Milk, illegal? Yep. Unpasteurized, non-homogenized, raw milk is illegal for human consumption in 22 states (including my own Virginia!) because of ‘health’ reasons. And probably because the milk lobby doesn’t want you to not buy milk from big industry.
I ran across this article, More Dairies Go Raw, in The Boston Globe about how some industrial dairy farmers are deciding to down scale and sell raw milk. I was very excited to hear that. We just found a local source for raw milk, and if I don’t have to, I’ll never go back to using pasteurized, homogenized. Raw milk with the cream on top is simply luxurious, good for you food.
Check out the campaign for Real Milk for more info.
I guess the real question (that’s not dealt with in the article) is do the health benefits outweigh the health risks. Government organizations like the CDC and Health Canada think the risks are too great.
Beyond the health of an individual person comes the question how do we treat people or a community (and pay for that) in the event of an outbreak of something like tuberculosis or e-coli from contaminated milk?
And in states like Virginia, where raw milk is illegal, who is testing it for pathogens?
I guess my point is that I don’t think raw milk is illegal in places for “health” reasons. I think those “health” reasons are real, legitimate public health concerns. The information on the CDC website is not well organized but here’s a paragraph from a report about a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak in 2007:
“Raw milk is a well-documented source of infections from Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Listeria, Mycobacterium bovis, and other pathogens (2–6). In 1938, before widespread adoption of milk pasteurization in the United States, an estimated 25% of all foodborne and waterborne outbreaks of disease were associated with milk (7). By 2001, the percentage of such outbreaks associated with milk was estimated at <1% (7). During 1998–2005, a total of 45 outbreaks of foodborne illness were reported to CDC in which unpasteurized milk (or cheese suspected to have been made from unpasteurized milk) was implicated. These outbreaks accounted for 1,007 illnesses, 104 hospitalizations, and two deaths (CDC, unpublished data, 2007). Because not all cases of foodborne illness are recognized and reported, the actual number of illnesses associated with unpasteurized milk likely is greater.”
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5644a3.htm
A good start is to compare the CDC facts with the Raw Milk campaign, http://www.realmilk.com/. See the scientific PDF’s at bottom of the page.
The more I try to get my food from local sources, the more I see USDA regulation stifling small producers.
During the past 40 years, a funny thing has happened. Logical regulation to encourage food safety has been co-opted by corporations to keep out competitors. Small producers cannot fulfill the overly rigid regulation for butchering, milk, and other food commodities.
Corporations have also used “food safety” as an argument to insure that food has a long shelf life. Real, fresh milk doesn’t last a month. But ultra-pasteurized milk sure does. They can even get “milk” into a form that can sit on unrefrigerated shelves for years. They even inject vitamins back into milk that they irradiated out. I guess it’s safe, and it won’t kill you, but it sure can’t be all that helpful to your body.
Small producers are pushed into selling out of their homes or at farmer’s markets. So people are safely eating these local, unregulated products all the time. Personally, I feel safer knowing who is producing my milk. If there is a problem, then we know exactly where the problem is. If there’s a disease outbreak in corporate milk, who knows where the problem is. Maybe a farm in Mexico, California, Vermont?
There’s also the fact that locally produced milk is probably from cows that are well-treated. I can visit our neighbor’s farm to verify. We know what corporate-run feedlots and milking centers are like.
Bottom line? Why give all the power to corporations to make the mistakes? Let me legally buy my food where I want.
Pasteurized milk is not without incidences of food poisoning…
http://www.realmilk.com/foodborne.html
I would like to see some statistics on the number of foodborne illnesses caused by both raw and pasteurized milk and the ratio of that to the total consumption of each.
My understanding is that the pasteurization of milk allows for lower quality standards of fecal contamination in the milk. The industrial system of milk production relies on pasteurization to make the milk drinkable. Have you ever had pasteurized milk that tastes like cow manure smells? I have.
Pathogenic bacteria are everywhere. You probably consume them all the time in small quantities. I would rather have beneficial bacteria to out compete the pathogenic bacteria than not.
The times that I have gotten raw milk I saw exactly how the farmer milked the cows and knew exactly what I was getting into. The milk tasted better than any I have ever had and did not spoil but soured instead.
If you’re going to get your milk (or any food) from a factory farm, where you don’t know what the condition of the animals is or the processes involved, then pasteurization is probably a good idea. On the other hand if you want to get high quality milk straight from the farmer, where you can see exactly whats going on and are informed of what you are getting in to, then you should be able to do that too.
Milt makes a point that I was going to say as well:
“My understanding is that the pasteurization of milk allows for lower quality standards of fecal contamination in the milk. The industrial system of milk production relies on pasteurization to make the milk drinkable.”
Remember in Fast Food Nation- “There’s shit in the meat!”. Well there is shit and god knows what else in the milk in industrialized dairy production. Pasteurization allows for producers to kill any contamination, but if done properly, there should be no contamination of milk in the first place.
