Milk

The Dark Ages of Raw Milk

There was a period of time, from 1860 to the 1920s, when raw milk went through what McAfee describes as a “dark age.” The cows’ diets, combined with unsanitary conditions, raw sewage mixed with water and lack of refrigeration, led to the spread of disease like tuberculosis and typhoid. A lot of people died from raw milk that came from these unsanitary distillery dairies raising malnourished cows.

In the days before refrigeration, farmers who lived near towns delivered milk the old-fashioned way: they brought a cow into town and went door to door looking for customers. Anyone who wanted milk could step out into the street with a pitcher or a bucket, and watch the farmer milk the cow right before their eyes. Since customers were standing only a few feet away, it paid for the farmer to take good care of his cows. Nobody wanted to buy milk from a beast that looked dirty, mistreated, or sick. So although there was a risk of buying bad milk, it was kept to a minimum.

But in cities, where door-to-door cow service wasn’t practical or possible, buying milk was another matter. “Milks sellers” acted as middlemen between farmers and townspeople. Like used car dealers today, they were widely mistrusted and said to possess “neither character, nor decency of manner, nor cleanliness.” Whether or not the reputation was deserved, they were notorious for diluting milk with water to increase profits. People said their milk came from “black cows,” the black cast iron pumps that provided towns with drinking water. And if the pump was broken, horse troughs were always a handy source of water.

Although it actually spread serious diseases, water-down milk was seen as more of an annoyance than a health hazard, and nothing much was done about it. It wasn’t until the 1840s that scandals in the liquor industry led to the first demands for milk reform.

In the mid-1800s, it was common for whiskey and other distillers to run dairy and beef businesses on the side. The manufacture of grain alcohol require huge amounts of corn, rye, and other fresh grains, which are cooked into a mash and then distilled. Once that distillation is complete, the remaining “swill” can be discarded… or, as the distiller discovered, it can be fed to cows.

Profit, not quality, was the priority with “swill herds.” As a result, conditions in many distillery-owned dairies were atrocious. The cows spent their entire lives tied up in tiny pens, which were rarely cleaned. They received no food other than the swill -and no fresh water at all, since distillers though there was already plenty of water in the swill.

With no exercise, no real food, and no water, even the hardiest cattle sickened and died in about six months. The failing herds were milked daily until the very end; when a cow became too weak to stand on its own, it was hoisted upright with ropes so that it cold be milked until it died. Milk produced by swill herds, as muckraking journalist Robert Hartley wrote in 1842, was “very thin, and of a pale bluish color,” the kind nobody in their right mind would buy. So distillers added flour, starch, chalk, plaster of Paris, or anything else they could get away with to make the milk look healthy. This adulteration only increased the amount of bacteria in milk that was already virtually undrinkable.

The toll that adulterated milk took on public health was severe: in New York City, where five million gallons of swill milk were produced and sold each year, the mortality rate for children under five tripled between 1843 and 1856. No one knew for sure what was causing the child mortality rate to soar, and there was probably no single cause. But people began to suspect that bad milk was at least partially to blame. In May 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, one of the most popular journals of the day, published a series of articles describing in graphic detail the conditions in some of New York’s swill dairies.

Public exposure had a devastating impact on the industry. Some distilleries got out of the milk business entirely; other cleaned up their act. Those that remained were forced out of business in 1862, when the state of New York outlawed “crowded or unhealthy conditions” in the dairy industry. Two years later, the state outlawed the industry outright, declaring that “any milk that is obtained from animals fed on distillery waste, usually called will, is hereby declared to be impure and unwholesome.” Several other state followed suit, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana. As they took action, the spiraling infant death rate in the U.S. leveled off -and even began to decline. But there was plenty of work left to be done to ensure that milk was safe.

The beginning of pasteurization started around this time and was hailed as a panacea because you didn’t have to worry about the milk being clean anymore. Even milk riddled with pathogenic bacteria could be safely consumed once it was heated to high temperatures. It wasn’t until decades later that it began to be understood how much was lost during the process.

“There is a dark period. That dark period has been amplified and made into a political mantra against raw milk, when in fact it was never raw milk’s problem. It was mankind and what we did to the cows and the environment that was the problem,” McAfee said.

