Our Farm Our Food Coop members, in happier days, when the raw milk was still flowing from Glencolton Farms. Sadly, since raw milk packaging and distribution have been criminalized through injunctions granted a few weeks ago to Ontario Milk Director Gavin Downing and to the Regions of York, Simcoe and Peel, a lot of people who need raw milk for their health and well-being — including the author of this article — are having to go without.
On Nutritious Milk
Since 2000, I have been consuming milk from a farm operated, at the time, by Michael Schmidt. Prior to consuming this milk, I had done research which resulted in my decision to choose to drink this unpasteurized milk. Based on my research, which I will document in this article, I asked Michael Schmidt two questions. I already knew his cows were at grass so I didn’t need to ask him a third question which I would have asked if I hadn’t known the cows were at grass. The two questions I asked Michael were:
1/ What colour is your butter?
and 2/ What kind of cows do you have?
His answers were “yellow” and “Canadienne” to the two questions. Based on my previous research and his answers I decided to drink the milk.
What prompted me to want to investigate milk?
Very simply what prompted me to want to investigate milk were previous investigations. The investigation which led directly to “Pottenger’s Cats” was reading a book titled, “IMMUNIZATION THE REALITY BEHIND THE MYTH” by Walene James. In her book she talked about Pasteur and the pasteurization of milk. In addition, she described a ten year study by Francis Pottenger, Jr., M.D. in which cats were fed several combinations of raw and cooked milk and meat. The investigation that led directly to reading Walene James’ book was a book called, “Confessions of a Medical Heretic” by M.D. Robert Mendelsohn. In this book, Dr. Mendelsohn recommended some other books to read. Walene James’ book was one of them. What caused me to buy and read Dr. Mendelshohn’s book was seeing him interviewed on a late night television program, probably “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.
When I read about the cat study, although I was interested in reading the study itself, I had no idea where to find it. Some considerable time later, at an annual convention and exhibition called “Total Health”, I picked up a brochure from a booth on Max Gerson’s alternative cancer therapy. In the brochure there were a number of books available for sale by the Gerson Institute and I discovered one of them was titled, “Pottenger’s Cats”. Right away I ordered it from the Gerson Institute.
Pottenger’s Cats, A Study In Nutrition By Francis M. Potterger, Jr., M.D.
The Pottenger Cat Study took place over ten years from 1932 to 1942. In the study, the cats were penned and fed different diets. In one group the cats were fed a diet of two thirds cooked meat and one third raw milk. In three other groups the cats were fed a diet of two thirds cooked milk and one third raw meat. Each of these three groups had a different type of cooked milk, pasteurized, sweetened condensed or evaporated milk. Two groups of cats were kept on raw food. One of these groups was fed two thirds raw meat with one third raw milk and the other was fed two thirds raw milk with one third raw meat. All the cat groups in the study also received cod liver oil.
Simply put, the cats in the two thirds raw meat with one third raw milk group remained healthy generation after generation. The list of problems encountered in the two thirds cooked meat with one third raw milk group are too long to list here. Some of them are skeletal deformities, heart problems, nearsightedness and farsightedness, underactivity of the thyroid or inflammation of the thyroid gland, infections of the kidney, of the liver, of the testes, of the ovaries and of the bladder; arthritis and inflammation of the joints; inflammation of the nervous system with paralysis and meningitis. In behaviour, female cats became more aggressive and males became more docile.
Results in the four groups of cats fed a diet of two thirds milk with one third meat correspond to the results experienced in the two groups of cats fed the diet of two thirds meat with one third milk. Cats in the two thirds raw milk with one third raw meat remained healthy generation after generation while those in the other three groups where the two thirds portion of the diet was one of the three cooked milks suffered similar problems as the cats in the group fed two thirds cooked meat and one third raw milk.
Interestingly to me, cats in the cooked meat or cooked milk groups developed a variety of allergies with the number of allergies increasing in second and third generation cooked food fed cats. Milk allergies were common in these second and third generation cooked food cats. One kitten developed asthma.
