© 2006 Karen Selick
Raw Milk Consumers Get Raw Deal

An edited version of this article first appeared in the December 6, 2006 issue of The Globe and Mail
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Raw Milk Consumers Get Raw Deal


There’s a cow in our freezer.  My husband and I looked her in the eye one fine summer afternoon as she stood chewing grass in the pasture.  She didn’t look too yummy, lifting her tail occasionally to poop or swat flies.  But Henry, the organic farmer who raised her, predicted that her grain-free, grass-only diet would make her lean and tasty (besides giving her a high Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids ratio), so we ordered her. She’s been delicious.

As health-conscious consumers, we check out our food sources whenever feasible.  We’ve toured four local organic farms over the past few years, making sure the chickens really ranged free and the farmers were sincere about their commitment to pesticide-free vegetables.  We’re fairly confident that the organic food we buy is more nutritious and less toxic than its supermarket counterpart—but we know for sure it tastes better.

What we would really like to include in our diet is raw, unpasteurized, milk--but being Ontarians, we are not allowed to.  We know there are dairy farmers out here in eastern Ontario who drink their own milk unpasteurized, and would be happy to sell it to us that way, but they can’t. Nor can they sell us a share in their herd and provide us with our own cow’s unpasteurized milk. Farmer Michael Schmidt of Owen Sound, who has been openly circumventing the law in precisely this way for eleven years, recently had his farm raided and his equipment seized, essentially shutting down his business.

Ontario health authorities, ever eager to protect ignorant, slapdash consumers like my husband and me from ourselves,  issued a warning last week that consuming raw milk can produce “mild illnesses, long-lasting serious diseases and even death.”  That sounds pretty serious.  Maybe we should be grateful that someone who devotes his or her full time to studying these issues is out there looking after us.

But a little digging on the internet brings me to the website of Chris Gupta, an electrical engineer who apparently spends his spare time browsing through publications such as the American Journal of Public Health and the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. This light reading leads him to conclude in his article “Health Canada vs. Unpasteurized Milk” that in the U.S., the incidence of bacterial illness from the consumption of raw milk (1.9 per 100,000 people per year) is far lower than that from the consumption of foods in general (4.7 per 100,000).

So maybe Ontario’s health ministry should be urging me to forego the consumption of everything but raw milk, if they really want to reduce the risks to my health. Incidentally, consuming nothing but raw milk is what Michael Schmidt is currently doing as he stages a hunger strike pending the return of his equipment.

Then there’s Dr. Joseph Mercola, whose website claims that pasteurization renders insoluble most of the calcium normally found in milk. Because I have osteopenia, this worries me.  Pasteurization also destroys significant enzyme and vitamin content. While killing harmful bacteria, it simultaneously kills beneficial bacteria.

Organic Pastures Dairy Company is a California family-owned farm that produces and sells raw milk—legally. (I guess the California government just doesn’t care about its citizens’ health as much as Ontario does.)  This year, Organic Pastures has achieved bacterial counts averaging 4,007 per millileter, well below the 15,000 that California law permits for raw milk, and only 4 percent of the 100,000 that California permits for pasteurized milk. OP points out that the high levels of bacteria contained in milk destined for pasteurization are not removed from the milk—they’re just killed. When they die, their cell walls burst, releasing histamines that cause allergic reactions in many people.  The destruction of enzymes by pasteurization also causes lactose intolerance. Many people who become ill drinking pasteurized milk can drink raw without any problem.

I’m no scientist.  I can neither prove nor disprove the allegations that are thrown around in the raw milk debate.  I do know, however, that there’s enough information about the dangers of pasteurized milk to make me want the freedom to choose.

Pasteurization is really just the lazy man’s way of preventing milk-borne diseases. “Nuke ‘em all and let God sort it out.” Back in the 1930s, when pasteurization became mandatory in Ontario, this indiscriminate approach might have been the only one possible. But today we know from the experience of farmers around the world that they can selectively eliminate harmful bacteria while retaining beneficial bacteria. In short, legalizing the sale of raw milk in Ontario would probably result in higher standards of hygiene among milk producers.

Would-be consumers of raw milk aren’t ignorant about the dangers.  It’s almost impossible to get information about the benefits of raw milk without simultaneously wading through a barrage of allegations against it.  We are probably the people who least need government “protection”. 

Please, Ontario, go “protect” someone else.



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December 6 , 2006