Health Freedom | Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health

Government Puts Doctors in Stranglehold over Medical Testing and Diagnostics

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 18:53:29 +0000

One test per year not related to a specific illness under Medicare? So much for preventive medicine.
In recent weeks we have been telling you about a new FDA proposal to increase its control over low-cost laboratory-developed tests—including locally performed custom diagnostics and tests for rare conditions. Tests like these are the future of medicine. People will soon be able to test for and spot cancers long before they manifest themselves using current methods. Testing can already help prevent diabetes, heart and blood vessel illness, prostate cancer, and other diseases.
Now for the bad news: Medicare will not pay for more than one test a year that is not directly related to the illness currently being treated by the doctor. In addition, Medicare rules forbid your doctor to treat (and therefore to test for) more than one ailment per office visit.
In theory, the patient could pay for the additional testing, but if those tests are deemed “medically unnecessary,” your doctor could go to jail for writing that prescription if he or she bills Medicare for the test. And if she or he wants to discuss the results of the test and prescribe a course of treatment, all discussion and treatment must be about that original ailment, even if you’re now sick with bronchitis instead.
It sounds absurd, but when claims for reimbursement are submitted for tests, procedures, or services that Medicare deems “medically unnecessary,” then they’re considered fraudulent “false claims” under the False Claims Act. In addition, what mainstream medicine deems “medically unnecessary” includes many natural treatments.
Yes, we know that doctors are sometimes involved in Medicare fraud, and it’s been growing: we reported on this issue back in 2010. However, it is more often a well-orchestrated ring of perpetrators committing organized theft. On the other hand, because of the complexity of Medicare rules, it is very easy to make a false claim. In one experiment, a researcher contacted five different government Medicare billing advisors about a possible claim and got five different answers about how to handle it. So even if a doctor stopped practicing and instead spent full time supervising each and every bill, the government can easily claim error and thus fraud.
To make it worse, checking with Medicare doesn’t protect the doctor. Even if a Medicare employee approved the billing, it can still be prosecuted. Of course, it isn’t that every error will be treated as fraud. It is just that it could be, and nobody is sure of what the rules really say. This is a very powerful weapon of intimidation and reprisal.
What about nutritional screening and counseling? Medicare will only cover medical nutrition therapy in very limited circumstances: if you have either diabetes or kidney disease, or have had a kidney transplant in last 36 months. (If you live in the Southwest, Medicare allows only one nutritional imbalance screening per year.)
If a product or diagnostic test is new, getting Medicare to create a new billing code for it can take a long time and cost doctors a significant amount of money in lost reimbursements. Even if there is already a billing code, Medicare must agree to pay for the service. In general, Medicare has not been willing to pay for genetic testing (except in screening for compatibility for kidney and bone marrow transplants), and it is certainly unwilling to cover the level of genetic testing needed to do truly personalized medicine.
Medicare keeps the focus on billable hours at the office from beginning to end. They won’t pay for physicians to consult with patients by email or over the phone—even if you’re old, disabled, or too ill to come to see the doc. They won’t pay for doctors to teach diabetics how to monitor their glucose levels or manage their diabetes in other ways. The same goes for other chronic illnesses.
In addition, Medicare requires the American Medical Association’s Current Procedural Terminology Codes (CPT), which healthcare professionals use to report medical procedures and services in patient records. Healthcare providers must use these codes—no other coding systems are permitted—in order to be reimbursed by Medicare. This squeezes out alternative medicine because there are no codes for many commonplace CAM treatments.
It is no coincidence that the coding monopoly is run by the American Medical Association and enforced by government. Fees earned from coding are believed to represent the bulk of AMA funding and make the AMA totally dependent on the goodwill of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Needless to say, Medicare only covers FDA-approved drugs—not supplements. The only fish oil Medicare will pay for is an expensive FDA-approved synthetic fish oil drug such as Lovaza. In theory, the FDA has only approved Lovaza for treatment of one condition. But nobody worries about that.
Is it any surprise, then, that Medicare is projected to be insolvent by 2026, only twelve years from now?

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Freedom of Speech about Health Is Gone in Europe

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:00:31 +0000

But the battle to protect health speech goes on both in Europe and America.

What do the words “probiotic,” “prebiotic,” and “superfood” have in common? In the European Union, it’s illegal to use them.

Recently, the ANH-USA office enjoyed a visit from our UK-based colleague, Dr. Robert Verkerk, president of ANH-Europe. This trip inspired him to dedicate his monthly column in What Doctors Don’t Tell You magazine to recent violations of European free speech:

Throughout the EU, the terms “probiotic,” “prebiotic,” “superfood,” and “antioxidant,” when used in relation to commercial food products or supplements, are now illegal….The European Commission believes that terms like “microorganisms” or “bacteria” is a more accurate way of referring to bacteria associated with the human gut that we have long called probiotics, despite the fact that some bacteria may be harmful or even pathogenic….

The Commission is equally concerned about how terms like “superfood” might mislead consumers and affect their buying practices. Any commercial operator that now uses this long popular term to suggest that pomegranate, goji berries, chia seeds, mango, blackberries, or green tea are somehow better for us than white flour or sugar or any number of processed foods, is now engaged in a criminal act in the EU. The same goes for the term “antioxidant” when used to refer to vitamins or polyphenol-rich fruits, vegetables or herbs.

Furthermore, under the EU Food and Supplements Directive, it’s illegal for doctors to communicate the benefits or health claims of any food, supplement, or non-drug product to patients. As Dr. Verkerk shared in an interview with LaLeva.org,

So for example, though we have a very substantial problem in our society with consumption of inappropriate foods, to say that taking Omega 3 fatty acids are good for ADHD children, would be illegal. Yet that may be a very important and fundamental piece of advice a practitioner needs to give to their client or patient. Unless your product is licensed as a medicine, you are not allowed to talk about its benefits, even if it is a food.