In an additional series of experiments, Pottenger looked at the diet of the cattle producing the meat or milk. In the previously mentioned experiment involving cats fed the diet of two thirds raw milk with one third raw meat, the cows were on fresh feed. Cats fed two thirds raw milk from cows fed dry feed with one third raw meat and showed similar deficiencies to the cats fed two thirds pasteurized milk with one third raw meat. Again, all cats in the study received cod liver oil.
From the book I quote: “Francis Pottenger, Jr., never stated that a one-to-one comparison could be made between his findings in cat nutrition and his findings in human nutrition.” He did say: “While no attempt will be made to correlate the changes in the animals studied with malformations found in humans, the similarity is so obvious that parallel pictures will suggest themselves.”
It is of interest to me that when you feed a deficient diet to a group of cats the result is a variety of different problems. This makes looking for a specific cause of a problem so much more difficult that the best that can be offered is often just a symptomatic treatment rather than a cure.
The book on the cat study is available here:
https://price-pottenger.org/store/pottengers-cats-study-nutrition
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, D.D.S.
Inside the cover of my copy of Pottenger’s Cats was a sticker with the name of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, including the address and phone number. I was so impressed with the book, I phoned them to tell them so. The person I spoke to suggested I might also be interested in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, D.D.S. I was sent an order form and I ordered the book.
For almost ten years, Dr. Weston Price, DDS, and his wife, Florence, travelled the world studying the health of isolated and “modernized” populations. Isolated populations, of course, were still on their traditional diets while the “modernized” had started eating the white man’s food. Of interest to Canadians may be a short piece taken from their journey to study the isolated populations in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon territory.
“When I asked an old Indian, through an interpreter, why the Indians did not get scurvy he replied promptly that that was a white man’s disease. I asked whether it was possible for the Indians to get scurvy. He replied that it was, but said that Indians know how to prevent it and the white man does not. When I asked why he did not tell the white man how, his reply was the white man knew too much to ask the Indian anything. I then asked him if he would tell me. He said he would if the chief said he might. He went to see the chief and returned in about an hour, saying that the chief said he could tell me because I was a friend of the Indians and had come to tell the Indians not to eat the food in the white man’s store. He took me by the hand and led me to a log where we both sat down. He then described how when the Indian kills a moose he opens it up and at the back of the moose just above the kidney there are what he described as two small balls in the fat. These he said the Indian would take and cut up into as many pieces as there were little and big Indians in the family and each would eat his piece. They would eat also the walls of the second stomach. By eating these parts of the animal the Indians would keep free from scurvy, which is due to a lack of vitamin C.”
While Price and his wife were in Australia, he learned about a situation that demonstrated the variable nutritional value of mother’s milk. Native women who were nursing babies were fed food almost all supplied by the government. Some of the native babies had become ill while nursing from their mothers and some had even died. When the babies were switched from nursing to a condensed whole milk product, the babies recovered. When they then went back on their mother’s milk, they again became sick. It was noticed that the hogs that were used to clean up scraps from the kitchen were going down with a type of paralysis and could not get back up. The situation with the hogs and the babies suggested a vitamin A deficiency which became the method of treatment.
For milk from mammals to be nature’s most perfect food it should be able to fully nourish the offspring of the mammal without supplementation. If the milk requires added nutrients then the milk is nutritionally deficient and who is to know that the added nutrients are all that were deficient in the milk.
Of interest in this article, of course, is Price’s studies of the nutritional value of milk and butter and his application of the studies to altering diets of people with health problems such a dental caries. Price used a test developed by Yoder for antirachitic properties of food. Since vitamin D cures rickets, it was assumed that this test was measuring only the vitamin D content of the food. Price initially assumed that it was a test for measuring only the vitamin D content of the food but later concluded, from his data, that the nutritional factor it represented included aids to mineral utilization as well as potency for dental caries immunity. Price called this unknown factor activator X. For vitamin A Price used a chemical test developed by Carr and Price that depended on the action of antimony trichloride in chloloroform solution.
