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.

If your state doesn’t allow the sale of raw milk, you can still have it if you own your own share of a milk-producing animal. Farmtoconsumer.org tells you how:

How Cow or Goat-Share Programs Work

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.

Other resources
farmtoconsumer.org/
realmilk.com
NJ Raw Milk Group