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cally, #0233) that had turned up in seventeen of Health Services today for further comment; if The team
the sick team members in the manure of ten of I do get further information, I will provide an
the dairy’s sixty-three cows. Now, that is a strong update.) members also
piece of laboratory linkage, though The Farm So, worst-case scenario, in addition to the consumed
Family wonders how any manure got into the distress of too many kids getting a bad case of chicken
milk in the first place, and even if some did, that stomach woes, we have a case very similar to an-
it would be enough to sicken that many people. other one in Wisconsin, in 2011. Those illnesses, alfredo with
at a school birthday party, from milk intended noodles.
ONLY TESTED THE MILK for pasteurization, got added to the total of “raw
Since the investigators assumed they had milk illnesses” tabulated by the U.S. Centers
gotten their man, so to speak, they apparently for Disease Control, which gathers this data
didn’t test the chicken, sauce, pasteurized milk, only for it and its pals over at the U.S. Food and
or the water in question. (I couldn’t get through Drug Administration to discredit real raw milk
to anyone with the Wisconsin Department of (as opposed to determining trends and ways to

IN THE PRESS: WOMAN SAYS RAW MILK MAY NOT HAVE MADE DURAND FOOTBALL TEAM ILL
By Joe Knight, Leader-Telegram staff, December 13, 2014

The raw milk served at a team dinner for the Durand High School football team may not have been the source of
the bug that later made people sick, said Diana Reed, whose farm provided the milk. "Some people got sick who did
not drink the milk," she said Saturday.
A total of thirty-eight people associated with the team, including many football players, were sickened from the
outbreak tied to the September 18 dinner, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Twenty-six of the
illnesses were laboratory confirmed to stem from Campylobacter jejuni, a bacterium that causes severe gastro-intestinal
problems.
The bacteria can be found in contaminated milk, but also in undercooked meat and poultry.
After interviewing people who attended the dinner, state health officials in late October concluded the common
link to people who became ill was that they had drunk the unpasteurized milk. State health officials also tested manure
of the cows at the Reed ranch and concluded some of the cows contained the strain of Campylobacter that sickened
the students.
On Friday, state health officials identified the Reed farm as the source of the milk following an open records inquiry
by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
But Reed said there could have been other sources of the bug.
"I discussed it with the epidemiologist in Madison. He gave me some statistics—fifty-six people ate chicken, thirty-
eight got sick; forty-three people chose to drink milk and thirty-three got sick," she said. "They interviewed everyone
who was there."
That leaves five people who did not drink milk, but who still had campylobacter.
She said their bulk tank was tested six days after the outbreak and state officials did not find any contaminating
bacteria.
State officials also took manure samples from the intestines of the cows in their herd and found campylobacter, but
it is not unusual to find the bacteria in Wisconsin cows, she said.
"You will find it in every cow herd in Wisconsin. It can be 4 to 100 percent on a farm," she said.
"They are claiming the DNA footprint was the same. . . That particular strain of the Campylobacter jejuni is not only
found in cows, it is also found in chicken," she said.
The important step is to make sure the cow’s udder is clean before beginning milking, Reed said. "We do everything
at the dairy farm to keep our milk clean. After all, we drink it," she said.
Reed said her family has always drunk raw milk, and for seven years she has brought beef, which they also raise,
and unpasteurized milk to team dinners.
"I just tried to offer them the best that we had," she said.
"We’ve had four boys in football in Durand through the last eight years. I’ve lived and breathed Durand football,"
she said. "This was the last thing I would ever want to be involved in—making a football team sick," she said.
Reed said they will continue to ship their milk to a cheese factory, and they will continue to drink raw milk as a
family, but it will only be used by her family.
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