In his analysis of the vitamin A and activator X content he tested more than 20,000 samples of dairy products from the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand. He found that neither the total hours of sunshine nor temperature was the primary controlling factor. He found that the most potent factor was the grass in the pasture, with rapidly growing grass in the pasture or rapidly dried being the most efficient. Since vitamin A and D are fat soluble vitamins, Price turned his attention to the levels of vitamin A and his activator X in the butter fat.
Butterfat was tested for vitamin A and activator X in six samples spaced about ten days apart beginning in February and ending in April. In March green alfalfa hay was also fed to the cattle. The cattle were in a herd in Deaf Smith County of northwest Texas near Hereford. (Authors note: Hereford was known in the 1950’s as the town without cavities. It was assumed, at the time, that the reason for the lack of cavities was the presence of naturally occurring fluoride in the water.) What this series of tests revealed was that the colour of the butter was changing. In the first two samples of butter, Price describes the colour of the butter “as white as lard”. A slight tint was noticed in the third sample. The colour change then progressed to a brilliant yellow through the next three samples. With respect to the levels of vitamin A and activator X in the samples, they also progressed from their lowest levels in the first sample to their maximum levels in the final sample.
For use in his studies, Price found he could increase the potency of the butter by melting a high vitamin butter, allowing it to crystallize and then centrifuging it. This resulted in an oil with a solid crystalline layer below it. The oil, which remained limpid at seventy degrees fahrenheit, was much higher than the whole butter in the activating factor. This is what he called activator X.
A group of twenty-seven children from poor homes during the severe industrial depression were selected on the basis of rampant dental caries. Price chemically tested the saliva of all the children at the beginning of the test. At the beginning of the test, powered bone passed inorganic phosphorous into the saliva. After two months in the test the movement of the inorganic phosphorous reversed with the saliva passing the inorganic phosphorous into the powered bone. The rate of transfer continued to increase through seven months.
The children were provided with one meal a day at a mission. The diet at home and the care of the teeth at home were not changed. A teaspoonful of a mixture of equal amounts of cod-liver oil and the high potency butter oil was provided to the children at the beginning of the meal. The meal consisted of stew, cooked fruit, whole wheat rolls spread with a high vitamin butter and two glasses of whole milk. There was some variation of the menu from day to day.
The result was complete control of the dental caries for the entire group. Any exposed dentin gained a hard glassy appearance. There were other improvements in the children with perhaps the most significant being “…that two different teachers came to me to inquire as to what had been done to make a particular child change from one of the poorest in the class in capacity to learn to one of the best.”
After first publishing the book in 1939, Price added a supplement and republished the book in 1945. The forward to the supplement and one chapter was written by the soil scientist, William A. Albrecht, PhD. Chapter 23 by Albrecht is titled, “Food is Fabricated Soil Fertility”. In the article Albrecht asks what is soil fertility? His answer is “In simplest words it is some dozen chemical elements in mineral and rock combinations in the earth’s crust that are being slowly broken out of these and hustled off to the sea. Enjoying a temporary rest stop enroute, they are a part of the soil and serve their essential roles in nourishing all the different life forms. They are the soil’s contribution—from a large mass of nonessentials—to the germinating seeds that empowers the growing plants to use sunshine energy in the synthesis of atomspheric elements and rainfall into the many crops for our support. The atmospheric and rainfall elements are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, so common everywhere.”
Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is available here:
https://price-pottenger.org/store/nutrition-and-physical-degeneration
The Albrecht Papers
After reading Albrecht’s description of soil fertility, I decided to learn how to provide these chemical elements in the best form for Nature to make use of them. At the time, I had no idea that there were volumes of Albrecht’s papers available in book form. My investigation into soil fertility led to finding that three volumes of Albrecht’s papers were available in Canada in Wellesley Ontario from Bio-Ag Consultants and Distributors Inc. I made the trip out to Wellesley to buy the three books. There I spoke to the owner, Murray Bast, and he suggested I buy two other books, “Soil Grass and Cancer” and the “Acres U.S.A. Primer”. I saw that Murray had copies of both “Pottenger’s Cats” and “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” in his bookcase. I told Murray if he thought that I should also buy the additional two books that that was fine with me and I purchased all five books.
