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Throughout the previous few years, bureaucrats and public well being officers have been quiet about uncooked milk, however then Iowa legalized its sale in Could. The accompanying publicity — in The New York Instances and USA Right this moment,^1,2 plus many different publications — has resulted in a flurry of pro-pasteurization, anti-raw milk Web posts.

Considered one of these appeared on December 8, 2023,³ written by Claire Panosian Dunavan, professor emeritus of drugs and infectious ailments on the David Geffen Faculty of Medication on the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and previous president of the American Society of Tropical Medication and Hygiene. Dunavan can’t perceive the “dangerous attract” of uncooked milk. “Is it consumers’ religion in ‘nature’s good meals’ or sellers’ pure, bare greed?” she asks. The primary claims in her article:

Within the Eighteen Nineties, Nathan Straus (co-owner of Macy’s) began a personal basis to dispense pasteurized milk after his son died of typhus throughout a trip in Italy — the demise blamed on uncooked milk. (Dunavan then credit Straus with a drop in U.S. toddler mortality from 125 per 1,000 to fewer than 16 per 1,000 between 1891 and 1925.)

Uncooked milk customers are 840 instances extra prone to undergo sickness than those that drink pasteurized dairy.

Latest outbreaks of sickness blamed on uncooked milk have occurred in California, Utah and Idaho.

Uncooked milk incorporates harmful pathogens like campylobacter and salmonella.

Uncooked milk might trigger Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Persons are avoiding pasteurized milk due to milk allergy “versus a critical, even life-threatening an infection.”

The actual villains are the individuals who promote uncooked milk “as a result of they imagine there’s an viewers on the market that can purchase it,” despite the fact that they “know” that uncooked milk will hurt some individuals.

Are Uncooked Milk Farmers Pushed by Greed?

Let’s take a look at these factors one after the other, beginning with the accusation that uncooked milk farmers are motivated by pure, bare greed. (Within the spirit of full disclosure, I’m a dairy farmer who sells uncooked milk.)

Standard dairy farmers at this time obtain about the identical worth as they did throughout World Conflict II, even whereas their prices have skyrocketed. Sometimes, they get $1.45 per gallon, which prices them $2 to provide.⁴

This explains why the variety of licensed dairy operations within the U.S. has steadily declined by greater than 55%,⁵ from 70,375 in 2003 to 31,657 in 2020. Greater than 3,000 dairy farms stopped manufacturing throughout 2020 alone — that’s eight per day.

A few of these farmers have averted going bankrupt by switching to uncooked milk gross sales. Sometimes, customers are glad to pay from $5 to $10 per half gallon — sufficient to avoid wasting the household farm, particularly if the farmer reduces his prices by nourishing his cows on grass (the pure meals for cows) relatively than feeding grain.

Dunavan refers to farmers’ want to make an honest dwelling as “pure, bare greed,” however let me offer you an instance of actual greed. Dairy firm CEOs sometimes make salaries upwards of $3 million per 12 months. They do that by holding milk costs as little as potential — therefore the heartbreak of dropping the farm inflicted on hundreds of dairy farmers. That’s what most of us would name pure, bare greed.

True Causes of Toddler Mortality

About Nathan Straus dropping his son to typhus and blaming it on uncooked milk, in line with that font of standard data, Wikipedia, typhus is attributable to micro organism unfold by lice, chiggers or fleas.⁶ Since Dunavan is a public well being skilled, she ought to know this. (I’ve not been capable of finding any reference to uncooked milk inflicting typhus, apart from the case of Straus’ son.)

Typhus reigns in filthy circumstances and it was an actual downside, particularly in cities, earlier than the appearance of contemporary housing, sewage programs and washing machines. Even at this time we see outbreaks of typhus, however public well being consultants sometimes blame them on rats, by no means on uncooked milk!⁷

As for the decline in toddler mortality within the U.S. on the flip of the twentieth century, it was throughout this era that public officers labored to scrub up our cities with the set up of sewage programs, garbage assortment and clear water.

This was additionally the interval when the automobile progressively changed the horse and mule — earlier than the automobile, our cities had been stinking cesspools of manure and dirt. Immigrants huddled in crowded housing with out operating water and refrigeration, and with solely rudimentary sanitation. The demise fee by the age of 5 was 50% — and this was blamed on uncooked milk relatively than unsanitary circumstances — officers referred to as it the “milk downside.”

