The safety of raw milk consumption is on people’s minds in light of the August 2011 government raid of the Rawesome raw food club in Venice, California. Raw milk is milk that has not been treated by pasteurization. Who is correct, the raw milk activists of the real food movement who “completely reject and refuse all governmental food standards,” or the U.S. federal and state of CA governments that condemn the claims by raw milk activists that raw milk is nutritionally superior and better for one’s health than pasteurized milk?
What is pasteurization?
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was the French chemist and microbiologist credited with the development of pasteurization, the controlled heat treatment of liquid foodstuffs, like milk and apple juice, to eliminate bacterial contaminants that can cause disease if consumed. Pasteurization has the added benefit of increasing the shelf life of such products since spoilage microbes are also killed by pasteurization.
Pasteur was commissioned by the French government and the French brewing industries to figure out how to prevent the spoilage of beer and wine. In the process he discovered that the different “ferments” which convert grape juice into wine, wine into vinegar, and grain into beer are due to different living microbes that grow on different foods and produce different end-products of their metabolism. Furthermore, he determined that “diseases” of beer and wine happened when undesirable microbes spoiled the brew, producing sour-milk-acid-smelling or rancid-butter-smelling concoctions instead.
To prevent this waste, Pasteur developed a method of partial sterilization that treated the brews, after fermentation was complete, with just enough heat to retard the subsequent spoilage without changing the taste and quality of the beverages.
When did pasteurization become commonplace?
Pasteurization is now practically synonymous with the sanitization of milk. Nathan Straus (1848-1931), a New York City businessman who founded the Milk Depots to provide the poor with cheap milk, campaigned (1890s-1910s) for the compulsory pasteurization of milk to render it safe for consumption despite the filthy and unhealthy conditions under which the urban swill dairies confined their cows.
Ultimately this led to the establishment of the National Commission on Milk Standards (1911) and all of the rules and regulations imposed based on the sorry state of the dairy industry and general public health issues of the early 20th century. In 1912, this commission ordered that all milk, excluding Certified Raw Milk, be pasteurized.
The term Certified Raw Milk described milk marketed and self-regulated by the American Associations of Medical Milk Commissions (AAMMC), an organization that formed in 1907 to help clean up the milk supply without pasteurization, by raising the overall standards of the dairy industry. Alta Dena, the last dairy to belong to the AAMMC, stopped selling raw milk in the 1980s.
When people lived in crowded urban centers like NYC in the late 1800s/early 1900s, infectious diseases including infectious diarrhea, cholera, tuberculosis, and diptheria ran rampant. There is no question that the pasteurization of filthy milk obtained from filthy cows living and milked under filthy conditions helped save lives.
But there should be a better solution for 21st century America, and there is.
What is Grade A market raw milk?
There is no reason for raw milk to be unsafe if the dairy animals are healthy, well cared for, not allowed to wallow in their own excrement, and cleaned properly just prior to milking. Enforcing this should not require a mountain of paperwork and cost-prohibitive licenses and permits. All that should be required is that the animals be free of infectious disease (brucellosis and tuberculosis) and that the milk be clean as well.
Grade A market raw milk is just that. This designation indicates that the milk is legal to be sold for human consumption. In the state of California, Grade A raw milk is actually cleaner than pasteurized milk.
Raw milk advocate Mark McAfee, the owner of Organic Pastures Dairy near Fresno, told the Examiner that his
“raw milk is required to meet and exceed the standards for pasteurized milk.”
McAfee explained that the California standards for raw milk, buried in the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) code, are even more stringent than the federal standards.
All dairy cattle must be tested for brucellosis, an infectious bacterial disease that can be transmitted by consuming contaminated milk. However, only cows used for raw milk production must be tested yearly for the infectious bacterial disease tuberculosis; cows whose milk will be pasteurized are exempt.
Furthermore, raw milk must be tested to prove the complete absence of the disease-causing bacteria Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., Campylobacter jejuni, and Listeria monocytogenes. In other words, there is zero tolerance for these pathogens in raw milk. However, milk to be pasteurized is not tested, neither before nor after pasteurization. Instead its safety is based on faith in the efficacy of the pasteurization process.
Yet the milk to be pasteurized is allowed to contain 50,000 bacterial colony forming units (cfu) per ml before and 15,000 cfu/ml after pasteurization. The permissible numbers for pasteurized cream are even higher. This is based on a standard plate count test that does not distinguish the types of bacteria counted and whether or not they are pathogens. Raw milk must also meet the 15,000 cfu/ml standard. Yet raw milk must display a warning label even though it starts off cleaner, it is tested for pathogens, pasteurized milk is not, and pasteurization is only required to kill 70% of the total bacteria present based on the above numbers verified by McAfee. So a 500 ml glass of pasteurized milk is allowed to contain 7.5 million bacteria which may or may not include E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., C. jejuni, and L. monocytogenes.
Per ml, milk for human consumption (raw or pasteurized) can have no more than 10 coliform bacteria, an indicator of fecal contamination. Most coliforms are not pathogenic but their presence in high levels suggests unsanitary dairy practices. E. coli are coliform bacteria but Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter are not.
