Raw Milk
According to our government, raw milk is dangerous. In 1986, Federal Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled that unpasteurized milk is unsafe. She stated, "It is undisputed that all types of raw milk are unsafe for human consumption and pose a significant health risk." This is a strong statement, but is it true?
F. M. Pottenger, a doctor who studied the affects of raw milk consumption, states in his book Certified Milk: “In our attempt to protect the child from milk-borne infections, we may be denying his heritage of good health by removing from his milk vitamins, hormones and enzymes that control mineral assimilation.” So whom do we believe?
I say we should believe Adonai. When He visited Abraham, what was He served? Milk.
He took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and placed it before them; and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate. (Genesis 18:8)
For hundreds of thousands of years, man has consumed raw, unpasteurized milk. So why, after all of those years, do we now need to pasteurize what has traditionally been safe in its raw state? Because of man’s greed.
Back at the turn of the last century, there were many milk producers who cared little for the health of their cows, or the quality of the milk they sold. Many fed their cows the by-product of whiskey production called “distillery slop”, which was made up of chemically changed grain and water. Although this slop has very little, if any, nutritional value, it did cause the milk production to increase. The milk from these cows tended to be bluish in color, so other ingredients were added in an attempt to turn the milk white again. These ingredients included starch, sugar, flour, plaster of Paris, and even chalk.
Often those who milked the cows by hand were sick themselves and, due to the lack of understanding regarding the benefits of sanitation, the milk was often placed in dirty containers. These conditions led to tainted milk. Since milk sources needed to be close to the consumer, and there is not much open land available within major cities, many of these cows never saw the light of day, spending their entire lives chained in stalls, eating swill. These conditions created sick cows, which in turn created tainted milk. People, especially children, were getting sick and the public cried out for something to be done.
So, rather than address the cause by ensuring the cows were healthy, the medical community called for the pasteurization of milk. Pasteurization is the super-heating of the milk in order to kill off any harmful bacteria that may be found in the milk, thereby making it safe to drink regardless of the health of the cow. Unfortunately, harmful bacteria are not the only things destroyed in the pasteurization process.
As Dr. Pottenger stated, there are vitamins, hormones and enzymes that our bodies need to function properly that are also removed during the process. But because infant and child mortality rates dropped during the early days of pasteurization, the process was hailed as the savior of our children. The media failed to take into account that better sanitation practices and the advent of the icebox also helped to reduce diseases.
It was falsely believed that tuberculosis came from cows tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which has since been proven false, and that the only way to combat TB was by pasteurization. By 1937 the medical community had many studies that indicated that raw milk actually increased our resistance to TB, yet the pasteurization campaign continued. The milk industry agreed because it is easier, and more cost effective, to simply clean up the dirty milk rather than insure the cows were healthy.
In 1917 studies indicated that children who were raised on pasteurized milk suffered from scurvy. Why? Because milk naturally contains vitamin C, necessary for the prevention of scurvy, and this vitamin was destroyed in the heating process. It was also found that those same children were healed of scurvy by simply returning them to a diet of raw milk. It was also known as early as 1933 that children raised on raw milk had much better growth rates than those raised on pasteurized milk.
On February 9, 1907 the New York Times posted an article on the Milk Conference held in that city during the preceding November. The article quoted Mr. Straus, the former President of the Health Board:
“If it were possible to establish a system of public inspection and examination of milk that would prevent the supply of polluted milk, there would be no cause for pasteurization. If it were possible by legislation to secure a milk supply from clean stables, after a careful process of milking, to have transportation to the city in perfectly clean and close vessels, then pasteurization would not be necessary.”
Well, it is now not only possible, but routine, to inspect the entire milk industry, from barn to truck to store. Most cows are milked using machines, sanitary conditions have improved, and the milk is trucked using tanker trucks designed specifically for that purpose. According to Mr. Straus, we no longer need to pasteurize milk. So why do we continue to pasteurize?
We continue to pasteurize because we have been convinced that raw milk is intrinsically bad for us. Not only that, but we have also been convinced that low fat and skim milk is best, when nothing could be further from the truth. Our body needs the saturated fats found in milk to function properly. Besides vitamin C, the pasteurization process also destroys vitamins A and D, which is why most dairies add these vitamins to their milk.
Tooth decay is less likely in those raised on raw, whole milk because the calcium and magnesium found in the milk is easier to digest due to the enzymes that are naturally in the milk. These enzymes are needed for proper digestion but they are destroyed by heat. Dr. Weston Price discovered that children raised on raw milk had stronger teeth then those who did not, regardless of whether they had ever used a toothbrush.
In 1994 the state of Connecticut’s Environmental Committee held public hearings on the certification of raw milk. At these hearings Ron Schmid, ND testified:
I have prescribed raw milk from grass-fed animals to my patients for nearly fifteen years. Time and again I have seen allergies clear up and dramatically improved health. Particularly in children, middle ear infections usually disappear and do not recur on raw milk. Both children and adults unable to drink pasteurized milk without problems have thrived on raw milk. In hundreds—perhaps thousands—of my patients using raw milk, not one has ever developed a salmonella, campylobacter, or other raw-milk-related infection.
These findings have been verified by a study carried out by scientists in Salzburg, Austria that compared children raised on raw milk and those raised on pasteurized milk. They discovered that the asthma rates of the control group (those raised on pasteurized milk) were higher than those on the raw milk diet. The same was true for suffers of allergies and skin conditions. The most interesting part of the study, I believe, is the fact that those who had been exposed to raw milk during their first year of life tended to be the healthiest in the group.