As we’ve seen in the most recent outbreaks of E.coli, which were all from industrialized sources, http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/outbreaks.html, that corporate food producers can also spread disease. In fact, they spread it further than any local producer would ever have the power to.
Michael you say “I guess my point is that I don’t think raw milk is illegal in places for “health” reasons.” So why is it illegal? Other than the fact that the dairy industry has incredible sway over the USDA, they do have valid concerns for pathogens in raw milk, I agree. So if people are going to drink it anyway, shouldn’t we get some kind of regulation started modeled after, say California or Massachusetts, where it is legal and they do check those things. I don’t think it should be a toss up between having to eat industrial food and risking my health. We should be able to give local producers the chance to meet standards but not in a way that would stifle them in the first place.
check out how technology can be used in milk making! Imagine how this could be used for raw milk safety purposes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DxK4yYSEZ4
Ryanne I think you misunderstood my quoting of you by saying “health” in quotations. To me what you wrote in the post (saying that raw milk has been made illegal for quote-unquote health reasons) was dismissive of what I think are legitimate concerns.
Also, Jay, for what it’s worth the CDC is not the USDA and has no regulatory oversight of farmers to my understanding but I could be wrong. I don’t doubt that large corporations have used regulation to help keep out small local competitors but that’s a different issue than whether raw milk is sufficiently safe.
As for the Real Milk campaign, it’s run by the Weston A. Price Foundation which I think has a few misinformed opinions about healthy diets. They seem to have some sort of anti-vegetarian and anti-soy agenda. I’m not sure what that’s all about; they seem to use a lot of fear based, incendiary language in their claims. I’ve only heard of them today from your post.
http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtvegetarianism.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/obama-letter.pdf
As a vegetarian (who eats a lot of soy and has, as you know, only been ill once in over 10 years) who is concerned about the welfare of animals I agree that big factory dairy farms are not the best way for us to get our milk. But why like Ryanne says does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t a small local dairy farm – they kind where you get your raw milk now – pasteurize their milk?
As I write this I’m asking myself why am I even concerned. I’m not drinking raw milk why shouldn’t you be able to? What do I care? You guys are my friends – why should I argue with you about this? I’m not sure – I’m certainly not an expert on this stuff but on first blush I’m much more likely to trust the CDC and FDA over the Weston A. Price Foundation when they say that “In light of research showing no meaningful difference in the nutritional value of pasteurized and unpasteurized milk, FDA and CDC have also concluded that the health risks associated with the consumption of raw milk far outweigh any benefits derived from its consumption.”
here are the things i’m concerned with, and i think we probably agree on some of these points-
humane treatment of animals- i can prove that our milk comes from a happy cow.
safe, small food -why is this illegal in 22 states but not the other 28? health reasons, corporate lobbies squashing competition- both? can we have good regulation that doesn’t stifle small producers?
local economies- i want to give money to local producers and keep money in our county and not give it to wal-mart, food lion etc.
lower travel emissions- i meet my producer in town while running errands, wal-mart milk is sometimes getting shipped from as far away as California.
i didn’t mean to be dismissive with ‘health reasons’ in quotes, i should have pontificated more on these points. i feel that the dairy/ag lobby in our state tries very hard to keep local small producers from selling as widely and publicly as they could. we’ve seen repeated examples of small producers being raided and shut down in a pretty extreme way. most small producers have to be pretty quiet about their services and only advertise as producing milk for pets only, while in 28 states it’s fine.
the other thing is that if you pasteurize raw milk, it’s no longer raw milk. i buy raw milk because i believe that the beneficial bacteria is good for you – much like acidophilus in yogurt. if you heat it up during pasteurization, it kills that good bacteria.
I hear you Michael. I guess it’s the Libertarian streak in me that cringes anytime the government says people CAN’T do something. They should put out warnings if they are justified, but why make it illegal for people to sell products to each other?
Expecting everyone to pasteurize their milk creates a barrier to entry. Cost of equipment and manpower. What about our neighbor who has one cow and wants to sell her extra milk to us? Technically, it’s illegal which is illogical.
One solution would be to allow small producers exclusively with local customers to sell raw milk under x-amount of dollars. Large producers, especially ones who ship milk across state lines, should be inspected.
Jay is completely right on this one. The only need for pasteurization is to keep the milk safer for shipping and storage for long periods. Small farmers have there own regulations, it’s called looking into the face of their customers. I would like to see big dairy, big AG and the meat industry to try this.
Hello from New York,
I found your site through the WGBH Lab. As I’ve been recently contemplating on building my own green house, I was fascinated by the topics and discussions I found here. I read this article a while ago in Harper’s Magazine and I thought it might throw some light on the milk discussion.
