The Milx: The Life and Illnesses of Organic Pastures

by The Editor

A really bad logo.

The other day I ran across an article from The Business Journal about a local dairy company that has had their milk recalled after testing positive for Salmonella. I encourage you to read that article first (it's pretty short and I'm going to talk about it throughout this post.) The article is pretty impartial and tells both sides of the story (including why the dairy thinks Salmonella showed up.)

This caught my eye because, only a few days before, Organic Pastures (the local dairy company involved) had just started following GBF on Twitter. So I quickly checked out their Twitter page to see how they were handling the recall. It was there that I discovered this tweet.

This tweet has since been deleted (thanks to the heckling of yours truly) probably because Organic Pastures doesn't want to be seen encouraging people to drink it's contaminated milk. This fits with their position that a "sample sent to [their 3rd party laboratory] tested negative." But still, they tested positive at one location which means you *should* try to protect people as much as possible and not tell them to drink contaminated milk.

Which led to this exchange.

Tweets don't count as journalism so they must be talking about The Business Journal whom we had retweeted. But their article is not "bad journalism". Couldn't figure that one out. Regardless, don't just cry "bully" because someone figured out you're an asshole.

But I did decide to "get the facts". Here's what I found. (source: foodsafetynews.com)

October 2015 – Organic Pastures raw milk recall and quarantine after CDFA inspectors found Campylobacter as a result of product testing conducted as part of routine inspection and sample collection at the facility. 

September 2012 – Organic Pastures raw milk recall and quarantine after CDFA inspectors found Campylobacter bacteria as a result of product testing conducted as part of routine inspection and sample collection at the facility. 

January-April 2012 – Organic Pastures products linked to campylobacter outbreak. Raw milk, raw skim milk, raw cream and raw butter were recalled and the dairy quarantined after the confirmed detection of campylobacter bacteria in raw cream.
State officials identified at least 10 people with campylobacter infections throughout California. They reported consuming Organic Pastures raw milk prior to illness onset. Their median age was 11.5 years, with six younger than 18. The age range was nine months to 38 years. 

August-October 2011 — Organic Pastures products linked to E. coli outbreak.
A cluster of five young children with E. coli O157:H7 infections with matching pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns was identified. Illness onsets were from Aug. 25 to Oct. 25. All five children reported drinking commercially available raw milk from a single dairy, Organic Pastures, and had no other common exposures.
Investigations by the CDPH’s Food and Drug Branch and the California Department of Food and Agriculture showed environmental samples collected at Organic Pastures yielded E. coli O157:H7 isolates that had PFGE patterns indistinguishable from the patient isolates. 

September 2008 — Organic Pastures Grade A raw cream recall and quarantine after state testing and confirmation testing detected campylobacter bacteria in the cream. 

September 2007 — Organic Pastures Grade A raw cream recall and quarantine following laboratory confirmation of the presence of Listeria monocytogenes bacteria. CDFA inspectors found the bacteria as a result of product testing conducted as part of routine inspection and sample collection at the facility. 

November-December 2007 — Organic Pastures cows linked to Campylobacter outbreak. State officials found 50 strains of Campylobacter jejuni plus Campylobacter coli, Campylobacter fetus, Campylobacter hyointetinalis and Campylobacter lari when they cultured feces from Organic Pastures dairy cow feces.
There was only one patient isolate available for DNA fingerprinting, but it was identical to isolates from four cattle fecal samples collected at Organic Pastures. 

September 2006 — Organic Pastures linked to E. coli O157:H7 outbreak.
Six sick children were identified by state officials. Four had culture-confirmed infections, one had a culture-confirmed infection and HUS (hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can result in kidney failure and stroke), and one had HUS only. The median age of patients was 8 years, with a range of 6 to 18 years.
Organic Pastures’ operators claimed the illnesses were linked to consumption of fresh spinach that was linked to a separate E. coli outbreak in 2006.
However, the five children who consumed Organic Pastures’ products who had culture confirmation were laboratory matches to each other and the CDC reported their specific E. coli isolates “differed markedly from the patterns of the concurrent E. coli O157:H7 outbreak strain associated with spinach consumption.”

Not only do they have a long history of contaminated products (8 others in 10 years!), but they also have a history of shuffling off the blame.

So far, it looks like Organic Pastures has gotten off easy. According to the FDA, "raw milk" can contain "harmful organisms responsible for such diseases as listeriosis [they did test positive for listeria once and this stuff can cause meningitis], typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and brucellosis" and is "150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products." (source: The Motherf*ckin FDA)

And then Organic Pastures said this: "In 17 years of testing, OP has never had a positive Salmonella test result."

You should probably stop trying to obfuscate the fact that you just did! And---let's be honest---Salmonella is probably one of the lesser things you've tested positive for.

Own up to your mistakes. Protect your consumers.

You sell milk that is naturally predisposed to having harmful bacteria in it. Don't act all shocked when it does.

Anyways, what did GBF get for finding the "facts"?