You may find it difficult to believe that such a suppression of speech could happen here in the United States, given the First Amendment. However, your freedom of speech is violated every day, in ways that are written into state laws and federal regulations:

You may not be able to share diet tips. You may be familiar with the case of Steve Cooksey, the North Carolina paleo blogger with an informal, “Dear Abby”-style nutrition advice column. The North Carolina Board of Dietetics claimed he was giving nutrition advice without a license. They literally went through Cooksey’s website with a red pen, crossing out any speech they deemed unsatisfactory. Dietetics boards across the country frequently commit abuses like this, limiting speech about nutrition by threatening legal action.
You can’t talk about industrial farming abuses. Throughout American history, reforms to our industrial food system have been sparked by the eyewitness accounts of concerned activists (to use a famous example: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was the catalyst to the 1906 Food and Drug Law). But in many states, “ag-gag” bills have made it illegal to videotape or take a picture on a factory farm—even when an illegal act was occurring. These bills are simply meant to protect illegal or unethical operations from consumers’ prying eyes, and help perpetuate the sickening industrial CAFO system.
Your doctor can’t tell you about natural treatments…. In Kentucky, doctors can’t discuss chelation therapy with their patients. In California, natural treatments for cancer have for many years been illegal, so a doctor can get in serious trouble just mentioning them. As you can see, your freedom of speech and your freedom to choose the treatments, supplements, foods, and practitioners you prefer are closely intertwined.
…or what’s making you sick. Fracking can contaminate the water table and air with such toxic chemicals as benzene, toluene, etylbenzene, xylene, barium, and radium. A Pennsylvania law allows physicians to access information about the proprietary chemicals used by fracking companies when they sicken patients—but they must sign a confidentiality agreement that they won’t tell anyone else—not their patients, not other doctors—what’s in those formulas. Plain and simple, this places restrictions on what doctors can tell sick patients about their condition.
A Facebook “Like” can magically turn a supplement into a drug… In 2013, the FDA issued warning letters to supplement company AMARC Enterprises because it “liked” a Facebook customer testimonial about how their product helped “keep cancer at bay.” FDA says this means AMARC made a disease claim (according to FDA regulatory-speak, a disease claim turns a supplement into a drug). Are companies now responsible for customer comments on social media pages, an increasingly important form of communication and interaction between companies and the public? If a company stops allowing customer comments that might get it in hot water with the FDA, then the FDA has effectively censored consumer speech.
…and quoting scientific studies can, too. Current FDA regulations prohibit dietary supplement manufacturers and food producers from referring to any scientific studies on the health benefits of a food or natural substance. In the FDA’s view, even providing a link on a website to a study converts a healthful fruit or nut into an unapproved new drug—a bizarre result that effectively censors scientific information and greatly restricts consumer access to scientific research.

It’s vital that we remain consistently vigilant against these piecemeal attempts to violate the First Amendment. By maintaining our freedom of speech, we maintain our ability to speak out against our government and Big Business, share important information about the products we buy and the treatments we use, and protect communication between patients and doctors, as well as consumers and businesses.

It’s unlikely that the First Amendment will ever be repealed—however, it’s clear that our freedom of speech is being chipped away slowly and subtly, one law and lawsuit at a time.

That’s why proactive measures are just as important as defensive ones. For example, the Free Speech about Science (FSAS) Act, a bill that would change FDA regulations so that legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific studies can be referenced without changing the food’s regulatory category to an unapproved drug. This will protect access to scientific information, and will protect your right to know about the healthy benefits of food and food supplements. We expect this bill to be reintroduced soon, and will let you know when it’s time to take action.

Dr. Verkerk has always praised Americans’ fortitude in the face of Crony Capitalism. Compared to Europe, we have superior access to potent dietary supplements because—and only because—of consumer-activists such as our members. For example, in Europe, if a beta carotene capsule contains more beta carotene than is found in one-third of a large carrot, it is banned). Dr. Verkerk concludes his article by encouraging consumers not to give up hope, and continue to fight for what’s right:

We must do as much as we can to pass our knowledge to the younger generations who will grow up in a world in which the corporatocracy rules—and for which censorship over communications about healthy foods and supplements is rife.

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Could Congress Legalize Raw Milk?

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 17:51:52 +0000

The natural health community has been touting the benefits of raw milk for years. Now there are two bipartisan bills in Congress to help legalize it. Action Alerts!
In a victory for supporters of the raw milk movement, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chellie Pingree (D–ME), and a bipartisan coalition of eighteen other lawmakers, have introduced two congressional bills:

The Milk Freedom Act of 2014 would overturn the interstate ban on raw milk, as well as provide relief for small, local producers who have been harassed, fined, and prosecuted for distributing unpasteurized dairy.

The Interstate Milk Freedom Act of 2014 would allow the interstate shipment of raw milk between two states where the sale of raw milk is already legal.

Meanwhile, local legislators aren’t waiting for Congress to act: ten states—California, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Oklahoma—are all considering legislation to legalize or enhance the sale of raw milk.

Why, after years of grassroots activism, are we finally seeing these results? Increasingly, citizens and legislators are appalled not only by the industrial food complex, but by the FDA’s targeting of small family businesses. For example, in 2011, the FDA conducted a year-long sting operation on an Amish dairy farmer, which climaxed in a 5 a.m. raid and the destruction of his business.

Raw milk is natural and healthful. The government estimates that 1% to 3% of Americans are drinking it. As the Weston Price Foundation notes in their Real Milk campaign, people are 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other FDA-protected foods than from raw milk.

Opposed to our position are the mainstream media and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, many raw milk producers have taken the proactive step of securing certification from the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI); some take more precautions than required by the state and by RAWMI, adding an extra layer of on-site testing before delivering milk to clients.

It should be noted that the government has long had an anti-raw milk political agenda, no doubt linked to its close ties to massive dairy companies and Big Farma—an agenda which these bills threaten.

Action Alerts! Please ask your congressional representative to support Reps. Massie’s and Pingree’s raw milk bills. Take Action!

In addition, if you’re a resident of one of these states, please send an additional message to your legislators in support of raw milk!

California—Take Action!
Georgia—Take Action!
Hawaii-—Take Action!
Iowa—Take Action!
Louisiana—Take Action!
Maryland—Take Action!
Massachusetts—Take Action!
Michigan—Take Action!
New Jersey—Take Action!
Oklahoma—Take Action!

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Dying Patients Denied Access

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:45:01 +0000

FDA tells Burzynski to seek approval. When he agrees, they use this as an excuse to let his patients die.Action Alert!

