Pasteurization Promise

The Untold Fear Campaign On Raw Milk

“It is irresponsible for senior national government officials to oppose raw milk, claiming that it is inherently hazardous.”

Did I get your attention? Let’s unpack this because in my opinion what we have here is another example of repeat a lies long enough and the truth gets lost.  We are going to lean on the work of Dr Ted Beals as well as published research to make the case for raw dairy being a perfectly safe and nutritionally superior choice to its pasteurized and mass marketed counterpart.

First let’s go back in time. The pasteurization of milk became necessary not for the reasons you think. In 1814 the domestic liquor industry was born in the US and distilleries began popping up in cities and in the country. Cows were often being housed next to these distilleries and were fed hot slop, the waste product of whiskey making. As you might imagine this slop is of little value in fattening cattle; it is unnatural food for them, and makes them diseased and emaciated.

Diseased cows were milked in an unsanitary manner. The individuals doing the milking were often dirty, sick or both. Milk pails and other equipment were usually dirty. Such milk sometimes led to disease. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, a growing number of influential people throughout the country believed that American cities had a milk problem. Pasteurization was a supposed solution…but a more nuanced understanding is important.

For perspective at the end of World War II, 3.7 million of America’s 5.4 million farms had milk cows. Most still sold raw milk directly to neighbors and through local distribution channels, a situation that would change drastically under relentless official pressure for compulsory pasteurization of all milk. 

Opposite the pasteurization solution was a simple and more logical solution, the certified raw milk movement, which insisted on clean, fresh milk from healthy, grassfed animals. Henry Coit, a medical doctor, was the founder of the first Medical Milk Commission and the certified milk movement. Physicians in cities throughout the country considered raw milk essential in the treatment of their patient. You read that correctly.

In 1929, J. E. Crewe, MD, one of the founders of the Mayo Foundation, the forerunner of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, published an article entitled “Raw Milk Cures Many Diseases.”

But the push for pasteurization was relentless. A series of articles in popular magazines in 1944, 1945 and 1946 served to frighten the public into support of these efforts. A side effect of this movement was the demise of America’s small farms.

Ladies’ Home Journal began the campaign with the article “Undulant Fever,” claiming - without any accurate documentation - that tens of thousands of people in the US were suffered from fever and illness because of exposure to raw milk. The next year, Coronet magazine followed up with “Raw Milk Can Kill You,” by Robert Harris, MD. The outright lies in this article were then repeated in similar articles that appeared in The Progressive and The Reader’s Digest the following year.(1)

From the Coronet magazine article, “Crossroads, U.S.A., is in one of those states in the Midwest area called the bread basket and milk bowl of America….What happened to Crossroads might happen to your town - to your city - might happen almost anywhere in America.” The author then gives a lurid account of a frightful epidemic of undulant fever allegedly caused by raw milk, an epidemic which “spread rapidly…it struck one out of every four persons in Crossroads. Despite the efforts of the two doctors and the State health department, one out of every four patients died.”

The only problem was there was no Crossroads and there was no epidemic. Dr Harris later admitted this. However as we have seen with our modern eyes the media, sadly, can be very convincing to the uninoculated.

Back to Dr Beal.

The key figure that permits a calculation of raw milk illnesses on a per-person basis comes from a 2007 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) FoodNet survey, which found that 3.04% of the population consumes raw milk, or about 9.4 million people, based on the 2010 census. Likely much higher today. Beals has compiled published reports of illness attributed to raw milk from 1999 to 2010.  During the 11 year period, illnesses attributed to raw milk averaged 42 per year.

“Using government figures for foodborne illness for the entire population, Dr. Beals has shown that you are about thirty-five thousand times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk.” 

“It is irresponsible for senior national government officials to oppose raw milk, claiming that it is inherently hazardous,” says Dr. Beals. “There is no justification for opposing the sale of raw milk or warning against its inclusion in the diets of children and adults.”

So what about the health benefits? Is raw milk actually healthier? If there isn’t a difference, who cares about defending raw milk?

A 2011 paper in the Journal of Food Protection found that looking at the water-soluble vitamins, researchers found a significant decrease for vitamins B12, B2 and folate, with a slight decrease in vitamins B1 and B6.  As for vitamin C, “In the majority of trials, a numeric decrease in vitamin C was found after heat treatment.”(2)

With fat soluble vitamins, studies on vitamin A were inconsistent, with two studies reporting a reduction and—strangely—two reporting an increase in vitamin A after pasteurization.(2) This is highly unlikely unless it was added post pasteurization.

The available data did not allow the researchers to make important conclusions about vitamin E, although “pasteurization appeared to qualitatively reduce concentrations” of vitamin E. Nor did they look at vitamin D or K2…hardly a useful study here especially given the fear of fat that pervade society and thus reduces natural consumption of critical fat soluble vitamins.

But I found a paper that did look at the effect of pasteurization on donor breast milk. Specifically the vitamin D concentration. Milk samples were obtained pre- and post-Holder pasteurization. The results found that pasteurization resulted in a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in the content of D2, D3, 25(OH)D2 and 25(OH)D3. The losses ranged from 10% to 20% following pasteurization.(3)

I know this is a lot to swallow and I presented both history and data here but given what you have seen in the recent when it comes to manipulating truth for profit, are you surprised? Clearly you can get these vitamins in other places but that is not the point. Although that is the defense of many of the papers I have read. They all accept a decrease in nutrients but say it won’t effect public health.

I beg to differ. In a chronically ill society why would we intentionally create a nutritionally inferior food? Especially with even one micronutrient deficiency can impact the immune system. There is no good answer other than in the short term it gives the government more control over food. This may just be a minor inconvenience now but in the long term it determines what you are allowed to eat and drink.

This is the ultimate end. See Amos Miller Organic Farm being run out of business by the federal government AND the state of Pennsylvania. It has never been about health, they wouldn’t have to lie to you if it was. It has always been about control.

References

1.       Harvey, Holman. “How Safe Is Your Town’s Milk?” The Reader’s Digest, August 1946.

2.       Macdonald LE, Brett J, Kelton D, Majowicz SE, Snedeker K, Sargeant JM. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of pasteurization on milk vitamins, and evidence for raw milk consumption and other health-related outcomes. J Food Prot. 2011;74(11):1814-1832. doi:10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-10-269

3.       Gomes FP, Shaw PN, Whitfield K, Koorts P, McConachy H, Hewavitharana AK. Effect of pasteurisation on the concentrations of vitamin D compounds in donor breastmilk. Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2016;67(1):16-19. doi:10.3109/09637486.2015.1126566