Our very existence, our survival at one time was dependent on breastfeeding. Infants were raised under all kinds of conditions and survived because human milk protects against pathogenic organisms. Breastmilk, a living fluid, works to protect the infant from bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. Our existence now is because women back then had no choice but to breastfeed their babies. But why is it so hard for people in modern times to believe that breastfeeding is more than nutrition? Why am I still getting the same calls I got 16 years ago when I first started working with breastfeeding mothers. That call and its many variations is that the mom is sick and she has stopped breastfeeding or plans to stop breastfeeding or thinks she needs to pump and dump. E.coli falls into one of our many variations of illnesses that mothers and some HCPs believe means weaning from the breast. Yet we have numerous studies that shows us that human lactoferrin inactivates e.coli and yes many patents that say so, too. So we want to err on the side of caution--pasteurize the milk. What is mostly killed by such methods--lactoferrin. Of interest is that the US meat industry is utilizing lactoferrin. They will be using lactoferrin on all their meat to protect it from e.coli. It will be genetically engineered human lactoferrin but based on what human milk lactoferrin does--kills e.coli. (dairy cow's produce very little lactoferrin, so they use transgenic cows to produce the human lactoferrin) Why should we tell mothers to stop breastfeeding? How does weaning or ingesting milk devoid of lactoferrin help? I look at it as another nail in the coffin for breastfeeding. Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC article on use of lactoferrin in the meat industry: http://www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&artNum=2040 "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given activated lactoferrin Generally Recognised as Safe (GRAS) status. This puts it one step closer to being approved as an additive for foods, including meat products. Activated lactoferrin is a naturally occurring milk protein that inhibits growth of pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, and Campylobacter ."FDA's recognition of activated lactoferrin as GRAS brings us one step closer to using this new food safety technology to protect fresh meat products from harmful pathogens," Eric Hale, president, aLF Ventures LLC, a partnership between Farmland National Beef Packing Co. L.P. and DMV USA LLC, said. Activated lactoferrin will now undergo review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) before fresh meat produced using the technology becomes available in the market. aLF Ventures, LLC, holds the worldwide exclusive rights to activated lactoferrin for use in food safety. Dr. A.S. Narain Naidu, a medical microbiologist with more than 20 years of experience researching antimicrobials, patented the technology and now leads, N-terminus, aLF Ventures' new research laboratory in Pomona, California. He most recently directed the Centre for Antimicrobial Research at California State Polytechnic Institute, Pomona. Web posted: October 31, 2001 Category: Food Safety" *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html