A Swedish study of 100,000 pasteurized milk drinkers shows a strong correlation between 1-2 glasses per day milk consumption and early death, plus osteoporosis leading to bone breaks. The results from eating cheese and fermented milk products like yogurt are different, and do not produce these unfortunate results. Natasha Longo in a RiseEarth article reviews the study and breaks down the science of how pasteurization transforms healthy, raw (unheated) milk into a compound that leeches calcium out of bones and injects our bodies with toxins we can’t handle. More damningly, Natasha talks about why Big Dairy uses pasteurization.
(People) think (milk’s) safe due to pasteurization. However, heat destroys a great number of bacteria in milk and thus conceals the evidence of dirt, pus and dirty dairy practices. It’s cheaper to produce dirty milk and kill the bacteria by heat, that to maintain a clean dairy and keep cows healthy. To combat the increase in pathogens milk goes through ‘clarification’, ‘filtering’, ‘bactofugation’ and two ‘deariation’ treatments. Each of these treatments uses heat ranging from 100-175 degrees Fahrenheit. Dairies count on many heat treatments to mask their inferior sanitary conditions: milk filled with pus, manure and debris. Consumer Reports found 44% of 125 pasteurized milk samples contained as many as 2200 organisms per cubic centimeter (fecal bacteria, coliforms)
Pasteurization also destroys vitamin C, and damages water soluble B vitamins diminishing the nutrient value of milk. Calcium and other minerals are made unavailable by pasteurization.
So much happens to your milk before it jumps onto the shelf of your local market and waits for you to buy it. For one thing, your milk might travel clear across the country before it gets there, even though there are plenty of dairy farmers right near you, and it gets pasteurized. The New York Times, in an article about the growing demand for raw milk, explains that liquids like milk and orange juice are subject to the pasteurization “process of heating and quickly cooling to kill pathogens,” but it, “also destroys beneficial bacteria, proteins and enzymes.” This is a different process than homogenization, which uses force to disperse fat molecules throughout milk so the fat doesn’t just sit on top in a layer separate from the lighter liquid underneath.
Small farmers – except in states where the sale of raw milk is allowed – are also, never able to sell their milk to the public and cannot set their own prices when they sell it, because they are obliged by law to sell to aggregators which truck it to a plant having a pasteurization machine, which is a huge piece of equipment very costly to purchase, maintain and operate. We should care about family farms because their owners care about us: they care about producing real, authentic, food that’s healthy to eat, and doing it using sustainable farming methods and by treating their animals well. Whereas on corporatized, or factory, farms, cruelty to animals is the norm and it is taken for granted that the environment and people’s health will be damaged as a natural consequence of their operations. Small farms are vital parts of a healthy food chain, a healthy economy and a healthy small business community.
Big farms are the ones that own the pasteurization machines and represent the organized dairy industry, which “contributed $4.8 million to federal candidates during the 2008 election cycle, with 60 percent going to Republicans. The top contributor was the Dairy Farmers of America, a dairy farmer cooperative.” About DFA, Mother Jones says, “…both the soybean lobby and dairy lobby are powerful presences on the Hill, as the fracas over last year’s climate bill showed,” and at a Syracuse conference held in 2004, Peter Hardin explained about this organization that forces family farmers to join their cooperative by refusing to give them access to pasteurization if they refuse to join,
Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) – the nation’s largest raw milk marketer – and Dean Foods (the nation’s largest fluid milk processor) have rigged a system that controls sale of one-third or more of U.S. farm milk. In areas where DFA has far greater control of all farm milk, such as the Southeast, producers’ milk prices suffer dramatic underpayments. DFA’s “market power” is a tool used against farmers.
This video is the Harvard Law School Food Law Society-sponsored debate on raw milk. Proponents of raw milk – not boiled at home – refer to surveys showing that 82% of lactose intolerant people are able to drink raw milk without problems and that when compared with pasteurized milk it is shown to build greater bone density in children. Children raised on raw milk have perfectly healthy teeth and, it was recently discovered that raw milk offers protection against asthma. Raw milk advocates claim that modern milk safety was made possible by faster transportation (cars over horses), better refrigeration and better hygiene – not by pasteurization as the big dairy farms claim.
The consumer purchases a share in a milk cow, goat or dairy herd. The farmer and the consumer enter into a contract whereby the farmer feeds and boards the animal and provides the labor to milk the animal and store the consumer’s milk. Such contracts are legal and valid, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America. The consumer does not buy milk from the farmer. Rather, they pay the farmer for the service of keeping the cow or goat and his labor for milking and processing the milk into value added products such as butter, cream, cheese, etc. However, they may directly purchase other products from the farm, such as eggs, vegetables and meat.
