After reading yesterday s Dispatch entry addressing the public health concern over raw milk, ACSH advisor Dean Cliver, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, weighed in with this own expert opinion:
We solved the milk-borne disease problem a century ago in my opinion, any government that chooses to allow distribution of raw milk should also abdicate all of its other food safety regulations. No other food-safety measure is as well established and reliable.
Dr. Cliver further points out that the epidemiology linking disease outbreaks to raw milk, which can transmit bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, and listeria, is robust:
Fingerprinting has matched outbreak strains among people whose association was drinking raw milk from the same source, and the same pathogen strain has often been isolated from the milk and from animals on the dairy farm.