Back in February, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) published a study targeting raw milk as dangerous and unsafe for human consumption. The media jumped on it in typical fashion. You may have seen headlines like this:
“Raw Milk Causes Most Illnesses From Dairy, Study Finds.”
– USA Today“CDC: Raw Milk Much More Likely to Cause Illness.”
– Food Safety News“Raw Milk is a Raw Deal, CDC Says.”
– LiveScience
While two of these headlines are technically accurate – raw milk is responsible for more illnesses than pasteurized milk when the number of people who consume each is taken into account – the concern they convey about the risk of drinking unpasteurized milk is dramatically overstated.
I’m going to break this series into three parts. In this first article, we’re going to examine what the research really says about raw milk safety, and compare the risks associated with drinking unpasteurized milk with other foods and activities. In the second article, we’ll explore the benefits of drinking raw milk from several different perspectives: nutritional, health-related, social, environmental and ethical. Finally, in the third article I’ll make recommendations and provide guidance on finding a safe and responsible raw dairy producer in your area.
The purpose of this series is to present the other side of the argument, and give you the bare facts without bias or hyperbole so you can make an informed decision about whether unpasteurized milk is a good choice for you and your family.
I’m not here to convince anyone that they should drink raw milk. That’s a decision each individual has to make on their own by weighing the potential risks against the potential benefits. But to do that, you need an accurate understanding of the risks (which we’ll cover in this article) and the benefits (which we’ll cover in the next.)
Just how “dangerous” is raw milk? A little perspective…
Before we do that, however, let’s put the current discussion of unpasteurized milk safety into a wider context. Foodborne illness is a concern for many types of food. According to the most recent review of foodborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. in 2008 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), seafood, produce and poultry were associated with the most outbreaks. Produce is responsible for the greatest number of illnesses each year (2,062), with nearly twice as many illnesses as poultry (1,112). Dairy products are at the bottom of the list. They cause the fewest outbreaks and illnesses of all the major food categories – beef, eggs, poultry, produce and seafood.
According to the CDC, during the period from 1990 − 2006, there were 24,000 foodborne illnesses reported each year on average. Of those, 315 per year are from dairy products. This means dairy products account for about 1.3% of foodborne illnesses each year. That’s not exactly an alarming number, considering that more than 75% of the population consumes dairy products regularly.
It’s also important to note that the outbreaks and illnesses associated with dairy products are generally mild compared to other foods.
According to the CSPI report above, approximately 5,000 people are killed every year by foodborne illness. From 2009 − 2011, three high profile outbreaks involving peanuts, eggs and cantaloupe alone accounted for 2,729 illnesses and 39 deaths. (1) Yet there have only been a handful of deaths from pasteurized dairy products in the last decade, and there hasn’t been a single death attributed to raw fluid milk since the mid-1980s, in spite of the fact that almost 10 million people are now consuming it regularly.
Why the CDC report can’t be taken at face value
The CDC report claimed that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness than pasteurized milk, and such outbreaks had a hospitalization rate 13 times higher than those involving pasteurized dairy products.
According to senior author of the CDC study, Barbara Mahon:
When you consider that no more than 1% of the milk consumed in the United States is raw, it’s pretty startling to see that more of the outbreaks were caused by raw milk than pasteurized.
But can these claims be taken at face value? No.
There are several problems with the CDC report:
- First and foremost, the CDC doesn’t include the dataset they used, so we can’t analyze how they reached their conclusions. Fortunately, the CDC data for foodborne illness, as well as data from other institutions and peer-reviewed studies, are readily available online.
- There are about 24,000 foodborne illnesses reported each year. Yet by the CDC’s own admission, this represents only a tiny fraction of the true number of foodborne illnesses that occur. In 1999, CDC scientists used an estimate of the overall prevalence of diarrhea and vomiting to calculate the “true” incidence of foodborne illness as 76 million cases per year! Put another way, 99.97% of foodborne illnesses go unreported.
- A food vehicle was identified in only 43% of the reported outbreaks and only half of these were linked to a single food ingredient. What this means is that the true prevalence of foodborne illness that can be attributed to a particular food is much higher than what is reported. It also means that the data linking specific outbreaks with specific foods is such a tiny sample of the total that even small errors or biases in the reporting of outbreaks would seriously skew the results.
- To calculate the number of people that drink unpasteurized milk, the CDC used an older, lower estimate (1%) of the number of people that drink raw milk. This is curious because a FoodNet survey done by the CDC itself in 2007 found that 3% of the U.S. population – about 9.4 million people – regularly consumes raw milk. That number is likely even higher today with the growing popularity of raw milk. (In 2010 alone, raw milk sales increased by 25% in California.) Why did they do this? If you’re a cynic, you might conclude that they used the lower estimate to exaggerate the risk of drinking raw milk.