Trail-blazing cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski’s story really begins with dying patients who are desperate for access to unique, innovative care.
Although his clinic utilizes a broad spectrum of cancer treatments, Dr. Burzynski is perhaps best-known for his discovery and development of antineoplastons, which are peptides and amino acid derivates that activate tumor suppressing-genes. Antineoplastons have also been proven to be an effective cancer treatment via independent research by Japan’s Dr. Hidaeki Tsuda of the Kurume University Hospital. Until the 1990s, Dr. Burzynski used antineoplastons, sometimes in conjunction with traditional oncology agents, to treat and cure cancer patients.
Over the past several decades, the conventional medical establishment, via a succession of relentless attacks, has slowly choked off patient access to antineoplastons. After 1998, and at the insistence of the FDA, treatment with antineoplastons was limited to patients in registered FDA trials. Despite the incredible expense of FDA-registered clinical trials and the small likelihood that—given the FDA’s clear bias towards Big Pharma “cures” and their continued persecution of Dr. Burzynski—antineoplastons would ever win FDA approval, Dr. Burzynski has been able to treat patients with antineoplastons only via FDA clinical trials. This is yet another FDA “Catch-22”: they’ve forced Dr. Burzynski to conduct expensive clinical trials, with the full knowledge and likelihood that even after trials, antineoplastons would not be approved!
In July 2012, after years of failed legal attempts to shutter the Burzynski clinic, the FDA stopped allowing Dr. Burzynski to accept children for treatment with antineoplastons. In January 2013, this ban was extended to adults. This means that under current FDA restrictions, no new patients can be treated with antineoplastons. Terminal cases who could be saved by them will instead die.
Since the FDA has constricted patient access to antineoplastons, the only hope of dying patients is to convince the FDA to grant a “compassionate use” or “single patient protocol” exemption via its expanded access rule. This rule allows for the case-by-case use of an experimental or unapproved drug outside of a clinical trial if a patient has a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition, and has no other treatment options left.
With the FDA’s ban, many patients are desperately seeking FDA exemptions for access to antineoplastons. For example, shortly after a series of anti-Burzynski articles were published by USA Today, leading natural health pioneer Dr. Julian Whitaker’s Health and Healing newsletter revealed the stories of two young brain cancer patients and their desperate and so far unsuccessful battle to win access to antineoplastons:

McKenzie Lowe, 12 years old, suffers from diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive cancer of the brainstem. Because DIPG grows amidst healthy nerves, it is inoperable, and traditional radiation and chemotherapy is rarely effective. As detailed in McKenzie’s Change.org petition—which currently has over 50,000 signatures—begging the FDA to grant a compassionate use exemption, antineoplastons are “the first and only medical cure for the type of tumor McKenzie has.” As noted in a Huffington Post article about McKenzie’s struggle for access, the FDA has already permitted 471 “compassion use” exemptions for other treatments. As she has no other options left to her, why won’t the FDA grant her request?
Liza Cozad Lauser, 46 years old, was also diagnosed with DIPG (DIPG is rare in children, but seldom heard of in adults). She was told that her cancer was inoperable, and that radiation would only buy her a year or two more with her family and friends. Undaunted, Liza searched for a cure—and discovered antineoplastons. Like McKenzie, Liza is now petitioning the FDA to grant her a compassionate use exemption. And, with no other options and nothing left to lose, why shouldn’t Liza be granted the chance to save her life? In the words of Liza’s husband, “Why would you withhold something that would give her a chance?” (Read Liza’s impassioned letter to the FDA pleading for access to Dr. Burzynski’s treatment here).

Dr. Jonathan Wright, another natural health pioneer, also wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Tacoma News Tribune about the FDA’s refusal to grant compassionate access.
In the course of its decades-long vendetta against Dr. Burzynski, the FDA has become deaf to the suffering of those patients for whom antineoplastons are their last shot at living a full, normal life. The FDA’s refusal to grant McKenzie and Liza access to Dr. Burzynski’s treatment is particularly egregious, considering the extremely limited treatment options for DIPG. As Dr. Wright told ANH-USA, “Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski has cured DIPG in some individuals with his 100% harmless antineoplastons, and FDA is denying this woman and this girl antineoplaston treatment!”
When other doctors refuse to help, and death is imminent, shouldn’t patients have the option to try any treatment that could save their life?
Action Alert! Contact your senators and representative immediately and call for a full congressional investigation into the FDA’s violation of patient rights, particularly its refusal to grant compassionate exemptions to dying patients. Send your message today!

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A New Front Opens in the Battle to Protect Health Choice in the US

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 19:00:35 +0000

In new trade talks between the US and the European Union, we need to make sure “harmonization” doesn’t make our supplement laws like theirs. Action Alert!

Last March, the Obama Administration announced its intention to enter into Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations with the European Union (EU) to increase trade and investment between the two regions. The two sides are in the very preliminary stages of a process that is expected to take two years, and are beginning their second round of negotiations on October 7 in Brussels.

According to the White House fact sheet, the goal of the negotiations is to boost economic growth in the US and EU, and increase jobs supported by transatlantic trade and investment. One of their stated aims is to reduce costly “behind the border” non-tariff barriers that impede the flow of goods, including agricultural goods.

ANH-USA will closely monitor the process, to protect the interests of natural health consumers here in the US. We do not want to see a threat develop to our access to a wide range of higher-dose supplements or to legitimate health claims on products.

As we have reported numerous times, (here, here, and here), Europeans have such restrictive laws regulating supplements that much of what we take for granted here in the US is completely unavailable to them. A worst-case outcome from these trade talks would be for US laws to be aligned more closely with those of the EU. Since the goal of the TTIP is to increase trade and investment between the two regions, this would be highly illogical: trade can hardly increase if products are banned! But no one should expect logic from these negotiations, especially if powerful agencies like the FDA and FTC see them as an opportunity to get more of what they want, which is protection for US drugs.

The US market for supplements is approximately $5 billion a year; the European market is much smaller, because so much is prohibited. The truth is that natural health is a huge new growth industry in the US. It could be even bigger and create even more jobs if foreign governments did not regulate away the market.

