Raw Milk...in a Pasteurized World

A dive into the world of Raw Milk is vertiginous. With just a little questioning, our basic health and diet concepts, which we naively assume to be given truths, start to melt apart like good mild cheddar. As Americans, we’re supposed to eat less fat, and lower our cholesterol. Whole grains, veggie snacks, skim milk, fat free chocolates; these are a parent’s weapons with which to help their family fight obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. So how come they’re not working? Could the way we process our milk and dairy products be part of our nation’s health problems?

In the debate between conventional dairy wisdom (mandated pasteurization and homogenization, grain fed “super-cows”, large scale farming) and the Raw Milk campaign (no pasteurization, grass pasture fed cows, organic and smaller farming practices), personal education is most likely the path to wisdom and a useful understanding of the subject. One the one hand, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, representing convention, informs us: “The pasteurization process uses heat to destroy harmful bacteria without significantly changing milk's nutritional value or flavor. In addition to killing disease-causing bacteria, pasteurization destroys bacteria that cause spoilage, extending the shelf life of milk.” Raw Milk advocates argue, “Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.”

To summarize the positions, the largely funded pasteurization proponents argue that the vitamins and flavors lost during the processing of milk are acceptable collateral damage considering the total health benefits of eradicating human pathogens, and they have financed the research to prove it. The less funded opponents feel pasteurization is not only unnecessary, but symptomatic of a society dangerously disconnected with the food it eats.

Since its institution over one hundred years past, pasteurization has greatly reduced human suffering and increased mortality. Today it’s the law, with its particulars mandated separately by each state. If we were only to weigh the greater good afforded to dairy consumers over the past century by the practice of heating milk before imbibing there would be no valid argument against its practice. So what gives? Conventional “proven” wisdom is not often taken to task. Generally, American consumers do not question what the scientists and policy makers at the U.S. FDA tell us. It’s a very confusing world and we must trust to their wisdom. However, the core of the Raw Milk position is not based on falsifying the FDA’s testimony, rather in exposing what it has no interest in addressing: blatant problems, alternatives and natural, holistic betterments. The negative effects created by pasteurization are little known, under-researched and, arguably, no longer even necessary. For whom then is the sustentation of pasteurization good for, the consumer or the dairy industry?

Raw Milk advocates will tell you that a combination of better dairy practices and modern refrigeration neutralizes the necessity of pasteurization, arguing the disease causing organisms which occur in pre pasteurized milk are simply a result of a haphazardly managed, inorganic, “we’ll clean it up at the end with heat” philosophy. ww.Realmilk.com, the website for the Campaign for Real Milk, funded by the Weston A. Price Foundation, will tell you that modern dairy farms do not operate in the cleanest, healthiest, and most ecologically concerned manners, and why should they? Pasteurizing the dirty pathogen laden milk before packaging should clean up the mess. The campaign critically evaluates our modern dairy farming practices waving pasteurization as its black flag and shaming homogenization, standardization of fat percentages, fat free fetishes and other ultra modern practices, exposing them for what they truly are: the cheapest and easiest way for the dairy industry to get their products to market.

According to critics of institutionalized pasteurization, heating milk physically destroys nutrients, healthy bacteria, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is touted to have anticancer properties, along with those pesky human pathogens. The FDA’s own research has yet to prove similar results. Along with applying heat, Homogenization is employed to standardize and control the fat content in milk. This is done by force filtering milk through tiny holes, breaking down the milk solids and inhibiting the rich cream to rise to the top, completely altering the physical and chemical properties of milk.

Raw Milk, being unheated with its milk solids intact, contains higher amounts of fats and cholesterol than its processed and homogenized counterpart. In our processed and preserved diets, fat and cholesterol are supposed to be the bad guys. Unfortunately, too few of us currently understand that there are many different kinds of fats and cholesterol, some bad, but many necessary for survival. In general, these two chemical substances affect our circulatory systems. According to www.raw-milk-facts.com, “Overeating sugar or white flour products causes a spike in insulin, the hormone which, besides controlling blood sugar, also triggers the formation of fats destined for storage. The fats in raw milk aren't the problem. It's the half a bag of chocolate chip cookies you're dunking in it.” Raw Milk’s cholesterol is similarly healthy in that it combats levels of clogging plaque cooked animal cholesterols found in many of our diets.

So where does this leave low fat milks and the highly revered skim milk? Since such a large portion of milk is water, and homogenization and other separating procedures are used to remove and reprocess the rich top cream and buttermilk, the dairy industry has a large excess of extremely low fat content “milk”. Even they have little to say about the benefits of skim milk beyond its low level of fat, and the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions is calling them out: “When children are denied the high-fat and cholesterol-rich foods they need to develop normally, the result is behavior problems ranging from autistic withdrawal to uncontrolled consumption of processed food.” The short piece, titled “Food Puritanism” published last fall, concludes that tasteless plain grain, skim milk, low fat diets encourage fits of “food pornography” – binge eating of candy, processed sweets and sodas – and an unhealthy diet pattern of extremes.

Is the FDA then a puppet of the powerful “got milk?” dairy industry, conspiring to deprive Americans of health and well being? In learning about the benefits and concerns of Raw Milk and pasteurization, a complex paradigm in which the individual, family and community confront the machinery of bureaucratic industrial progress is exposed. Pasteurization and homogenization simply works better for the dairy industry, its regulatory agency, and the total infrastructure for production and distribution of dairy goods. But what’s good for the system isn’t necessarily good for you.

Is Raw Milk then the answer to our society’s dietary woes? The Raw Milk renaissance itself, like home beer brewers, wood burners, clothe makers, small self sufficient farmers, and other self empowered pioneers, is symptomatic of a much wider collective movement which began in the 1960’s after one unofficial and two official wars, of closing the gap between us humans and the natural world. Like home wine, vinegar, maple syrup and cheese makers, Raw Milk drinkers and producers are not in the business of replacing the current infrastructure: they simply attempt to bypass it.

Even if legalized, a Raw Milk industry would not work on a large scale. For one, many of the benefits of unpasteurized dairy products are determined by the cow, goat, sheep, water buffalo, yak or moose’s diet. The dairy industry is currently grain based and Raw Milk yields the most health benefits when the cows, Jersey instead of Holstein, are fed on green grass pastures. Cows are ruminants, natural grass eaters, and do not do well living on grain, soy and alfalfa diets. Breeding and drugs keep the modern dairy cow going and increases the milk production but ultimately shortens their life span. The cow’s overused teats and udders react by filling with white pus which must eventually be centrifuged away from the milk. The conventional attitude towards this: no worries if a little pus gets in the milk, pasteurization will take care of it! Therefore, today’s dairy farming practices make pasteurization absolutely necessary.

Any hope for change in sight? On a large scale, no change will happen until consumers shift their support away from large industrial dairy producers and begin to seek out healthy alternatives. How about trying to buy your milk from a local dairy farmer? If this isn’t possible, at least inquire about where your milk comes from and how it is processed.

The Raw Milk debate should help remove a little bit of our nation’s naivety concerning our diets. Milk fat and cholesterol are not the enemies – processed, refined, additive laden, artificially preserved sugars, vegetable oils and flours are. It cannot be stressed enough: not all Raw Milk is the same. If it’s not produced in a sanitary manner, it could prove deadly! However, disconnecting ourselves completely from this sweet, nutritious and life giving fluid may also prove to be yet another small step towards our civilization’s demise.