- They combined data from outbreaks and illnesses associated with “bathtub cheese” (i.e. Mexican-style Queso Fresco made illegally at home) made from raw milk, and raw fluid milk. Queso Fresco is inherently more dangerous than raw milk, and is associated with more serious outbreaks and illnesses. Again, this distorts the data and makes raw milk seem more dangerous than it really is. (Note: commercial, properly aged raw milk cheese has never been implicated in a disease outbreak.)
(For a more detailed analysis and critique of the CDC report, see this article from the Weston A. Price Foundation.)
In light of these weaknesses, I decided to conduct my own analysis using a more comprehensive data set including the CDC foodborne disease outbreak surveillance tables, an online outbreak database published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), public health reports such as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly (MMWR), a CDC line list produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to CDC by the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), and peer-reviewed studies in the scientific literature (2,3,4).
I purposely excluded outbreaks associated with Queso Fresco cheeses, because we are concerned here with the safety of raw milk and not raw cheese made in a bathtub, which I would never eat and would never advise anyone else to eat. I chose to focus on the most recent data available, from 2000 – 2007, since unpasteurized milk consumption increased significantly over the last decade.
I also included two notable outbreaks in California that were missing from both the CDC and CSPI databases: a large outbreak of campylobacteriosis in 2006, involving over 1,644 illnesses among prison inmates that was linked to pasteurized milk produced by an on-site prison dairy and another campylobacteriosis outbreak in 2007, that caused 8 illnesses following consumption of commercial raw milk and/or raw colostrum. (5,6)
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What does this more reliable, peer-reviewed dataset tell us about the safety of raw milk?
The chart below lists all outbreaks and illnesses associated with unpasteurized milk from 2000 − 2007. Click the link to display the chart.
There were 37 outbreaks and 800 illnesses from unpasteurized milk during from 2000 − 2007, with an average of 100 illnesses per year. The estimated U.S. population as of today is approximately 313,500,000. Using the CDC’s own 2007 FoodNet Survey data indicating that 3% of the population consumes raw milk, we can estimate that approximately 9.4 million people drink unpasteurized milk (as I said above, the number is likely higher because of the explosive growth in the popularity of raw milk over the past 5 years, but 2007 is the latest reliable estimate we have).
This means you had a roughly 1 in 94,000 chance of becoming ill from drinking unpasteurized milk during that period.
Now let’s compare this to pasteurized milk, as the CDC did in their study. The chart below lists all outbreaks and illnesses associated with pasteurized milk from 2000 − 2007. Click the link to display the chart.
There were 8 outbreaks with 2,214 illnesses, with an average of 277 illnesses per year. According to the CDC FoodNet survey, 78.5% (246,097,500) of the U.S. population consumes pasteurized milk.
This means you had a roughly 1 in 888,000 chance of becoming ill from drinking pasteurized milk.
According to these data, it’s true that you have a higher chance of getting sick from drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk. But the risk is 9.4 times higher, not 150 times higher as the CDC claimed.
Perhaps this is a good time to review the difference between absolute and relative risk. When you hear that you have a roughly 9 times greater (relative) risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk, that might sound scary. And indeed it would be, if we were talking about the absolute risk moving from 5% to 45%.
But when the absolute risk is extremely small, as it is here, a relative 9-fold increase is rather insignificant. If you have a 0.00011 percent chance of getting sick from drinking pasteurized milk, and a 9.4 times greater risk of getting sick from drinking unpasteurized milk, we’re still talking about a miniscule risk of 0.00106% (one one-thousandth of a percent).
But to truly gauge the risk, we should ask how serious these illnesses are.
When is the last time you had a bout of diarrhea that you suspect was caused by something you ate? Did you report it to your doctor or the county public health department? Probably not.
The statistic we should be more concerned with is hospitalizations for serious illnesses such as kidney failure and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) caused by unpasteurized milk. This does happen, and children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable and more likely to experience a serious illness. That said, hospitalizations from raw milk are extremely rare. During the 2000 − 2007 period, there were 12 hospitalizations for illnesses associated with raw fluid milk. That’s an average of 1.5 per year. With approximately 9.4 million people drinking raw milk, that means you have about a 1 in 6 million chance of being hospitalized from drinking raw milk.
To put this in perspective, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, you have a roughly 1 in 8,000 chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident if you live in the U.S.. Therefore, you have a 750 times greater chance of dying in a car crash than becoming hospitalized from drinking raw milk.
The risk of dying in a plane crash (1 in 2,000,000) is orders of magnitude lower than dying in a car accident (1 in 8,000) – and yet most people who are afraid of flying don’t hesitate to get in their car. But as unlikely as dying in a plane crash is, it’s about 3 times more likely than becoming hospitalized (not dying) from drinking unpasteurized milk.