And this is not just about American jobs. Europe is choosing to destroy its chances to be a player in what is really the future of medicine. Damaging the public’s health and restricting job opportunities in an emerging growth industry is a complete lose-lose proposition.

There is an increasing trend towards “harmonizing” of rules and standards between international regulatory agencies. The excuse, and it really is just an excuse, is that this will facilitate trade. At the Codex conference in Germany last December, we noticed that although the tagline on many Codex documents is “safe, good food for everyone,” the point was stressed over and over again “we are here to facilitate trade.” Large multi-national companies of course like this, and they have the ear of government officials.

In the past, restrictive EU laws have clearly influenced laws in the US—for example, the FDA guidance on New Dietary Ingredients (NDI) mirrors the EU’s Novel Food Regulation. Both the EU and US use the same approach to determine what they consider to be safe upper levels for dietary supplements, with the focus all on risks rather than risks against benefits, a stance that has been criticized by ANH-Europe’s chief scientist, Rob Ververk. In addition, both the EU and US agree that dietary supplements cannot make disease claims, with the EU taking the most restrictive approach. The EU even makes it illegal for a doctor tell a patient about supplements in the privacy of a one-on-one consultation.

On the plus side, Europe is ahead of the US in banning GMOs, but in this case any “harmonization” will almost certainly go in the US’s direction.

With increasing harmonization of laws worldwide, it is important for us to fight back against inappropriate regulation of natural products among our trading partners. Inevitably, our regulatory agencies will come under pressure to conform, when trading partners adopt more restrictive policies.

Action Alert! Please tell the Office of the US Trade Representative to consider these issues as they continue their negotiations to increase trade between the US and EU. Your voice makes a difference!

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If Dr. Offit Had His Way, Vitamins Would Be Treated as Drugs

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:28:06 +0000

The New York Times has published another shameful op-ed bashing nutritional supplements. Here’s our response.

This week, Dr. Paul A. Offit, chief of the infectious diseases division of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (and author of a forthcoming book called, hilariously enough, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine), wrote a piece for the New York Times called “Don’t Take Your Vitamins.”

In his article, Dr. Offit states, “Nutrition experts argue that people need only the recommended daily allowance —the amount of vitamins found in a routine diet. Vitamin manufacturers argue that a regular diet doesn’t contain enough vitamins, and that more is better.” This statement is offensive (not to mention patently incorrect) on multiple levels:

We do not get enough nutrients from our food. The soil in factory farms is depleted of nutrients, resulting in less nutritious vegetables. The runoff from CAFOs and their animals, together with the pesticide residue on plants, produce foodstuffs that are considerably less safe and healthful than their organic counterparts.
Many Americans do not eat a healthy diet, and instead consume primarily processed foods—resulting in severe nutrient deficiency. A 2005 USDA report found that 93% of Americans have an inadequate intake of vitamin E, 56% have an inadequate intake of magnesium, 44% have an inadequate intake of vitamin A, 31% have an inadequate intake of vitamin C, 14% have an inadequate intake of vitamin B6, 12% have an inadequate intake of zinc, and 8% have an inadequate intake of folate.
The notion that “nutrition experts” agree with the recommended daily allowances (RDAs) is absurd—the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics adhere slavishly to RDAs. The vast majority of nutritionists and naturopaths provide treatment through vitamin and mineral supplementation, often recommending dosages well above the RDA.
In fact, RDAs are not the best way to determine optimal levels of vitamin and mineral intake. RDAs are based on extraordinarily conservative recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and spring from a deeply flawed risk assessment approach. As Robert Verkerk, executive and scientific director at ANH-Int’l, notes in his critique of this approach, there is a “tendency for risk assessments to be undertaken on ‘nutrient groups,’ rather than discrete ‘nutrient forms,’ despite considerable variation in biological response between nutrients within given groups.” For example, a risk approach that analyzes one more potentially dangerous form of niacin at higher dosages (nicotinic acid) discriminates against other forms of the same nutrient (inositol hexanicotinate).
Dr. Offit fails to distinguish between using nutritional supplements to maintain optimal health versus using supplements just to prevent disease (e.g., rickets), which is a much lower bar. He also ignores the fact that each individual has different nutritional needs and therefore different supplementation needs.

Dr. Offit cites a few studies indicating that vitamin E is linked to an increased risk of mortality, heart failure, and prostate cancer. Yet ANH-USA won a qualified health claim—in court, based on science—that vitamin E may actually reduce the risk of cancer!

The Life Extension Foundation (LEF) cites numerous studies that soundly contradict Dr. Offit’s assertions and show the protective effects of multivitamin supplementation. A large intervention trial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2012 discussed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in which over 14 000 US physicians took either a multivitamin or placebo each day and were followed for an average of 11.2 years. The doctors who took a multivitamin had a statistically significant reduction in total cancer incidence compared to those who took a placebo pill. Then there’s the 2010 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in which over 31, 000 women aged 49–83 revealed cardiovascular benefits of regular multivitamin use. In this study, women without a history of cardiovascular disease who took a multivitamin for more than five years had about a 40% reduced risk of heart attack.

Moreover, Dr. Offit referred to the Proxmire amendment, which prevented FDA from regulating megavitamins as drugs based solely on their potency (i.e., if they exceeded a certain potency, they would be considered a drug) as the agency’s biggest failure. We would call this a tremendous victory. The Proxmire amendment ensured that we would have access to high-dosage vitamins and minerals that could not go through the exorbitantly expensive drug approval process because, as natural substances that cannot be patented, manufacturers could never charge enough money to recoup the money spent in clinical trials.

As LEF notes, Dr. Offit ignores data that conflicts with his agenda. He only cites studies that suggest negative effects of supplementation and excludes important evidence to the contrary. This approach, LEF opines, may have been influenced by the fact that he will soon be publishing a book bashing alternative medicine. The entire piece seems to have been written to promote interest in his new book.

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ANH-USA Uncovers Suspicious Activity by State Dietetic and Health Boards

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:06:07 +0000

Our exclusive report reveals government surveillance, what appear to be undercover sting operations, and investigations into the alleged crime of “practicing nutrition without a license.” Action Alerts!

