Children’s illness stirs Colorado debate on raw milk
At first, Mary Pierce thought her 2-year-old couldn’t stop throwing up because she had a typical stomach bug. A few days later, she watched in terror as the lethargic little girl was rushed by helicopter to The Children’s Hospital, her little kidneys shutting down.
Then Nicole’s 5-year-old brother, Aaron, fell ill, following her into the hospital and onto a dialysis machine. The cause of their potentially deadly illness: drinking raw goat’s milk from a local dairy.
“I’m not a typical Boulder person,” Pierce said. “We were just trying it because my son is allergic to dairy. We’re not going near it anymore.”
The outbreak in June that sent the Pierce children to the hospital for three weeks and sickened about 30 others has state health officials ramping up efforts to warn people against drinking unpasteurized milk.
Some are calling for a more restrictive state law that would further limit who is allowed to buy milk that hasn’t been cooked to kill bacteria such as E. coli and Campylobacter.
Raw-milk producers, meanwhile, are mounting a defense to protect what they say is a healthy, natural alternative to an American diet of overprocessed and sterilized food.
While Mary Blair McMorran, director of the Raw Milk Association of Colorado, feels “terrible” about what happened to the Pierce children, she points out “there is a risk with any food.”
“Look at the egg outbreak, the peanut butter outbreak, the spinach outbreak, the hamburger outbreaks that happen every week,” she said. “I know people who are feeding their babies raw milk because they can’t breast-feed.”
Not a good idea, counters Dr. Doug Ford, a Children’s Hospital pediatric nephrologist who eventually got the Pierce children’s kidneys functioning again.
“You can clearly point to a direct link between ingesting raw milk and developing infections,” said Ford, who doesn’t let his five children drink unpasteurized milk. “It’s unassailable.”
Nicole and Aaron had been drinking raw goat’s milk about two or three months before they were infected with a virulent strain of E. coli, called 0157. The bacteria is found in animal manure and likely got into the milk because manure was near the goats’ teats.
The kids developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, which causes blood vessels to break up, become meshed with blood platelets and then damage filters in the kidneys.
Nicole and Aaron were anemic and pale and had almost no kidney function, meaning they were not urinating. They spent weeks on dialysis machines to filter their blood and regain kidney function.
Ford sees about 10 cases of the syndrome each summer and about 100 E. coli infections. Many are linked to undercooked beef at barbecues or unpasteurized milk or juice.
Mary Pierce and her husband, Mike, did research online before deciding to try raw goat’s milk because their son was allergic to pasteurized milk. The parents didn’t drink any.
“It was so healthy, I was saving it for them,” Mary Pierce said, on the verge of tears in a recent interview. She knew there was a risk of E. coli but figured it was highly unlikely.
“It’s not worth it,” she said. “You can’t understand until it’s your kid lying in the bed.”
Kids younger than 5 and older people are most susceptible to illness from unpasteurized food, said Alicia Cronquist, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Public Health and Environment. The vitamins killed during pasteurization — thiamine, B12 and C, to name a few — are present in milk in small amounts in the first place, Cronquist said.
“I do not drink raw milk. I don’t want to play roulette with my health in that way,” she said.
But raw-milk proponents say cooking milk destroys not only vitamins and “healthy-gut” bacteria but the enzymes that help digest milk, which is why people who are lactose intolerant can usually drink it without allergic reaction.
Colorado law bans the sale of unpasteurized milk but, since 2005, allows people to become part owners in herd-sharing operations to have access to raw milk. Health officials are discussing ways to tighten the law, perhaps making it harder for people who are shareholders to give raw milk to others.
Since the illnesses were linked to Billy Goat Dairy south of Longmont, owner Bill Campbell has lost six shareholders but gained nine. Campbell said he lost sleep over the outbreak and spent the time improving his dairy.
He removed a manure pile in the goat pasture, put in a gutter system to drain water outside the milk parlor, bought a commercial refrigerator and dishwasher, and is working on a shareholder handbook that suggests such safety tips as not leaving milk in the car while running errands on the way home from the dairy.
Drinking raw milk “is the one thing that I do good for myself,” Campbell said. “It’s like my little one-a-day.”
-Jennifer Brown
More from Mile High Mamas
- There is no vaccine for fear, and it’s contagious
- A Colorado Mom’s Connection to the Food Revolution
- Children’s Hospital develops team effort for tiniest patients
Mile High Mamas Recommends
- Abortion and Colorado’s vote on personhood (eLetters)
- Ken Buck’s comments on choosing sexuality (2 letters) (eLetters)
- DEA’s raid on Colorado marijuana grower (3 letters) (eLetters)
"Attention Parents! Smart-Girl is an activity-based program that empowers girls to become confident, capable, self-reliant young women. In a small-grou..."