As I said earlier in the article, there has not been a single death attributed to drinking unpasteurized milk since the mid-1980s. There were 5 stillbirths attributed to an outbreak linked to bathtub-style Queso Fresco in 2000 in North Carolina. These were the only deaths during the 2000 − 2007 period I analyzed.
How does the risk of drinking raw milk compare to other foods?
Now let’s put some of these abstract numbers into perspective.
According to the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly (MMWR), from 2006 − 2008 there were an average of 13 outbreaks and 291 illnesses per year associated with shellfish and mollusks. According to the CDC FoodNet Survey, about 5.7% of the population (17,869,500) consumes shellfish. This means you had a roughly 1 in 61,000 chance of becoming ill from eating shellfish. That’s about 1.5 times the risk of becoming ill from drinking raw milk (1 in 94,000).
The risk is even greater – and more serious – if you eat raw oysters. 7.4% of people who eat oysters consume them raw (1,322,343). There are 15 deaths a year on average attributed to raw oyster consumption. This means you have about a 1 in 88,000 chance of dying from raw oysters. In other words, you have a greater chance of dying from eating raw oysters than you do of getting sick from drinking unpasteurized milk.
What about other more commonly eaten foods? Check out the chart below, from the 2008 CSPI report. It shows the relative incidence of foodborne illness from 1999 – 2006, adjusted for consumption.
As you can see:
- Seafood caused 29 times more illnesses than dairy
- Poultry caused 15 times more illnesses than dairy
- Eggs caused 13 times more illnesses than dairy
- Beef caused 11 times more illnesses than dairy
- Pork caused 8 times more illnesses than dairy
- Produce caused 4 times more illnesses than dairy
I hope this helps you understand the true risk of drinking unpasteurized milk within the context of other risks most of us take on a daily basis without a second thought. Of course, the next question that naturally arises is why someone might be willing to take any additional risk with raw milk – however miniscule it is on an absolute basis – when pasteurized milk is readily available.
In Raw Milk Reality: Benefits of Raw Milk, I’ll address that question by exploring the benefits of raw milk from a variety of perspectives.
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My take on the A2 concept is that two dead New Zealand pro A2 milk guys duped the world. The Devil is in the processing of the milk and the feeding of the cows and not the genetics. There is no support for their concepts. There are still allergies to pasteurized A2 milk and there is still lactose intolerance with pasteurized A2 milk.
I know all about the A2 corp. They tried to get me to sell all of the OPDC to them when they were in North America in 2003….they failed. I wanted to sell OPDC raw milk and not pasteurized.
See the OPDC position at our archived letters at http://www.organicpastures.com Mike Schmidt and others that lead the raw milk movement agree with me. Pasteurization changes all of the proteins and all of the enzymes not just one of them.
Feed the cows on pastures and stop processing it…that is the milk that humans have been drinking for 30,000 years. genetics are not the issue. The jury is still completely out on this. Many more studies need to be done to even consider this A2 logic.
A2 corp and A2/A1 issues are two separate issues. Just as is Pasteurized vs RAW. If you drink RAW milk that is A1, I think you owe it to yourself to look at the research the data is out there. Since you sell A1 milk and you just offered your opinion not any fact I will keep an open mind and in the meantime consume A2 Milk whenever that is an option. Here is a good read on the issue. http://fourfoldhealing.com/2009/03/10/march-2009-newsletter/
Met with PhD researchers at UC Davis. They run the Milk Genomics Research Lab. They say that raw milk will make a strong emergence in the coming years with the advent of better testing technologies and better production conditions. They also said this….Pasteurization is a 18th solution to a 18th century problem.
Consumer Dollar voting is taking care of pasteurized milk as we speak. The markets for liquid pasteurized milk fall at about 1% per year….regardless of the amounts of money spent to prop them up. Raw milk grows with out marketing or promotion…why? It is delicious and it is healing a crisis of the GUT and Allergies in America. Lies have a way of becoming known and the truth always gets discovered…it is a matter of time and the internet has rapidly accelerated this discovery.
“It is a delicious and it is healing a crisis of the GUT. . . ”
It most definitely is. Here I am almost 3 months later from our previous conversation and a steady, daily diet of raw milk kefir, along with raw cream and other healthy lifestyle choices and I am feeling amazing!! Lean, strong and healthy. We are fortunate to have advocates such as yourself Mark, paving the way. I have become a big fan of yours–I love your rebel style and I have become very involved in my local raw milk movement and am spreading the word in both my business and the community.
Mark,
What are your thoughts on A1 cows vs A2. Is your dairy A1, A2 or a combination?
