Responses in the comment section of yesterday’s GlobeandMail.com story on raw milk “A Time Before Pasterurization” give an interesting cross section of public opinion on raw milk issues. In spite of the fact that the author’s position was virulently opposed to raw milk, public comments favourable to raw milk choice outweighed those from nay-sayers 19 to 10. I’d call that overwhelming support for the idea of legal access to raw milk for those who choose to consume it. And that’s from a pretty random cross section of readers too. After all the Globe and Mail is not a periodical that would specifically attract an audience into alternative health culture.
Just for fun, let’s have a look at what people are saying about raw milk. We’ll start with those opposed to the concept:
“Growing up in the 50’s we would visit our cousin’s farms in different parts of the province. At both farms it was clear that raw milk was not to be eaten. No discussion. Seems my relatives had come to know the benefits of pasteurization early on.”
“Thank you, Jane Jenkins, for the reminder of why we pasteurize milk. I’m always amazed that people take our public health policies for granted. We have them for a reason and they should be defended vigorously.”
“Hadn’t these hippies best remember History, and why pasteurization came about, and what it accomplished? Distrust of corporate infestation of the food chain is leading to some dumb, stupid and really ignorant moves in reaction. Stop and think please.”
“As a Food Scientist who deals with numerous small companies producing and marketing their products to the public, I am amazed at the number of producers who have no conception of the potential of their products to cause serious illness and even death.”
“Michael Schmidt’s only concern is to make money for himself. He runs a farm. Then he finds simplistic minds who are prepared to pay for the cost of his livestock and then buy the produce of the animal which they own. He has it both ways.”
“It’s nice to see the Globe printing a story from someone who knows what she is writing about. The ‘I drank it and nothing happened to me’ crowd notwithstanding. If unpasteurized milk products hit the market there would be many incidents like recently happened in Quebec with unpasteurized cheese. Most would be safe but many would not.”
“I have a patient who contracted brucellosis from drinking unpasteurized milk in Europe some years ago. He was ill for 18 months and nearly died. He doesn’t think raw milk is a great idea. My children go through about a liter and a half of milk daily. I’ll take safety over flavour any day, thank you very much. As for the ‘I drank unpasteurized milk, it was great and nothing happened’ crowd, you’re fools, simple as that. That logic is right up there with ‘I drove my car at 200 kph with no sealt belt and didn’t die.’ The fact that you didn’t die that particular time doesn’t mean it was a good idea. Suggesting pasteurization isn’t necessary for small dairy operation is incredibly naive and almost willfully stupid.”
“Now requiring milk to be pasteurized is a different issue. This is regulating the sale of a food product for the purposes of public safety. It’s like requiring meat be properly processed and stored before being sold.”
“Before pasteurization, people used to BOIL milk, whether they bought it from the market or just milked it from their own cows.”
Now some comments from raw milk fans:
“I don’t mind pasteurized milk, but I do mind homogenized milk. It is really bad because during homogenization the fat molecules get broken up so we can’t digest them. It also enables them to enter the blood stream. I won’t get into all the additives that one cannot find in organic milk such as antibiotics, hormones, fertilizer residues, etc. I also believe that if we can buy cigarettes and alcohol we should be able to buy inspected raw milk. There could be a health warning on it.”
“I was part of a cow-share arrangement in Vancouver and absolutely loved the milk that I got from it. I grew up hating milk my whole life, refused to drink it as an adult… until I discovered raw milk, which I would happily guzzle. It is a completely different substance, fresh and sweet and delicious. And while pasteurized milk makes my stomach feel uneasy, raw milk is highly digestible.
No one in our cow share ever complained of illness.
I found this to be a ridiculous and highly uninformed editorial. Pasteurization became necessary — and I definitely recognize that it serves a purpose — as industrial farming became more prevalent. When animals are raised by caring farmers on free range farms, their milk is perfectly healthy. Of course it is! Just like human milk is perfectly healthy, if the woman is healthy.
I wouldn’t EVER drink industrially produced milk that hadn’t been pasteurized. But I absolutely stand by my right to drink raw milk that comes from a farmer I trust.
