CDC information on raw milk :

Web Link

chicken heads for broth? yuck

Raw whole milk is great!
The CDC and FDA are full of ---.
Soon cheap DNA profiling will identify pathogens.
The will have to back down.
Congratulations, Christina!

Love Real Food Bay Area as it gives me access to Grassfed beef and pastured pork without the inestment on a full steer and at reasonable prices. I also love the pastured eggs and raw milk. Thanks for all your work and dedication Chrisina!

"Part of raw milk's richness is because, as Hildebrand put it, consumers are getting exactly what the cow produces. Most pasteurized whole milk sold in stores has had the cream separated from the milk, and just enough added back in to meet the mandated percentage of fat to qualify as whole milk."

Both raw milk and whole milk must have at least 3.5% fat content. Both may have cream about 3.5% removed.

"We're lucky in California because (raw milk) is legal and it's being tested on a regular basis. All raw milk dairies have a clean record. They can't afford not to have clean milk."

Oops :

In mid-September 2006, the parent of one of the two children hospitalized with HUS notified CDFA that both children had consumed raw skim milk from dairy A in the days before illness onset. CDFA notified CDPH and the local health departments of the reports. Dairy A, a licensed raw milk dairy, sells raw milk, raw cream, raw butter, raw cheese, raw colostrum,* and kefir throughout California at retail stores and nationwide via Internet sales, all under a single brand (brand A).

Six cases were identified; four persons had culture-confirmed infections, one had a culture-confirmed infection and HUS, and one had HUS only. The median age of patients was 8 years (range: 6--18 years), and four of the patients (67%) were boys. The six cases identified during this investigation were geographically dispersed throughout California. All six patients reported bloody diarrhea; three (50%) were hospitalized.

Five of six patients reported they had consumed brand A raw dairy products in the week before their illness onset; the sixth patient denied drinking brand A raw milk, although his family routinely purchased it.

Have been using RFBA for a couple of years now. I live in Saratoga and used to have to drive to Palo Alto once a week to try to get Raw Goat milk, the only milk I can eat. Usually, by the time I got there, it was gone off the shelves.

Now I can get my raw goat milk every week by just popping down to Los Gatos.

Thanks you again, Christina!!!!

In the 2006 incident, "Dairy A" is Organic Pastures. But Claravale has had issues too :

March 2012 - "Lab tests have confirmed the presence of Campylobacter bacteria in raw cream from Claravale Farm in California, according to state officials who have quarantined and issued a statewide recall notice for all the raw milk, raw nonfat milk and raw cream produced by the San Benito County dairy."

"Most people who become ill with campylobacteriosis get diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever that typically lasts one week. Some infected persons do not have any symptoms.

About one in every 1,000 reported Campylobacter illnesses leads to Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), which can result in paralysis. According to CDC estimates, as many as 40 percent of GBS cases in the U.S. may be triggered by campylobacteriosis."

Web Link

People can get sick from eating literally anything. Maybe we should put everything in a giant autoclave so that we will all be safe from germs.

RFBA has been my one stop shop for years. No need to look for raw dairy products and organ meats anywhere else. Excellent job Christina. Thanks for what you are doing.

I don't know why the CDC is in the business of badmouthing specific types of products, but that is exactly what they have done with the study mentioned in the comments. Please make informed decisions. The FDA and CDC should hardly be the final word on products in the market as they are influenced by policy and pressures often made by people who don't know science from fiction. Below are some alternate views on the CDC report:
Web Link
Web Link

Oh, and as a response to Jonah about how raw milk and pasteurized milk must meet the minimum 3.5% fat content; Yes, they both CAN have the cream removed from it, then added back in to reach the minimum fat content. Nevertheless, this process is standard in the pasteurized milk industry, while it is not typically done in the raw milk industry (as a matter of fact, I don't know of a single raw milk dairy that does this, but I'm not an industry expert, so my experience is limited).

I love RFBA. I admit I was a little nervous about raw milk at first, but now I consume it everyday and LOVE it. My son who is lactose intolerant has NO problem with raw milk. I also only use raw milk cheese, and I LOVE the corn free, soy free eggs and meat, and the sprouted raw almond butter.

I haven't eaten this well or been this healthy in a long time, which is NOT a coincidence!