What I have read on Mercola http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/07/09/the-devil-in-the-milk.aspx is that One of the major proteins in cow’s milk is casein, the predominant variety of which is called beta-casein. In older breeds of cows, such as Jersey, Asian and African cows (called A2 cows), the beta-casein contains an amino acid called proline.
In newer breeds of cows like Holstein (A1 cows), however, the proline has mutated into an amino acid called histidine.
This is important because beta-casein also contains an amino acid called BCM-7, which is a powerful opiate linked to negative health effects. Well, the proline that exists in A2 cows has a strong bond to BCM-7, which helps keep it out of the cows’ milk. The histidine in the newer A1 cows, however, has a weak hold on BCM-7, which allows it to get into the milk, and also into the people who drink the milk.
By drinking milk from A1 cows, which are the predominant cows used for dairy products in the United States, you’re exposed to BCM-7, which has been linked to neurological impairment, including autistic and schizophrenic changes,type 1 diabetes, an impaired immune response, autoimmune disease, and heart disease
Thanks,
SC
These points about A1 & A2 are important, but I was a little puzzled by now the strong bond of proline keeps the BCM7 from getting into the milk. So with some investigating came up with clarification:
BCM7 is an incompletely digested protein fragment, which results from the partial digestion of A1 milk (with histadine at position 67). With a healthy GI tract and healthy gut flora, these protein fragments are further broken down in the gut and don’t cause a problem. Hence a truly healthy person can probably tolerate A1 milk. If one has a leaky gut and/or abnormal gut flora, BCM7 may be formed from incomplete digestion and can enter the blood stream and cause havoc. If strong bond proline is at position 67 it prevents casein digestion from producing BCM7 even if digestion is impaired. Raw milk is very beneficial for healing the gut and encouraging healthy gut flora. Dr. McBride makes this point toward the end of this article on the GAPS Diet http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-health/gaps
So the point seems to be that if one has leaky gut and/or abnormal gut flora then stick with A2 Raw milk only. If you have a healthy GI tract and healthy gut flora then A2 is preferred but A1 is still ok.
Paula,
The total story is still to be told on raw milk and autoimmune disorders. However, the science is pointing towards this: When the body is missing its gut biodiversity ( we are too clean ), the body starts to attack itself. This is the socalled autoimmune disease response.
Suffice it to say that when your gut is well…you will be well. Raw milk contains the rare sources of vital missing biodiverse bacteria that is missing in the highly processed American diet. Add to this the mixed blessing of Antibiotic abuse of modern medicine and industry abuse and the gut does not have a chance.
My experiece in CA with 13 years producing raw milk and taking calls from thousands of consumers every year says this….raw milk rocks!! It stabilizes MAST cells ( reduces allergies and asthma ), it repairs the gut flora, it all but heals IBS quickly, helps excema dramatically in most people and kids, eliminates recurrent ear infections, reduced CRP values and inflamation and so much more.
The CDC and FDA are so backup against the wall on this that they just completely lie to the public. Their very own Complimentary and Alternative Medicine websites agree 100% with my statements.
Big pharma is laying in bed with the government agencies that regulate and protect their interests. FOOD INC is alive and struggling to protect its drug trade.
Pasteurized milk is listed as the MOST allergenic food in America at the FDA website.
There is a reason why raw milk sales in CA and nationally are skyrocketing and fluid pasteurized milk consumption is tanking.
mark
Thank you Mark for the validation. I love the way you spell out the truth. And cheers, I just finished my workout and was enjoying the best post workout “protein shake” I know of when I read this–16 oz of raw milk!
Mark,
“Builds immunity”, so raw milk would be beneficial for someone with an autoimmune disease? Conventional wisdom (which is usually wrong) says to avoid dairy but then again they are referring to pasteurized. I am asking there is a big difference between the 2; raw milk being a living whole food and pasteurized being a dead food and possibly detrimental to ones health.
Thanks, Paula
I must apologize for a math error I made in my last post. I went back and looked at the Cornell data one more time and my memory had not served me well. There had been only 1,100 illnesses associated with raw milk since 1973…not 11,000.
The correct math is more like this:
422,000 illnesses from pasteurized milk over 37 years for the USA ( 330 million consumers )….or about .0012% incidence of illness.
1,100 illnesses from raw milk over 37 years for the USA (9.9 million drinkers CDC data ) = .00011% incidence of illness.
That makes the incidence of illness for raw milk drinkers about 1/10 as much as pasteurized milk drinkers. I will take these odds anyday…especially when raw milk builds immunity and cures, IBS, Asthma and crohns.
Hi all,
In doing raw milk research I came across a Cornell University study of CDC illnesses regarding the years between 1972 and 2007. The data was shocking.