Uncooked milk might certainly have contributed to the excessive demise fee as a result of it got here from distillery dairies — interior metropolis confinement dairies of unimaginable filth the place cows had been fed distillery waste. The milk was so poor and watery that chalk was usually added to make it look white — this was the milk that Straus needed to pasteurize.

Nevertheless, pasteurization can not take the credit score for the decline in toddler mortality because it was round this time that distillery dairies had been banned. The actual hero was not Nathan Straus, who did nothing for public clean-up efforts, however Dr. Henry Coit, who labored to carry clear uncooked milk from the countryside to the cities.

Public well being officers on the time lauded Coit’s licensed uncooked milk with saving kids’s lives and famous that kids in orphanages introduced up on uncooked milk had been more healthy than these given pasteurized milk.

Questioning the Experiences

About uncooked milk security, Dunavan repeats the current declare that individuals who drink uncooked milk are 840 instances extra prone to contract food-borne sickness than those that don’t.⁸

However an evaluation by epidemiologist Peg Coleman, primarily based on knowledge thought of by the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Meals Security and Inspection Service (FSIS), discovered that on a every year foundation, out of 23 meals thought of, pasteurized milk ranked second highest and uncooked milk ranked seventh highest in inflicting extreme sickness.⁹ The actual query that one should ask, nonetheless, is how correct are stories of sickness and demise from uncooked milk?

The Weston A. Worth Basis analyzed a 2007 PowerPoint presentation by John F. Sheehan, then director of FDA’s Division of Dairy and Egg Security, who contended that pasteurization is the one means to make sure the protection of milk.¹⁰

Desk 1 reveals that the 15 research Sheehan referenced (by means of 2005) both had been methodologically flawed or that bias or outright fabrication guided the conclusions that he drew; not one of many research cited by the FDA really proved that uncooked milk triggered the sickness.

We have to do the identical evaluation for stories of uncooked milk sickness from 2005 to the current — one that features the claims of sickness from uncooked milk in California, Idaho and Utah. It’s secure to imagine that lots of them are bogus, given the alacrity of public well being officers responsible uncooked milk for any sickness with out a thorough examination of all the information.

Desk 1: Unfounded Conclusions From Uncooked Milk Research

LAW OR BIAS	NUMBER	PERCENT
No Legitimate Constructive Milk Pattern	12/15	80%
No Legitimate Statistical Affiliation with Uncooked Milk	10/15	67%
Findings Misrepresented by FDA	7/15	47%
Options Found, Not Pursued	5/15	33%
No Proof Anybody Consumed Uncooked Milk Merchandise	2/15	13%
Outbreak Did Not Even Exist	1/15	13%
Did Not Present that Pasteurization Would Have Prevented Outbreak	15/15	100%

In line with the late Dr. Ted Beals, who analyzed stories of foodborne sickness from 1999 to 2011,¹¹ authorities knowledge report a median of 42 sicknesses from uncooked milk per 12 months out of 90,771 sicknesses from all sources.

Utilizing these figures, Dr. Beals concluded that one is 35,000 instances extra prone to turn into sick from different meals than from uncooked milk. Beals additionally famous that there is no such thing as a option to quantify whether or not anyone meals is safer than one other from the information now we have, however on the identical time, it’s clear that there is no such thing as a foundation for singling out uncooked milk as “inherently harmful.”

Not too long ago, melons have ranked excessive in inflicting sickness — together with an outbreak from cantaloupe that resulted in over 300 sicknesses, over 100 hospitalizations and 4 deaths. The place is Dunavan’s outcry in opposition to grasping melon growers? And what about uncooked oysters, which kill 15 individuals per 12 months?¹² The place are the warnings to oyster lovers to not eat these horrible issues?

Pathogen Information

Dunavan implies that uncooked milk could cause Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) — a degeneration of the nerve cells that causes muscle weak spot and paralysis — as a result of uncooked milk can carry campylobacter, and campylobacter usually will get the blame for GBS.

