USDA: No known brucellosis infections in U.S. cattle

No U.S. cattle herds are known to be infected with brucellosis, and all states are listed as class-free for the disease, the Department of Agriculture announced in July.

Lyndsay M. Cole, a spokeswoman for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said that once again eliminating all known cases of brucellosis among cattle in the United States was a great step, but officials in her agency know work remains because bison and elk in Yellowstone National Park continue to be wildlife reservoirs of the causative organism.

"As long as there's that interaction between brucellosis-positive wildlife and livestock, there's always the possibility of disease," Cole said.

The entire United States was listed as class-free for brucellosis from February to May 2008, the first time in which all states were considered free of the disease since the cooperative state and federal brucellosis program began in 1934. Montana's brucellosis status was downgraded to class A following two reports of infected herds in 2007 and 2008, but USDA-APHIS announced in July the agency was restoring Montana's class-free status.

Both of the infected herds were in the Yellowstone area, USDA information states. State classifications are downgraded from class-free when at least two herds are found to be infected within two years.

Cattle movement restrictions increase as the state's classification decreases.

An annual nationwide brucellosis status report for 2008 states the loss of Montana's Class Free status showed the importance of vigilance against the disease.

"The presence of brucellosis in wildlife populations, such as the free-ranging bison and elk in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, remains a challenge, threatening the brucellosis status of surrounding states," the report states.

Cole said APHIS officials met with state authorities from Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in June, and state and federal government entities have been developing a brucellosis management plan for the ranches that surround Yellowstone.

A Brief History of Raw Milk

snip

With raw milk and whiskey being the main beverages of choice (hopefully not mixed!), demand for both grew along with the cities. When the War of 1812 broke out, the supply of distilled spirits from Europe essentially dried up. Although the conflict only lasted about two years, it's impact on our country was substantial, and strangely enough for milk, particularly nasty.

To meet the soaring demand for spirits, distilleries soon sprang up in most major cities. In one of the most bizarre twists of entrepreneurial insight, some brilliant soul thought it would be fun (and profitable) to confine cows adjacent to the distillery and feed them with the hot, reeking swill left over from the spirit-making process (3).

As you might guess, the effects of distillery dairy milk were abominable, and for many of those drinking it, amounted to a virtual death sentence. Confined to filthy, manure-filled pens, the unfortunate cows gave a pale, bluish milk so poor in quality, it couldn't even be used for making butter or cheese. Add sick workers with dirty hands, diseased animals and any number of contaminants in unsanitary milk pails and you had a recipe for disaster.

Lacking its usual ability to protect itself, and with a basic understanding of germs or microbes decades away, the easily contaminated "pseudo-milk" was fed to babies by their unwitting mothers. In New York City during 1870 alone, infant mortality rocketed to around 20% and stayed there for many more years (4).

The Distillery Dairy page mentioned above contains links to articles in the New York Times archives which enable you to 'read all about it' in the language of the era.

The situation languished for years until two men stepped up to the plate from different directions, united by a disaster common in the day- the death of a child.

In 1889, two years before the death of his son from contaminated milk, Newark, New Jersey doctor Henry Coit, MD urged the creation of a Medical Milk Commission to oversee or "certify" production of milk for cleanliness, finally getting one formed in 1893 (5).

By joining with select dairy experts, Coit (above, treating babies in New Jersey) and his team of physicians (unpaid for this work, by the way) were able to enlist dairy farmers willing to meet their strict standards of hygiene in the production of clean, certified milk.

After years of tireless effort, raw, unpasteurized milk was again safe and available for public consumption, but it cost up to four times the price of uncertified milk.

New York philanthropist Nathan Straus, who lost a child to milk contaminated with diphtheria, felt differently. He believed the only safe milk was that which had been pasteurized.

Straus (at right) made a fortune as co-owner of Macy's department stores and spent decades promoting pasteurization across America and Europe.

Using his considerable finances, he set up and subsidized the first of many "milk depots" in New York City to provide low-cost pasteurized milk (6).

While infant mortality did fall dramatically, other technological advances, such as chlorination of water supplies and reduction of previously ever-present horse manure (through the arrival of the automobile) occurred in the same time period making it difficult to say which change was most responsible.

Pasteurized and certified milks managed to peacefully co-exist for a time, but by the mid-1940's, the truce had become decidedly uneasy. In 1944. a concerted media smear campaign was launched with a series of completely bogus magazine articles designed to spark fear at the very thought of consuming raw milk (7).

Government officials and medical professionals, swayed by corporate dollars and lies, have effectively taken this valuable, healing food from the mouths of the people. Only in recent years has the consumer backlash against valueless processed foods grown to the point where access to clean, raw milk is once again being considered a dietary right.