Cat Dung and Urine from the Pottenger cat study as Fertilizer
In Volume II of “The Albrecht Papers” Albrecht compares the different effects of cat dung and urine as fertilizer for dwarf bean plants. He reports that the cat pens contained an infertile quartz sand. Thus the only fertilizer in them at the end of the feeding study were cat dung and cat urine. After a period of time after the feeding study ended, it was noticed a single species of weeds were growing in some of the pens where cats had been fed milk. In the pens where the cats had either pasteurized, evaporated or sweetened condensed milk there were no weeds growing except where male cats had been fed pasteurized milk. In contrast in the pens where the cats had been fed raw milk, the weed growth totally filled the pens.
As a result of these observations, the same pens were planted with two rows of dwarf beans. In the pens with cats fed on either of the three heated milks, the beans grew as bush or dwarf beans. In the pens where the cats had been fed raw milk, however, the beans grew as if they were pole beans climbing the screened sides of the pens as high as six feet, contrary to the claims of the seed seller. In addition there was a fecal odour in the beans seeds from the plants in the pens were cats were fed heated milk. There was no such odour in the seeds from the plants in the pens where cats were fed raw milk.
Fluoride or Activator X?
After a period of time another volume, Volume IV of “The Albrecht Papers” was published and I purchased a copy. In this volume Albrecht addresses the issue of fluoride in the water of Hereford, Texas. Hereford was known in the 1950’s as the town without a toothache.
Albrecht points out that the naturally occurring fluoride in the drinking water in Hereford was coming from the weathering of the magmatic mineral, apatite. In addition to releasing soluble fluorine, the apatite was releasing calcium and phosphorus in more available forms to the soil for the better nutrition of plants and animals. Albrecht states that calcium and phosphorus are the most abundant nutritive minerals in the ash of a warm blooded body. Lewis B. Barnett, M.D., of Dallas, Texas described the area there as better for bone-building. The town got its name from the prize Hereford cattle that were being raised in the area. Albrecht questions the single factor thinking that fluorine, a highly corrosive element, was solely responsible for the lack of dental caries in Hereford. If apatite is still releasing fluorine, calcium and phosphorus to the soil and water, one would assume that the fluoride in the drinking water would still be preventing dental caries in Hereford. In the 1950’s, with the lack of modern transportation of food, most food would have been grown locally. Today much of the food available in grocery stores in Hereford may come from soils other than the soils in their area. If the people in Hereford are now experiencing a higher rate of tooth decay and there is still fluoride in their water but much of the food they eat is no longer locally produced, what does that say?
Calcium (Lime) in the Soil
In the first volume of “The Albrecht Papers” in a chapter titled “Calcium”, Albrecht addresses the importance of sufficient calcium in the soil in this paragraph:
“Improved products from animals come in for greater efficiency also by way of lime and fertilizer used on the soil. The wool of the sheep was improved when fed hay grown on soil given lime and phosphate over that grown where only phosphate was used. Fatty secretions were visibly different but quality differences were revealed on scouring the wool. Milk, another animal secretion, so commonly considered of constant nutrient value has permitted rickets in the calf, irrespective of ample green food and ample sunshine for both mother and calf on soils deficient in lime.”
Tart Albrechtisms
At the beginning of the first volume of “The Albrecht Papers” are listed some tart Albrechtisms which I think well represent his point of view. I am listing some of them here:
1/ Insects and disease are the symptoms of a failing crop, not the cause of it.
2/ The use of sprays is an act of desperation in a dying agriculture. It’s not the overpowering invader we must fear but the weakened condition of the victim.
3/ The excessive use of chemical salts in fertilizers is upsetting plant nutrition.
4/ We are exhausting the quality of our soils. As we do so the quality of our plants goes down. And we are accepting this.
5/ Those who teach must constantly hold up the challenge to study nature, not books.
6/ Students today throw themselves down in front of teachers like a pile of boards to be turned into furniture. They don’t come to the university to educate themselves.