In fact, many, many meals harbor campylobacter. In 2019, there have been over 100,000 reported circumstances of GBS worldwide;¹³ a fast Web search doesn’t discover any of those circumstances related to the consumption of uncooked milk.

By the way in which, campylobacter and salmonella, the 2 pathogens mostly related to uncooked milk, don’t develop in refrigerated uncooked milk. In a pilot examine sponsored by the Uncooked Milk Institute, refrigerated uncooked milk inoculated with excessive and reasonable counts of those pathogens suppressed their development.¹⁴

Inoculated listeria did develop in uncooked milk, however an affiliation of this pathogen with uncooked milk is extraordinarily uncommon. Furthermore, a current systematic overview discovered that the dangers of extreme listeriosis an infection had been larger for pasteurized milk merchandise than for uncooked milk merchandise.¹⁵

Shoppers Shunning Pasteurized Milk

Dunavan wonders why individuals would indulge within the dangerous conduct of ingesting uncooked milk. There are superb causes for ingesting uncooked milk, however first, let’s think about why fewer and fewer individuals are ingesting pasteurized milk. In each the UK and the U.S., consumption of pasteurized milk has declined by 50% since 1974 (Determine 3). (I’d like to know whether or not Dunavan herself drinks pasteurized milk!)

To search out out why consumption of pasteurized milk is declining, let’s think about a 2019 examine out of China, entitled “Processing milk causes the formation of protein oxidation merchandise which impair spatial studying and reminiscence in rats.”¹⁶

The researchers subjected milk to 4 processing strategies: boiling, microwave heating, spray-drying and freeze-drying. (Boiling takes milk to 212 levels F; ultra-pasteurization takes milk to 280 levels F. Most milk bought at this time is ultra-pasteurized.)

All 4 strategies (even freeze-drying) triggered oxidative harm to the milk proteins and resulted in “numerous levels of redox state imbalance and oxidative harm in plasma, liver, and mind tissues.” Feeding broken milk proteins to rats resulted in studying and reminiscence impairment — no marvel IQ ranges are falling!

The researchers concluded, “people ought to management milk protein oxidation and enhance the processing strategies utilized to meals.” However methods to enhance these processing strategies? What varieties of processing strategies would they counsel? How about no processing in any respect? Why not simply deal with milk fastidiously and cleanly and let the various pure antimicrobial compounds in uncooked milk do their work?¹⁷

Milk Proteins Are Simply Broken

Milk proteins are usually not robust like muscle or collagen proteins; they’re extraordinarily fragile and simply broken by warmth and stress (as in heated drying). No marvel the consumption of commercial pasteurized milk is declining — the physique sees processed and broken milk proteins as international proteins and mounts an immune response.

This explains why milk protein is the number-one allergy and why research hyperlink consumption of pasteurized milk with digestive issues, rashes, bronchial asthma, diabetes … and even sudden demise.

Based mostly on statistics supplied by the Allergy & Bronchial asthma Community,¹⁸ one can deduce that pasteurized milk causes roughly 20 deaths from anaphylactic shock per 12 months! The kind of milk that’s really harmful is pasteurized milk. Sure, certainly, “purpose to not” drink pasteurized milk is allergy — life-threatening allergy. Mother and father are determining that they shouldn’t give this junk to their kids … or drink it themselves.

Pasteurized milk is the milk that causes well being issues, whereas uncooked milk is certainly Nature’s Good Meals — in spite of everything, it’s the meals in Nature that nourishes all mammals, loaded with nutritional vitamins and minerals, every one in every of which has a particular enzyme that ensures 100% assimilation. When milk is pasteurized, these vitamins are largely destroyed, or rendered very troublesome to soak up (Desk 2).

Desk 2: Destruction of Vitamins and Nutrient Assimilation by Pasteurization

Vitamin C — Uncooked milk however not pasteurized can resolve scurvy. “Doubtless … the explosive enhance in childish scurvy in the course of the latter a part of the nineteenth century coincided with the appearance of use of heated milks.”19

Calcium — Longer and denser bones on uncooked milk. (Supply: Research from Randleigh Farm.)

Folate — Service protein inactivated throughout pasteurization.20

Vitamin B12 — Binding protein inactivated by pasteurization.