The revolution will not be pasteurized: Inside the raw-milk underground
By Nathanael Johnson
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992
Cheers with a glass of cold milk – pasteurized – for lack of other, and keep up the good work!
amazing to me that federal police will raid an independent dairy farm, but the FDA ignores corporate industrialized processors and lets people die eating peanut butter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/us/09peanuts.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print
To Verdi,
If you do real much reading about raw milk, not like the kind the giant filthy mega dairies pay to have put into modern college nutrition textbooks, you will find that the reason to pasteurize milk came about simply because filthy conditions in the large dairies did spread disease. Clean dairies rarely do. There are more incidences of food poisoning after milk has been pasteurized than from raw milk from clean, certified raw dairies. Tuberculosis doesn’t even travel through bovine mammary systems. The tuberculosis outbreaks were due to infected humans spreading it into the milk after it was already out of the cow. Large dairies do not want to be required to be clean so they perpetuate all the lies with the help of the FDA and USDA. Two government agencies that are not exactly our protectors. This whole issue is a travesty. Pasteurized milk is one of the main reasons why we have so much diabetes, food allergies, lactose intolerance and countless other digestive diseases because all of the beneficial properties in milk have been killed, ie; digestive enzymes, etc. Pasteurized milk truly is pretty much empty calorie junk food. How many people die of diabetes every year?
Interesting discussion. I don’t drink a lot of milk but I occasionally buy it to put into a sauce or to make scones. I have not seen a source for local raw milk so this has never come up for me. Also, my husband is lactose intolerant – so he uses rice milk instead (probably not the best choice, but he only uses it when having a bowl of oatmeal, and he doesn’t like soy milk).
I buy whole pasteurized milk in the old style glass bottle from Strauss Family Creamery in California. It comes with the cream on top and tastes better to me than other milk. I don’t buy local brands because they’re part of “big dairy” and I’ve heard enough bad things about them from former employees that they’ve lost my trust. This isn’t to say Strauss is better – I haven’t been there to confirm – but I believe they’re better, and I like that I can return the glass bottles to them to be sterilized and reused.
I’d like to know what connection there is between pasteurized milk and diabetes, mentioned by Lynn. Does anyone have a source on that? All my past research indicates that overly processed/refined foods, especially grains and sugar, are the main reasons for diabetes. While milk could probably be included in that list of overly processed/refined foods, I’m a bit skeptical seeing it called “one of the main reasons why we have so much diabetes…”
I’m also curious how pasteurization could cause or contribute to lactose intolerance. I would be interested in a source for that claim. The reading I’ve done recently indicates that those humans who co-evolved along with cattle tended to develop the ability to digest cow’s milk, other humans did not. I always felt lactose intolerance was more a matter of genetics and where/how our ancestors lived as opposed to pasteurization. I suppose those ancestors could be said to have co-evolved along with cattle *and* the beneficial bacteria from their milk. This makes me wonder if my husband could digest raw milk even though he has problems with pasteurized milk. I doubt he’ll want to be a guinea pig for me though.
I’m not arguing against raw milk, I am just curious on these two points. I haven’t had the opportunity to try raw milk, but would like to. If I had the opportunity to buy raw milk from a local, clean dairy, I would. I’m totally over processed foods at this point in my life. I’ve eaten real food and I can’t go back.
I grew up next to a Vermont dairy farm. They had about 35 milking cows, and while the barn was dirty, cows aren’t potty trained, the farmer was very careful to clean and sterilize the teats before the milking machine was attached. Any of his animals that were receiving anti-biotics (as one was because it had a really bad scratch from barbed wire) are milked separately so their milk is not mixed in with the main batch. They had a 2000 gallon refrigerated tank that all the milk was dumped into and the dairy truck came every other day. I don’t remember who they sold it to.
One of the best dairies in Vermont is Monument Farms (in Weybridge), they pay their farmers better than most, and their milk is the best I have ever had.
Oh, and they drank their own raw milk. I always take that as a sign of a quality product if the workers eat their own food.
When cows are fed corn, soy or wheat, even just a little bit of it, their digestive systems get out of whack and their milk becomes so much unhealthier. Grass (and hay, aka dried grass – or sometimes slightly fermented to keep the cows’ guts healthier) is the only natural food for cows. Therefore, cows digestive systems, which we have utilized for millenia as a food source (milk), do not operate properly on anything but grass/hay. Therefore, you will see a flawed product in improperly fed/handled cows. In decades of greed, this is the first century in which pasteurized milk has become the norm. In, as I mentioned before, millenia. Why? Corporate greed demands cows from CAFOs and other factory farm environments – sick, miserable cows in extremely unhealthy conditions. Of course their milk needs to be pasteurized in order to avoid an immediate sickening reaction in the drinker. However, over the long term, milk whose molecular structure has been scientifically altered in homogenization, an industrial feat not seen prior to the 20th century, and whose healthy enzymes have been neutralized in high-heat processing (pasteurization) will make you sick over the long term.
In the U.S., food allergies have increasingly become an epidemic. There are a few reasons why, but they all boil down to one thing. Corporate greed.