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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