The first two volumes of “The Albrecht Papers” are available from Acres, U.S.A. here:
https://www.acresusa.com/store?acres_level=21&cat=32
Soil Grass and Cancer by Andre Voisin (is out of print)
On the cover of his book, Voisin states, “HEALTH of animals and man is linked to the mineral balance of the soil”.
Chapter 28 is titled, “No attention is paid to the origin of the milk used in experiments”. I am only including the final paragraph in this chapter under his subtitle “Attention must always be paid to the origin of milk used in experiments or prescribed in diets”.
Quoting Voisin from his book:
“All these observations serve to illustrate how very different results can be obtained from trials based on a foodstuff so variable, although identical in appearance. It cannot be stated too often, nor sufficiently stressed, that the progress of biological and medical sciences must necessarily be slow so long as no consideration is given, either in experimentation or in dietetics, to the pedological and agronomic origin of the foodstuffs employed.”
Since cancer has been in the news lately, I will provide an example from Voisin that it is not the overpowering invader, the carcinogen, that we must fear in cancer but the weakened condition of the victim. Chapter 47 is titled, “Nutrition affords powerful protection against carcinogenic effects”.
The first example of a simple and clearly defined chemical substance which, when in the diet, caused cancer was provided by Yoshida in Japan in 1932. Yoshida discovered that when an azo dye was put in the ration fed to rats it caused a cancerous tumour of the liver. When researchers in Europe and in the U.S.A repeated the experiment, the rats failed to get cancer. Although it was supposed that Yoshida had committed an experimental error, in repeated experiments in Japan the rats continued to get the cancerous tumour of the liver. Finally it was realized that the rats used for these experiments were fed differently in Japan than in Europe or the U.S.A. In Japan the rats were fed rice while those in Europe and the U.S.A. were fed wheat. In 1940 Japanese researchers reported the following:
“(1) Development of liver cancer due to azo dyes depends on the nature of the ration, particularly on the nature of the cereal and what treatment it has undergone.
(2) Whole wheat has a remarkable capacity for inhibiting the carcinogenic action of azo dyes on the liver.
(3) Non-polished rice has only a moderate capacity for inhibiting power. This becomes almost non-existent in the case of polished rice.”
A German surgeon and cancer specialist H. K. Bauer addressed this experiment in Das Krebsproblem (Berlin, 1949).
Quoting from Voisin:
“He writes:
‘The fact that the carcinogenic influence of azo dyes cannot be exerted if the ration contains sufficient riboflavin is a discovery of fundamental importance for our methods of defence against cancer. It shows in effect that we will no longer be exposed to the danger of carcinogenic action if we see to it that our diet is not deficient in a fundamental vitamin. No one can believe that this is a unique and exceptional case. On the contrary, this example justifies the conclusion that the diet, whatever its nature, can favour cancer if, for a long period of time, it is lacking in certain essential substances.’
These words were written ten years ago by one of the greatest authorities on cancer. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have found much echo.”
As far as I can tell these words have not seem to have found much echo, if any, since then in either the cancer treatment industry or in the agriculture industry.
It’s Not the Overpowering Invader We Must Fear but the Weakened Condition of the Victim
I use this statement often when I address issues that I am addressing here. To me this point of view expressed by Albrecht is representative also of the point of view of Pottenger, Price and Voisin. It certainly represents my point of view. In the society in which I live it seems to me wealth is more important to people than health. Offering symptomatic treatment for problems certainly makes more money than comprehending causes and thereby preventing the problem.
Soil Fertility
In Price’s book, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, chapter XX is titled, “Soil Depletion and Plant and Animal Deterioration”.
At the end of chapter 43 in Voisin’s book, “Soil Grass and Cancer”, Voisin states:
“For all time the soil will remain the very basis of our life, in every sense of the word and from all points of view.”
In Chapter 12 titled, “Proteins for Protection and Reproduction”, in Volume II Albrecht states in relation to failing health in animals under our care:
“We hold postmortems, tabulate symptoms, and offer explanations (often only consolation) but fail to comprehend causes. We run the motion picture backwards, as it were, in our delusion that we manage the lives of animals and that we control the ecological pattern. We fail to recognize the fact that the soil fertility is the basic force under all creation.”