For people who don't want to consume raw dairy, then don't. I don't know why Jonah is trying to scare people. My family and I have used raw dairy for years without a single problem, and as I said, we're healthier than ever! THANK YOU Christina!!

This is a great service and one that promotes health!

Happy customer since the very beginning. Thank you Christina for the great job!

I have been buying and consuming raw milk from Real foods bay area for the last 4 years (Claravale raw milk to be specific). The milk is rich, creamy and tasty and reminds me of good whole milk from India.

Thanks fo Christina for making raw milk so easily available.

We live in San Carlos and are sooo grateful to RFBA for giving us a direct connection with our amazing local farmers...the true healers of our time.

Christina, thank you for providing excellent milk and eggs to my family! My daughter since one was drinking raw goat milk from Claravale farm. We never had a problem! Now we regularly purchase soy free, corn free eggs! Thank you for making all these products available to us!

Thanks to Christina's passion my community, Gilroy, has access to healthy, clean foods. These include raw milk, yogurt, grass fed beef, pastured no soy, no corn chicken, all of which we enjoy on a regular basis.

I love RFBA! I was looking for raw milk for so long and I am so happy I found Christina! Not only that the milk is so good, and I also get wheat free bread that is delicious, but Christina is so personable and she is helping all of us like we would be her family. I am so grateful for what she is doing for our health. I am recommending to all clients to check Real Food Bay Area.

I use RFBA weekly for milk and occasionally for other things like bones for stock, eggs, raw honey, etc. It's a wonderful resource for people wanting to eat actual food and avoid processed food-substitutes. Real raw milk has been a game changer for me - I've always loved dairy, but it wasn't until I tried real milk (instead of the white processed stuff we've all started calling milk in the last few generations) that I understood both how good it can taste and how good it can be for the body. My skin has improved dramatically since switching to raw Jersey milk. It's better for the cows too! Pasteurized milk often comes from unhealthy cows. For those worried that raw milk is "dangerous", I ask you: should you and your family avoid raw vegetables? Because there have been a lot more spinach recalls than there have been raw milk recalls.

Here's some corrective information about the alleged 2006 raw-milk problem. California officials were unable to find a single pathogen at Organic Pastures. It's interesting that there are so many recalls of pasteurized milk products. Should we stop eating anything that's been pasteurized out of health concerns? I'll give a link for the text quoted below at the bottom of this post.
- - -
"The September 2006 E.coli spinach outbreak provides another example. Over the past eight years, Organic Pastures Dairy of Fresno, California has sold over 40 million servings of raw milk without one case of illness; during the same period the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued at least 19 recalls of pasteurized milk products in California. Frequent testing by Organic Pastures, the state of California, and the veterinary departments of local universities has failed to detect even a single human pathogen in the milk."

"Yet in September 2006, after four children who had consumed raw milk and also raw spinach or sushi became ill, state officials ordered the dairy to shut down. All Organic Pastures products were recalled. Officials performed over 2,000 tests of the entire dairy operation, including swabs taken from the 300 cows, the farm, the manure and the equipment, without finding a single pathogen. The raw dairy products are now back on store shelves, yet many state health officials continue to report that Organic Pasture’s raw milk caused illness due to E. coli."
- - -
Some other interesting statistics in the article:

"Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:

31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)
- - -
Web Link

Here's some corrective information about the alleged 2006 raw-milk problem. California officials were unable to find a single pathogen at Organic Pastures. It's interesting that there are so many recalls of pasteurized milk products. Should we stop eating anything that's been pasteurized out of health concerns? I'll give a link for the text quoted below at the bottom of this post.
- - -
"The September 2006 E.coli spinach outbreak provides another example. Over the past eight years, Organic Pastures Dairy of Fresno, California has sold over 40 million servings of raw milk without one case of illness; during the same period the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued at least 19 recalls of pasteurized milk products in California. Frequent testing by Organic Pastures, the state of California, and the veterinary departments of local universities has failed to detect even a single human pathogen in the milk."