Additions from: Neatorama.com

There Are Two Kinds of Raw Milk Today

The underpinnings that led to the dark ages of raw milk are still found today in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where most commercial dairy is produced. On CAFOs, milk can be produced in filthy conditions, then heated until all the pathogens are gone.

Never mind that, along with killing “germs,” pasteurization kills off beneficial organisms in the milk and prevents natural souring (while naturally soured milk can still be consumed, pasteurized milk past its prime will quickly go bad).¹ According to RAWMI:²

“Raw milk is a living whole food that contains: enzymes, a biodiversity of beneficial bacteria, sugars, proteins, fats, minerals, antibodies and other essential elements needed to nourish a growing baby.

Raw milk also contains a complementary immune system that provides an environment that tends to suppress the growth of pathogenic bacteria in favor of beneficial lactic acid producing bacteria. Raw milk inside of the animal generally does not contain bacteria; however, as the milk exits the breast or teat canal, protective resident bacteria join the raw milk to complete its genome.”

Today, however, there are two kinds of raw milk produced. One is the type produced on CAFOs, which is intended to be shipped to a creamery for pasteurization. This type of milk is regulated according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO), which has no requirement that the milk be tested for pathogens.

“PMO raw milk is permitted to contain high levels of bacteria. This is because this milk will be pasteurized by heat treatment. Milk produced under the PMO is collected from many dairies and combined together at the creamery for processing and the production of final processed dairy products,” RAWMI notes.³ It has to be pasteurized, as drinking this type of CAFO milk raw could easily make you sick.

The other type of raw milk is that produced with the intent of being directly consumed by humans. While there are no national regulations for human consumption raw milk, individual states may have their own. RAWMI has also created standards to ensure its quality and safety.

“Our Common Standards set a benchmark for national raw milk production and safety. Raw milk for human consumption always comes from one dairy that works very hard to assure that the milk they produce is safe and clean. Human consumption raw milk is never combined with other dairies’ raw milk,” according to RAWMI. The Common Standards include:⁴

• Have a Risk Analysis and Management Plan (RAMP) for raw milk production; this is a basic food safety plan that includes risk assessment and mitigation for milk handling, manure management, feed sources, human factors (such as health of the milking team), nutritional management of the cow, cleaning protocol, health screening of animals and much more.
• Raw milk shall not contain zoonotic pathogens including salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria.
• Testing for coliform bacteria, with a target rate of less than 10 coliforms per milliliter (ml) raw milk over a three-month average.
• Testing for Standard Plate Count, with a rolling three-month average of less than 5,000 per ml raw milk.
• Sell raw milk for direct human consumption only from their own farm (not comingled with raw milk from other dairies).
• Provide documentation and assurance that herds are tuberculosis (TB) free and tested once per year or meet local TB requirements.
• Provide documentation or assurance that herds are brucellosis free.

RAWMI even provides additional training to further ensure quality raw milk, including farm biosecurity (how to protect the herd), basic microbiology and preventive herd health medicine. RAWMI adds:⁵

“These standards are not a guarantee of perfectly safe food. However, when followed diligently, these guidelines will dramatically reduce the risk of illness from consumption of raw milk and improve the safety of raw milk. The Common Standards serve as the basis for RAWMI farmer listing, and are a portal to a world of continued learning.”

Raw Milk Feeds Your Body on a Microbial Level

While it’s long been said that “you are what you eat,” a more accurate description might be “you are what your microbes eat.” There are more bacteria and other microorganisms in your body than there are human cells, and your unique microbial community is constantly changing in response to your environment, including your diet.

McAfee describes the research of Bonnie Bassler, Ph.D., a molecular biologist with Princeton University, which revealed bacteria communicate with each other using a chemical language called “quorum sensing.” Every type of bacteria secretes small molecules, which allow the bacteria to “count” how many of its own kind there are, as well as measure the strength of competing colonies.

Once the colony reaches critical mass, the bacteria spring into action as a synchronized group, based on the group behavior programmed into its genes. So the microorganisms living in your digestive tract form a very important “inner ecosystem” that influences countless aspects of your health.

More specifically, the type and quantity of organisms in your gut interact with your body in ways that can either prevent or encourage the development of many diseases and mental health problems, and eating microbial-rich foods like raw milk, raw milk cheese and kefir are one way to support the bacterial communities in your body.

