Personal Injury Law

More on the Raw Milk Issue

By Food Poisoning Lawyer

In what seems like a near daily article on raw milk, I gave Georgina Gustin of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (my dad was a paper boy for them during the depression) a few choice words:

Bill Marler, an attorney who specializes in food-borne illness cases, recently represented two Missouri residents who were sickened by raw milk. One was a 1-year-old boy; the other, a 9-year-old girl. Both suffered acute kidney failure related to E. coli, and both drank raw goat's milk that was traced back to the same farm and bought from a store in Barry County that was selling the milk illegally. The cases were settled out of court.

Marler is currently representing two people from Connecticut, where retail raw milk sales are legal, who claim they were sickened by raw milk purchased at Whole Foods. Whole Foods has since decided to pull raw milk from its stores in states where it could sell it legally.

"I have not seen any scientific literature that supports a lot of the claims raw milk supporters cite," Marler said. "It's very anecdotal."

… But for others, the regulators are just performing their public health duties, trying to prevent illness. To some, new legislative efforts to relax raw milk laws could encourage more producers in the struggling dairy industry to get into the raw milk game and could result in health risks.

"There are raw milk producers who do a good job and don't poison themselves or their customers," Marler said. "But I guarantee you that as legislation expands … you'll have more low-end operators and more sick people."

This issue is not going away anytime soon.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on May 10, 2010 (boomark / email).