Raw Milk

The Health Benefits Of Raw Milk From Grass-Fed Animals

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In 1970, I went to live on the island of Martha's Vineyard. I was quite ill with gastrointestinal problems. I began living mostly on seafood, fresh vegetables and salads, and raw milk and eggs purchased from a local farmer, with a little meat and whole grain bread. My health problems, which had been intractable for years, disappeared.

Raw milk remained a mainstay of my diet. Since 1981 I have strongly recommended raw milk to thousands of people who have seen me in my practice as a naturopathic physician. I practice in Connecticut, where we enjoy the right to purchase certified raw milk throughout the state (with the exception of the town of Fairfield, where a fascist local health board has instituted an unchallenged-for-lack-of- funds town ordinance prohibiting the sale of raw milk.)

The raw milk available in the part of Connecticut where I live is from Debra Tyler's farm in Cornwall Bridge, called "Local Farm." Debra has nine cows on fourteen acres. Eight health food stores in central and northern Connecticut pick up milk regularly at Local Farm. There are about a dozen other certified raw milk dairies among Connecticut's 210 dairy farms.

Debra has Jersey cows. Most farms have Holsteins, which provide large quantities of milk, but milk that is lower in protein, fat and calcium. Jerseys were originally bred by the French to produce milk for cheese making. The fat content of Debra's milk during the warm months is about 4.8 percent, well above the normal 3.5 percent for whole milk. Debra's cows eat mostly grass in the spring, summer and fall, and mostly hay in the winter (each cow consumes a forty pound bale a day!), with a few pounds a day of ground corn and roasted soybeans (five to one corn to soybeans ratio).

Local Farm milk is certified organic. Certification costs several hundred dollars a year in fees and considerable paperwork. It also means that Debra must sometimes pay more for certified feed from faraway places than for locally produced feed she knows to be organic but which is not certified. This raises the question-if you know and trust the local farmers who produce your food, does it really have to be certified?

TESTIMONY ON RAW MILK

The last time the right of the people of Connecticut to purchase raw milk was seriously threatened was in 1994 when the state Environmental Committee held public hearings on the certification of raw milk, before voting almost unanimously to continue licensing new farms and allowing raw milk to be sold. I testified at those hearings. My testimony was framed to respond to objections to raw milk raised by the state health department and to document the benefits of raw milk. To quote from that testimony:

"The state epidemiologist writes that `It has yet to be demonstrated that raw milk has any beneficial health effects. . . ' He cites articles attached to his letter. In one article, `Unpasteurized Milk, The Hazards of a Health Fetish' (Journal of the American Medical Association, 10/19/84), the authors make a series of misstatements about the research of Francis Pottenger before concluding that raw milk has no health benefits. I detail these charges as follows in the paper I've given the members of the Committee.

"Now what Pottenger actually did in some of his experiments is this. He used four groups of cats. All received for one-third of the diet raw meat. The other two-thirds of the diet consisted in either raw milk or various heat-treated milks. The raw milk/raw meat diet produced many generations of healthy cats. Those fed pasteurized milk showed skeletal changes, decreased reproductive capacity and infectious and degenerative diseases.

"Now just who was Francis Pottenger? He was the son of the physician who founded the once famous Pottenger Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis in Monrovia, California. He completed his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930 and became a full-time assistant at the Sanatorium. From 1932 to 1942, he also conducted what became known as the Pottenger Cat Study.

"In 1940, he founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital at Monrovia. Until closing in 1960, the hospital specialized in treating non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.

"Dr. Pottenger was a regular and prolific contributor to the medical and scientific literature. He served as president of several professional organizations, including the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the American Academy of Applied Nutrition and the American Therapeutic Society. He was a member of a long list of other professional organizations.

"Pottenger's experiments met the most rigorous scientific standards. His outstanding credentials earned him the support of prominent physicians. Alvin Foord, MD, Professor of Pathology at the University of Southern California and pathologist at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, co-supervised with Pottenger all pathological and chemical findings of the study.

"One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study is one that modern science has largely ignored. It has to do with the nutritive value of heat-labile elements-nutrients destroyed by heat and available only in raw foods.

