The economics of the raw milk wars
This morning, I reported on the raw milk debate as we experience it here in rural New York.
It’s nothing compared to Wisconsin. There, the state legislature passed a bill legalizing raw milk sales from the farm, much like we have it here in New York. Governor James Doyle said he would sign it.
Then something happened. In a New York Times op-ed last week, public radio guy Michael Feldman put it this way:
…in the meantime the Cheese Makers Association, the Farm Bureau Federation and the Dairy Business Association, a sort of “Axis of Ag,” had sold their anti-raw case to Governor Doyle, blending their self-interest with warnings over diphtheria-, salmonellosis- and strep-bearing unpasteurized milk. Governor Doyle has had his moments, but Solomon he wasn’t on May 19, when he vetoed the Raw Milk Act — despite his February approval of a tangentially related bill that made the dills and salsas of home-picklers street-legal.
Last year was one of the worst years for traditional, “pasteurize-it” dairy farmers ever. Now those same farmers are watching a growing number of consumers clamoring for the right to pay upwards of $12 a gallon for raw milk. (In the North Country, the going rate is a much humbler – but still quite profitable – $5 a gallon.)
No wonder the “Axis of Ag” feels threatened.
It’s not just Dairy with a capital D getting nervous. Tomorrow, we’ll hear from Organic Valley CEO George Siemann. One of America’s biggest sellers of organic pasteurized milk, Organic Valley’s coop board recently voted not to allow members to sell raw milk on the side. As you’ll hear, Siemann cites a few reasons, but competition is definitely one of them.
For the record, New York’s Big Dairy representative – the New York Farm Bureau – is tepidly supportive of raw milk sales on certified farms, but not in stores. Here’s Farm Bureau spokesman Peter Gregg on the subject.
Just to throw in another opinion, food safety expert and author Marion Nestle recently weighed in against drinking raw milk on her blog:
Raw milk carries a greater risk of bacterial contamination than pasteurized milk and people who buy it should know what those risks are. The risk may be small, but it is finite. Putting a child at risk of hemolytic uremic syndrome from toxic E. coli just doesn’t make sense to me.
So there you have it, folks. What do you think about raw milk? Hav you ever changed your mind one way or the other after reading/hearing something about it?
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David,
I don’t think you are doing a balanced reporting job on this issue. Terms like “Axis of Ag” and “Big Dairy” aren’t neutral terms!
Raw milk advocates promote it as superior to pasteurized milk, conferring long term health benefits. This claim is based mainly on the observations of a dentist, Weston Price, traveling throughout the world during the early part of the 20th century. He saw healthy indigenous people and concluded that their health was due to better diet. He published his views in a book which did not gather much attention until 1999, when Sally Fallon founded the WAP Foundation.
Today we are well aware that many chronic diseases are diet-related and nutritionists such as Marion Nestle, whom you quote, talk constantly about the importance of eating more whole foods. However, during the subsequent 70 years little evidence has been found that raw milk in particular contains any special, health-giving components that are lost through pasteurization. The small farmers featured in your segment are certainly raising cattle in a humane and thoughtful way, and I would be happy to support them. But if raw milk adds no benefits (at least as far as science shows) yet does carry a small, but potentially deadly, risk why would I choose it?
We drank raw milk from a near-by farm for several years, until that farm closed its dairy operation. The farmer is a smart man, and he knows how to run a well-managed operation, and we trusted his milk. It was a great product, good flavor, rich with cream, and reasonably priced. There is nothing like homemade yogurt made from fresh, whole milk!
That said, I think Marion Nestle has a point. I was not feeding raw milk to a young child.
We’ve used raw milk in the past . We produced the milk ourselves and we’re sure of it’s sanitary condition and of the animals it came from. Our house cow is due to freshen in the next couple weeks. These days we pasteurize, nit so much because of health concerns, but because of flavor. It’s hard to get kids used to 1% store “milk” over to whole milk, much less raw milk. Pasteurizing changes the flavor a bit.
