Courtesy of Ivan, I’ve been directed to this press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation decrying a U.S. FDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture crackdown on purveyors of “raw” — that is, unpasteurized — milk. Now, I have very little sympathy for people who think raw milk is perfectly safe and/or somehow better for us than pasteurized milk. After all, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable scientific breakthrough and public health miracle for a reason: raw milk can harbor any number of nasty bacteria — including S. typhimurium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria, Campylobacter, and Brucella.
That said, there’s no good reason why consenting adults should not be able to buy and consume raw milk. And, if the claims made in this press release are accurate (and I don’t vouch for the accuracy of anything put out by the Weston A. Price Foundation), these regulatory enforcers really ought to have something better to do. Apparently, what’s gotten their panties in a bunch is the interstate sale by a California dairy of unpasteurized bovine colostrum (also known as “first milk,” it’s the very high protein milk produced in the first few days after birth) for use in pet food. Seems that zoos like to feed colostrum to certain animals, and they prefer unpasteurized product.
Every budget season, FDA officials trudge up to Capitol Hill and complain that they don’t have sufficient resources to perform their really important work. Well, I think we may have identified a good place to cut the enforcement budget.
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Pasteurizing milk wasn’t done to spare people from unsanitary practices that allowed people to contract diseases like tuberculosis this is post facto revisionism.
Pasteurizing was a response to the problem created in the move to industrialize agriculture and a consequence of feeding the distillery waste from the gin mills to dairy cows. This increased acidosis and set up anaerobic environments in the cows rumen where many ‘bad’ bacteria thrive like e-coli 0157h. So many people got very sick.
According to Ron Schmidt author of ‘The Untold Story of Milk’ doctors noted with the adoption of pasteurizing increased incidents of birth defects, allergies and asthma which they attributed to the consumption of pasteurized milk!
Current knowledge about sanitation coupled with testing for bacterial counts then means that raw milk from cows fed quality feeds is superior to pasteurized milk.
Another piece of the pie comes from Udo Erasmus author of Fats that Heal and Fats that kill is that high grain feeding to the cows increases the omega 6 content of our meat and dairy skewing the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 essential fatty acids (e.f.a.) Versus much higher levels of omega 3’s in grass fed ruminants. He asserts that optimum essential fatty acid ratios are in the 2:1:1 2 omega 3 to 1 omega 6 and 9 respectively. So grain fed (fits industrial food model) is bad for us. Grass fed confers proper e.f.a. ratios and offers increased levels of conjugated linoleic acid c.l.a.(which surprise! offers us protection against atherosclerosis).
I agree with your assertion that people should be free to choose. This is based on market share increasing barriers to entry not about health concerns.
Finally milk is homogenized for one reason only and that is so that it can then sit in a bag or box on a store shelf for extended periods of time favouring the retailers.
Michael Pollan in his new book speaks about this.
For twenty years now we have known that homogenizing scars the lining of our arteries and so plaque builds up trying to heal the scarred arteries. This is known as atherosclerosis and is one of the leading causes of death in North America.
Educated consumers choose unpasteurized un homogenized grass fed milk. The food nazi’s however want to ’save’ us. What are your comments about the w.t.o.’s passed codex alimentaris?