422,000 illnesses from pasteurized milk with 22 deaths. The CDC also failed to count 50 deaths from the pasteurized cheese listeria outbreak in 1985 at Jalisco Cheese Co in CA. So the real number was about 77 deaths from pasteurized dairy products.
11,000 illnesses were listed for raw milk and raw dairy products for the same time period…..and ZERO deaths.
It we assume that 3% of US citizens drink raw milk ( CDC data ). Assuming 330 million people in the USA, then the numbers are like this.
The rate of illness from pasteurized milk over the period is = .0012%
The rate of illness from raw milk over the period is = .0011%
They are practically identical.
The rate of death from pasteurized milk or dairy products is 77 souls….and none from raw milk!!!
I rest my case.
The only people hurt by raw milk is the Big Indistrial Monopolies that can not make any money off of raw milk. Raw milk must come from real farmers that care and work hard. Raw milk can not be faked or outsourced. It is true food and it is the greatest immune food on earth. You never mess with several million years of natural evolution and biologic selection. Raw milk is the perfect food to protect and nurture life. Man kind and its CAFO FOOD INC selfishness…not only kills milk and its living goodness but farmers that serve processors.
Mark or Chris,
I am a huge fan of raw milk, fortunate to have a local source and have drank it for 4 years with beneficial effects. Question: those with autoimmune challenges have been told to avoid dairy because the proteins resemble gliadin. Would that be true with pasteurized milk only or also raw milk? I would think raw would be safe and pastuerized not because the heat denatures the milk protein? Any insight would most be most appreciated. Thank you.
Chris, I am reading this article. It is great. I was raised on raw cows’ milk. Have milked many a cow in my day. I drank maybe a gallon a day by myself.
Now I raise Nigerian Dwarf and Mini Nubian goats for raw milk.
Could you email me privately? I have a couple of questions.
thanks,
Peggy
Aubrey,
When you discuss milk…try reaching back more than 120 years and look at the tens of thousands of years prior to the last 120 years.
People that had access to raw milk ( and all the wonderful products made from it ) from all sorts of mammals had a decided advantage over those that did not. It created a protein and fat rich super food from grass, water and sunshine. People do not eat grass very well, we do not have four stomachs like cows. Where ever there was sun and grass, there was food if you had a milk giving mammal. Milk was a complete food and people stopped starving.
Super markets give anti-milk people all sorts of excuses and easy alternatives. Take away the super markets and people will pray for a goat or a cow in the back yard with some grass.
We forget history so quickly as humans on this planet.
For everyone that is interested. Pastuerized milk is listed as THE MOST ALLERGENIC FOOD IN AMERICA at the FDA website…to find this data, GOOGLE “most allergenic food in America” and it will pop up very quickly.
8 children have died since 1998 after consumption of pasteurized milk. This was perfectly pasteurized milk with no living bacteria left in it….the deaths occured because the Milk was dead…this a food that kills when it done right!!!
These are deaths that occured from consuming properly pasteurized milk…ie… “super-allergenic-food” and the paramedics could not get to the child fast enough to intubate, do CPR and push epinephrine. These are dead kids!!! Death by pastuerized CAFO milk!!!
Raw milk is known the world over as a “super non allergenic food” that stabilizes MAST cells and stops allergic reactions and reverses Asthma 9 among lots of other great things ). The EU raw milk studies are clear as crystal. PARSIFAL and GABRIELA are both peer reviewed and published. 23,000 kids that drank raw milk in EU studied for six years showed the dramatic decrease in Asthma, excema and allergies.
Breast milk is Raw Milk….breast milk is not sterile. Kids thrive on breast milk!! Bacteria are critical to life and immune system function. That is why all of the baby formula producers are rushing to add bacteria into baby formula.
When you pick on OPDC you are picking on an “educational-warrior”. We will teach and teach and teach…The truth is clear and it is just a matter of time before the big lie of dirty dead foods is uncovered completely for all to see.
Mary,
One thing I have come to respect is mother lions and the love they have for their RAWMILK. Instead of attacking OPDC and me why don’t you attack a mother lion that loves raw milk. That would be a real fight….
Prison or no prison,…..CDFA did not bother to write a press release. They kept it all very quiet. That is pure bias. It was their embarrassment. Instead they wrote a very nasty press release filled with assumptions all about RAWMILK and OPDC. When CDFA had discovered their screw up and realized they could find no smoking gun at OPDC they paid us for the recall and signed a release and agreement to keep CDFA from being sued for a false unfounded recall. ( for anyone that wants to see the cancelled CDFA check and the release settlement agreement between CDFA and OPDC I would be glad to share it ). Lets all remember that the 2006 Spinach recall killed 3 and hospitalized 200. The CDFA recall of OPDC products happened in the middle of the Spinach recall. The DNA fingerprints associated with any sick kids and the OPDC recall could never be found at OPDC or in any of our products or cows. CDFA could prove no connection between OPDC and any sick kids. Nothing….it was all pure assumptions. Assumption that can not be used in a court of law. In a court of law…. “causation” can only be proven with facts.