Vitamin B6 — Animal research point out B6 poorly absorbed from pasteurized milk. (Supply: Research from Randleigh Farm.)

Vitamin B2 — Utterly destroyed.21

Vitamin A — Beta-lactoglobulin, a heat-sensitive protein in milk, will increase intestinal absorption of vitamin A. Warmth degrades vitamin A.22,23

Vitamin D — Current in milk sure to lactoglobulins, pasteurization cuts assimilation in half.24

Iron — Lactoferrin, which contributes to iron assimilation, destroyed throughout pasteurization. Youngsters on pasteurized milk are inclined to anemia.

Minerals — Sure to proteins inactivated by pasteurization; Lactobacilli, destroyed by pasteurization, improve mineral absorption.25,26

Causes to Go Uncooked

Extra causes to drink uncooked milk: much less bronchial asthma and respiratory infections, fewer allergy symptoms and rashes. These are the conclusions of quite a lot of European research, which pasteurization proponents within the U.S. dismiss, however which public well being officers in Europe have taken severely. These embrace:

• A 2001 examine revealed in The Lancet — Much less bronchial asthma, fewer allergy symptoms²⁷
• The 2006 PARSIFAL examine (Medical & Experimental Allergy) — Much less bronchial asthma, fewer allergy symptoms²⁸
• The 2011 GABRIELA examine (Journal of Allergy and Medical Immunology) — Much less bronchial asthma, fewer allergy symptoms²⁹
• A 2012 examine (Present Opinion in Allergy and Medical Immunology) — Much less bronchial asthma, fewer allergy symptoms³⁰
• The 2014 PASTURE examine (Journal of Allergy and Medical Immunology) — Much less respiratory an infection^31,32

Within the U.S., bronchial asthma kills 9 individuals per day, lots of them kids. When dad and mom see that uncooked milk relieves bronchial asthma of their youngster, they exit of their option to acquire this magical product from grasping farmers.

There’s extra: early research point out that uncooked milk given to rising animals confers longer and denser bones in comparison with pasteurized milk.³³ I’ve heard from a number of gals recognized with osteoporosis who began ingesting uncooked milk day by day and handed their bone density check two years later.

Uncooked milk additionally contributes to robust, wholesome enamel.³⁴ And many individuals who can’t tolerate pasteurized milk can take pleasure in uncooked milk with out issues. I’ve even had dad and mom inform me that their kids’s conduct improved after they made only one change of their food regimen — switching from pasteurized to uncooked milk.

Seeking to the Future

For these and different causes — comparable to the truth that uncooked milk tastes so good — uncooked milk gross sales are booming. Our web site realmilk.com will get virtually 400,000 visits monthly, most of them to the Uncooked Milk Finder web page.

Once we arrange realmilk.com in 1999, we had solely a handful of listings; at this time, the web site lists over 3,000 locations to get uncooked milk within the U.S., and there are various extra not listed. Uncooked milk farmers inform me that they’ll’t produce sufficient uncooked milk to fulfill the demand — which signifies that these grasping farmers aren’t charging sufficient for it.

The reality is, pasteurization is a Rust Belt expertise — a bit like hitting a pile of manure with a sledgehammer. It lets the business get away with elevating cows in filthy, crowded circumstances, however it doesn’t make milk any safer, and it ruins Nature’s good meals.

Now we have come a great distance because the days of Nathan Straus. Now we have the expertise to provide clear uncooked milk — chrome steel, speedy cooling, on-farm testing, an environment friendly nationwide chilly chain — and get it to each rising youngster within the nation.

Uncooked milk is the longer term. I predict that inside 20 years, pasteurized milk shall be a factor of the previous. Small, grass-based dairy farms will proliferate to fulfill the demand, and no couple will begin a household with out ensuring there’s a provide of uncooked milk close by. Well being officers like Professor Dunavan can protest all they need, however fewer and fewer individuals are listening.

In regards to the Writer

Sally Fallon Morell is creator of the best-selling cookbook “Nourishing Traditions” and plenty of different books on food regimen and well being. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Worth Basis (westonaprice.org) and a founding father of A Marketing campaign for Actual Milk (realmilk.com). Go to her weblog at nourishingtraditions.com.

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