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Research and published reports are verifying via scientific methodology what has been cultural wisdom for millennia: fresh, raw milk is highly beneficial to those who drink it. If the milk-producing 
animals are raised in their natural environment (out in sunlit fields, rather than in Confined Animal Feeding Operations), and if they eat their natural diet (natural grass rather than feeds processed from cheap agricultural waste-products and by-products), then the resulting milk is so beneficial that it actively protects itself and its consumer from any pathogens that may try to move in.
When animals are packed tightly together on CAFO’s, and are forced to spend their lives standing in the accumulated feces of thousands of animals, it may produce milk more cheaply than if raised in traditional ways. But it also virtually ensures that the animals won’t be healthy enough to survive without antibiotics, that their milk will be of poorer quality than the milk of healthy animals living in pastures, and that their milk will be contaminated by dangerous levels of fecal bacteria. In order to make this cheaply-produced but poorer-quality milk minimally suitable for humans to drink without becoming sick, the milk must be cooked until all the bacteria is killed (pasteurization).
Pasteurization doesn’t selectively kill just the pathogenic bacteria.
Pasteurization kills anything living in the milk, from the beneficial bacteria that crowd out pathogens and that even actively fight off and kill any pathogens, to the enzymes that make the nutrients in the milk digestible to us. What’s left after pasteurization is a sterile medium containing all the fats, proteins and carbohydrates that are ideal for supporting bacteria—after all it used to support a wide array of beneficial bacteria. But when they’re killed, milk is ready to support any stray pathogenic bacteria that happen to drift by, now that it lacks milk’s built-in defenses that used to prevent pathogens from colonizing and contaminating the milk. In other words, what’s left is milk so dangerous that it must be processed and handled with elaborate safety systems to prevent contact with even a single bacterium.
It might not be so bad if we had a choice between (on the one hand) cheap, poor-quality, contaminated milk that has been cooked into sterility, and (on the other hand) high-quality, fresh, natural raw milk with all its built-in immunity and nutritional excellence left intact. I’m pretty sure that the agribusinesses of CAFOs, feed-producers, and industrialized dairies are afraid of losing market share if their milk had to openly compete against healthy raw milk. So regulations (formulated with the “help” of the largest agribusinesses) require that virtually all milk will be pasteurized and reduced to a similar level of depletion.
When pasteurization is required for fresh raw milk that’s been produced by cows in open pastures, we completely change the character of milk that was once highly nutritious and that could actively defend itself and its consumers from pathogens. Further regulations require that the depleted milk will be subjected to highly elaborate safety systems that can afforded only by the big agribusiness producers. Small farmers are driven out of business, condemning all milk to be raised by industrial methods that ensure fecal contamination.
Are these just the ravings of a food nut? No, they’re reflected in the expert testimony of scientists who appeared in a US court about raw and pasteurized milk. I found the court transcript fascinating.
Court Transcript:
Question: “Dr. Beals, based on your background, education, training, your experience, do you have an opinion to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty whether milk that is unpasteurized is safe for human consumption?” Dr. Beals: “My opinion is that it is, and historically it’s been shown clearly that it is. Pasteurization was only introduced in about 1900. And the history of human consumption of milk goes well back before recorded history. And as a matter of fact, in recorded history we know that the domestication of animals for the purpose of providing fluid milk for human consumption is present in almost all civilizations around the world. And recorded history and historians have well documented the fact that this consumption of milk was in fact very advantageous to civilization.
“If a food is unsafe for consumption, it is very quickly eliminated from the diet of cultures. And in fact history shows that the consumption of milk from domestic animals has persisted throughout history, and on the basis of that, I don’t believe that there’s any argument but that the consumption of fresh milk is in fact safe, confers competitive advantage to those that drink it.”
Question: “Do you know if anybody has done research on the benefits of bacteria in cow’s milk?” Dr. Beals: “There are a few studies out there and more recently, very recently, studies on domestic animals in which very large numbers of beneficial bacteria have been cultured from direct milk, right out of the teat of the animals.”
Question: “Do you have an opinion about whether or not milk must be free from bacteria in order to be safe for human consumption?” Dr. Beals: “And the answer to that is that it does not need to be free of bacteria.”
