Call for Halt to Raw Milk Sales Disputed

A Los Angeles County health official has asked state agriculture officials to temporarily stop Alta-Dena Certified Dairy from selling about half of its raw milk to the public after initial tests showed the presence of the same bacteria responsible for a recent cheese-related epidemic. The request, however, was challenged by the scientist who conducted the tests.

Dr. Shirley L. Fannin, who heads the county’s communicable disease control program, said she made the recommendation on Thursday to county health officials and expected it to be forwarded to state officials.

“The potential danger is that there is contamination of the Alta-Dena milk,” Fannin said Friday. To prevent any possible illness, she added, the firm should pasteurize milk from the cows that showed evidence of the potentially dangerous bacteria Listeria monocytogenes.

The epidemic spawned by the bacteria in cheese products has claimed 89 lives, including unborn and stillborn babies, in California.

But Fannin’s request is premature, according to a University of Vermont scientist.

“We can’t say that Alta-Dena has bad milk,” said Catherine Donnelly, a researcher in the university’s department of animal science.

“It’s such a new test. We just don’t know what problems arise from it,” Donnelly said in a telephone interview from Burlington, Vt., when informed of Fannin’s decision. “Our test could give a false signal.”

Harold Stueve, Alta-Dena’s chief executive, said that despite the preliminary Vermont test results, he has no plans to pasteurize all of his firm’s milk. City of Industry-based Alta-Dena produces most of the raw, or unpasteurized, milk sold in California.

“They (the critics) are trying to knock out raw milk come hell or high water,” Stueve said. “Nobody milks as clean as we do.”

At issue is how the Listeria bacteria got into the soft Mexican-style cheese produced by Artesia-based Jalisco Mexican Food Products. Jalisco’s products were recalled in mid-June amid a government investigation into the epidemic, which largely affected pregnant women and others with low immunity levels.

To date no investigator--criminal or scientific--knows with any certainty how the cheese contamination occurred.

The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has been testing milk samples from all of the California dairy herds that supplied Jalisco with raw milk. Twenty-seven herds owned by 23 Southern California firms are represented in the sample; five of the herds are owned by Alta-Dena.

The CDC’s tests utilize a refrigerated process to grow a culture indicating bacterial contamination. These tests take from six to 10 weeks. According to the CDC, no results are expected for at least a week.

Qicker Test

Meanwhile, the research agency has turned to the University of Vermont, which has been working on new technology using a fluorescent microscope, to learn quickly if milk is contaminated with Listeria bacteria. The Vermont test takes only two days.

Working on the same 27 cow herd samples that are being tested by the CDC, University of Vermont animal science specialist Donnelly said that the two-day test turned up Listeria monocytogenes in 12 herds. Three of these were Alta-Dena herds that are milked at the firm’s Chino facility. Using the CDC’s method, the Vermont test also turned up Listeria in a control herd that did not supply Jalisco and that is not owned by Alta-Dena.

Alta-Dena, which owns about 13,000 cows, is currently milking five herds. Two of these herds are producing raw milk for direct consumption; the other three produce milk that is to be pasteurized. The contaminated sample that triggered Fannin’s concern came from Herd No. 1, which produces raw milk both for consumption and for use in products such as cheese.

Kills Bacteria

Pasteurization, quickly heating milk at a high temperature, kills dangerous bacteria, according to the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The results of the Vermont tests were contained in a memo by Dr. Michael Linnan, a CDC epidemiologist. “Until the final results are available (from the CDC),” Linnan said in the Aug. 20 memo, “it may be prudent to consider ensuring that milk (from Herd No. 1) be pasteurized before being sold.”

Patton Smith, an assistant director of the California Food and Agriculture Department, whose agency has the authority to order Alta-Dena to pasteurize all of its milk, said he would “analyze” Fannin’s request. But Smith, too, said the request was “premature,” based on what he knows about the Jalisco investigation.