One short question: Is e. coli157:H7 the only issue of concern with the
pasteurization of milk in these instances?

Thank you

James Curts


"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

"Gordon Couger" wrote in message
news:3f0769c5$1_4@newsfeed...


When people visinting farms started getting e. coli157:H7 they tested
all
the dairy families and people who had been around cattle and found many
had
anybodies ageist it yet none had every had a fully expressed case of the
disease. The same is probably true for several other pathogens on the
farm.


While we were milking we got a letter from a chap at one of the
universities
who wanted to test our herd for e coli 157. The problem was, if we had
found
it, given the panic at the time, our milk buyer would have stopped
collecting it until we had treated all the animals, whereas as the milk
was
all pasteurised it isn't a problem anyway. So having them tested was a
no-brainer. I phoned the chap and had a chat with him and discovered
everyone else had worked this out as well.
The biggest problem with 157 is in the beef industry. Here it means that
slaughter cattle have to be clean before slaughter and by clean I mean no
muck buttons and no visible traces of muck. This means that these cattle
have to be trimmed out while still alive and there have been quite a few
people injured trying to do this.

In the US e. coli157:H7 is putting the pressure on pasteurizing
everything.
And if they force the little apple grower to pasteurize his apple juice
they
have to force everyone to pasteurize every thing. Every year or two we
have
a problem with unpasteurized milk. Often it is not from the dairy but on
of
the people handling the milk. But we don't have these problems from
pasteurized milk. From a public health point of view the answer is very
simple, pasture anything that can grow bacteria and you have less
disease.

I have never been able to under stand the panic that mad cow continues
to
cause when it caused about the same number of deaths that are cased by
unpasturised cheese. You defend one and wreck your economy over the
other.
I can understand the panic at the time but to continue the charade after
the
problem is understood is foolish.

Mad cow just cost Canada millions of dollars and there was never a
measurable risk to anyone. The US cattle market sure benefited from it.


The UK Food Standards Agency is consulting on getting rid of OTMS (for our
non-UK readers this is the Over Thirty Month Scheme where bovines do not
enter the food chain once they get over thirty months old but are
incinerated
instead.)

To maintain the current system is estimated to cost £736 million,
To go over to testing individual animals like the rest of Europe will
probably cost £48 million.
The estimate is that the OTMS scheme probably prevents 1 case of nvCJD a
year; out of 80+ a year anyway.

Interestingly Susan Myles et al have produced a paper quoted by the FSA
report. Basically you have to put a cost on the results of car accidents,
kidney
failure etc so you can do the equivalent of financial triage to put the
money where it will do most good.
It is estimated by the NHS that they have an average cost of £50,000 per
nvCJD patient. Susan Myles calculates the costs for the family at a median
cost of £32,000.

Hence currently we are burning £736 million to save one life and £82,000.
Admittedly this is not an uncommon sort of occurrence in the course of the
BSE epidemic.
Indeed at 90 cases a year, the cost is about £7.3 million. Given that
there
is as much emotional pain and suffering for families who's loved ones die
of
other diseases, I suspect that nvCJD is going to drop well down the list
for
research priorities and a lot of researchers who have made a good living
out
of the disease are going to have to find a new field of endeavour.

Jim Webster.

Gordon