And, now that I live in California, I can buy raw milk legally at the grocery store. Surprise surprise, no one dies from it here either, because in order to be able to sell it, farms have to pass a rigorous safety inspection.
To suggest to Globe readers that raw milk is inherently dangerous and that people who want it are ignorant is both insulting and… ignorant. Give me a break.”
“ I agree I would not trust factory milk that had not been pasteurized. However, the difference between natural milk and irradiated milk (heat pasteurized) is remarkable in flavour and richness. I grew up drinking natural milk when visiting the farms of relatives and the milk was a highlight of the visit (along with fresh eggs and chicken). Comparing milk now with advanced animal husbandry to the 19th century is disingenuous. Especially with respect to cheese–raw milk cheese is plainly superior. Among other things, the raw milk must be used right away locally. Industrial milk is pooled from numerous herds of varying quality and typically sits around for three days before being used for cheese, stripped of flavour. Producers of raw milk or users of raw milk tends to be artisanal with their livelihood at stake on the quality of the product.
Imagine if they pasteurized all the beef on the shelves (heat to 165 farenheit) or the spinach, tomatoes, an all the other numerous vegetables that have been carrying food-bourne bacteria? Public health professionals would have us all eating soyant green tablets. Fortunately we have a growing back-to-real-food movement.”
“Pasteurization is a form of mass hypnosis. Irradiation and genetically modified foods are the more recent additions to this belief.
GMO companies like Monsanto started out as chemical companies and then ventured into the biotech food business. Ten years ago we were told, promised, that GMOs were necessary in order to feed the growing world population. Since that time the opposite has happened. As Monsanto gains control of the world seed supply we as consumers have to accept higher prices because of GMO failure to deliver on its promise.
Irradiation is another failed promise that we consumers accept. The argument is that irradiation kills bacteria including salmonella and E. coli. However there is no guarantee and people must not eat rare meat but must cook to medium or well-done.
As a child I drank raw milk from the cow or dipped from the vat we dumped the collected milk into. Never since has milk been so tasty.
Are we healthier now than 50 years ago? Why have obesity,diabetes and cancer rates skyrocketed? We live longer but is it better? We are the subjects of a great agribusiness experiment when we accept GMO foods, irradiation, pasteurization and fast food.”
“I guess I should clarify since some people seem to stoop to name calling here. Pasteurization may be necessary in our factory-farm reality, with people who want a blanket government rule for everything (I wonder why all food, including fruits and vegetables, isn’t mandatorily served pre cooked, heck boiled, it’d be so much safer). But for individuals who are part of something like Schmidt’s setup, why not?”
“If you think these farmers make a lot of money then you are the simple minded individual… I would tell you to open your mind, but your post shows a lack of ability to do so…
Good luck drinking hormone injected, corn fed, antibiotic filled cow milk boiled to protect the factory farms (from being sued by those who would get sick from drinking their awful milk) NOT to protect the consumer…”
“Mmmmm! Nothing better than a cup of UHT pus infested industrial milk…
Europe (and some of the US) is on its road to extinction…with all that raw milk in the stores.
I wonder how pasteurized wine tastes like? It must be good, it’s safe to drink. How about pasteurizing water? There have been deaths from contaminated water.
We should also ban restaurants and BBQ jokeys from serving meat cooked rare…
Carpaccio? Are you out of your mind? Fry it first then you call it whatever you want.”
“Why are the penalties for Raw Milk higher than pot or other drugs? Why does the DFO exceed their mandate and not allow any cows on a small artisan cheese farm? Why do Cdn cheese manufacturer’s have to buy american milk for use? Why can I not make cheese at home with unpasturised milk that sits for 60 days abiding by the laws of the Ontario Government? Why does Greg Sorbera get to drink raw milk at home and if I go to my local farmer they loose their farm, milk quota, equipment and rights?
While I do understand we have to be concerned about bacteria, it is solved by having a clean and sanitized work space which is easier at home than at ML foods or other large manufacturers.”