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE COLOUR AND VITAMIN A OF BUTTER AND
THE FEED OF THE COW
This is the title of a paper by H.T. Converse, H. G. Wiseman and E. B. Meigs in The American Society of Animal Production. Their results are similar to Price’s report on the herd near Hereford, Texas with respect to the colour of the butter and the vitamin A content of the butter. The conclusion of the study states:
“The experiments show that: (1) the butter colour varies definitely with the green colour and content of the roughage fed, (2) the vitamin A content of milk is roughly proportional to the changes of colour caused by the changes of feed, and (3) the colour of milk or uncoloured butter may become a valuable index, for the consumer, of its vitamin A content, at least if the breed of cows is known.”
Do You Have E. Coli on Your Romaine Lettuce?
What are the government, the dairy industry and the beef industry not telling you? They aren’t telling you that there are two distinct groups of E. Coli, one being acid sensitive and the other being acid resistant. This means that if you consume an acid sensitive E. Coli it is destroyed by your stomach acid, whereas, if you consume an acid resistant E. Coli it passes through your stomach acid into your intestines where it can cause intestinal disease.
An article titled, “Simple change in cattle diets could cut E. Coli infection” by H. Roger Segelken was published September 8, 1998 in the Cornell Chronicle. You can find it here:
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1998/09/simple-change-cattle-diets-could-cut-e-coli-infection
The article explains that grain-based cattle diets promote the growth of the acid resistant form of E. Coli. Beef cattle are fed starch-containing grains. The gastrointestinal tract of cattle, however, digests starch poorly. Undigested grain may reach the colon where it ferments. A large part of the E. Coli produced there are acid resistant. These acid resistant E. Coli may be shed in the feces.
The researchers found that cattle fed hay or grass had only acid sensitive E. Coli. When cattle on a grain-based diet were switched to hay for five days, acid resistant E. Coli could not be detected. When beef cattle are slaughtered, the meat may accidentally contaminated by the feces. The suggestion was made that if beef cattle were fed hay for five days before slaughter this simple change in cattle diets could cut E. Coli infection.
In studies at Cornell, both beef and dairy cattle fed grain based diets produced acid resistant E. Coli for the same reason. With the modern high grain for high production diet for dairy cattle there is no opportunity to feed grass for any period of time. Thus the possibility of contamination of the milk by feces contaminated by acid resistant E. Coli always exists. Pasteurization of this milk certainly should be compulsory for the protection of the public. Dairy cattle always fed grass or hay, however, according to this study, have no chance of shedding acid resistant E. Coli in their feces. If it’s not in the feces, it can’t be in the milk even if the milk was contaminated by feces.
The cattle that produce the milk that I drink raw are on grass 24/7 in season and on hay the rest of the time. Not only do these cattle have no chance of having acid resistant E. Coli in their milk, they are not putting it out into the environment at any time to contaminate your romaine lettuce either. Not so with beef and dairy cattle fed high production, high grain based diets.
Ontario’s Milk Act
One might ask if the Ontario Milk Act is designed to protect the consumer or the producer. Section 16 (1) of the Ontario Milk Act states:
“Except as provided for in the regulations, no person shall possess, sell, offer for sale or have in possession for sale butter that has a tint or shade containing less than one and six-tenths degrees or more than ten and one-half degrees of yellow, or of yellow and red collectively, measured in terms of the Lovibond tintometer scale or the equivalent of such measurement.”
Looking at the evidence regarding the colour of butter from both Weston Price and the paper by Converse, Wiseman and Meigs, it would seem that this regulation benefits the producer of the butter and is against the interest of the consumer. The informed consumer is unable to make a decision to buy or not buy butter based on the colour of the butter while the producer’s colouring the butter saves the producer from having the butter he sells being rejected by the informed consumer.
Section 2 of the Ontario Milk Act states:
“The purpose and intent of this act is,
(a) to stimulate, increase and improve the producing of milk in Ontario;”
In Ontario, the producing of milk operates in effectively a monopoly system where the production of milk is limited by a quota system that limits the production of milk in order to increase the price of the milk according to the economic relation between supply and demand. While this makes the dairy industry more profitable, the consumer is paying more for milk than the consumer would pay in a competitive free market. It would appear that the dairy industry in Ontario is decreasing the producing of milk in Ontario with a quota system.