"In his article `Clinical Evidences of the Value of Raw Milk,' Pottenger writes: `Some of the factors transmitted by milk are thermo- labile [sensitive to heat]. Though their destruction may not produce death, their deficiency may prevent proper development of the child. This may show in the development of an inadequate skeleton or a decrease in resistance. . . . delay in development of osseous centers is noted more frequently in those children. . . receiving heat treated milk. It is particularly absent from the raw milk fed children. . . . I am basing this discussion on analysis of 150 children whose parents have consulted me because of respiratory allergies. Many other workers... have also shown that treating milk by heating interferes with its proper assimilation and nutritional qualities... The best milk from a nutritional standpoint is raw milk. ... Heat-treating milk interferes with calcium metabolism causing... delay in bone age and small bones... The interference with calcium metabolism as shown in the bones is only a physiological index of disturbed metabolism throughout the body.'

"I have prescribed raw milk from grass-fed animals to my patients for nearly fifteen years. Time and again I have seen allergies clear up and dramatically improved health. Particularly in children, middle ear infections usually disappear and do not recur on raw milk. Both children and adults unable to drink pasteurized milk without problems have thrived on raw milk. In hundreds-perhaps thousands-of my patients using raw milk, not one has ever developed a salmonella, campylobacter, or other raw-milk-related infection.

"In the letter cited above, the state epidemiologist states that `The processes of certification and/or inspection do not guarantee that raw milk will not be contaminated with pathogenic organisms.' He also lists a host of microorganisms that are alleged to be transmitted by raw milk, not mentioning that, as the literature accompanying his letter makes clear, the only organisms even potentially associated with the consumption of certified raw milk are salmonella and campylobacter. And in one of the articles he cites, `The Hazard in Consuming Raw Milk' (in The Western Journal of Medicine), the authors actually state that `Salmonella and campylobacter diseases in humans are generally not serious. But in persons with compromised health (particularly those with malignant conditions and immunosuppressed by disease or therapy), these infections may be serious.'

"So, the gist of the state's argument against certified raw milk is that it might possibly on isolated occasions cause serious disease in some people whose immune systems have been compromised by the toxic effects of chemotherapy. And because of this very slight risk, those of us who might choose to drink certified raw milk for the benefits I have catalogued should be denied that right."

Fortunately, the members of the Environmental Committee saw through the shallowness of the state's argument and voted in favor of raw milk.

Milk in History and Evolution

Not everyone agrees that milk should be part of the human diet after infancy. The argument is made that just as all other species drink no milk after weaning, neither should we, especially that of another species. Many adults have difficulty digesting pasteurized milk, and allergies to pasteurized milk products are common. While this lends credence to arguments against milk, such reactions are usually due to pasteurization itself and the poor quality of conventionally produced milk and milk products. While for some individuals genetic influences play a role, for most people, the body's reaction to milk depends largely upon the quality and state of the particular milk used.

The Swiss of the Loetschental Valley were one of the few native groups Weston Price studied that used milk. (The others were certain African tribes, including the Masai.) The Swiss valley-dwellers used raw whole milk, both fresh and cultured, cheese and butter, all in substantial quantities. The milk was from healthy, grass-fed animals and was used unpasteurized and unhomogenized. Such foods clearly can play a major role in a health-building program for the individual genetically enabled to utilize these foods well. They are a rich source of fat-soluble vitamins A and D and other crucial nutrients in short supply in diets lacking in high quality animal fats. (Contrary to popular opinion, liberal amounts of animal fats, particularly from grass-fed animals, are essential for good health and resistance to disease.)

Yet it is possible to attain optimal health without dairy foods. Price discovered groups using no dairy foods that had complete resistance to dental decay and chronic disease; their diets invariably included other rich sources of animal fats, calcium and other minerals. The soft ends of long bones were commonly chewed, and the shafts and other bones were used in soups.

Modern medicine has discovered the importance of a substantial intake of calcium. Several recent studies have linked high blood pressure and other problems to chronic subclinical calcium deficiency, including increased incidence of colon and prostate cancers in men and osteoporosis and osteoarthritis in both men and women. Paradoxically, other problems are associated with high consumption of dairy foods; this has not gone unnoticed by researchers, nutritionists and holistic physicians.

The difference between fresh raw milk from grass-fed cows and processed milk explains the paradox. This concept has not been considered in attempts by today's medical community to explain the health effects of dairy foods.

