if you're making a food product, real broad stroke here, if you're making a food product and want to sell it to people, that food product is regarded as guilty. Not meeting the regulatory laws unless you prove it innocent. So you understand that? It's not an entitlement that you get to sell food just because you're a good person. It's guilty until you can document and prove that it's manufactured in a way that's going to be healthful. Standards of business versus government. I'll talk a little bit on this. It used to be that the majority of our regulatory criteria were governmental-based. 

Now, you could make a very strong argument, and I'll show you that that may not be the case in many instances. Also the role of insurance companies. To a great degree, as a so-called expert on dairy foods, I'm not hired by the companies, I'm hired by the insurance companies who are saddled by a fight on either side of this issue trying to navigate those waters. So recognize there's a big role of insurance companies, and we'll see that in a minute too. Food law climate. So everything is in the hand of Governor Doyle right now. He says he will consider all arguments put forth by farmers, consumers and health officials. He says everyone knows people who grew up on farms drinking raw milk and believe they're healthier and stronger for it. And I believe him. Everybody hears those kinds of comments. 

It's not at all uncommon to have that platform communicated to me. And I understand that. Governor Doyle adds there's also a system in which milk goes out to millions of people who have to be protected for health reasons. So he's got this thing to juggle now, doesn't he? So the vote passed, I think it was 60 to 35 in favor of the raw milk bill. And I suspect that's going to have some interplay on his decisions here. The role of businesses and insurance. So let's take a look, I hope this will work all right. I have a couple of websites we're going to visit. Here's one. 

So it's about Whole Foods. So if you recognize a Whole Foods. A very popular market. I eat there routinely. They have a great buffet. I'm putting a plug in for Whole Foods but it's a novel natural foods market. Very high-end products, very expensive. So here's their statement. Whole Foods and another alike market pull raw milk. So it used to be you could buy raw milk at Whole Foods. 

Now, they've retracted that. Could be forever, Whole Foods says. If you look down and start reading the fine print here, you'll see they make the standard comments. High risk. It's high risk for young, for elderly. If you scroll down a little bit here. Let's see. I want to hit on something here. Let's see. Okay, let's go right to this statement here. 

According to information from Whole Foods the company's decision to discontinue selling raw milk and raw milk products except for raw milk cheese that has been aged according to food safety standards is in large part based on high costs of liability insurance. So it's a business decision. Understand that? It is a business decision based on an insurance company, those schooled in the art of risk assessment and deciding on, they're making a business decision. This is an investment and they're going to have to make their return on that in terms of a court case or otherwise. So understand the role of insurance companies now in the food industry is tremendous. Here is another group. Raw milk notice. So this is another Whole Foods-like market. Raw milk notice. 

PCC has withdrawn fluid raw milk due to management's assessment of risk and liability. Very similar language for that very reason. It's an issue of liability. They represent thousands of stakeholders in their co-op and so forth so recognize that role. This is our friend Wal-Mart. You think Wal-Mart has changed the food industry? You better believe it. And so here's a statement made by them. Wal-Mart sets new rules for suppliers starting in China. So this is in the wake of our friend melamine and the big issues with melamine sprouting up in hundreds of products. 

Here are some quotes for this statement right on Wal-Mart's website. The world's largest retailer will require factories to certify compliance with laws and regulations. And what that means is, what they're saying is, they're not allowing you to certify it, they're hiring a third party auditor whose standards are that third party's standards coming into your company, and you know what, they're going to get access to everything they darn well please or guess what, you're not going to dance with Wal-Mart anymore. So here are some of their statements. Wal-Mart says it aims to push returns of defective merchandise virtually out of existence. So if you're not in compliance, you're on Wal-Mart's blacklist. So recognize, again I'm just making this point, that the industry has a big influence on itself in terms of regulating. Understanding the controversy. And so I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about what I'm going to call my IFP. And I stumbled across this years ago, someone else gets credit for it, but I can't remember who that was so I'm going to use it anyway though because it has some merit. 

So what I want you to understand here is this formula here. And I've written some items there that I think sort of help us understand the complexity of a variety of issues including raw milk. So if a product, if an issue is tied to happiness, add health, add children, plug science in, some contents of your rights in a democracy, money, shared stakeholder, put in Uncle Sam or DATCP or Department of Ag here and you generate the ideological freight potential. So do you understand this? So you add all these things up and you got a lot of freight here. Let me take you through some examples here. I don't mean any offense to the asparagus people, but let's kind of add up their IFP here. How many here, their happiness closely tied to asparagus? 
(laughter)
 A couple. 

Well, we'll forget them. But just for sake of argument, recognize this probably isn't one on my top 10 list in terms of happiness. Health? Children? Save your kids, eat asparagus. Science? Maybe. Rights? I demand my asparagus. Not a lot of them downtown here. 

Shared stake? I don't know, do I own part of that? Government? Get the federal government off of the asparagus grower's back? I don't see that either. So recognize this is very little on that scale. And I just want your brain to start wrapping around, so I'm going to show some other products. I just want your brain to start wrapping around these things. Let's talk about this one. So is the IFP inching up a little bit? 

