Over the last thirty-plus years of practice, I have been a vocal advocate for robust public health involvement in disease prevention—especially foodborne illness. It is beyond me to comprehend why public health would remain mute in the face of at least 165 sick, 20 hospitalized, and 40 percent of the ill five years or younger—especially raw milk, a risky elixir. The more I think about this, the harder it is to figure out why public health would sit on the scientific fact that a food producer of a known high-risk food is sickening hundreds.
This includes overwhelming epidemiological evidence of the same WGS pattern in humans and milk. Setting aside the “food freedom” argument for a moment, people should be able to eat or drink what they want and feed their kids the same; what about simply informing the public of the facts and letting the public decide for themselves? CDPH Mission Statement: “To advance the health and well-being of California’s diverse people and communities.” CDPH failed in its Mission when it failed to alert the public that a producer of raw milk in the State of California had sickened at least 165 (likely larger) with Salmonella, Campylobacter, or E.
coli both in the State of California and three other unnamed States. And nearly 40% of those sickened were five or younger. All sickened by Salmonella people’s stool cultures were a whole genome sequence that matched each other to raw milk samples.
These facts would have been an opportunity to al.
