Interesting Statistics . . .

I've mentioned before in these blogs, my feelings about statistics and the value I place in them. Statistics can be manipulated to support or annihilate anything. I found an interesting article about raw milk and the stats just caught my eye.
Here is the link.
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jun11/0,4670,RawMilkCrackdown,00.html
I'll qualify this with the statement that I am all natural and Orthodox organic. I go by the Bible in raising my animals and garden and I do not adhere to the propaganda proposed by the FDA. This FDA is the very bureaucratic branch of our government that has approved all sorts of cancer causing edibles, neurological damaging additives, and a plethora of pharmaceuticals that are the subject of class action law suits, and although I do not mean to disregard any loss of life, this article states that 2 people have died in 8 years from this particular situation. Is there anything the FDA has approved in the past decade that has only resulted in 2 deaths?

Raw milk proponents insist they are under siege by state and federal regulators intent on snuffing out the industry.

Food safety officials say raw milk has sickened hundreds of people with salmonella, E. coli and other bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,000 people fell ill from raw milk between 1998 and 2005. Two died.


Herzog, whose 10-year-old daughter spent two months in the hospital after her kidneys failed because of E. coli poisoning, is one of the families suing Organic Pastures over the 2006 outbreak that health officials determined was probably caused by raw milk from the dairy.
"I don't have anything good to say about raw milk," she said. "It was a horrible experience."

I emphasized the word, probably, because it needs to be. When we can read about E. coli and salmonella in the produce that is approved for us to consume and we know there is a class action law suit pending for a myriad of FDA approved drugs, I have a real issue with the propaganda perspective of these statistics, in regard to raw milk. Mrs. Herzog's daughter lived through this E. coli experience, unlike the little 2 year old boy that ate spinach and unlike a few people that ingested peanut butter a couple of years ago.
I can, off the top of my head, name more FDA approved death causing problems in the last few years, than the FDA's claim over the past 8 years. In a period of just a few days of consumption, there were more illnesses and deaths reported from peanut butter than 8 years of monitoring unpasteurized milk, yet Peter pan is still for sale and Con Agri is still in business.

If anyone truly believes this is about unpasteurized milk, I'm guessing their naivete is quite inviting for the average huckster, lawyer or politician.

Considering the year pasteurization took place, I found this next quote particularly asinine.

"Raw milk should not be consumed by anyone for any reason," said John Sheehan, head of the FDA's dairy office. "It is an inherently dangerous product."

So, this bureaucrat is obviously oblivious to the fact that the human race has existed, thrived, and propagated in a prolific manner for thousands of years, consuming raw milk. As a matter of fact, historically speaking, humanity has only been avoiding this "inherently dangerous product" for the last 125 years.
However did humanity last long enough to come to this enlightened period of the past 125 years?
or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? New Testament