I marvel at people going on about the possible chance of getting some nasty germ from local milk when many of the same people think nothing of eating out at a restaurant where the word “sanitation” is a joke. Or they think nothing of grabbing a bag of fruit at the store and eating it before washing it in hot soapy water. Folks, that little spray of cold water the Price Chopper uses on the veggies isn’t to wash the food, it’s to keep it from wilting and looking good. We’ll happily munch on lettuce produced in a 3rd world country where all sorts of manure is used in the fields, some types you really don’t want to know about. And do you really think a spritz of cold water is going to clean up the phlem the illegal alien Mexican with TB hocked up on to your greens? Is a little cold water going to clean off the bird droppings, rat droppings, insect waste, etc? And that not even mentioning the chemicals used in foreign countries on crops.
And people say a vegan lifestyle is safe?
Bret, you are right about supermarket food. It’s a little like ‘out of sight,out of mind.’
Raw milk has significant short- and long-term health benefits over pasteurized milk.
Raw milk is subject to more stringent sanitary requirements than pasteurized milk, and if handled properly by the producer, seller, and purchaser, is safe.
Pasteurized milk does present occasional infection problems, perhaps at a higher rate than well-handled raw milk.
Check the Dr. Mercola website for articles and references.
I have to agree with Bret, There is risk in everyhing we eat and purchase at the market. I think the People who are the most scared are the middlemen who are the real profit makers in the ag business, They are the ones who buy it low from the farmer and sell it High in the market.
Although I don’t use it myself, I’m all for people being able to buy raw milk locally, more profit for the very deserving farmers is Great in my book I think our bodys are amazing things that would have alot more resistance to a lot of diseases, if we’d only give them a chance to build up a tolerance. and not be so in love with “antibacterial this or that”.
Raw Milk if handled cleanly is Just how mother nature intended it, What could be any better than that ??
What is very disappointing to see in any article regarding raw milk which touches upon the risks associated with it is that the same assessment of the risks of food borne illness from pasteurized milk is never mentioned. People can and do get sick from pasteurized milk also, especially if it handled properly. While the risk of illness may be higher than from raw milk, it isn’t like there is no risk of illness from pasteurized milk.
The reason I’m a raw milk drinker is because the flavor is so much better than store bought milk, it is fresher and it is complete. Even if I buy whole milk in the store, it isn’t really whole milk. Instead it is milk which has had the fat stripped out of it and then a specific percentage put back in and the whole concoction is homogenized so that the fat cannot rise to the top and then it is pasteurized. I wouldn’t mind drinking store bought milk if I could purchase a milk straight from the bulk tank which has only been pasteurized, but this isn’t sold. Instead, I can only buy milks which have had a substantial amount of processing in addition to being pasteurized.
I do a fair amount of cooking and baking and the performance of a raw milk in cooking and baking is much better than a homogenized milk. The safety issue is also eliminated once the milk is cooked or baked.
As a progressive dairyman, I first and foremost want to say that milk is a great food. Dairy farmers work very hard to produce a clean, wholesome, wonderfully healthy product. That said, producing milk is working with living, breathing, animals that, just like humans, can pick up bacteria and viruses, and perhaps can be shedding cells before they show outward signs of illness, just like humans! Pasteurization takes the very small potential of a risk of exposure to a bacteria or virus out of milk. Milk is a very perishable product, and when it hasn’t been pasteurized, and is handled improperly, such as being left in a warm car for an hour as someone finishes their errands, is left open to the potential of producing a foodborne illness in those who drink it because it was not handled properly!! Although I wholeheartedly agree that we live in a society who has not allowed immune systems to develop as they were intended, and I have drank raw milk my whole life, because my milk is taken from the milk tank at 34 degrees and placed in my refrigerator within five minutes, I still believe that for the health and safety of the general public, pasteurization is important and essential. Please remember, that prior to the discovery of pasteurization, death caused by unpasteurized milk was a huge issue in humans- that is why pasteurization was considered such a landmark in the history of milk handling and processing. This is a difficult time in the dairy industry for producers, and I am concerned with seeing all of us be more profitable, but lets make sure that we keep the safety of our product in consumers’ diets first and foremost!
Raised on raw milk and still alive, despite my best efforts.
Those who support drinking raw milk as a general practice are wrong. Our population is much healthier because of pasteurized milk with vitamins added. Pasteurized milk has much better health reputation and safety record by far than raw milk.
I’ve been to dairy farms that both produce raw milk and also process it. Taking the whole process one step backwards where they just sell raw milk to consumer that have been hoodwinked into thinking it has some magical properties and where they do not even pasteurize it is like going back to the stone age.