The farm where the milk I drink comes from is not in the quota system. It is, however, increasing the producing of milk in Ontario.
The government, in its free trade agreement with the U.S.A. and Mexico does not allow milk to be imported tariff free. Understandably the Ontario dairy industry does not want milk from the U.S.A. to be imported tariff free thereby offering a lower price to consumers. The group of people that drink milk from the farm that produces the milk I drink have purchased the cattle and the dairy equipment and they must support the costs of feeding and boarding the cattle on the farm while also supporting the costs involved in getting the milk to them in a suitable way to be able to take it home and drink it. Rather that each person having a fixed amount to pay, each person supports these costs in relation to the milk they take home. This effectively makes the milk far more expensive to us than if we bought milk from a grocery store. If the dairy industry is concerned about milk produced outside their quota system undercutting their price for milk, they certainly don’t need to worry about us.
Would increasing the nutritional value of milk in Ontario comply with “…improving the producing of milk in Ontario”? The Ontario Government’s budget for health care is taking up an increasing percentage share of the budget leaving less available for education and other government services. Is an ounce of prevention still worth a pound of cure? If so, the government might want to look at the cost of the sickness care portion of health care and see if money spent on more nutritious milk would save money spent on sickness care. Of course there would need to be a government study to see first if the nutritional value of milk can be improved and whether this food results in lower sickness care costs. Economists could analyze the comparative the costs to see if there are any cost savings to the government. If so it could even make sense for the government to subsidize the production of more nutritious milk, at least for those transitioning to this type of production.
The farm that produces the milk I drink would be a good place to start such an investigation. It seems to me that neither the dairy industry nor the government has looked at what Michael Schmidt has done in regard to milk production in Ontario. First, with respect to milk safety, both the milk and the cattle feces could be tested on a regular basis to see if either ever contain the pathogens for which milk is pasteurized. Secondly, an acid resistant E. Coli, such as the notorious O157, could be added to the milk in a safe laboratory environment to see if the bacteria grow or die in this environment. Just because it spreads in contaminated meat does not mean it necessarily will spread in milk. Why not test it? Thirdly, from a nutritional point of view, butter from the farm could be tested on a regular basis throughout the year with respect to its natural colour and its content of vitamin A and vitamin D (testing for Price’s activator X, which includes vitamin D would be better).
If the government studies show both that this milk never contains pathogens and it has higher nutritional values (which should vary during the year depending on whether the cattle are on pasture or on winter hay) than milk currently sold in grocery stores, that would suggest actually incorporating milk and butter into a feeding study similar to Weston Price’s study with the twenty-seven children chosen for rampant dental caries. Health problems with Canada’s First Nation people suggests that that might be a good place to try such a study. If the study obtains similar results to Price’s study, the people of the First Nations win, the government wins and the dairy industry wins. The people of the First Nations win by improving their quality of life. The government wins by thereby supporting and enabling a method of dairy production that benefits the people who elect them while, at the same time, saving money on sickness care costs. The dairy industry wins as the public learns that paying more for food improves their quality and likely the length of their life. In producing such dairy products the dairy industry in Ontario need not fear cheaper imports and as when the government informs the public of the benefits of this improved milk they won’t need to restrict supply as they may have trouble keeping up with the demand. Milk and dairy products produced with these health benefits could become the number one “health food” in Ontario.
A government that bases its policy on evidence should take into account all the relevant evidence. While, in the past, milk was pasteurized because unpasteurized milk could be dangerous to human health, to condemn the raw milk produced on the farm run by Michael Schmidt without investigation is against the purpose and intent of the governments own Milk Act’s intent to “…improve the producing of milk in Ontario”. If the Milk Act is out of date with regard to different ways of producing raw milk it only needs to be revised in accordance with the production of raw milk that is fit or not fit for human consumption.
by Gary Wilson
The Bovine 