Got 'Real Milk'? Some Are Demanding It

(March 3) -- Meeting shady characters in Brooklyn back alleys does not immediately suggest "milk." But that's exactly what Hannah Springer and group of unpasteurized "raw" milk devotees are doing to get their daily dairy fix, Gothamist reported this week. It's their way of getting around New York state's restrictions on the sale of raw milk -- and they aren't the only ones bending laws to get closer to the cow.

In recent years, the consumption of unpasteurized milk has been rapidly expanding along with the market for organic, local foods. When the Weston A. Price Foundation began its Real Milk campaign in 1999, there were only a handful of people selling raw milk – now there are hundreds, and president Sally Fallon Morell believes that is expanding.

"It's a fringe market right now – we're where organics were 20 years ago," she says.

The government says pasteurized milk -- that which has been heated to kill bacteria -- is safer than unpasteurized milk, which the Food and Drug Administration says can harbor dangerous microorganisms.

As an advocacy group, the Weston A. Price Foundation has worked to make it more available through legal loopholes. Some states have banned the milk outright, while others allow sales at farms and farmer's markets. Currently, nine states allow the sale of raw milk in retail stores.

Even in some states with stricter laws, customers can still get raw milk via herd sharing or cow sharing programs based on an ancient cattle-grazing law called agistment. People buy a portion of either a herd or a cow, and then they can get milk from "their" cow as they choose.

Some farmers just go on selling raw milk despite laws against it, and hope for the best.

Legal battles over raw milk have been heating up, and lawmakers in seven states have introduced measures to change existing milk regulations, reports the Associated Press.

Raw milk devotees say it tastes richer than processed milk and contains beneficial nutrients that are eliminated during pasteurization. It can cost more than store-bought milk but often is cheaper than other farmer's market milk because it's unprocessed.

The most extreme proponents of raw milk argue that it can solve everything from allergies to asthma and cancer, but the FDA and mainstream science continue to say that it is dangerous.

In her book, "Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink," University of California Santa Cruz sociology professor Melanie DuPuis discusses how throughout modern American history, health advocates of all stripes have painted milk alternately as divine ambrosia or deadly poison.

In the 19th century, milk was sold to cities from cows fed off distillery waste products, and the dangerous result developed a reputation for killing infants.

Mandatory milk pasteurization, like many modern food safety regulations, developed out of those public health concerns over hazardous 19th and early 20th century industrial conditions. Cities began mandating pasteurization in the 1900s, and states followed suit in the early 1940s.

The milk supply today is far safer than it was before mandatory pasteurization. The FDA and the USDA are unequivocal in their statements that pasteurized milk is safer. "Raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family," reads their page: The Dangers of Raw Milk.

"The health risks are still black and white," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has a list of disease outbreaks from raw milk on its Web site.

Last week, a Seattle company recalled raw milk for fear of E. Coli contamination.

Raw milk advocates don't deny that there is a health risk, but they claim that is not exceptional. The Price foundation points to a number of enzymes in milk they believe provide benefits to the immune system, and a 2006 study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that children who lived on farms and drank raw milk had significantly lower rates of asthma, hay fever and eczema. Most of the evidence supporting their health claims, however, is anecdotal.

Some arguments in favor of raw milk are more ideological than scientific.

"Pasteurization laws favor large, industrialized dairy operations and squeeze out small farmers," the Real Milk campaign says on its Web site. "When farmers have the right to sell unprocessed milk to consumers, they can make a decent living, even with small herds."