ANH-USA has uncovered widespread surveillance (including undercover sting operations), aggressive investigations, and prosecutions of nutrition professionals. These actions, together with the levying of criminal penalties, have been undertaken by state health departments and state dietetics boards that are enforcing monopolistic laws sponsored by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. More often than not, they are supported by local law enforcement or the offices of state attorneys general. The AND—formally the American Dietetic Association, or ADA—is not a medical organization, but a trade group that represents the interests of Registered Dietitians (RDs, who are certified by the AND’s credentialing arm). The AND has about 74,000 members.
These non-RD nutrition professionals are being targeted by these states’ RD monopoly laws, despite the fact that many of them have advanced degrees and a tremendous number of clinical hours to their credit. They are being prosecuted for “practicing dietetics without a license” or for referring to themselves as “a nutritionist” in media or marketing materials.
One of the AND’s key agenda items is to pass “scope-of-practice” laws in each state whereby only RDs can legally offer nutrition services—even basic services like providing nutrition advice or nutrition consulting. The AND describes this as a “Mega Issue” for the organization, and it was listed as priority at the AND’s recent conference in Washington, DC.
If an RD monopoly bill is passed by a state’s legislature and signed into law by the governor, a dietetics board is created to enforce the new law. Unsurprisingly, these boards are mostly comprised of RDs (on Georgia’s board, six of its seven members are RDs). They have the weight of state law behind them, and depending on the state, the dietetics boards can levy heavy fines against a nutritionist who is not an RD and can either file criminal charges themselves or can refer the case to the state attorney general for prosecution for violating the state’s law of “practicing dietetics/nutrition without a license.” See, for example, the dietetics laws in Florida (468.517: Prohibitions; penalties), Georgia (43-11A-15: Refusal, suspension, or revocation of license; other disciplinary actions) North Carolina (90-366: Violation a misdemeanor), and Ohio (4759.09: Violation procedure).
The AND defends its RD monopoly law and the creation of these dietetics boards as an effort to “protect the public health.” However, in our investigation into three years of records from four state dietetics boards, we did not find a single case of an unlicensed nutrition practitioner causing harm or engaging in a harmful nutrition related activity, and not a single case of a customer filing a complaint. Every complaint that spurred a subsequent investigation and prosecution was made at the behest of the Board itself, or from complaint forms submitted by RDs. (At least one AND affiliate has openly encouraged its members to submit complaints against fellow nutrition professionals).

Let’s be clear: ANH-USA generally supports the AND’s desire to protect the term “Registered Dietitian” or “Dietitian.” We believe it helps inform consumers as to the professional training of that nutrition practitioner. At the same time, we adamantly oppose efforts by any nutrition organization to limit consumer choice by enacting laws that benefit one particular group. We believe in a competitive and open market for nutrition professionals, with consumers and employers (including hospitals) being able to decide what credentials, education, and experience they want in a nutrition provider.
As we’ve noted, there is no evidence whatsoever that an open and competitive market for nutrition services endangers the public safety and health. But do dietetics boards improve the public health? Let’s look at a public health issue that is the sine qua non of nutrition professionals: obesity. Five of the ten most obese state (MS, LA, WV, AL, MI, OK, AR, IN, SC, KY) have RD monopoly laws. Nine of the ten least obese states (AZ, CT, NV, NY, UT, CA, NJ, MA, HI, CO) do not. It would seem that ADA-run dietetics boards are not having a positive impact on public health, and may be having quite the opposite effect.
Not only is Colorado the least obese state in the country, it’s also one of three states (Arizona and New Jersey are the other two) that do not regulate the practice of nutrition whatsoever. If the AND were correct, and a lack of regulation of nutrition endangers the public safety, then Colorado should be the epicenter of harm—yet it seems the reverse is true. In fact, in a 2007 letter, the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies rebuked the Colorado Dietetic Association, which was at the time seeking an RD monopoly law, for failing to provide any evidence of harm caused by the unlicensed practice of nutrition professionals.
Currently only twenty-four states have restrictive nutrition counseling laws. That’s because most states recognize that this push has nothing to do with protecting the public health, and everything to do with market share. Nearly thirty years ago, in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association 84:4, the organization’s president wrote (emphasis ours):

Like other professionals, dietitians can justify the enactment of licensure laws because licensing affords the opportunity to protect dietitians from interference in their field by other practitioners. Licensure also can protect dietitians by limiting the number of practitioners through restrictions imposed by academic, experience, and examination requirements. This protection provides a competitive advantage and therefore is economically beneficial for dietitians.

When the news broke about the investigation (and attempted silencing) of blogger and Paleo diet proponent Steve Cooksey by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition, we had a feeling he wasn’t the first non-RD targeted by dietetics boards. Were there people like Steve Cooksey in other states?

ANH-USA filed freedom of information requests with state dietetics boards that had histories of aggressively targeting non-RD nutrition practitioners. Our requests sought any and all information on complaints, investigations, enforcement actions, and internal communications related to RD monopoly laws.
We received thousands of pages of documents, meeting minutes, email communications, complaint forms, cease-and-desist orders, and consent decrees relating the enforcement of restrictive nutrition practice and speech laws by dietetics boards in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. We also scoured the Internet for records—including those found on the boards’ public websites. Here’s what we discovered:

Florida
Florida’s Dietetic & Nutrition Practice Council is part of the Florida Department of Health; the latter carries out investigations and enforces the state’s RD monopoly law. Our investigation revealed that undercover operations—with individuals posing as potential patients or clients seeking personalized nutrition advice so as to entrap the unlicensed practitioner—were conducted by RDs who had filed complaints against non-RD nutrition professionals, as well as by investigators from the Department of Health itself.

Undercover surveillance might be excused if the public health were really at risk. But as Forbes contributor Michael Ellsberg noted, “The reason to surveil and report citizens who provide public nutrition advice (people like Steve Cooksey) is not that there’s any evidence that these citizens actually harm the public. Rather, the reason to surveil and report citizens like Cooksey is that doing so is necessary to maintain licensure laws (which were designed by the ADA explicitly to limit market competition).”