(laughter)
 So if all of a sudden chocolate wasn't around, would you like, "We're moving to Canada where chocolate is free." 
(laughter)
 What about water? Especially in the stakeholder. It used to be, the crick that runs through the back of my plant, well, that's my crick, well, no it's not. That water, now we all have a stake in that water. What about coffee? Would we be better off without coffee? Federal government has determined that coffee can be hazardous to your health. 

Next time you try and get health insurance, do they ask you about coffee consumption? I don't know, maybe they do. But recognize here that its freight is going up. What about beer? 
(laughter)
 So a very controversial topic in the US. We're very careful around this topic, especially in Wisconsin. But recognize, IFP, you better be very careful in this realm. You better know the facts. You better be very prepared for a very complex... 

How about cigarettes? Maryland Cooperative Extension, where I worked at, they make all the seed for the tobacco growers in Maryland. State money, tobacco seed. Do you have a stake in that as a taxpayer? Grandma died of lung cancer? Maybe you do. So recognize the complexities of these types of topics. What about this one? This is an interesting one, isn't it? So, again, you get my point here. 

And here we are to raw milk. Now we can go through this list. Is it tied to happiness, consumption of raw milk tied to happiness? For some, you'd better believe it is. Navy SEAL, that's what makes me leap out of the helicopter at 100 feet. Tied to health? I'm inserting opinion here. Tied to health? You'd better believe it. Children? 

Again, we'll go down the list. Science, rights, shared stakeholder? Is there a pro side and an against side in the raw milk or in the dairy industry about pasteurization? You'd better believe it. Are they all the dairy industry? You'd better believe it. So very much a shared stakeholder concept here. So a lot of freight with raw milk. So, again, high IFP, very complex, very old, use of science on both sides. Will it ever be solved? 

And I just want to have you understand, I'm going to go on a soap box here in a minute, on the interpretation of science. Much of this is in the realm of risk analysis, and you'll see that quoted a lot. What was the quote? You have a higher risk of getting sick from drinking my raw milk than driving to the farm to get the raw milk. But we all take risks. I was at the ski lodge the other day with my boys, and about every hour someone's plastering into a pole somewhere and the ambulance is pulling up to haul them away. But I love skiing. So who does it hurt if I decide to drink raw milk? Look, I'm going to take risks. I get it, Dr. 

Rankin, I get it. But who does it hurt? Well, if it's a five-year-old kid, do they understand the complexity of that? If you get sick and your medical bills and you don't have insurance, or your medical bills exceed what your insurance company is going to do, do I, as a taxpayer, have a stake in that? So, again, there's some shared stakeholder issues here. Further in the complexity here. So very broad stroke numbers. 13,000, ballpark, number of dairy farms in Wisconsin. I'm going to say they have four people in each family. The standard Leave it to Beaver kind of family. 

Various studies show about half of the families drink raw milk. So I'm doing this. So I'm 13,000 times four times 50% times that many days, how many doses of raw milk is our state getting? Do you understand? How many doses are we getting? And I'll ask, where is the body count? Where is the body count? Where is this vast list of so terrible, so filled with, where is this long list of people getting sick? Thousands of thousands of doses every day. So understand that. 

There is a study done, a food net survey, which is a product of some efforts in CDC and otherwise, it says about three and a half percent, and this is in 2002, three and a half percent of those surveyed in this effort said in the last seven days they drank raw milk. So the inferences are that raw milk is not just something that, yeah, my crazy uncle Louie who lives in a cabin in the north woods and whatever. No, it's more of getting a foothold. Maybe it's even a tenth of that but times 300 million people, that's still a large number. So in favor of raw milk, I'm way behind on time here. Let's see. We can kind of go down this one. So organic pastures, very outspoken CEO leader of this company. Very, very aggressive on the California front in terms of working to craft legislation on raw milk. And this is on their website. 

And they have production practices. So a variety of ways of comparing conventional, certified organic, and raw. On a variety of different attributes. How it's processed. Nutrition. Food safety. And history, I guess, talking about how it's evolved. There's one here that I kind of like. I like this one. Here's conventional, organic, raw. 

Conventional, piles of manure. Organic, piles of manure. None created. 
(laughter)
 So I feel sorry for those cows. 
(laughter)
 But recognize, again, I'm a consumer, I'm trying to do my homework. Go to this site. It's very well crafted. It makes sense. 

I'm knowing the facts now. Other sites look similar to this. So I think just in the interest of time we'll just move on. Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is another sort of political component of this. Defending the rights and broadening the freedoms of family farms. And this could be cooperative extensions mantra up to this line. And protecting consumer access, and here's where we deviate a little bit, raw milk and nutrient dense foods. It sounds great, doesn't it? That's something I can get behind. Small farms, nutrient dense foods, it just makes sense. 