Pasteurized milk has lots of dead bacteria. This dead bacteria when ingested triggers inflammation in the body because the body doesn’t recognize the waste products. The body reacts by destabilizing MAST cells which releases histamines that cause inflammation, mucus production, and bronchial spasm. This is where an inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs come about, asthma. 1 in 13 people have asthma, more than 25 million Americans. This has been rapidly increasing since the 1980s.

You consume pasteurized milk and immediately begin to have inflammation flare ups, and mucus production which is the body’s response to foreign dead bacteria, causing things like ear infections. The bacteria in raw milk are recognized by the body. Whey protein in raw milk stabilizes MAST cells and makes problems like asthma better. What was caused by pasteurized milk is eased by raw milk.

The Science Behind Raw Milk

McAfee believes there’s a breakdown in understanding among scientists, most of whom will argue that breastfeeding is incredibly important for infants, yet fail to make the connection that breast milk is raw milk. After breastfeeding ends, the next logical step, he says, is to continue drinking raw milk.

At least 16 peer-reviewed studies have detailed the benefits of drinking raw milk, yet still include a disclaimer at the end that the scientists can’t recommend drinking it because of the risks. RAWMI was created for this purpose, McAfee says, to show that raw milk isn’t high risk at all but is actually very low risk, with proven health benefits. Among them is alkaline phosphatase, an enzyme found in raw milk, that’s known to be anti-inflammatory.

“[I]ntestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP), a potent endogenous anti-inflammatory enzyme, is directly stimulated by various components of milk (e.g., casein, calcium, lactose and even fat),” researchers wrote in Medical Hypotheses,⁶ “… and detoxifies pro-inflammatory microbial components … making them unable to trigger inflammatory responses and generate chronic low-grade inflammation leading to insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, Type-2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity, known risk factors for CVD [cardiovascular disease].

Milk alkaline phosphatase is present in raw milk and dairy products but deactivated by pasteurization. “If confirmed, this “alkaline phosphatase” hypothesis will highlight the protective effects of milk alkaline phosphatase and promote the consumption of (microbiologically safe) raw milk and dairy products,” the researchers concluded.⁷

Other research has found children who drink raw milk have a lower risk of developing allergies and asthma.⁸ And, early human studies suggested raw milk was superior to pasteurized milk in protecting against infection, diarrhea, rickets, tooth decay and tuberculosis.⁹

Raw milk also contains protective components that aren’t found in pasteurized milk, including antibodies and beneficial bacteria that help to kill pathogens in the milk, as well as compounds that prevent pathogen absorption across the intestinal wall. There are a variety of immune-strengthening components in raw milk as well, including lymphocytes, immunoglobulins and growth factors.¹⁰

More Reasons to Choose Raw Unprocessed Milk

Raw milk and pasteurized milk are entirely different foods, with different outcomes in your body. While raw milk is noninflammatory and inhibits MAST cell release of histamines, pasteurized milk is the most allergenic food in the U.S., McAfee notes. He also points out that pasteurized milk is often associated with lactose intolerance and is often not digestible by children, whereas raw milk is highly digestible and gut friendly.

Anecdotal reports of customers drinking raw milk suggest recovery from a variety of conditions, from ear infections, asthma and eczema to dental problems, ulcers, lactose intolerance and depressed immunity. There are cultural differences, too, as while many Europeans are free to enjoy a glass of crisp raw milk anytime they like courtesy of self-serve vending machines, in North America selling raw milk is often forbidden.

In the U.S., efforts continue to expand access to raw milk — the ONLY food banned from interstate commerce — and, in so doing, protect people’s right to eat and drink what they please. If you’re interested in raw milk, in states where the sale of raw milk is legal, RAWMI lists farmers on their website who have gone through their training program and demonstrated, through testing, that their milk is consistently clean and safe.¹¹

In other states, those wishing to purchase raw milk often purchase a share of the cow or herd directly from a raw milk farmer. As with all foods, source matters, and this is just as true with raw milk as any other food, so be sure to review these tips for finding high-quality raw milk sources.

In Europe, raw milk is even available at vending machines that are becoming popular.

