Florida Mom Mad After Raw Milk Got Her Kid Sick And Ended Her Pregnancy!
Toothpick box labels: 'Do not stick in eye.'
Earlier this month, 21 people in Florida — including six children under the age of 10 — got E. coli and Campylobacter bacteria sickness from drinking raw milk and became very, very ill. One of those children was Rachel Maddox’s toddler. As if a sick toddler weren’t enough of a bad time, Maddox herself also got so sick that she actually had a miscarriage, 20 weeks into a pregnancy.
Maddox has filed a lawsuit against Keely Farms, which produced the milk she drank, as well as the store that sold it to her, alleging that she had no idea that there was any risk to drinking the milk — which has only been in the news for at least a year now due to the fact that it is a health risk, it can cause food poisoning, and Trump people are drinking it anyway to own the libs.
“I became very ill and I mean the sickest I've ever been in my life,” Maddox told WKMG. “I came really close to dying and our son did die. The doctors told me that I was lucky to be alive.”
Maddox said that while she never drank the milk herself, she had purchased it several times before for her toddler, under the assumption that it was a “healthy choice.” She says she saw it in grocery store next to cheese and other dairy products like normal food fit for human consumption so often is. When she asked why it was labeled as being for animal consumption only, she says she was told “that was a technical requirement to sell ‘farm milk.’”
It is not clear where it is that she thought pasteurized milk came from, other than a farm. It is also not clear why Maddox did not question why there was such a “technical requirement” in the first place. If she had, she might have learned it is illegal to sell raw milk in Florida (for now) for this exact reason.
After drinking the milk, Maddox’s toddler developed “diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain, chills, and resultant dehydration,” and had to be taken to the hospital, described in the lawsuit as “the first of what would be three emergency room visits and hospitalizations in the next several weeks.” Because she was taking care of her child, Maddox also contracted Campylobacter bacteria, which for her led to “ongoing diarrhea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain, and chills that led to septic shock and severe dehydration.”
“I contracted the bacteria from cleaning up the diarrhea and vomiting,” Maddox told WKMG. “As a mom, you get a lot of stuff on you when your kid is sick, and I became ill by contracting the bacteria that way.”
Naturally, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced last week on social media (the same week that we all learned about those 21 people getting sick) that he is pro-raw milk.
“Floridians have the freedom to make informed health choices,” he wrote. “I support the decision to consume raw milk when sought for potential health benefits and protective factors. Be aware of your source and know the risks.”
Except Maddox was not making an informed decision, was she? The fact is, the reason we have rules about what can and cannot be sold for human consumption is because not everyone is sufficiently informed about what is safe to eat and what is not. There is also the fact that people think that the reason things like raw milk are illegal and there are vaccine requirements for children to attend school is because mean liberals hate their freedoms and don’t want them to be healthy.
It is, surely, for this same reason that we encourage them to not eat raw sewage.
Raw milk has also been promoted, quite famously, by folks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the rest of his MAHA pals. On last night’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver went into some detail on this, along with the weird raw milk/raw meat smoothies that have suddenly become all the rage on the other side of the aisle.
Ew.
It’s hard not to be a little conflicted about all of this. The label said it wasn’t fit for human consumption and Rachel Maddox chose to ignore that and give it to her own child. Is that the farm’s fault? Not really! Milk is pasteurized for the purpose of killing bacteria and making it safe to drink, so it is not a reasonable assumption on the part of the consumer that unpasteurized milk is safe to drink. Even if the farm sold the milk with a little “wink, wink, nudge, nudge,” understanding that people would drink it and give it to their children to drink, the warning label — which Maddox admits she read — would make it difficult to find them culpable. She has a more reasonable case against the grocery store, since they put the milk with other human food and told her that the warning was just a technicality.
If anything, Maddox is the one at fault for putting her kid and her pregnancy in danger by not using the product “as intended.”
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Wait, this is Florida, right? (of course it is).
Can't they charge the idiot mother for murdering her unborn baby person, who has more rights than actual living, self-ambulatory persons?
Shouldn’t she be charged with murder? Isn’t that the rule in Florida?