This is completely contrary to what we are told by the folks at the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). John Bolton, M.D., a San Francisco pediatrician who is affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics, testified at an FDA hearing:
[The Academy] has reviewed both the nutritional properties and the safety records of raw milk and has found that the risks outweigh the benefits. There are no benefits of raw milk that would outweigh the extreme risk of infection that sometimes follows feeding raw milk products to infants, children with malignancies, and children with problems involving the immune system.
Who do we believe? I think we need to look at the track record of these different people to see how trust-worthy they are.
According to a press release issued by www.realmilk.com dated March 12, 2007 we read:
The FDA and CDC provided no facts to back up claims of widespread illness from raw milk in a recent press release, "FDA and CDC Remind Consumers of the Dangers of Drinking Raw Milk."
The joint FDA /CDC reminder claims that between 1998 and 2005, raw milk was implicated in 45 outbreaks, 1007 cases, 104 hospitalizations and 2 deaths. Yet the reference cited, the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for the week of March 2, 2007 (MMWR for 03-02-07), provides no such information; nor is any such information found in any other FDA or CDC document. Numerous requests to the FDA for clarification have not been answered.
"This is an excellent example of government bias against raw milk," says Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit nutrition education foundation that promotes the consumption of clean raw milk from healthy grass-fed cows. "FDA and CDC have provided not a single reference to support the claim of widespread illness from raw milk during the seven-year period."
This is just one example of the misinformation we have been fed from those who we trust to be looking out for our well-being. Notice that raw milk was implicated, not proven, to be the source of these outbreaks. This is the type of terminology used in order to cause us to believe something is worse than it really is. Why would the CDC and the FDA want to mislead the public like that? The press release further states:
The September 2006 E.coli spinach outbreak provides another example. Over the past eight years, Organic Pastures Dairy of Fresno, California has sold over 40 million servings of raw milk without one case of illness; during the same period the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued at least 19 recalls of pasteurized milk products in California. Frequent testing by Organic Pastures, the state of California, and the veterinary departments of local universities has failed to detect even a single human pathogen in the milk.
Yet in September 2006, after four children who had consumed raw milk and also raw spinach or sushi became ill, state officials ordered the dairy to shut down. All Organic Pastures products were recalled. Officials performed over 2,000 tests of the entire dairy operation, including swabs taken from the 300 cows, the farm, the manure and the equipment, without finding a single pathogen. The raw dairy products are now back on store shelves, yet many state health officials continue to report that Organic Pasture's raw milk caused illness due to E. coli.
We are all well aware of the fact that raw spinach and sushi have both been shown to be possible carriers of E. coli, yet the milk was the primary target. Why is that? According to the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) you have a much greater risk of becoming ill from produce that has not been washed properly than from raw milk. In some cases milk is blamed for an outbreak when not all who are sick had consumed raw milk or the milk had not come from the same source. This appears to be evidence of prejudice against raw milk.
Pasture fed cows produce good, wholesome milk that has a very low risk of being contaminated by pathogens. The important part here is what the cows are fed. If they are fed what they are designed to eat, various grasses and flowers, then their milk with be healthy for their children. If they are eating swill, full of ingredients they are not designed to digest (it is amazing what they will put in cattle feed these days!) then their milk will not be as nutritious or maybe even deadly.
To make matters worse, we also homogenize our milk. Homogenization, which prevents the cream from separating from the milk, has been linked to heart disease. Ultra High Temperature Pasteurization destroys many more nutrients than standard pasteurization, yet it is advertised as the safest for our consumption. It seems that the shelf life of milk is more important than the nutritional value, at least to some people.
Why is it so terrible for our milk to separate or even go sour? Sour cream is quite good for us and is enjoyed by many people. The British Medical Journal Armchair Science stated in the April 1938 edition:
With regards to the prevention of souring; sour raw milk is very widely used. It is given to invalids, being easily digested, laxative in its properties, and not unpleasant to take. But, after pasteurization, the lactic acid bacilli are killed. The milk, in consequence, cannot become sour and quickly decomposes, while undesirable germs multiply very quickly.
Lactic Acid Bacilli are the “good bacteria” that our bodies need in order to properly digest many foods. They are also needed in order to keep yeast in check. Without these bacteria, many people develop a yeast overgrowth, which can lead to other issues such as irritable bowls and dairy intolerances. These bacteria are not found in pasteurized milk, but they are abundant in raw milk. So why do we continue to insist that raw milk is bad for us? It seems to me that pasteurized milk is bad for us.
By finding a good source of clean milk from a pasture fed herd we can make quite a difference in our own health and the health of our loved ones. The evidence is overwhelming when you get outside of the misinformation being distributed by certain federal agencies and those who have an agenda regarding the health of the average American. With all the advances in modern farming, refrigeration and transportation, pasteurization is no longer necessary, yet we continue to advance this practice so that dirty milk can be made to appear clean. Is it really clean? The hormones given to the cows to cause an increase in milk production still come through into the milk.
Raw milk, butter, and cheese are full of nutrients that our bodies need. Not only that, but they taste good too. They don’t need any additives because nothing has been taken away. Raw milk will naturally separate, allowing us to not only make our own cheese, but give us the whey that is full of lactic acid bacilli, which we can use to ferment our own condiments. As long as we know the source of the milk, we can be assured of its quality. Can we be that sure of the pasteurized milk we buy in the local store?