At a Dietetic & Nutrition Practice Council meeting this past January, a board member stated that in 2012, the Department of Health spent 681 hours, at a cost of $19,857, to investigate complaints of people practicing nutrition/dietetics without a license. Previous year’s totals were 191 hours in 2010, and 207 hours in 2011. That’s a 229% increase in investigations in just two years! Last year the Florida Department of Health fined at least seven people at a total of $11,672 for the crime of referring to themselves as a nutritionist or offering “nutrition services” without a license. There were no allegations of harm and not a single complaint filed by individuals who visited these “unlicensed practitioners.”
Ohio
Our investigation revealed that since 2009, there have been 349 investigations by the Ohio Board of Dietetics. At least forty-two of the investigations were of non-RD practitioners accused of practicing nutrition/dietetics without a license—including wellness centers, alternative health providers, physical trainers, and other licensed professionals. To date, seven official disciplinary actions, such as cease-and-desist orders and consent decrees, have been issued by the board.
Ohio was singled out as “a model dietetics board” for its aggressive investigations into unlicensed activity at the AND’s Public Policy Workshop this past March.

In addition to its questionable investigations against non-RD nutrition professionals, we should highlight what seems to us to be a flagrant conflict of interest on the part of the Ohio Board of Dietetics. A bill that was introduced in the state legislature, HB 259, would have allowed non-medical practitioners who do no harm to practice in Ohio. The bill was supported by health freedom advocates, but opposed by the state Ohio Dietetic Association, a 501(c)6 trade group that can legally lobby for and against bills. However, our investigation revealed that the Ohio Dietetics Board—a state government entity—actively lobbied against HB 259, which is patently against the law. This is outrageous enough, but we’ve also learned the board was coordinating its lobbying activities with the Dietetics trade group—the same group the board is supposed to regulate. The bill passed the Ohio House, but failed in the Senate, and the bill died in 2012.
ANH-USA is preparing materials for review by the Federal Trade Commission into possible restraint of trade actions by both the state dietetic association and the state board.

Georgia
The office of Georgia’s Secretary of State responded to our freedom of information request with the statement that “all complaints, their outcomes, and all other documents pertaining to investigations…are restricted from release” and that “deliberations, a complaint, an investigation or a disciplinary proceeding…is not subject to release.”
The Georgia Board of Examiners of Licensed Dietitians (six of whose seven members are RDs) refused to release detailed meeting minutes or a recording of recent board meetings to us—even though ANH-USA was an agenda item at its December 2012 meeting!

Georgia’s “Dietetics Practice Act” empowers the board to “enforce the provisions” of the Act—one of which is that only a “person licensed…shall be engaged in dietetic practice.” That means that only an RD can legally “assess nutritional needs or individuals” or “provide nutrition counseling.”

Although the board states on its website that “the Board has not issued Voluntary Cease and Desist Orders for unlicensed practice,” the minutes of the board’s August 24, 2012, meeting tell a different story: the board “moved to accept the Cease and Desist order, notify the Composite Board of Professional Counselors, Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists of the complaint, and close the case.” Why is this information buried in meeting notes, but not posted in the Cease and Desist section of the board’s website?

At its June 15, 2012, meeting, the board went into executive session—that is, all matters were off the record and visitors were not privy to the discussion—to deal with “enforcement matters, investigative reports, and pending cases.” The board “moved to schedule an investigative interview” with a holistic health coach.
As we reported last November, the Georgia board conducts undercover sting operation investigations with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Georgia attorney general’s office. We find it appalling that a government board, through a controversial dietetics law, is able to investigate and prosecute, has little to no accountability or transparency, and misinforms the public as to their actions. They’re not even required to tell you what was said when you or your organization is “reviewed and discussed” in their board meeting!

North Carolina
Most of our readers will be familiar with the story of Steve Cooksey, the health blogger that provided nutrition advice online. What you may not realize is that the Cooksey is one of nearly fifty people in North Carolina who have been targeted and investigated by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition over the past five years for possible violations of the state’s dietetics practice law.
Our freedom of information request found that RDs in the state are posing as patients and consumers in order entrap individuals practicing nutrition without a license. We found a litany of needless investigations into practitioners who are not even violating the North Carolina dietetics law—though the board pursued these individuals simply because complaints were filed. We view this as tantamount to harassment.
Do restrictive dietetics laws limit competition in the nutrition field? You bet. Consider the case of Liz Lipski, an expert nutritionist who was forced to leave North Carolina because the board denied her the right to practice as a nutritionist in the state. There are only 2,408 licensed dietitians in North Carolina to service a population of nearly 10 million people! By comparison, there are 119,069 registered nurses in NC.

Action Alerts!
While ANH-USA has been very successful defeating AND-proposed RD monopoly bills, we’re currently exploring multiple legal and regulatory options that would end the anti-competitive, restrictive trade and anti-free speech actions of state dietetics boards.

If you are a resident of Florida, Ohio, Georgia, or North Carolina, please contact your state legislators and ask them to repeal your state’s dietetics board. In NC, there’s even a bill, HB 676, which hopes to do just that. Please send your message to your state senators and representatives today!

Florida

Ohio

Georgia

North Carolina

New York, S.4999, would create a licensure scheme for nutritionists and dietitians (lumping them together as if there were no difference). It creates a board disproportionately made up of RDs, ensuring a board biased against non-dietitians.
This bill is very similar to one introduced last year by the same senator, Kenneth Lavalle (R-NY01). We hope the bill doesn’t have legs, since no companion House bill was introduced, and the similar bill did not go anywhere last year, but we’re not taking any chances. New York residents, please send your message immediately!

New York

Michigan, HB. 4688, would repeal the 2006 the Dietetic/Nutrition Regulation Act, and eliminate the Dietetic/Nutrition Licensing Board. Michigan residents, please send you message immediately!

Michigan

The post ANH-USA Uncovers Suspicious Activity by State Dietetic and Health Boards first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Can Homeopathy Be Both a Useless Placebo and Dangerous at the Same Time?

TIM REIHM — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Let’s look at the science.

Earlier this month we told you about an attack on homeopathic medicines in California courts, one that could threaten the industry.

We also told you about a recent report published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice. That report claimed to do a systematic review of all adverse event reports (AERs) in connection with homeopathy from 1978 to 2010. On the one hand, the report concluded that homeopathy is ineffective because it has no active ingredients, that it is nothing more than a placebo because it has been diluted so much that “the likelihood of a single molecule approaches zero.” On the other hand, the report also concluded that homeopathic preparations caused many dangerous allergic reactions.

