REVIEW: Time Magazine’s Article on Raw Milk

Last week a reader sent me an email to let me know that there is an article about raw milk in the May 12 issue of TIME Magazine. (Thanks, Jody Morris!) Raw milk is a hotly contested issue all over the U.S., with devoted raw milk consumers on one side and food safety regulators on the other. Though I’ve mentioned my use of raw dairy products several times on this site, particularly for use in recipes, I haven’t really stated why I use it or what I think about it. So, here it is, in no uncertain terms: I love raw milk. I love drinking it, I love the way it tastes, and I have personally benefitted from its numerous health properties. In fact, I now avoid pasteurized milk when at all possible. It’s hard to enjoy when you’ve tried the real thing.

Pasteurization of milk exists for two reasons: for one, the industrialized food distribution system needs a way to keep milk from spoiling long enough for them to truck milk thousands of miles and into the homes of Americans. And second, the dairy industry’s reliance on corn feed for fattening cows (as well as the use of hormones to increase milk production in each cow) results in milk that has come from sick cows. Cows naturally eat grass, not grain; cows who eat a corn-based diet routinely contract a whole list of diseases. Factor in the widespread use of CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), in which thousands upon thousands of cows stand around in crammed pens while hoof deep in a muck of their own feces, and it’s no wonder that this milk makes people sick.

The industrial food complex in America loves pasteurization because it allows the widespread sale and consumption of farm goods that would otherwise cause disease. When the majority of the milk sold in the U.S. is going to be pasteurized anyway, who’s going to invest the time and money in producing milk that’s worthy of drinking straight fro the cow? Raw milk producers, that’s who. I buy all of my raw milk from Organic Pastures, a dairy based in Fresno, CA. I have been to this farm, I have seen the pastures that the cows occupy one at a time on a rotating schedule, and have seen the dairy’s mobile milking barn. In this barn, cows are lead up the ramp where they’re hooked up to exceptionally clean milking gear. The temperature of the milk is then instantly reduced to just above freezing, and it stays this way until it reaches stores and consumers. As a result of all this effort, the milk is very expensive (about $8 for a half gallon). The price causes me to consume less milk than most Americans, which is leads me to my final point about pasteurization: there’s a glut of cheap, shitty milk on the market, and consumers should be allowed to have a source of good, raw milk as an alternative.

This leads me to the TIME article, which barely scrapes the surface of the issues behind raw milk in America. The article includes the basic points from both sides of the raw milk argument, including some of the points I’ve mentioned here. It also includes the point of view of food safety regulators, who believe (or are paid to say) that consuming raw milk in any form is akin to playing Russian roulette, and these regulators list off a bunch of scary statistics about raw milk making people sick. But the thing is, these statistics come from studies that made no differentiation between raw milk from healthy, pastured cows versus that from sick, CAFO-produced cow’s milk. It’s insane to believe that milk from the latter source could even begin to compete with milk from a farm like Organic Pastures, and yet there are several food regulators (and plenty of conventional milk producers) who;d like you to believe that they’re identical.

The article does briefly bring up the fact that “all raw milk is not created equal,” though they state that this is the belief of raw dairy farmers. But the article doesn’t ever mention the difference between milk from cows who eat grass and milk from cows who eat corn. This is a crucial component, and I’m incredibly disappointed that it wasn’t mentioned. I think it displays TIME’s reluctance to piss off the American industrial food production complex. Instead of presenting a truly fair and balanced report on the issues surrounding raw milk, they’ve chosen to leave out the facts about grass vs. corn that are so integral to the discussion. I say that they chose to leave this out for one main reason: I’ve met Mark McAfee (the founder of Organic Pastures) in person, and I am positive that he would have mentioned the benefits of grass-fed raw dairy, like, thousands of times. McAfee is a raw milk zealot, a good quality since he’s constantly fighting the bureaucrats and giant conventional dairies that are constantly trying to shut him down. I can’t believe that someone who’s so committed to producing clean, healthy milk from grass-fed cows would have just forgotten to omit the statistics about the crucial grass-fed element.

Of course, I do agree with the TIME article on one thing: there’s no guarantee that any milk can ever be considered 100% safe. I just hate how they tote pasteurized milk as being a safe bet:

“So who’s right? The available evidence suggests that without a bug-killing step like pasteurization, even the cleanest dairy with the healthiest cows cannot always expect to produce safe milk.”

Never mind the fact that the article draws a conclusion at all, which is very un-journalistic of them. (What, TIME have a bias? Shocking!) The thing that upsets me about the above quote is that it promotes the assumption that pasteurized milk is the only safe way to drink milk. IT’S NOT. Conventional milk that has been mass-produced and pasteurized can makes people sick, too. And so does spinach. Remember that? I think the reality is that any nation that relies on industry to produce its food will experience food-borne illnesses at one time or another. When our source of nourishment is provided by a complex system of chemicals, machines, and drugs, the occasional illness is to be expected. It’s absurd to state that pasteurized milk is the only safe way to drink milk.

Oh, and also? Organic Pastures is completely open about their milk’s tests results. The dairy enlists a third party to test every single batch of milk they produce, and they’re so sure of the safety of their milk that they publish the results of these tests on their website. You can see the results of lab tests of Organic Pastures’ milk here.

If you’d like to learn more about raw milk, check out RealMilk.com, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation that’s devoted to education consumers about the whys and hows of raw milk. Also, next week I’m going to post an interview with Sally Fallon, the president of Weston A. Price and the fairy godmother of raw milk enthusiasts everywhere. I hope you check it out, it contains a lot of good information about raw milk.