Raw Milk from a Local Farm, Part II

The second step in our journey from pasteurized, homogenized skim milk to organic, raw milk from a local farm was the transition from generic brand whole milk found in the grocery store to unpasteurized raw milk.  Yes, this was quite a leap.  I was violently skeptical at first (ask Alex).  The thing is, people drank unpasteurized, non-homogenized milk for centuries, and so we wanted to dig deeper to find out when and why the switch happened.  The story I knew involved a clever Louis Pastuer who basically saved humanity by zapping out all the horrible crap present in milk that was making everyone sick.

From our research, we found there was more to the story.  It turns out, the war of 1812 blocked off America’s access to British whiskey, and so grain distilleries started popping up all over.  Cows were fed the slop grain leftover from fermentation, a struggle in itself since the cows didn’t want to eat it.  Combined with crowded, unsanitary conditions, the slop did not provide the proper nutrients for the cows to fight and prevent disease, which was inevitably spread to their milk (a,b).  “Swill milk,” as it was called, increased infant mortality and sickness from milk in general as it became common practice.  Cow owners found two separate solutions: pasteurize the milk, or feed the cows better food in more sanitary environments.  These two separate methods competed for years, until eventually pasteurization won out.  Another instance of treating the symptoms instead of solving the root of the problem... There are some great articles from The New York Times that show the back and forth banter between the two schools of thought (4,5,6).  I understand how, the way most cows are housed and fed today, that pasteurization is completely needed for your average jug of milk at Wegman's.  However, if cows are given the proper diet and kept in clean conditions, pasteurization to me seems completely unnecessary and may compromise many of the good qualities of milk, including probiotics, nutrients, etc.  This truly makes me wonder how healthy the grain-based diets milking cows are overwhelmingly fed across this nation… but more on that in a later post. 

Performing a literature search on the benefits of raw milk is extremely difficult.  As with many controversial and anti-mainstream research topics, I think the sorts of studies that want to show that raw milk is better than pasteurized milk are either not funded, or prevented from being published.  After all, the milk industry has a huge presence and probably a gigantic influence over this sort of thing.  I’m seeing more and more how many research groups and funding sources have a strict “agenda.”  From a logics standpoint, it’s quite easy for me to believe that raw milk is inherently healthier.  After all, that is what we raise our newborns on, although its source is human.  But, the data *are* out there.  Raw milk in history has been used as a medicine to treat a variety of disease (7).  For example, children fed raw milk showed increased resistance to tuberculosis and less tooth decay (8,9).  There is concern that raw milk may be a lovely incubator for bacteria to grow, but it appears both cow and human milk can inhibit the growth of certain bacteria, including B. diphtheria, B. coli, and streptococci.  But, when heated, as is done in pasteurization, the milk grew the bacteria like wildfire, as the pro-biotics were destroyed (10).  Pretty ironically, the "pro-biotic" yogurt you may buy has added back into it the same pro-biotics that are first zapped out out during pastuerization, although the additions are probably more homogeneous.  In terms of nutritional benefit, raw milk from grass-fed, outdoor cows yields higher calcium and vitamin A levels (8).  Pasteurized milk compared to raw milk had a 38% reduction in vitamin B complex and up to a 50% reduction in vitamin C (11, 12).  Heat disrupts the micelle systems present in the fatty parts of milk that house vitamins, enzymes, etc, making them extremely difficult to be absorbed.  Also, if you know something about protein structure (primary structure, secondary structure, etc), you will easily believe that heat denatures proteins in milk, screwing with their structure and therefore interfering with their function (13).  If you want to read websites that discuss in depth the nutritional benefits of raw milk in non-journal-article-technical form, try here, here, or here.

If you took a glance at the references, you will see most are very old, which is truly depressing.  In contrast, I am sure it’s simple to find recent articles addressing the health problems associated with consuming raw milk.  Here is one, for instance (14).  I do understand the value of pasteurizing milk from a treat-the-symptoms point of view.  If bacteria and viruses are found in milk, it’s easy and effective to zap it out.  However, I believe we are truly missing out on the amazing nutritional properties of milk by doing so.  And I agree, it would be very difficult to trust a label that claimed to have raw milk procured under sanitary conditions from healthy cows.  There is a delicate balance here.  Do we treat the symptoms by pasteurizing the milk, removing much of its nutrition, to mass produce a cheap, safe product?  Or, do we treat the disease, and start taking care of the facilities and animals to provide us a quality, nourishing product that may have a higher price tag?

References:

4) Brewery stock farms: too much like the swill milk dairies.  The New York Times. Oct 25, 1884.

5) Swill milk destroyed. The New York Times.  May 1, 1887.

6) Bad Milk.  The New York Times. April 30, 1874.

7) Crewe, J., 1929. Raw milk cures many diseases. Certified Milk Magazine, January:3-6.

8) Krauss, W. E., Erb, J.H. and Washburn, R. G., Studies on the nutritive value of milk II. "The effect of pasteurization on some of the nutritive properties of milk," Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 518, page 11, January, 1933.

9) The Lancet, page 1142, May 8, 1937

10) Dold, H., Wizaman, E., and Kleiner, C., Z. Hyt. Inf., "Antiseptic in milk," The Drug and Cosmetic Industry, 43,1:109, July, 1938.

11) Lewis, L.R., The relation of the vitamins to obstetrics, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 29.5:759. May, 1935.

12) Jordan, E.O., A Textbook of General Bacteriology, Twelfth Edition, Revised, page 691, W. B. Saunders Co., 1938.

13) Shanahan C and Shanahan L.  Deep Nutrition: Why your genes need traditional food. Big Box Books, 2008.

14) Oliver SP, Boor KJ, Murphy SC, Murinda SE. Food safety hazards associated with consumption of raw milk. Foodborne Pathog Dis. 2009 Sep;6(7):793-806.