Domesticated animals were first used for milk eight to ten thousand years ago, as a genetic change affecting mostly people in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa enabled them to digest milk as adults. Milk from domesticated animals then began to become important as a human food. With domestication and settlement, fewer wild animals were available; as groups of people roamed less, they hunted less, eating more grains and vegetables. In some cultures, milk replaced animal bones as the chief source of calcium and some other minerals.

In indigenous cultures where adults used milk, often it was used as cultured or clabbered milk. This is similar to homemade raw yogurt, and it is partially predigested-much of the lactose (milk sugar) has been broken down by bacterial action. This process must be accomplished over a period of several hours in the stomach when one drinks fresh milk; yogurt or clabbered milk is much more easily digested than fresh milk.

Adaptations in evolution are always the effects of particular causes. Humans developing the ability to digest milk into adulthood possessed a survival advantage; such changes are the basis of evolution. Put simply, many human beings evolved the ability to easily digest raw milk because raw milk from healthy, grass-fed animals gave them an adaptive advantage; it made them stronger and more able to reproduce. Such milk remains a wonderful food that provides us with fat-soluble nutrients, calcium and other minerals that are by and large in short supply in the modern diet.

In the six years since I presented the testimony quoted above, I have become more convinced than ever of the value and importance of raw milk in the diets of people of all ages. For many of the people who eat in the manner I recommend, raw milk is the chief source of enzymes. I believe enzymes are a critical component in recovering from disease and establishing and maintaining health. Hundreds of people I've seen have used Local Farm raw milk as an essential part of their naturopathic treatment.

There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not thankful that I live in a state where bureaucrats and medical monopolists have not stripped us of what should be an inalienable, constitutional right. I mean the right to purchase raw milk and other healthy, locally produced foods directly from the people who produce them.

It's impossible to overestimate the importance of the work Debra Tyler and farmers like her are doing. I long to see the day when all Americans have the right to purchase locally produced raw milk, meat, fowl and other farm products directly from the farmers who produce them. I hope to see the day when the current yoke of prohibitions and bureaucratic red tape will be thrown off, and we once again will be free to produce and consume truly healthy foods. The men and women who founded this country did not intend for commercial interests to control the food supply and thus our health. These are rights of the people, and they are rights that have been stripped away. We need to work together to regain them.

About Ron Schmid

Dr. Ron Schmid has practiced as a licensed naturopathic physician in Connecticut since graduating from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1981. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well, he has taught courses and seminars in nutrition at all four of the accredited naturopathic medical schools in the United States. He served for a year as the first Clinic Director and Chief Medical Officer at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine. He is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the Connecticut Society of Naturopathic Physicians, and is on the Honorary Board of the Weston A. Price Foundation. He is also the manufacturer of 100% pure, additive free nutritional supplements. Dr. Schmid is the author of Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine, first published in 1986.

Does Milk Really Look Good On You? Don't Drink It!

by Ingri Cassel

Pasteurized, homogenized cow's milk has been promoted as the perfect food for humans, especially for our children. This multi-generational advertising campaign has been so successful that the industry has a $multi-million advertising budget and a legislative lobbying influence in congress so powerful that every child in a public school receives a pint of milk each day -- whether he or she can pay for it or not.

In 1999 the Department of Agriculture donated $200 million to America's dairy farmers despite the fact that the wholesale price for milk had reached the highest levels in history.

Most people have been so conditioned to believe that the healthy growth of their children's bones is dependent upon receiving calcium from processed cow's milk that they view milk commercials as more of a public service announcement than an attempt by businessmen to sell a product.

Several well-footnoted books and countless articles on the subject show that processed cow's milk is not healthy for humans and, to the contrary, has been linked to a wide range of physiological complications. The list of problems that have been associated with the consumption of milk and dairy products includes iron deficiency anemia, allergies, diarrhea, heart disease, colic, cramps, gastrointestinal bleeding, sinusitis, skin rashes, acne, arthritis, diabetes, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma, autoimmune diseases and possibly even lung cancer, multiple sclerosis and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Milk and dairy products are acid-forming and mucus-producing substances that provide the ideal bodily environment for many children and adults to experience increased frequency of colds and flues.