You call it spin…I call it telling the rest of the story.
Ok lets get down into the dirt. If you want to talk about the whole truth. ‘
Why don’t you tell the world about your son. Did he ever have Ecoli 0157H7 ever detected in his body???
The answer is no. You also admitted to investigators that your son consumed lettuce!!! It is in the court papers.
There is no connection between OPDC raw milk ( which never tested positive with ecoli ) and Chris Martin.
Mary…lets all face it. What happened to your son is horrible. I never want that to ever happen to any child anywhere.
But….you have taken this illness ( which he has completely recovered from ) and made it a sick mission for your life. You deny any benefits to raw milk. You dig up 6 year old history….you can never let go.
Most of all….you give no credit to OPDC or raw milk for all the good things it does. Like….saving childrens lives that would have died from Asthma. 4000 children die from Asthma every year…yet Raw Milk Cures Asthma.
Where is the balance in your heart. You got a ton of money from our insurance company to settle this matter, because of Marlers scare tactics ( like a false video tape that he created and posted on the internet that he nearly got sued over ). Yet you persist in attacking OPDC and me. Why can’t you leave this alone and go on with life.
I thought we bought peace with you.
I am also a father lion for raw milk surrounded by tens of thousands of mother lions that love their raw milk and the health is has brought their children.
Mary….I prefer love and peace, but I will fight to protect peace and love. Can we just let this matter settle?
Can we just love our children and nourish their safety and health. I am very very glad that Chris is well. Perhaps you should be glad as well and stop the persistent super negative attacks.
Mark, once again you have your facts wrong. I think you need to check with your insurance company about the payout. Is it possible you have no clue? I will email you the correct facts.
What a great discussion. The data is accurate and the tone is fair.
As fall all the debate about recalls and illnesses, I find in fascinating that in 2006 1600 people were sickened and seven were hopsitalized from campylobacter after drinking PASTEURIZED milk from a CDFA inspected creamery…The CDFA published no Press Release and there was no creamery shut down. The creamery resumed operations in three hours.
Suffice it to say that recalls and illness pronouncements are a huge political tool. A tool used in an attempt to destroy raw milk.
When people say that OPDC sickened six in 2011…that is not accurate. Five were listed in the PULSENET data base….but only two were hospitalized. Those two did not drink raw milk….they drank raw milk Kefir that their mom made at home with store bought kefir cultures.
So do not believe the stories or the news. The agenda against raw milk is huge. Raw Milk is dangerous to one group of people…the processors and their profits. To the consumer it is a GODSEND. It heals asthma and kids stop dying from asthma and GUT related disorders. Last year 4000 kids died from asthma…yet asthma is cured by RAWMILK. See the huge studies in EU ( PARSIFAL and GABRIELA ).
The most allergenic food in America is PASTEURIZED MILK!!! It has killed 8 kids since 1998. Not from bad bugs, but from dairy allergies.
Market dollar voting tells the truth of it all. OPDC is thriving when conventional dairies are dying. 28 dairies in Fresno CO are in bankruptcy right now. OPDC grew 29% this last year.
We are very very serious about pathogens and even have our own lab to test and do 12 each day. We are leading America to a better place..A place where immune systems work and kids thrive.
Processors and their buddies at the FDA suck and that is the truth. Their plan to sterilize our food so it is easier to distribute and lasts longer on a shelf…sucks.
At OPDC we produce real living food for people and the HUMAN GUT….not the shelf.
Mark McAfee
Founder OPDC
Mark, funny how you left out the fact that the 2006 pasteurized outbreak you refer to happened at a prison. There was a malfunction with the pasteurization equipment and of course many prisoners became ill. This was not a public health threat to the general public. You are so the master of spin.
As for talking about the 2011 outbreak and the kefir—spin again. Yes the mother made kefir with the RAW MILK SHE BOUGHT FROM YOUR DAIRY. If it hadn’t been contaminated with E.coli 0157:H7 (which they found the matching fingerprint on your farm) the kids would have never become ill. Stop with all the spin and fess up to the fact your milk made kids ill. Have you learned nothing from the 2006 outbreak? You don’t want to piss off the mother lion.
Gosh , Mary, pasteurization machines can break down any time , at any dairy, not just at ones that sell to prisons. Anyway, how is it germane that it was prisoners who were stricken? Are you implying that since they were in jail they deserve to be sick so the public shouldn’t be concerned about their health? Pasteurizers are not fail proof – which is particularly dangerous if you are drinking milk from sick CAFO cows – and therefore CAN be a danger to the non-imprisoned general public.