We pointed out that you can’t have it both ways—either homeopathic preparations are powerful enough to cause a physiological reaction, or they can’t do anything at all. This is all too typical of what passes for scientific review of homeopathy. Dismiss it any way you can, regardless of fact or logic. If that doesn’t work, then argue that homeopathy is dangerous because it may keep people from visiting a conventional doctor.

We promised to return to the subject of what real evidence there is behind homeopathy. That is a large subject, but here are some scientific studies from the past ten years showing that homeopathy can indeed be effective—far more effective than placebo. These studies, which range from random controlled trials (RCTs, the supposed “gold standard”) to observational studies to meta-analyses, often look at homeopathy as an adjunct to conventional medicine. Here is just a sampling:

Acute otitis media (when the middle ear gets blocked with fluid and infected with bacteria): a 2012 RCT showed that symptomatic improvement was quicker in the homeopathy group than conventional therapy group, with a much lower antibiotic requirement
Allergies: a 2012 observational study revealed that homeopathy substantially improved allergy symptoms and conventional medicine dosage could be substantially reduced; a 2013 study listed the effectiveness of different homeopathic treatments for allergies based on the type of allergy
Asthma: In a study of individualized homeopathic treatment for asthma, there was evidence that it decreased the severity of asthma in children

Other studies show effectiveness of homeopathy for conditions ranging from chicken pox, diarrhea, and in a multi-center observational study, chronic sinusitis. Homeopathy could be an effective treatment for low-grade chronic inflammation, which is the root of many diseases, and as a complement to conventional anti-tubercular treatment (a finding that is especially important as patients are becoming resistant to TB drugs).

Much more research is ongoing despite the abysmal lack of funding for it. At the very least there is promising evidence supporting homeopathy.

So if it works, how does it work?

A homeopathic remedy is an extremely pure, natural substance that has been diluted many times. In large quantities these substances would cause the same symptoms the patient is trying to cure. In tiny, diluted doses, it is not only safe and free from side effects, but it will trigger the body to heal itself. For example, when you chop a red onion, it causes watery eyes and a runny nose in most people. Allium cepa is a remedy created from red onion; in very small doses, Allium cepa doesn’t create those symptoms but instead activates the body’s own mechanism for stopping watery eyes and a runny nose.

As noted in “Immunology and Homeopathy,” an article published in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, “The profound analogies between homeopathic thought and immunology are due to the fact that the whole of homeopathic theory is substantially based on the principle of regulating endogenous systems of healing, the best known of which is certainly the immune system and its neuroendocrine integrations.”

Around the end of the 19th century, scientists observed that different doses of the same substance can create wildly varying effects in humans. They observed that weak stimuli slightly increase biological responses, medium stimuli markedly raise them, strong ones suppress them, and very strong ones arrest them. This principal, called hormesis, is seen, for example, in medicinal plants: belladonna, in very small doses, has long been used as a pain reliever, muscle relaxer, and anti-inflammatory; in large doses it is extremely toxic. Foxglove (digitalis) helps cardiac arrhythmias in minute dosages, but in large doses can cause heart block and either bradycardia (decreased heart rate) or tachycardia (increased heart rate), depending on the dose and the condition of one’s heart.

The big difference between these practices and homeopathy is the amount of dilution used—and it is here that conventional medicine has such difficulty with it. In homeopathy, the substance (an herb, mineral, or animal product) is crushed and dissolved in a liquid (usually an alcohol and water solution), violently shaken with impact at least 100 times (“succussion,” usually done mechanically), then stored. This is the “mother tincture.” Homeopaths then dilute tinctures further. One part of the tincture to ten parts of the liquid is a 1X dilution (X being the Roman numeral for ten), with another round of succussion. A 2X potency takes one part of the 1X potency and adds it to nine parts of the diluting solution, thus creating a one-to-100 dilution; common potencies used in homeopathic remedies usually begin around 6X, or one part of the original mother tincture to one million parts of the diluting material. By the time you get to a 30X dilution, there is no measurable part of the original substance left.

The precise mechanism of how homeopathy works—why greater and greater dilutions should have more and more power, and why the violent shaking with impact should be so important—is still unknown. This is not really surprising given the lack of funding available to study the question, although some prominent scientists such as Luc Montagnier, the first discoverer of the AIDS virus, is pursuing it.

Despite the lack of formal research funding, homeopathy has always been an observational science, testing and refining a practice until it works better and better. The authors of “Immunology and Homeopathy” (cited above) put it this way: “The two approaches to system regulation—scientific/reductionistic and homeopathic/holistic—are not conflicting, but use different approaches: mainstream pharmacology applies a ‘structural’ analog, which is identified as the molecule binding to specific receptors or enzymes of the target system (if known). Classic homeopathy applies a ‘functional’ analogue, which is identified as the diluted compound that is able to regulate and/or to trigger homeodynamic systems. This kind of functional analogy, based on the similarity of symptoms, can be exploited even if the details of the receptors or the effector enzymes are unknown within the complex homeodynamic networks.”

Conventional medicine is, by and large, solely focused on biochemistry. but living cells and tissues also generate bioelectromagnetic fields, and it is at this level that homeopathy may be working. Every electron in every cell vibrates; so if everything vibrates, it would seem fairly logical that one vibration must affect another. One current hypothesis is that the succussion of the dilution strengthens the vibratory resonance of the substance, even when the physical component of the substance has been removed.

Other hypotheses discuss homeopathy in terms of nanotechnology—or nanopharmacology. The micro-bubbles and the nano-bubbles caused by the succussion may produce microenvironments of higher temperature and pressure. Several studies by chemists and physicists have revealed an increased release of heat from water in which homeopathic medicines are prepared, even when the repeated process of dilutions should suggest that there are no molecules remaining of the original medicinal substance.

In other words, no one knows precisely how homeopathy works. That is the rub. But there is a vast amount of anecdotal evidence that it does, including the experiences of ANH staff, such as an instant cure of trigeminal neuralgia, one of the most painful and difficult conditions to heal, instant cures of infant earaches, teenage allergies, and much more. Scientific studies, undertaken with very little funding because these are not patentable drugs, are now starting to show that it does work—and that it is far safer than FDA-approved drugs.