“According to her webpage the author does not have a background in bacteriology or medicine….so in my opinion she is not really qualified to say raw milk is safe or not.”
“When I was back there in agriculture school, there was a man in the area who hired me to work on his dairy farm for the summer. This guy was a former professor from an agricultural college in Holland. He had come over to Canada with his young wife to do some real world farming. I had a great time working there all summer doing all the different things one does on a farm. And guess what, we drank the milk raw, straight out of the bulk tank. Great taste. No health issues.
So some years later when I was raising my own family, I was one of probably many people who suggested to Michael Schmidt that he sell his milk raw, and that he sell it direct to the people who wanted it. That was back in the early 90s. I’ve been associated with Mr. Schmidt and his community of cowshare holders ever since and I’ve never heard of a health problem arising in connection with the milk.
On the contrary I’ve heard many stories of health improvement on Mr. Schmidt’s milk. Lots of people who thought they were lactose intolerant, turned out to be just intolerant of the commonly available pasteurized homogenized milk that you buy in the supermarket.
More and more people I know are swearing off dairy. Either their doctors are telling them not to drink it, or they’re realizing that it’s not so good for their health. And that’s got to add up to a lost market for dairy farmers. But when these people discover raw milk and experience the good it does for their health, they come back on board as milk drinkers, albeit of the raw variety.
So I see a huge growth opportunity here for the dairy industry. There’s a vast unfulfilled demand for raw milk, both from increasingly health-conscious Canadians and from immigrants who were accustomed to drinking raw milk in the places they come from.”
And now for some comments that didn’t make it through the Globe’s “semi-moderation” filter and thus never appeared on the site as part of the discussion:
“The author seems to suggest that stories of contamination in large scale meat packing should cause concern in people who get their milk directly from an organic farmer like Michael Schmidt. As one of Michael Schmidt’s cow share members I can say that I’ve always made it a point of personal health safety not to eat commercially processed deli meats, or any meats, for that matter, that are not organically grown.
My concern about eating these products centers around the means of production, which for non-organic meats typically involve stuff like artificial growth hormones or sub-clinical doses of antibiotics, you know, the ones that are implicated in the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of disease.
I’m concerned because what’s come to be called “conventional” farming is simply not sustainable in the long run. How long has it been “conventional”? Maybe 60 years? Let’s look at what’s been happening in India, where due to the hotter climate, the earth’s “metabolism” is quicker. According to the recent film “How to Save the World”, farmers who went the “green revolution” route of chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds were committing suicide in droves, in response to crop failures and financial ruin. Changing to biodynamic practices has made a world of difference for the growing number of farmers there who’ve been fortunate enough to see the light and make the switch.
Measuring bacteria levels in the final product is a poor standard of reference. In industry, quality is increasingly defined in terms of process (ISO standards). And that should be the case for farming as well. It’s got to be done right all the way along if we want safe food. No scrimping or cheating by using artificial fertilizers or chemical pesticides. Let’s get our nature in balance so these things are unnecessary. Because we sure don’t want to be importing our food from China, where more than one company seems to think melamine powder is an acceptable substitute for protein.”
AND
“Dr. Mark Gebhart M.D. is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where he teaches medical microbiology to medical students and public-health graduate students.
Speaking at a lecture series held in April at Rutgers University in New Jersey he began with a statement that raw milk is uniquely safe and that it “contains multiple, redundant systems of bioactive components that can reduce or eliminate populations of pathogenic bacteria.”
He goes on to say that the most common cause of food-borne illness is campylobacter which is best known for being a contaminant of meats. However, get this, according to Dr. Gebhart, studies have shown that when the pathogen is added to raw milk, there is actually a reduction in the the disease-causing bacteria over time.
Dr. Gebhart did preface his comments with the statement that he was expressing his own personal opinion (rather than accepted scientific dogma, I presume). You can read more of what he has to say on the subject in an article on the Rodale Institute website. The piece is titled “Got Raw Milk” and is part three of a four part series dealing with various aspects of raw milk.”
