Safety of Raw Milk at Issue in Lawsuit Filed Against Dairy

To believers, raw cow’s milk is the next best thing to mother’s own. They boast about its taste and claim that it cures illness. They scoff at people who insist on drinking milk that has been “blasted with heat”--meaning pasteurized. Now that many cattle diseases have been eliminated, they say, pasteurization is unnecessary.

To critics, raw milk is deceptively dangerous stuff. They claim that even the healthiest cows at the cleanest dairies can shed potentially lethal germs into collecting machines.

The decades-old controversy over whether raw milk should be marketed as a healthy alternative to processed products, or instead be regarded as hazardous and labeled as such, has engaged believers and critics at supermarkets, laboratories and the Legislature.

Basis for Suit

Now the debate has moved into an Alameda County courtroom, where two consumer and health groups, joined by the district attorney, have sued Alta-Dena Certified Dairy, of City of Industry, the nation’s largest producer of unpasteurized milk for sale.

In the trial, which has been under way since Oct. 5 in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge John Sutter, the plaintiffs seek financial damages from Alta-Dena and ask that the dairy be forced to label every carton and bottle of raw milk with a cigarette-style health warning. Current California law requires any unpasteurized milk product only to be clearly labeled as “raw.”

The civil trial, which is not being heard by a jury, is expected to last several more weeks.

The consumer and health groups who brought the suit allege that Alta-Dena has falsely advertised its product as the “safest,” “purest” and “most nutritious” dairy drink available, when in fact Alta-Dena raw certified milk has repeatedly been found contaminated with Salmonella dublin , a particularly virulent strain of the food bacteria salmonella, which is often found in cattle.

The most recent discovery of S. dublin in raw certified milk occurred Thursday, prompting state health officials to recall thousands of cartons of “Stueve’s Natural,” which is the label Alta-Dena Dairy has used for its raw certified milk since 1985.

Adherence to Standards

Although most people infected with S. dublin experience fever, headache, diarrhea, nausea and other temporary problems, the bacteria can produce much more serious complications and even death in young children, the elderly and those with impaired immune systems, such as people afflicted with AIDS. Proper pasteurization destroys the bacteria.

The owner and founder of Alta-Dena, Harold Stueve, maintains that the family business he has run since 1945 has consistently adhered to the strictest health standards.

“Nobody ever gets sick from drinking raw certified milk,” Stueve said in an interview. “Nobody.”

The lawsuit and other efforts to restrict the sale of raw milk represent “a conspiracy,” he said.

“There are doctors and health officers who want to put us out of business. I myself want raw milk, and so do a lot of other people. When you are right, you need to fight for it. You can’t let these crooks overcome you.”

Alta-Dena produces 85% of all raw cow’s milk sold in California. It is the only dairy in the state whose raw milk products are “certified”--meaning that the dairy conforms to guidelines set by the Los Angeles County Milk Commission, which is in turn entirely funded by Alta-Dena.

Among other claims, the plaintiffs argue that the certified label is itself misleading, because it implies that the milk sold to the public has actually passed daily sanitation tests by a disinterested commission before being sold to the public.

Timing Problem

“In fact, the test results come back after the product is already on the market,” said Gail Hillebrand, an attorney for Consumers Union, one of the parties suing Alta-Dena. Laboratory records show that Alta-Dena raw certified milk products have failed those tests 20% of the time since 1980, lawyers for Consumers Union said.

At stake is $4.8 million in milk company profits, which the plaintiffs claim Alta-Dena has earned since 1981 as a result of creating a false impression that the milk is safe and healthful.

If they persuade the court that these profits should be relinquished, a portion of the money could be awarded to consumers or used for corrective advertising, said Alameda County Deputy Dist. Atty. James W. Mullally.

In addition, the plaintiffs are asking for unspecified financial penalties against Alta-Dena for alleged violations of the state’s Sherman Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which regulates how food is marketed. They are also demanding that all raw milk products sold statewide be required to carry a warning label.

Fatal Illness Cited

“We’ve had testimony by the widow of a very sick man who begged her husband to drink Alta-Dena raw certified milk. The man died, and S . dublin was a contributing cause,” said Elizabeth Laporte, an attorney for Consumers Union and the American Public Health Assn., an organization of 30,000 health professionals that also is suing the dairy.

In the years 1971-84, S. dublin illness was confirmed 697 times in California, said Dr. S. Benson Werner, chief of the epidemiology unit of the infectious diseases branch of the state Department of Health Services. Of these, 35% were reported to be consumers of Alta-Dena certified raw milk, Werner said.

“This is remarkable, given that less than 1% of all milk consumed in the state is Alta-Dena certified raw milk,” Werner said.

Effective Advertising

Laporte said weak or sick people often purchase raw certified milk on the basis of brochures and signs that claim it has special salutary qualities.

The dairy has targeted its raw milk products to parents of infants, claiming in one advertisement that it is “the ideal formula milk for babies,” even though raw milk has been known to cause gastric bleeding in infants, according to court papers.

Alta-Dena distributes its raw certified milk to health food stores and supermarkets and sells the product at company-owned retail stores and via its delivery service. Raw certified milk costs an average of 10 cents more per quart than pasteurized milk, company spokesman Paul Virgin said.

Stueve and his attorney, Raymond A. Novell, contend that the product is safe and that reports linking salmonella and Alta-Dena certified raw milk are inaccurate. They have accused state health officials of purposefully skewing epidemiological data in a way that ignores other sources of the disease.

Other Sources

Novell said that people can contract it from many foods, including rare beef. “They just don’t look for (S . dublin) in these places,” he said. “It’s the political and ideological position of people in the health department.”

According to Novell, certified raw milk accounts for about 8% of Alta-Dena’s dairy output, or the equivalent of about 100,000 glasses daily. The rest is pasteurized.

Since 1977, 41 public health advisories and remove-from-sale orders have been issued against Alta-Dena raw certified milk. A 1983 state survey showed that people who drank Alta-Dena certified raw milk had approximately 158 times the risk of contracting S. dublin infection than people who did not, according to Werner.

On 248 occasions since 1977, laboratory samples of Alta-Dena certified raw milk have been found contaminated with salmonella at levels capable of causing disease, Werner said.

Found Too Late

Much of the contaminated milk was discovered by state and county laboratories after it was too late to stop its sale. But during the years 1982-1984, 46 samples of milk containing S. dublin in excess of the safety standard of 10,000 bacteria per milliliter were identified by Alta-Dena’s own laboratory.

Laporte of Consumers Union said these findings should have been grounds for immediate recall, but instead Alta-Dena kept the results secret--not even informing the milk commission--until the data was revealed at the trial.

Novell acknowledged the findings, but said that “every food you get in the grocery store” sometimes exceeds industry standards for bacteria. “That’s not a reason to shut it down,” he said. “It’s a reason to go back and find out if there was a breakdown” and fix it, “which we did every time.”

This is not the first time Alta-Dena has gone to court over the safety of its product.

As early as 1965, for example, a San Diego County health official banned the sale of raw milk in that county. Alta-Dena sued, and a state appellate court ruled that the official had acted outside his authority.

And in 1974, Los Angeles County health officials ordered the dairy to recall cartons of raw milk and begin pasteurizing all its milk after salmonella and brucellosis were found in tests of cows owned by Alta-Dena. The dairy again responded with a successful suit, but in succeeding years, raw milk was temporarily ordered off Los Angeles shelves more than a dozen times.