So very strong political lawyer-based, attorney-based or attorney-influenced effort to allow raw milk. Who's pro? Who's on the side of pasteurization? So each of these agencies has a statement about, "pasteurize the milk." CDC, FDA, American Medical Association, Academy of Pediatrics. These are long-standing trade and regulatory agencies whose job it is. Many of us have served on these boards. We don't have some hidden agenda like we want to control the world. We're trying to apply our best science. The best things that we know. 

Many people, including those in this room, know these people and they're charged with doing this. We're not out to ruin the world but recognize that many groups are in favor of pasteurization. The risks, and I have to give a little time to this, essentially a variety of tables and products out there that show simply that if you get raw milk and just start sampling it and looking for pathogens, 1% to 10% of the time you'll get a hit for one of these. Go around to the farms and 1% to 10% you'll get something. Things like Listeria, Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli. So they're out there. That's the conclusion that everybody comes to. All the science platform says, it is there. And if we ask what can we do to prevent them in the raw milk? 

Many things. Clean udders, clean dairies, modern facilities, good access to water and feed and on and on and on. But that wasn't my question. What can I do to eliminate them? On the raw side, insert sound of crickets chirping. What can I do on the science side to assure that that raw milk has no pathogens in it? There is no real production practice that allows us to reach that. Again, here's just a list of outbreaks tied to raw milk. So, again, you can go out and find lots of them. Here's a website that we're going to stop at. 

And it was crafted, in part, by those skilled in the art of working with juries. Skilled in the art of working with juries. So they're going to lay a drama card here and there. So I'll give you a warning about that. It's about four minutes long. Maybe we'll end on this topic or pretty close to it, but let's try and watch one of these videos. And this comes out now. I think they've added some sort of a blockage on this. Let's see if I can get it. 
- Today's October 21, 2001. 

What's your name? 
- Chris. 
- Your name is Chris? What's your last name? 
- Chris Martin. 
- Martin. Can you spell Martin? 
- The main reason that we tried raw milk was that Chris was very congested from pasteurized milk. And I did some research and went to some websites reading about raw milk, went to the dairy that sold the raw milk, and they have a lot of information about cows being fed grass and it couldn't have pathogens. They posted their results of all their testing, made claims that they have never found a pathogen in milk. 

And so I got lulled into a false sense of safety to try the milk. I think what people don't understand is when... 
(inaudible)
 It isn't a little diarrhea. You can die from a pathogen. And nowhere in my wildest dreams did I think drinking raw milk would make my child this ill and on the verge of death. 
(children singing)
 
- Chris was seven years old when this happened to him. Basically just starting his second year going into second grade or third year. 

And living, what I would consider, a great life, and I'm sure he would have told you the same thing. The next thing you know we're in the hospital, and he's trying to deal with the crisis of his life. Seven years old, dealing with the crisis of his life. Trying to hang on to it. You can't comprehend it. Because of what? Because he drinks milk? 
- Well, when a child is diagnosed with HUS and they have complete renal failure, the biggest concern is that the kidneys may never function again. And there are children and adults who reach that phase and their kidneys never function again. So we were thrilled when Chris first urinated for the first time. 

His kidneys didn't work right away, he still needed dialysis. But then it's the long-term complications. Yes, his kidneys are working, but will they work for the rest of his life? Many kids who have HUS when they're teenagers, their kidneys start not working and they hit stage one renal disease because the hormones and growth and there's changes. So there's been damage done to Chris' kidneys, we just don't know what that is. We're very fortunate right now that they're working, but that doesn't mean that they could not be working when he's 16 or he's 20 or he's 25. In the beginning, I blamed myself and I've come to terms with that. I've come to terms. I know it wasn't my fault. I've made the best choice with the information I had at the time. 

And that's what I hope about telling Chris' story for other people to know. The down side of choosing raw milk is that you can kill your child or yourself or a loved one that you may say, hey, I'm drinking raw milk, it's been great, why don't you try raw milk? The real risks of having pathogens in raw milk is terrifying. And our family learned the hard way, and I hope your family doesn't have to. 
(children singing)
 
- Rankin: Well, I warned you. But understand this is what the plaintiff is going to have in front of the jury. And it's very moving. Very, very potent stuff to have out in front. 

So recognize the dimension to this. Anyway, here's some science stuff that I was going to go through, but I think we're kind of out of time. Let me just end here with sort of my raw milk bill. So if I could re-craft the raw milk bill. So right now what it says is if a dairy in Wisconsin is going to sell raw milk, they have to be grade A, they have to register with the Department of Ag. I think this allowance is still in there, in other words it will sunset in the end of December 2011. You got to keep daily samples. They have to test for pathogens. They have a list of four or five pathogens. You're limited to advertising so you can't put an add in the State Journal saying, "come and get it." 

Required labeling and warning about dairy. But my add, require that they carry liability insurance. Put this decision in the hands of business. And not only to protect you, the farm, but to protect kids like that, and there are a lot of other videos in there. Some of those families don't have any financial means to support their kids under that kind of medical treatment. So anyway, I've about exhausted my time. I appreciate your time and attention. I'd be happy to address any questions you might have. 
(applause)