Dannemeyer Goes to Bat for Raw Milk : Health: Fullerton congressman criticizes the regulatory power of the state. He wants California to lift a quarantine on milk products from two herds in Chino owned by a former client.

The nation’s largest producers of raw milk, fighting to overturn California quarantines that have kept their non-pasteurized dairy products off store shelves for months, have enlisted the help of their former lawyer--Rep. William E. Dannemeyer.

The Fullerton Republican confirmed on Friday that he has placed calls to the California Department of Food and Agriculture and has scheduled a meeting with department Director Henry Voss on Friday. Dannemeyer said he wants the state to relax two of the quarantines and let consumers decide if the milk is safe to drink.

“I think it’s proper for me, as a politician, to get involved,” said Dannemeyer, whose Orange County district does not encompass the Stueve family dairy herds in Chino that are under state quarantine. “ . . . Nobody’s paying (me). . . . What’s life all about if you can’t help your friends?

“I don’t know if anything can be done, but I’m going to see if I can help out. I’ve just been infected with nothing but sadness to see what the state of California has done.”

In urging Voss and other state officials to allow the sale of the Stueve family’s raw-milk products, Dannemeyer--about to become the senior Republican member of the House health and environment subcommittee--is taking a position directly at odds with California’s public health Establishment.

“If he (Dannemeyer) is of the opinion that this poses no health risk or this is a health food, then either he’s not seeing or not understanding the body of scientific evidence,” said Dr. S.B. Werner, chief of the state health department’s infectious disease unit. “ . . . People buy this stuff because it’s extolled as a health food. And in my view, it’s anything but.”

Agriculture officials say that only a fraction of the milk consumed nationally is non-pasteurized. And, the milk from the contaminated herds is still being sold--after it has been pasteurized.

In an interview, Dannemeyer said that he drinks raw milk and believes that it possesses nutrients that are killed by the high temperatures of pasteurization.

Dannemeyer also contended that health officials are using the recent test findings of bacteria and listeriosis in two of the six quarantined herds owned by Stueve Brothers Farms Ltd. as a pretext to abolish the sale of raw milk and raw milk products, such as “Stueve’s Natural” cottage cheese, butter and cream.

“The power of government today is awesome,” said the 61-year-old Dannemeyer. “The regulatory hand is terribly profound, because they have unlimited resources to just grind you down. That’s why I, as a congressman, have no problem going up and laying out the case to the state director of Food and Agriculture.”

Dannemeyer said that state health officials have waged a campaign of “total and absolute harassment . . . for 25 years” against the Stueves and their recently sold Alta-Dena Dairy. Dannemeyer said that he represented the dairy operations of family patriarch Harold Stueve from 1960 through 1978, the year he won election to Congress.

During those years, Dannemeyer fought efforts by city, county, state and federal officials to impose restrictions on the Stueves’ raw-milk products. Dannemeyer said that he met Harold Stueve and other members of the family through their shared affiliations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Dannemeyer said he feels added justification in acting on behalf of the Stueves because, in his view, state regulators are applying “politics, not science.”

” . . . It’s just a tragedy. Harold Stueve is 71 years old” and has dedicated much of his life to supplying raw milk products for a loyal clientele.

The Stueve brothers, although they sold their Alta-Dena Dairy chain last year, remain the nation’s most significant producers of raw-milk products.

“In a nutshell, we’d like to have raw milk available for those people who want to buy it,” said Boyd Clarke, general manager for Stueve’s Natural Corp.

Dannemeyer said that although he recently made calls on the Stueves’ behalf from his congressional office in Washington, he has billed the charges to his “personal credit card.” The congressman also said he would travel to Sacramento Friday at his own expense.

The Stueve’s natural-product line of certified raw milk, cottage cheese, butter and cream has been hit hard by the quarantines that have been in effect since October.

Dannemeyer said that he has no quarrel with keeping the prohibitions on four of the herds, which have tested positive for brucellosis, a rare disease that could be deadly to infants, sick or elderly humans.

However, Dannemeyer said the state is unjustifiably keeping two additional Stueve herds under quarantine. Laboratory tests have found that cows from those two herds have possessed salmonella and listeria monocytogenes--the same bacteria that five years ago were linked to the death of 48 people who ate the now-defunct Jalisco brand cheese.

Regarding the salmonella findings, Dannemeyer said:

“It’s just nonsense. If it’s the position of the Department of Health Services that the presence of salmonella is inimical to the health of the citizens of California, then they’re going to have to eliminate hamburgers, chicken, beef and water.”

As with the pasteurization of milk, tests have found that salmonella can be effectively eliminated in meat products through adequate cooking.

Asked about the danger posed by listeriosis, the agent that caused the deaths of consumers of Jalisco cheese, Dannemeyer dismissed the laboratory findings as faulty and “another bow in the arrow of the arbitrary conduct of the state Department of Health Services.”

He added: “We Americans have reached the point where our scientific instrumentation is able to tell us things that we didn’t know, without any harm, 10 or 20 years ago. The extension of this logic will send a statement: You must stop eating food, because that’s the best way to prevent (getting sick). That’s the absurdity of where this nonsense leads you.”

Dr. Patton L. Smith, the state Food and Agriculture Department’s assistant director and chief veterinarian in charge of monitoring the Stueve herds, said that he had “heard that Mr. Dannemeyer was interested. . . . But I feel the department has taken appropriate actions.”

Dannemeyer’s re-emergence as an advocate for raw milk drew immediate criticism from a representative of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

“It doesn’t augur well for the nation’s health to have someone like Congressman Dannemeyer, who will ignore scientific evidence showing the dangers of raw milk, making decisions at the highest levels of government,” said consumer lawyer Harry M. Snyder.

Snyder on Friday sent a letter to Food and Agriculture Director Voss, urging the department not to abandon its standards in the face of opposition from Dannemeyer and the Stueves.

“The Department’s testing, quarantine and milk processing requirements are scientifically based protocols,” Snyder wrote in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “They should not be changed to clear (the Stueve) herds. . . . The public’s health and (the) public’s confidence in our milk supply must be protected.”