The milk of mammals is species-specific and cow's milk is a species- specific food for calves. Dr. Frank Oski explains in his book Don't Drink Your Milk!, ìThe milk of each species appears to have been specifically designed to protect the young of that species.....Heating, sterilization, or modification of the milk in any way destroys the protection.î

There is a tremendous difference between human babies and baby calves and a corresponding difference between the milk intended to nourish human babies and baby calves. It takes about 180 days for a human infant to double its birth weight, and human milk is five to seven percent protein. It takes only 45 days for a calf to double its birth weight and cow's milk is 15 percent protein. This protein in cow's milk is of a different composition than that of human milk and is poorly assimilated in the human body. The primary type of protein in cow's milk is casein. According to Dr. John R. Christopher, N.D., M.H., there is up to 20 times more casein in cow's milk than human milk which makes the nutrients in cow's milk difficult (if not impossible) for humans to assimilate.

Lost in the process

Pasteurizing milk destroys enzymes and reduces the vitamin content by over 50 percent. Raw milk contains beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus acidolphilus which holds the putrefactive bacteria in check. This is why raw milk will eventually curdle and sour if allowed to sit at room temperature. Pasteurized milk, not having any beneficial bacteria or enzymes, eventually rots.

The irony of pasteurization is that it destroys the germicidal properties of milk. Experimental animals deteriorate rapidly on pasteurized milk. For instance, calves fed pasteurized milk die within 60 days, as shown by numerous experiments. So why do we pasteurize milk? 1) It extends the shelf life of milk from five days to several weeks and 2) It enables the farmer to have lower standards of cleanliness. The standards for certified dairy herds and milk handlers of raw milk are considerably higher than for herds whose milk is to be pasteurized. Homogenizing milk has been linked to the rise in arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and heart disease. The culprit is an enzyme in milk called xanthine oxidase (XO) which partly survives pasteurization (40 percent). When the cream in milk is in it's natural state, the fat globules are too large to go through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream.

Homogenization changes that by straining the fat through tiny pores under great pressure. XO attaches to the fat molecules (now reduced in size but increased in amount a hundred times) which are now small enough to get into the bloodstream and do its damage.

Scientists have discovered that a significant amount of XO is present in areas of hardened and blocked arteries. XO is not present in human milk. In clean, raw cow's milk. XO is not absorbed by the intestines.

Your bones are a mineral bank for your body storing 99 percent calcium, 85 percent phosphorus and 60 percent magnesium. When mineral levels are low in the blood, osteoclasts break down bone to free up these minerals and deposit them in the blood. Excessive animal protein intake increases the need for calcium to neutralize the acid formed from digesting animal protein. This indicates that the drinking of processed milk destroys bone in the process of digestion - - the opposite of what the Dairy Farmer's Association of America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration has been telling the American public for generations.

Conditioning the American public to believe that processed cow's milk is beneficial, if not critical to growing healthy bodies is not unlike conditioning the American public to believe that fluoride prevents tooth decay.

Jethro Kloss, author of the internationally recognized and revered herbalist resource guide ìBack to Edenî stated in 1939 that, "Cow's milk is unfit for human consumption" and causes the symptoms of "intestinal auto-intoxication."

The Monsanto connection

In 1994 the FDA approved the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST -- better known as bovine growth hormone -- BGH), a genetically- engineered hormone manufactured by Monsanto that increases milk production in cows by 10 percent to 25 percent. The milk from cows treated with BGH contains elevated levels insulin-like growth factor- 1 (IGF-1), one of the most powerful growth factors ever identified. While IGF-1 doesn't cause cancer, it definitely stimulates its growth. Recent studies have found a seven-fold increase in the risk of breast cancer in women with the highest IGF-1 levels, and a four- fold increase in prostate cancer in men with the highest levels of IGF-1.

BGH is banned in both Canada and Europe. BGH-treated cows are also more likely to contract mastitis, a persistent infection of the cows' udders. These cows are then treated with a myriad of antibiotics and sulfa drugs. Trace amounts of these drugs as well as pus and bacteria from the infected udders are also found in their milk. Many of these antibiotics, even in trace amounts, can cause allergic reactions -- from mild reactions such as hives to anaphylactic shock.

