One farmer's solution: reduce the herd, go organic and sell raw milk direct to consumers. Photo (Yoon S. Byun/Boston Globe Staff
Here’s an excerpt from the Boston Globe/Boston.com story that goes with the picture above:
“By Darry Madden
Globe Correspondent February 23, 2008
Jill Ebbott, a holistic health counselor in Brookline, buys 8 gallons of unpasteurized milk a week for her household of three people, and she pours a splash in the bowls that her three dogs eat from. She says a year of drinking raw milk has cleared up her husband’s allergies.
“He suffered tree pollen allergies for 21 years,” Ebbott said. “In the spring, he was swollen and oozing and had to wear mittens to bed so he didn’t scratch himself too much. After 13 months on raw milk, his gut was rebalanced to such a degree that he was healed.”
The US Food and Drug Administration warns on its website that drinking unpasteurized milk is “like playing Russian roulette with your health,” but Ebbott is part of a growing number of people who reject the long-held belief that pasteurized milk is better for you. People who prefer raw milk say that pasteurization – the process of heating milk to kill bacteria – destroys good bacteria along with the bad. Massachusetts is among 28 states in which raw milk can be sold for human consumption, and in the past two years the number of dairies licensed to sell it here has gone from 12 to 23. Dairies are selling more raw milk than they were five years ago, according to the Northeast Organic Farming Association, which says it receives calls weekly from consumers trying to find it.
Neither the association nor the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture keep records of how many gallons are produced, but farms say they are producing more raw milk than ever. Cricket Creek Farm in Williamstown, for example, is primarily a cheese-making operation, but it began selling unpasteurized milk a year ago because customers kept asking for it. Anecdotal evidence such as Ebbott’s is common among people who drink raw milk. But science is beginning to weigh in, too. Researchers at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Basel in Switzerland followed nearly 15,000 children ages 5 to 15 in Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany from 2001 to 2004. The study, sponsored by the European Union and published in 2007, found that children who drank raw milk had a lower incidence of asthma and allergies…..” Read the whole story here.
And now, for a look at the problem this farmer is helping to solve:
Millions of pounds of govt.-owned milk powder stored in a warehouse in Fowler, Calif. Photo by Peter DaSilva for the NY Times.
According to a recent NY Times story, the price of milk is expected to drop from $20 to $14 per 100 lbs of milk in coming months, in response to a slowdown in buying and a glut of supply. Here’s an excerpt from that NY Times story:
“….As a breakneck expansion in the global dairy industry turns to bust, Roger Van Groningen must deal with the consequences. In a warehouse that his company runs here, 8 to 20 trucks pull up every day to unload milk powder. Bags of the stuff — surplus that nobody will buy, at least not at a price the dairy industry regards as acceptable — are unloaded and stacked into towering rows that nearly fill the warehouse…..” “…..The bags of milk powder represent a startling reversal of fortune for the dairy industry, which flourished in recent years in part because of a growing appetite for milk, cheese, ice cream and pizza in places like Mexico, Egypt and Indonesia. Many of those countries were benefiting from a global economic boom led by free-spending consumers in the United States. As American dairy farmers increased their shipments of powdered milk, cheese and other dairy ingredients to foreign markets, their incomes rose. And the demand surge helped drive up the price of milk for American families. The national average for whole milk peaked at $3.89 a gallon in July, up from an average of $3.20 a gallon in 2006.
Arthur Machado, a dairy farmer in Fresno, Calif., has to keep feeding his herd of more than 300 cows. He plans to sell them and take up a more stable commodity. Photo by Peter DaSilva for the NY Times.
But now, demand for dairy products is stalling amid a global economic slowdown and credit crisis, even as supplies have increased. The result is a glut of milk — and its assorted byproducts, like milk powder, butter and whey proteins — that has led to a precipitous drop in prices…..” Read it all here.
