On unpasteurized milk
May 19th, 2008 | Published in Animals, Health, Politics, Thoughts | 7 Comments
I enjoyed reading “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized.” The article is of particular interest to me because my family drinks unpasteurized milk. We have a milk cow that my mom and wife milk twice a day. We run the milk through a filter, cool it quickly, but do not pasteurize it.
There’s a debate about whether it should be legal or not to sell unpasteurized milk. Currently it’s illegal in half of the US states. Many people I know think it’s outrageous for the government to enforce that law. If people want to drink it, why should the government stop them?
Here’s the problem: dairys are dirty. I mean really dirty. The larger the dairy, the dirtier it is. Cows go to the bathroom at the most inconvenient times. They kick over the pail. They step in the pail. The pail or machine or milk jar may not have been sterilized properly. The teats may not have been washed thoroughly. The cow may have ate something diseased or become sick and passes tainted milk.
If the government allowed the sale of unpasteurized milk, more people would get sick. That’s the entire reason we started pasteurizing it. According to Nathanael Johnson, “Between 1919, when only a third of the milk in Massachusetts was pasteurized, and 1939, when almost all of it was, the number of outbreaks of milk-borne disease fell by nearly 90 percent.” The FDA claims that raw milk can be dangerous to health and is not healthier as claimed by raw milk advocates.
Yes, there might be healthy bacteria that are killed with pasteurization. (I’m sure we kill healthy bacteria when we cook meat, too.) Yes, there are some small farmers who are meticulously clean and could keep most of the harmful pathogens out of the milk. But what happens when one of their employees fail? And how could it be guaranteed as safe as pasteurized milk? How many people can get sick before they shut a dairy down?
I can see both perspectives. It makes sense to make selling unpasteurized milk illegal. It also makes sense to allow people to drink what they want, even if it ends up hurting them. Which is why they let they let us drink the raw milk from our own cow, but don’t allow us to sell it.
So, should the government make it legal to sell unpasteurized milk even though there is evidence of increased health risks? Or is the current system necessary to protect public health, even though people want to do it? Or is the government plain wrong, raw milk isn’t dangerous at all, and is actually more healthy than pasteurized milk? (If making that last claim, please cite a reputable scientific study, as I am interested.)
May 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am (#)
I think the current system is pretty reasonable, though like you I’m open to persuasion. I’m no fan of centralized authority, especially in matters like these. (I still don’t understand why moonshining is still illegal.) Nevertheless, the public health risk seems substantial enough to justify it.
May 19th, 2008 at 5:17 pm (#)
Thanks for the post. I’ve always been bothered by the fact that my grandparents had to stop selling the milk from their rural farm when the law was passed that the milk had to be pasteurized. It seemed to stifle the viability of small family farms. But with the reasons you provided I think it makes sense even though it is (was) inconvenient for many people. I think it was a good decision.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:54 pm (#)
In switzerland you can buy unpasteurized milk from certain shops. That milk is controlled quite thoroughly. And as I understand there mostly is no pail the cow can step into as the milk goes through the pump directly in those metal cans…
Switzerland has quite a “bio-industry” (don’t know how you say that in english, just organic food, short transportation, etc.) with many labels and control. If it would be made public that there is a higher risk in drinking unpasteurized milk I’m pretty sure the stores selling that milk would have a big problem because most people here believe those reports.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:51 am (#)
I think it’s foolish to strictly define “health” on the basis of “reputable scientific studies.” Surely you can think of all sorts of way in which “reputable scientific studies” have misled us into unhealthy things in the past. You’re probably familiar with some of Michael Pollan’s writings recently on the foolishness of letting scientists tell us what to eat, how the end result of such attempts is quite unhealthy. Perhaps even more to the point, would reputable scientific studies take the extra deaths and injuries from automobile accidents into account that result from the increased automobile traffic necessary to support the kind of societal structure consistent with more highly processed milk (greater transport distances, more trips out of the neighborhood, etc.)? Of course, that’s just one example; my point is that there are all sorts of indirect consequences of regulating milk sales. Can you even imagine the parameters of a reputable scientific study on the subject that would hold water? As Albert Einstein said, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” I might say: as far as scientific studies refer to the real world, they are not authoritative, and as far as they are authoritative, they do not refer to the real world. Don’t you agree?
Best regards, Eric
P.S. Philipp, we would commonly say “organic agriculture.” In German, would you really say industry, though, as opposed to Landwirtschaft?
July 1st, 2011 at 1:25 pm (#)
I say let the free markets decide. If someone wants to sell their milk, let them. They can not force anyone to buy it, furthermore, one death from a dirty farmers milk will certainly put them out of the milk business. Good practice results in good income for a good farmer. A free market would allow consumers to pick and choose the best farmers with the most reliable milk, as it used to be. Who believes the FDA anyhow, as we use our pasteurized milk to wash down our prozac and oxycontin. Also, I have read that pasteurization eliminates an enzyme which assimilates the calcium and magnesium in the milk so our bodies can absorb these nutrients. When the enzyme is gone, our bodies don’t recognize the nutrients and cant absorb them, therefore, causing our bodies to take calcium from our bones … causing osteoporosis.
August 26th, 2011 at 2:13 am (#)
We have become obsessed with cleanliness. We spray our worktops with chemicals and our bathrooms with chemicals that drain into land and sea without concern with the consequence. We sell cheese made of plastic and we wonder why illnesses are on the increase. Over the centuries we have built up an immunity to bacteria that helps defend against new strains. Obviously, as with all bacteria, some will suffer greater than others, but most will claim benefits.
Is there a survey to analyse the detrimental effect of calves drinking their mother’s milk?
October 13th, 2011 at 4:25 pm (#)
Raw milk isn’t the issue..it’s ‘mass production of milk’…that’s the issue.
When everyone got their own milk or bought only from a clean farmer they knew, no problem. It’s when milk got industrialized..and the distributors had to mix Dirty Farmer Joe’s milk with Clean Farmer Bill’s milk (and ruined a whole tank trailer’s worth) that we started making everyone sick.
So, we choose to let factory milk producers, who dont want to spend the money on clean milk, write unreasonably imposing laws at your health’s expense.
what’s next? outlaw well water?