Are raw milk and pasteurized milk equivalent?
Taste is very subjective so it is up to you to decide which you prefer.
However, nutrients are measurable. Many vitamins present in raw milk are either completely or partially destroyed by pasteurization, including Vitamin A, Vitamin B complex, and Vitamin C. The level of soluble calcium, a mineral important for bone and teeth development and maintenance, is reduced by pasteurization.
In addition, as presented by Sally Fallon Morell at the Wise Traditions conference in 2009,
“raw milk contains multiple, redundant systems of bioactive components that can reduce or eliminate populations of pathogenic bacteria.”
To visualize this, get a bottle of raw milk and a bottle of pasteurized milk. Leave both at room temperature and let them sour. More often than not, pasteurized milk left to sour turns into a distasteful suspension of curds and whey. However, naturally soured or clabbered raw milk is creamy, thick, rich, and tangy due to the growth of beneficial lactic acid-producing bacteria. The difference is because without the bioactive compounds that fend off the growth of undesirables, the bad bacteria usually outcompete beneficial bacteria and the pasteurized milk spoils rather than sours.
Raw milk contains the enzyme lactoperoxidase that oxidatively damages pathogens, the protein lactoferrin that delivers iron to the blood after stripping it away from pathogens that need iron to grow, and the enzyme lysozyme that digests bacterial cell walls. Although lysozyme holds up to the heat of LTLT pasteurization (low-temperature, long-time; 145°F for 30 minutes) most of the lactoferrin and lactoperoxidase are destroyed.
Raw milk contains various cells and proteins of the immune system, including antibodies, that confer passive immunity to the consumer of the milk. This is why breast-feeding is so important to the health of newborns. These components of the immune system are inactivated by pasteurization.
Other biopolymers present in raw milk stick to bacteria and viruses so that ingested bacteria and viruses cannot stick to the lining of the gut and just pass on through. Levels of these protective biopolymers are reduced by pasteurization.
Pasteurized milk is nutritionally inferior to raw milk in other ways as well.
See the slideshow for more details.
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Milk allergies
Pasteurized milk is among the top 8 foods collectively responsible for 90% of all food allergies, per the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is the most common childhood food allergen.
Goat’s milk is thought to be easier to digest and less allergenic than cow’s milk.
Some people claim that raw milk is not allergenic. It is reasonable that proteins and other biochemicals denatured by the heat of pasteurization might react with the human immune system to cause allergies.
The government does not agree.
Lactose intolerance
Lactose is milk sugar and is present in all milk. Some people cannot digest lactose and suffer from the discomfort of lactose intolerance. The inability to digest milk sugar is not a milk allergy, it is due to a specific enzyme deficiency.
Raw milk advocates claim that raw milk can be tolerated by most people who otherwise suffer from lactose intolerance. Present in the raw milk are beneficial bacteria such as Bifidobacteria that produce the enzyme lactase to help digest the milk sugar lactose. Mark McAfee says that these people have been misdiagnosed as lactose-intolerant when they are really pasteurized-milk-intolerant.
The government does not agree.
Personal view
I am a microbiologist. For many years as a university professor, I “preached” the evils of raw milk. However, as a scientist, lifelong learner, and critical thinker, I believe that I am able to distinguish between scientific truth and science fiction based on an exaggerated sense of risk. It is everyone’s prerogative to change his or her mind after weighing all the evidence for and against an issue. So I have. Scare tactics are fun. I loved to scare my student audience. But unfounded scare tactics should have no place when it comes to making policy that affects us all. That being said, if I discover new research that scientifically and convincingly argues against the safety of raw milk, I will report on it.
If the idea of drinking raw milk disgusts you, don’t drink it. But don’t force others to abandon their principles and freedom to choose the real food that suits them best.
More Information
California Milk Standards, published on the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) website
Drinking Raw Milk: It’s Not Worth the Risk, an article published on the FoodSafety.gov website
Food Safety and Raw Milk, the government’s perspective, published on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website
Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, the classic book on the major discoveries of the microscopic world
Milestones in Microbiology (1546-1940), translated and edited by Thomas D. Brock, a compilation of scientific manuscripts published in the primary literature
Pasteurize or Certify: Two Solutions to “The Milk Problem” by Ron Schmid, ND, a Real Milk article published on the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund™ website
Raw Milk Info and Frequently Asked Questions, published on the Organic Pastures website
The Dangers of Raw Milk: Unpasteurized Milk Can Pose Serious Health Risk, the government’s perspective, published on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website
Traditional Diets — Seminar of Traditional Diets, Part III by Sally Fallon Morell, a powerpoint presentation made at the Wise Traditions 2009 conference. Sally is the president and co-founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation (Washington, D.C.)
Which do you choose? A comparison of pasteurized and raw milk, published on the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund™ website
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You might also be interested in Donna’s other work as National Food Security Examiner, National Science News Examiner, Long Beach Urban Agriculture Examiner, and founder and executive director of Long Beach Grows.
Copyright © 2011 Donna Marykwas; All rights reserved.
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