Raw Milk Benefits

1. Reduces Allergies
Studies now suggest that children who drink raw milk are 50 percent less likely to develop allergies and 41 percent less likely to develop asthma compared to children who don’t. (3) A study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology involved 8,000 children with various diets, and one of the conclusions that researchers made was that by drinking raw milk, children experienced “naturally immunizing” effects. (4)

As documented on the Real Milk website, many other studies carried out over the past century have shown that raw milk benefits and supports children’s growth and development in other ways too, including increasing immunity against infections, boosting dental health and supporting skeletal growth, for example. (5)

You might be wondering: How can raw milk reduce allergies, and isn’t dairy tied to high rates of intolerance or sensitivities? Nutrients like probiotics, vitamin D and immunoglobulins (antibodies) found in raw milk naturally boost the immune system and reduce the risk of allergies in both children and adults. Enzymes found in raw milk help with digestion but are often reduced or destroyed during pasteurization, which can contribute to lactose intolerance.

2. Helps Improve Skin Health

Dairy might have a bad reputation when it comes to causing or worsening acne and skin inflammation, but this is far from the case with raw milk. As we’ve seen, the benefits of raw milk are numerous, but surprisingly one of the most common reasons that people consume it is to benefit their skin. The success stories of people consuming raw milk to improve conditions such as psoriasis, eczema and acne are very widely reported.

Raw milk benefits the skin for the following reasons:

• It contains healthy fats: Because raw milk contains large amounts of healthy saturated fats and omega-3 fats, it supports skin hydration. In fact, some people don’t only consume raw milk, but they use raw milk as a moisturizer topically.  Today, goat milk soap bars are popular around Europe and making their way to the U.S. more often, and recipes for homemade moisturizing face creams using raw milk can be found all over the Internet.
• It supplies probiotics: Probiotics in raw milk can kill off or balance bad bacteria in your gut, which can dramatically affect the health of your skin. Research shows that inflammation and unbalanced gut flora contribute to skin issues such as acne and eczema.

3. Helps Prevent Nutrient Deficiencies 

According to the USDA, nearly 300 calories a day in the average American’s diet (out of a total 2,076 calories) can be attributed to added sugars or sweeteners. In comparison, nutrient-rich foods like raw dairy, fruits and vegetables only contribute about 424 calories, although they should make a much greater proportion of nutrients. (6) You can see why deficiencies in nutrients like magnesium, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin K are so common.

One serving of raw milk contains about 400 milligrams of calcium, 50 milligrams of magnesium and 500 milligrams of potassium. (7) These minerals are vitally important for cellular function, hydration, building bone density, blood circulation, detoxification, muscle health and metabolism. These happen to be three minerals many children and adults are deficient in, which is especially problematic considering most people have a high sodium intake.

4. May Fight H. pylori Infection

The whey proteins and good bacteria in fermented milk might help combat H. pylori infection. (8) H. pylori sometimes causes no symptoms but some people who carry it develop uncomfortable or even severe digestive symptoms such as vomiting or stomach ulcers.

5. Can Be Used to Make Probiotic Foods

Probiotics are microorganisms that line your gut and support nutrient absorption. They also help protect you from foreign invaders like E. coli and parasites. The best way to include probiotics in your diet is to get them in their most natural state, which includes raw milk products, such as cheese, kefir and yogurt. Real, raw and organic probiotic yogurt, cheeses and kefir have been consumed by some of the healthiest populations living around the world for thousands of years (such as those who call the famous Blue Zones home). Some disorders probiotic foods are known to help with include:

• Colon cancer
• Diarrhea
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Intestinal infections
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Skin infections
• Weakened immune system
• Urinary track infections
• Vaginal yeast infection

6. Doesn’t Contain Added Sugar or Synthetic Ingredients

In addition to pasteurization, conventional milk also usually undergoes a homogenization process. Homogenization is a high-pressure process that breaks down fat into tiny particles — however, fat subjected to high heat and pressure becomes oxidized and rancid. Many low-fat dairy products also have thickening agents added to make up for lost texture, and some have even been tied to rising rates of inflammatory diseases like cancer. Raw milk needs no added thickeners or shelf-stabilizers and also doesn’t contain added sugar or flavors.

Most foods have some levels of natural sugar, including raw dairy, which has the type called lactose. The natural sugar in dairy is balanced with other nutrients and therefore not a concern (even healthy for you in moderation). However, many dairy products now contain multiple added ingredients, including extra sugar or artificial sweeteners, to boost taste. Added sugars come in many forms (for example, cane juice, corn sweetener, dextrose, fructose and high fructose corn syrup) and are unnecessary and harmful in excess.

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