Question: “Which is more likely to have a pathogen in it? Some raw, fresh, unprocessed milk that has good bacteria in it or pasteurized milk where all the bacteria has been killed?” Dr. Beals: “Pasteurized milk where the beneficial bacteria have been killed.”
The Court [i.e., the judge]: “Your comment was that there’s a greater chance that pasteurized milk is contaminated with pathogens as opposed to raw milk?” Dr. Beals: “Not contaminated. I believe the understanding was whether they were present in the milk.”
[After the swearing in of a second scientist:] Question: “Have you published research on that subject?” [The subject of bacteriocins, i.e., substances produced by beneficial bacteria which in turn kill pathogenic bacteria, e.g., Listeria] Dr. Hull: “Yes I have. If Listeria, for example, is inoculated [introduced] into raw milk, then they’re actively killed by the raw milk’s natural antimicrobial systems.”
Question: “Did you say killed?” Dr. Hull: “Killed, yes.”
Question: “Is all milk the same?” Dr. Hull: “No, definitely not.”
Question: What types of milk are there?” Dr. Hull: Well, there is raw milk. Raw market milk, I’ll describe first, is a living food. And on the other hand we have pasteurized milk, which is a cooked—I would describe it as a dead food. The raw market milk is living just as you and I are living because it contains a number of live components. The first one—the first component is the competitive flora, which are the same microorganisms that live inside of our intestinal tract when we’re healthy. It’s the same flora that’s used to make cheese and yogurt. That competitive flora competes out other pathogens.
Question: “What’s the second component?” Dr. Hull: The second component is what nature provided in milk from the mammal, and that again we refer to as innate immunity.
Question: “What’s the third component?” Dr. Hull: “The third component is a group of enzymes which digest the milk. Milk consists of fat, proteins, carbohydrates, and minerals. They’re in a very complex state in milk, very concentrated form, and very difficult to digest without those enzymes. Those enzymes there are specifically to digest each of those components down into smaller molecules. Those smaller molecules are the things we absorb when we drink milk. They’re also the nutrients for the competitive flora, the number one living system in milk. So the natural enzymes in milk actually foster the protective flora in milk. And so the three work together. But in pasteurized milk, or cooked milk, if you like, those systems are essentially dead.
“So the two milks are very different. One is a living food. When we cook it, it’s a dead food. And food safety issues with these two products are very different.
Question: “If you set these two milks out and let them sit at room temperature, what happens to them after a certain period of time?” Dr. Hull: “If we set raw milk, which is the living food, aside at room temperature, it will curdle, and that product is perfectly safe to drink. If you set it aside at body temperature (in other words if you carry it around in your pocket or sit it next to a stove at body temperature), it will also curdle or sour, and that product is perfectly safe to drink. It will not make you sick. In contrast, if you set aside pasteurized milk at room temperature or body temperature, it will spoil and putrefy, and if you do drink it, it will make you sick. In fact it will make you very sick. And I think the two products are quite different in that respect.”
Excerpts from the transcript of the proceedings in the Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of San Benito before Honorable Harry J. Tobias, Judge, April 25, 2008.
No. CU-07-00204
Organic Pastures Dairy Company LLC and Claravale Farm, Inc., Plaintiffs,
Vs.
State of Califirnia and A.G. Kawamura, Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture, Defendants.
John Chisholm is co-owner of a small company that makes Good-Gums, a toothpaste-replacement that supports the body’s ability to heal its gums. When WAPF Chapter Leaders started carrying Good-Gums, John started learning and practicing Weston A. Price dietary principles, as lucidly explained by Kevin Brown’s Liberation Wellness. Already a regular exerciser and feeling pretty healthy, John didn’t anticipate how well his body would further respond to unprocessed, full-fat, pasture-raised foods.
tens of thousands of people each week are finding and listening to this twice-weekly Top 20 Fitness & Nutrition podcast on iTunes thanks in large part to the amazing word of mouth marketing that so many of you have engaged in telling your friends, co-workers, family, and patients about it. I’m sincerely grateful for all of the wonderful support that people have given me over the years to get to do what I do speaking with some of the best and brightest voices in the field of diet, exercise, and health and then sharing them with you. For someone who has never been educated or trained in broadcasting and conducting interviews, I am humbled by the enthusiastic response to the work I am doing.