Hi Chris,
I apologize if the answer to this question is readily apparent, but somehow I’ve been unable to find it. Where do I locate the two follow-up articles which you mentioned you were going to write? I would really like to read them and share them on Facebook with my family and friends.
~Bernice
I grew up in a farming community in Germany. It was my job to go get milk from the neighbor’s farm every night when I was a kid. The milk was not pasteurized. Most nights nearly 1/2 the milk would be gone before I got home, so I’d have to go back and get more. I used to love drinking that milk. In the late 70’s we moved to Canada. No more milk straight from the cow. The first time I had milk from the store I spit it out, because it tasted strange, not like the milk I was used to. I haven’t had a glass of milk since.
In all the years that we were drinking raw milk none of our family members nor any of the neighbors who got their milk from the farm ever got sick. I really don’t know what the negative hype is all about. The cows our milk came from were kept in pasture during the day, walked through the upper part of the village back home, had their udders cleaned and were milked. They were fed and moved back to pasture in the morning.
Maybe it’s the way cows are kept today – in massive milking operations, up to their knees in their own excrement. They’re pumped full of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, growth hormones, etc. I could certainly see the milk from these types of businesses being contaminated with all sorts of ‘crap’.
If we kept our livestock the way it was supposed to be kept – outdoors in pasture – we probably wouldn’t have so many food-borne illnesses.
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Chris,
I realize you are addressing the safety of RAW milk vs. industrial milk, but do you address anywhere the safety of milk in general, whether raw or pasteurized/homogenized. I’m thinking of Pedro Bastos’ work (See AHS 2011 presentation or this blog post: http://www.paleoplan.com/2011/08-15/pedro-bastos-on-dairy/) where he points out that milk is intended as a postnatal food to stimulate rapid growth. Industrial milking practices, which includes some RAW milk dairies, milk cows year-round outside of the roughly 5 months they would produce milk naturally, and therefore may introduce even more estrogen and other hormones into an already hormone-heavy substance.
Bastos raises concerns for me that ANY milk will be insuligenic and increase IGF-1, which may promote cell proliferation and cancer. Hormone levels, whether “normal” for milk or elevated due to year round milking raise other concerns.
To draw a parallel, I wonder if discussing RAW vs. pasteurized milk is somewhat like discussing white vs. whole wheat flour. Are we perhaps better off without it altogether?
Thanks,
Aubrey
Good point Aubrey.
I touched on the Paleo Diet exclusion in my comment back on May 9th. Chris has covered the paleolithic diet in the past and so I too would like him to revisit the subject of dairy in light of Paleo Diet guidelines some time in the future. I think it would make for an interesting investigation. Pedro Bastos has begun to delve into it, but I’m sure there are a lot of studies out there that reflect on this issue.
Thanks for bringing this up.
I’ve seen those mechanistic arguments, but most studies that look at actual humans consuming dairy in a free-living environment find that dairy (especially full-fat dairy) is associated with health benefits – not problems. When you consider that most of the people in these studies are probably drinking dairy from factory-farmed, grain-fed cows, that’s interesting.
My point exactly! Where are the studies showing full-fat, unprocessed milk from pastured cows, let’s go so far as even A2/A2 cows, is harmful to human health? I sent this question to Robb Wolf with the subject line, “Dairy-bashing.” Okay, so Paleo-man didn’t have domesticated animals to milk, they also didn’t have buckets, ropes, fences or could stay in one place long enough to develop a milking herd. Just because it wasn’t in the hunter-gatherer diet doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be consumed or was/is harmful. My understanding is that raw milk is the one and only food that can sustain human life for any length of time!
I think you did an excellent job assessing the risks, but I found fault in your use of 2010 population numbers as a basis for estimating percentage risk based on 2000-2007 data for raw milk. It’s a minor issue, but it does skew the risk of illness lower amount by using a population figure that is larger than when the data were recorded. The 2010 census reported 308,745,538 people in the United States, and the 2000 census reported 281,421,906 people. I don’t recall any reason for dramatic shifts in the U.S. population, and a linear estimate would presume that the average population from 2000-2007 was 290,985,177, but it would be most accurate to specify a range (e.g. illness risk from 2000-2007 is between illnesses/308,745,538 and illnesses/281,421,906).
Chris, please address my comment above. You are claiming to be an unbiased researcher, yet your analysis in the article contains serious flaws. It has not been peer-reviewed and it is in a public forum. I am calling you out on your erroneous statistics which you claim as facts, not your opinion or conclusions.
Please correct your article or rename it Raw Milk Hyperbole because as it stands, it is not Raw Milk Reality.