"Yet in September 2006, after four children who had consumed raw milk and also raw spinach or sushi became ill, state officials ordered the dairy to shut down. All Organic Pastures products were recalled. Officials performed over 2,000 tests of the entire dairy operation, including swabs taken from the 300 cows, the farm, the manure and the equipment, without finding a single pathogen. The raw dairy products are now back on store shelves, yet many state health officials continue to report that Organic Pasture’s raw milk caused illness due to E. coli."
- - -
Some other interesting statistics in the article:

"Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:

31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)
- - -
Web Link

It is wonderful to find Christina bringing up her children with an attitude that is natural and is to most people in Europe to drink and eat products that are natural and not manipulated. Why would one want to buy milk that has Vitamin A&D added when it is a whole food, same with meat that is full of Antibiotics and growth hormones and worse, when you can get organic meat free of all that. I am lucky I grew up when chemical fertilizers did not exist and now live close to an organic farm and can get all the dairy produce raw, vegetables in Season and cheeses and meats and eggs in a community that is the third largest place for Hedge Funds in the world after New York and London.

RFBAwesome! Helps me have access to things I otherwise couldn't find or purchase, such as duck eggs, pastured meats, broths. So glad there's a service like this!

""Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:

31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)"


So....you're saying the SAME amount of people who eat poultry, beef, eggs, produce and seafood also drink raw milk? I never knew that, this is indeed interesting information.

You'd think with the 24 Billion (24,000,000,000) pounds of beef processed in the US every year, and raw milk consumption being even MORE than that (factor in those other things people eat) Safeway or Costco or somebody would get in on that action.

USDA figures say 30,000,000,000+ lbs of produce are consumed in the US every year (2012,last year I could find stats for...)

Crazy. Not even half the list and were already over 50 BILLION lbs of raw milk consumed in the US. (figure 8lbs/gallon for milk, give or take to get a better measure, since it's liquid)

That's still billions and billions and billions of gallons of raw milk consumed by people in the US every year. I guess politics must be keeping grocery chains out of the raw milk business. Big Lacta probably has tons of lobbyists in DC as well.

Sparty, you set up a straw man and knocked him down to puff yourself up in the eyes of the public. Pitiful just pitiful. You wrote "So....you're saying the SAME amount of people who eat poultry, beef, eggs, produce and seafood also drink raw milk?" However, the person to whose comments you were reacting did not say or write what you alleged. You made yourself look like a fool with your weak straw-man ploy.

So... unequal amounts of consumption make the food illness stats posted relevant in what way?

BTW that's not "strawman" that's "apples and oranges."

At best listing those illnesses to compare the safety of raw milk to other foods is like saying commercial air safety was better in the 1920s than the 1970s because so many more people died in air crashes during the 1970s

Raw milk is good for some but not needed by all. This is a good option for those who need raw milk. Nobody has to accept it as good for everyone, and nobody has to paint it as bad for everyone. It is an option for those who want it, so what's the problem now? Everyone doesn't believe what you do? Get used to it Martha. Live your life and let others live theirs.

I love living in the Bay Area because of our access to beautiful, high-end food and I've eaten many wonderful foods of excellent quality as a result. However, trekking everywhere to purchase all these foods takes time, so I tried RFBA to simplify my grocery shopping. I was skeptical because of my standards, but wow, was I ever blown away. Each and every product we tried stands as one of the best in their category we've ever eaten. I found myself on each supplier's website looking at their practices and processes and looking for additional products to purchase. It appears RFBA has an excellent vetting process that saves you time and brings you products that are absolutely delicious. I recommend this organization highly and hope an organization like this will further the cause for real food.

We have been using RFBA for our raw milk for four years and I love it. We started out with an order of 4 quarts a week. We are now up to 14 because my kids love it so much. After much research, I had realized pasteurized milk was not only unhealthy but also detrimental to us. I have Crohn's and dairy always upset my digestion. I have no such problems with raw milk. And it was a lifesaver when I had my daughter and wasn't able to breastfeed. I hated giving her store bought formula and with the amount she was throwing up, she hated it too. Luckily, I found a recipe for a homemade raw milk formula and she has thrived on it. Even our pediatrician, skeptical at first, is amazed at how healthy and robust she is. Raw milk tastes amazing, has amazing health benefits and is better for the cow and the environment. Win Win Win! Thank you RFBA and Claravale for our raw milk. I love sharing what raw milk can do and am happy to have converted several people away from pasteurized and into our raw milk community.

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