Page 101 - Summer 2017 Journal

says that the machine improved his cash flow “instantly.”7,14,21,22
Jeremy Holmes is another dairy farmer who owns a machine from DF Italia. The machine cost him nine thousand pounds ($11,400). He milks a mix of Holstein-Friesians crossed with Brown Swiss. He thinks the vending machine is “absolutely brilliant” and has probably saved his business. He notes that he pays the utmost attention to hygiene to ensure that the lab test results are “easily met.”7,14
Elwick dairy farmer Andrew Sturrock, a third-generation farmer of Home Farm, has launched a new vending machine that allows villagers to serve themselves with a “pinta” or two of the white stuff that has been freshly milked that day. It is the first of its kind in the North East. Sturrock bought the machine after seeing an item about it on the BBC Countryfile television program. Sturrock said that he “in- stalled the vending machine as a way of adding value to our products,” noting that “people love the taste and keep coming back.” Every morn- ing, Sturrock pours one hundred and twenty liters of raw milk from his one-hundred-and- eighty-head herd into the machine after it has been filtered and chilled. The Home Farm website shows a video of seven-year-old Louis Richmond purchasing milk from the machine on his tippy toes and, after the bottle is filled, taking a long slug and then giving the camera a million-dollar smile.23
In the UK, raw milk is not only the choice of smiling seven-year-olds and many Britons but also of the royal family. A recent report states: “Queen Elizabeth drinks her milk raw. She reportedly thinks so highly of unpasteurized milk that when her grandsons Princes William and Harry were students at Eton, she instructed herdsman Adrian Tomlinson to bottle up raw milk from her Windsor herd and deliver it to them at school.”24 Prince Philip also supports the consumption of raw milk.
RAW MILK SAFETY
What is the safety record for raw milk vend-
ing machines that have now dispensed thou- sands of liters of milk? In Slovenia, health of- ficials confirm that there have been no outbreaks of illness.9 In fact use of the milk machines may
SUMMER 2017
limit the potential for introduction of pathogenic bacteria because the milk goes straight from the cow to the dispenser without undergoing any intermediate processing,25 and the milk is kept at a constant temperature.8
With its large network of vending machines, there have been no re- ports of illness in Italy. Nonetheless researchers in northern Italy decided to examine milk samples from sixty machines on thirty-three farms that sell about three thousand five hundred liters of raw milk daily.26 When they used the method of testing (called an ISO test) that the region’s regu- lators rely on to check milk safety, the researchers found no pathogens. When they decided to use two additional testing methods—polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and modified bacteriological analytical manual (mBAM)—they detected the presence, in extremely small numbers, of Salmonella, Campylobacter jejuni, E. coli O:157 and Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (Map), leading the researchers to conclude that the standard ISO test is “not sensitive enough.” The researchers also found that “in comparison with milk samples collected from bulk tanks, the milk samples collected from vending machines showed a significant increase of total bacterial count ‘meaning that raw milk was mishandled during distribution and sale,’ perhaps due to lack of consistent temperature control.”26 However, they failed to disclose their methods for protecting the milk from contamination during collection of the samples.
Another Italian study conducted from 2009-2011 assessed six hun- dred and eighteen milk samples from one hundred and thirty-one vending machines for the presence of pathogens.27 They found that 0.3 percent of the samples were positive for Salmonella spp., 0.2 percent for E. coli O:157, 1.5 percent for Campylobacter spp. and 1.6 percent for Listeria monocytogenes. The researchers did not compare pathogen levels in raw versus pasteurized milk samples, nor did they consider the possibility that they themselves may have mishandled the milk. A study comparing the detection rates for these bacteria in similar samples of pasteurized milk or raw milk intended for pasteurization might furnish more credible information for risk assessment.
In early 2017, reports emerged of a Campylobacter outbreak in the UK’s South Lakeland District, sickening fifty-six people. Authorities associated the outbreak with milk from a raw milk vending machine, shutting it down pending further testing and investigation. No reports have been forthcoming to identify or confirm the source of the bacteria.28
The European Union watchdog for food safety—the European Food Safety Authority’s Panel on Biological Hazards—has its eye on raw milk. Clearly this is because of the growing consumer interest in the health benefits of raw milk consumption. The panel has been unable to quantify accurately the public health risks associated with drinking raw milk due to gaps in data (or shoddy records?). However, member state data on food-borne disease outbreaks point to twenty-seven outbreaks between 2007 and 2013 due to consumption of raw cow's or goat's milk. Most (78 percent) were caused by Campylobacter; others were caused by Salmonella, Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV). No further information is available regard- ing the outbreaks or their relationship to raw milk vending machines.9
Wise Traditions 101