In the meantime, vicious attacks on homeopathy—in the US and UK and elsewhere—continue, both because it is an affront to conventional medical thought and an economic threat to the patent drug business.

The post Can Homeopathy Be Both a Useless Placebo and Dangerous at the Same Time? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Healthful Artisanal Cheese Under Attack Again

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:00:38 +0000

FDA simply ignores the lack of a single documented illness in twenty-three years. Action Alert!

Cheese, particularly real cheese, gets a bad rap. The American Heart Association makes “heart-healthy suggestions” to eat cheese with five or fewer grams of fat per ounce, and light or fat-free cheese products. The American Diabetes Association recommends low-fat cheese recipes—even though they usually contain more sugar! And the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine put up a series of billboards showing fat folks with the captions “Your Abs on Cheese” and “Your Thighs on Cheese.”

This is all nonsense. Cheese is actually good for you— especially when it’s made correctly, as is done in Europe by introducing bacteria at the right time and following a careful process. Artisanal cheese is hand-made from milk that comes from a single source (local whenever possible), and its creation focuses on the quality of its raw ingredients and the health of its animals. People are generally willing to pay higher prices because of its superior taste and health benefits. Cheese is the best source of vitamin K2, which the body needs (together with vitamin D) to process calcium correctly.

Unfortunately, artisanal cheese is not widely available in the US. There are some raw-milk artisanal cheese producers in some states, though not many. Several years ago, the FDA shut down the importation of most fine cheeses from Europe. Only a few larger companies—mainly offering pasteurized cheeses—are still allowed to import to the US, though as Cathy Goldsmith of Berkeley’s Cheese Board Collective points out, “The pasteurized versions are just not very good. They don’t ripen in the same way. They get flat and bitter as opposed to gooey and rich and multilayered in flavor,” and sales of pasteurized imported cheeses have dropped.

Of course, the industrialized, pasteurized, often tasteless cheeses are not only protected from competition; they also get tremendous economic support directly from the government. The government buys it and distributes much of it to school lunches where it is used mainly in pizza. You know, the same pizza which for the government counts as a vegetable because it has some tomato sauce. The USDA even has a marketing arm called Dairy Management that actively pushes the sale of cheese and milk.

How did we get so obsessed with pasteurization anyway? After World War II, retail milk’s competition was based on how much cream your milk had—the more the better—which was clearly visible because of “the cream line.” But this made the cheaper, less rich milk harder to sell. So the dairy industry started homogenizing the milk to do away with the cream line. That catch is that once milk is homogenized, if there is no further processing, it will go rancid in a matter of hours, which didn’t happen as quickly when milk was kept in its natural state. So pasteurization was mandated, first by states and then federally.

The FDA wants simple solutions and does not want to be blamed for food poisoning. So it likes large scale industrial solutions like pasteurization, especially ultra-pasteurization, and food irradiation (“nuking”). It has been alarmed about listeria in cheese for some time. The initial charge, and especially the attack on French cheese, came at the same time the French were refusing to support the invasion of Iraq. That is when French raw cheese was first banned and then only a few large producers were allowed to send it here.

Now the FDA, in conjunction with Health Canada, has just issued a joint risk assessment that claims consumers are “up to 160 times more likely” to contract a listeria infection from soft-ripened cheese made from raw milk compared to the same cheese made with pasteurized milk. Listeria monocytogenes has some of the highest fatality and hospitalization rates among pathogenic bacteria.

In the US, the FDA estimates that there is one case of listeriosis linked to raw-milk cheese for every 55 million servings eaten. Except that this estimate is not based on any direct evidence—it’s a mathematical probability only. The report is actually saying that if 55 million people eat raw-milk cheese (and with as little raw-milk cheese as is being sold in this country, the idea that 55 million of us are eating unpasteurized cheese is patently absurd), it is a mathematical probability that one lone individual will get sick from it.

In fact, it’s the lack of damning evidence that is so striking. Between 1986 and 2008, the report could not account for one single documented illness in the US from listeriosis due to tainted brie or camembert (soft cheeses). The researchers were only able to document twenty occurrences of illness from listeria in all cheeses from all kinds of milk worldwide over the same twenty-three-year period—less than one per year—and, according to the report, half of these illnesses involved cheese made from pasteurized milk! Compare that to the frequency of other foodborne illnesses (more than 1,000 outbreaks, resulting in between 15,000 and 30,000 illnesses, from all foods each year in the US), and raw cheese has a demonstrably sterling record of safety.

Listeria usually comes from the cheese-making environment, not from the milk itself. The few problems that have occurred were almost all from unlicensed producers. On page 17 of the report, they show four outbreaks of listeriosis from soft cheese—but all four were from homemade raw milk queso fresco (nicknamed “bathtub cheese”) which was not aged the required 60 days. In other words, the only incidents have been from cheese that was already illegal in the US.

While the FDA has a zero tolerance policy for listeria, which effectively crushes raw dairy production, Europe takes a different approach. They have tolerance limits with strict quality control measures in place.

The FDA is making its draft risk assessment available for public comment.

The Weston A. Price Foundation, in its formal comments to the FDA, recommends that FDA rules on dairy take into account processes for raw cheese making, and that it should be sensitive to the size and scale of the operation. Unfortunately this runs contrary to everything the FDA seems to believe in.

Of course, cheese is not the only story here. Weston Price as a good deal to say about the health value of real butter—butter made from raw milk—which is naturally high in vitamin A, supports the immune system, is good for preventing arthritis and osteoporosis, and helps the thyroid gland and the gastrointestinal system. Butter generally sells for hardly more than cream, even though it is made from cream and takes a good deal more work to produce—which means there’s no price incentive for artisans to produce raw milk butters. Producers are further discouraged from making raw butter because the FDA makes it so difficult for them.

Action Alert! There are bills pending in three states—Hawaii, Indiana, and Massachusetts—that deal with the sale of raw milk and milk products directly to the consumer. Please contact your state legislators and let them know you support raw milk and artisanal cheeses and butters!
Hawaii Action Alert!
Indiana Action Alert!
Massachusetts Action Alert!

The post Healthful Artisanal Cheese Under Attack Again first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.