The role of Monsanto, one of the world's largest chemical corporations and developer of the terminator gene for seed crops, in the willful adulteration and contamination of milk must be considered. Monsanto, also one of the world's most prolific polluters, intends to control the world's food supply by making sure that farmers must come back and purchase its seed year after year because terminator gene-containing plants will not produce viable seed. Monsanto also developed the FDA-approved bovine growth hormone that increases production at the expense of the cow and the health of the adults and children who drink the milk.

Kloss' statement, which cannot be interpreted as "vague" or confusing, was published long before Monsanto was able to further contaminate milk with bovine growth hormone. If cow's milk was ìunfit for human consumptionî in 1939, has Monsanto and the FDA, with the introduction and approval of BGH, made it more or less fit than it was before WWII?

Dietary alternatives to cow calcium

Our nutritional education in school (funded in part by the dairy industry) taught us that dairy products are one of the four basic food groups we ALL need for proper nutrition. Largely as a result of this K-12 conditioning, the average American consumes 375 pounds of dairy products a year. One out of every seven dollars spent on groceries in the U.S. goes to buy dairy products.

There is no question that cow's milk contains calcium. What is in question is how much of that calcium is made available to the body through the digestive process.

We have been told all of our lives to drink plenty of milk in order to build strong teeth and bones. Curiously, the U.S. as a whole records the highest consumption of dairy products in the world and also boasts the highest incidence of bone fractures and osteoporosis in the world. In the January 1988 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, scientists reported that calcium excretion and bone loss increase in proportion to the amount of animal protein ingested. Animal proteins, due to their high sulfur content, alter the kidney's reabsorption of calcium, so that more calcium is excreted on a diet based upon meats, eggs and dairy products. People on high protein diets excrete between 90 to 100 mg. of calcium a day.

The difference in health between consumers of milk and those who choose to abstain are astounding. Dr. John R. Christopher tells the story of a woman who came to his office with her three grown daughters. All three daughters were encouraged by their mother to drink lots of milk but one of the daughters had rebelled. The two daughters who dutifully drank their milk and lots of it wore false teeth whereas the third daughter who abstained still had all her teeth intact.

Being a former La Leche League leader, I have heard numerous stories told by mothers of the trials and tribulations of raising children. The most frequent success stories I have heard about resolving chronic ear infections and frequent trips to the doctor's office is the elimination of dairy products. Over and over again these women relate how surprised they were to have healthy kids at last. Others have found that milk, being quite addictive, was more difficult to eliminate totally. These families would go on a dairy binge periodically. The following week they would pay for it with a flare up of symptoms from the build up of mucus.

Dr. J.Dan Baggert, a pediatrician in Alabama, describes his experience after recommending that ALL his patient's eliminate cow's milk from their diets:

In Don't Drink Your Milk, Dr. Baggert was quoted as stating, ìDuring the years from 1963 through 1967, I referred an average of four appendectomy cases per year. During the past five and a half years, I have referred only two patients for appendectomy, the last one being three years ago. Both of these children were professed milk guzzlers.... I do not have a single case of asthma. In fact, I have nearly forgotten how to prescribe for them....

ìPerhaps the most significant thing I have learned is that Group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus germ will not, under ordinary circumstances, establish an infection in a child kept on an absolutely no-milk-protein dietary regimen. I have been aware of this for the past two and a half years and, so far, there have been no exceptions. Anytime a patient of mine is found to have streptococcal pharyngitis or pyoderma, we can establish by history that he ingested milk protein within five days prior to onset of symptoms or signs bringing him to the office....

"I now admit an average of 12-14 patients per year to the hospital. Their average hospital stay is three days. Between 1963 and 1967, I admitted an average of 100+ patients to the hospital per year. Their average stay was five days."

Considering all this evidence, it would be difficult to still buy into the media hype that cow's milk is the perfect food and natural for humans to consume. So what do you drink instead? Distilled water, herbal teas and fresh-extracted fruit and vegetable juices. And if you are a newborn infant, there are two obvious alternatives -- the right and left breast of your healthy mother.

To increase dietary calcium, consider increasing your consumption of green leafy vegetables such as collards, kale and spinach. Adding these greens to soups, stews and even chili is a more appetizing way to incorporate them into your diet. Carrots and their juice are also an excellent source of highly assimilable calcium.

From the February 2000 Idaho Observer: http://proliberty.com/observer/20000208.htm