Yes, you can drink raw milk and not get sick. But, the problem is eventually there will be a problem, not detected early enough by even the best dairy farmer and then the problems start. It is like playing the lottery, but this is one you don’t want to win.
For the general population, they should drink pasteurized milk. Milk plants are highly regulated and inspected to make sure they provide a very good product for customers. Dairy farms are not places that are conducive to proper food handling, sales or consumption. This is all about money for dairy farmers, those that support raw milk consumption don’t care about the entire industry’s reputation.
Children are told that “the cow gives us her milk”. In fact it is robbery with violence followed by murder. But we wouldn’t tell our children that, would we?
I never drink milk nor do my children! And, after reading all of this, I’m glad we don’t. Look at the choices… milk with chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and now not even vitamin D because the cows are kept indoors OR raw milk with potential germs and other life threatening components. Typically when mammals are weaned they stop drinking the stuff. I’ll just drink water … thank you.
Wow Hillbilly, do you milk your cows at gunpoint and then kill them?
When I was a dairy farmer my cows had better living conditions and healthcare than most of the people in the world. We drank and sold raw milk and never had a problem. The allowable bacteria count for our milk was 100,000 ( I don’t remember the per unit demarcation)
Our bacteria count for the year averaged around 1100. Our milk was safe and anyone who does a decent job of milking can safely sell raw milk.
It is pretty easy for a savvy consumer to determine if their farmer of choice is doing a good job. Milk tastes good, nobody gets sick, everybody is happy.
The not so savvy consumer?
Let them roll the dice at the grocery store where they can buy sausage with salmonella (R.I) hamburger with e coli (Oh.) tainted peanut butter
(Ga.) lettuce with e coli (Ca.) pausteurized milk with lysteria ( upper midwest). mercury in fish (N.J.). Tomatoes anyone?
Need I go on?
Face it , food has some inherent problems built in.
Once we remove it from the plant, the animal or the ground, it has lost it’s support system and begins to decompose. Throughout history it’s been our challenge to prepare it and consume it while it is still safe.
Recently we’ve made some advancements like sanitation, refrigeration and fast transportation.
We’ve learned what warning signs to watch for and we’ve come a long way. Remember, pasteurization doesn’t exist in a vacuum we are also learning how to produce milk more safely on the farm, so that decrease we saw when pasteurization came along was accompanied by other advances right on the farm.
You’ll notice we don’t transport milk in 10 gallon tinned cans in unrefrigerated trucks anymore for example.
Consumers should be free choose to buy raw milk if they so desire without nanny friends, nanny neighbors and nanny government getting in their face about it.
That is why I introduced a bill in the New Hampshire legislature to allow farmers to sell up to 20 gallons of raw milk per day from their farms with no gov’t interference. The governor signed it into law last week.
I”d like to see the limit removed altogether and allow the consumer to make their own choices.
You think it’s dangerous? Fine, don’t buy it. Maybe you should rethink that whole riding in an automobile or airplane thing.
You know they sometimes crash and burn.
Some of the comments here are just….inane at best. Donna, there is absolutely no food you can purchase that doesn’t carry some risk with it. Even home produced foods carry some risk, just how do you intend to eat without any risk at all? And Hillbilly, your post implying that these animals are just exploited and then “murdered” is inaccurate at best. A responsible husbandman will do his best for his livestock and will provide them with a pleasant, meaningful life. As far as exploitation goes, no matter what you eat you are exploiting something, murdering something. So please save the hypocrisy for another venue. I’m not in favor of mega farms milking 3x a day, 24/7/365 and loosing cows at 4-5 years old, standing in mud or a freestall all day, everyday. But the consumer rarely considers that conditions that make that type of outfit nearly the only profitable method of producing milk now. Will consumers pay the true cost of milk or meat or produce with no controls or subsidies? I doubt they’d like it much. So what’s the answer? Get rid of the artificial limits and supports and prices will rise for the buyer. Continue on and prices remain fairly low, but corners have to be cut to keep the farms going or supports and controls increased which costs the taxpayer.
Some choice, eh?
OMG. You all need to stop relying on each other and the web for your info, it’s full of half truths. Start reading some new research. I hate MILK. But RAW MILK studies are showing some real promise. As with most research involving the refinement of our foods the info is showing no matter how much we eat of that old crap, we’re starving ourselves.