Personal Injury Law

Organic Pastures - "Where There is Smoke, There is Fire."

By Bill Marler, Esq.

I was paging through the pages of the Ethicurean when I stumbled over this post:

Amanda kicks over the raw-milk bucket

Whoa! Our Ethicurean team member Amanda Rose (and Organic Gardening milk feature writer) neglected to tell us she would be dropping a bombshell on the California raw-milk community. On her other blog, she confirms rumors that one possible reason that state investigators’ tests never could link Organic Pastures Dairy conclusively to the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak of 2006 was because it wasn’t OP’s milk…even if it was under its label. Organic Pastures’ Mark McAfee has admitted he was “outsourcing” — selling colostrum from the notorious Vander Eyk dairy, which had its organic certification pulled because it did not give its cows access to pasture. Sums up Amanda, at the end of an obsessively detailed factual argument that ends with the roar of an outraged mama bear: “This story is a food processor integrity story. If I buy a product from a processor and that processor tells me that the product comes from a cow on grass, I expect that the product comes from a cow on grass … I want to thank Mark for bottling a product self-described as laden with ‘filth, feces, contaminants, and pathogens.’ Thank you for marketing that same product to my young son as a health food.”

For a slightly different perspective on Ms. Roses' post see the Complete Patient.

It is very unlikely that that source of the E. coli-contamination in 2006 was milk sourced from another supplier, but even if it was, Organic Pastures, as the manufacturer of the milk and milk product that all of the children consumed, would still be on the hook for the injuries to those children.  It was not spinach as Organic Pastures has tried to spin it.

As I read the Ethicurean post and Ms. Roses’ too, I was struck by the thought:  “where there is smoke, there is fire.”  Organic Pastures has been linked to an E. coli Outbreak, Campylobacter Outbreak, Listeria Recall and is subject of an ongoing criminal investigation which seems likely related to either misbranding or knowingly selling raw milk to humans across state lines.  Now, it also appears that Organic Pastures may have been serving up raw milk to its consumers that was out-sourced.  Perhaps Organic Pastures has just become another corporate giant (certainly in the milk field) concerned with one thing - making a buck.  I'm just glad I am not Organic Pastures' lawyer - i would have a very big headache.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).