Joe,
I’ve been thinking about your comments, and also attending to the many other obligations I have. While I don’t agree with all of your critiques, I do accept your point that it’s unfair to compare two activities with different levels of reported and unreported risks. i.e. if many illnesses caused by raw milk or other foods are not reported, and virtually all car accidents are reported, it’s not accurate to compare those two numbers.
Tomorrow or Saturday I plan to edit the article. In the case of raw milk illness, I will compare them only to other reported foodborne illness risk. In the case of hospitalizations from raw milk illness, I think it is still fair to compare them to motor vehicle accidents and plane crashes (although imperfect because such comparisons don’t adjust for frequency of travel/consumption). As you conceded, it’s likely that the vast majority of hospitalizations caused by raw milk are reported.
Beyond that, I have addressed your other comments and I maintain that the data and analysis in this article are sound.
Thanks Chris for the clarification. I meant to distinguish between regular raw cheese and queso fresco statistics since I buy Organic Valley’s raw cheese at Whole Foods.
I really dislike that it seems health authors/bloggers can’t write an article and discuss raw milk without WAPF being dragged into it. No wonder more paleo writers don’t address the issue. Finally, Chris is providing an attempt to see if WAPF’s information is acurate. Bravo Chris. I’m looking forward to the rest.
FYI: Organic Valley’s “raw” cheeses are, “heat treated 158 degrees for 15 seconds.” and do not meet the pasteurization requirement of “a minimum of 161 degrees F for 15 seconds or more” and thus can be legally labeled “raw.” This plus other irritations with OV have led me to look elsewhere for truly raw cheeses such as Sierra Nevada Cheese Company. The milk used for their raw line of organic cheeses is heated to under 104 F which not only retains more of what we want from dairy but also results in more interesting flavor profiles.
@Lynn: I didn’t know that. I’ll look into Sierra. Thanks.
[quote=Chris]
So far, you have raised one issue with my numbers, which I have addressed (as has Glenn). That does not change the basic thrust of this article. Furthermore, even if the risk of getting ill from drinking raw milk were 1 in 2,800, which I don’t accept for the reasons I mentioned, that is less than 3 times more than the risk of dying in a car crash. Those illnesses may include things as mild as an upset stomach and a little diarrhea. The risk of becoming hospitalized with a serious disease is still orders of magnitude lower than the risk of dying in a car crash. Do you dispute that?[/quote]
Yes, I raised an issue with your numbers and you haven’t acknowledged that the absolute comparison examples in the article are bad comparisons. You’ve provided a very weak hypothetical phenomenon as justification for EXCLUDING ALL OF THE UNREPORTED ILLNESSES FROM YOUR COMPARISONS. Furthermore, your comparisons are all done in terms of ABSOLUTE RISK. This is very misleading. Glenn also recognized this point when he said: “I appreciate that you are pointing out that the risk comparison in this article is not accurate. I agree with you.” And why shouldn’t he agree? Your numbers are clearly wrong.
I didn’t come up with the ratio of reported/actual foodborne illness. In your own writing: “In 1999, CDC scientists used an estimate of the overall prevalence of diarrhea and vomiting to calculate the “true” incidence of foodborne illness as 76 million cases per year! Put another way, 99.97% of foodborne illnesses go unreported.” I do not believe that you have adequately addressed this unfair comparison. If you don’t accept the 97.7% ratio, then what do you propose to do, make up a number? How is that going to benefit the analysis? Do you think it’s still appropriate to exclude all of the unreported illnesses, which is admittedly the vast majority? Don’t you think that it makes a difference when you say that “you are about 12 times more likely to die in a car crash on your way to pick up your raw milk than you are to get sick from drinking it” even though it would be more fair to say that you are about 2.5 times more likely to get sick from drinking raw milk (1 in 3200) than you are to die in a car accident (1 in 8000)? I agree when you say “The risk of becoming hospitalized with a serious disease is still orders of magnitude lower than the risk of dying in a car crash.” I’ve never disputed that since there would be very few serious illnesses that go unreported.
[quote=Chris]
You are discounting the idea that raw milk numbers are skewed, yet accepting as fact the estimate for total foodborne illnesses each year – which is just a guess not based on any culture-confirmation or other empirical data. That’s a double standard.
[\quote]
I’m not discounting the idea that raw milk numbers are skewed. In fact, as I stated earlier, if you believe the numbers are skewed against raw milk, then you can’t use any of the data. If they are skewed, then you can’t use the reported statistics! The stated intent of this article is to “give you the bare facts without bias or hyperbole so you can make an informed decision about whether raw milk is a good choice for you and your family.” You have chosen to accept these statistics, not me. You argue that the absolute risk of getting sick from raw milk is extremely small. I’m pointing out that the numbers that you use to calculate absolute risk of getting sick are grossly understated since they don’t include the vast majority of the illnesses. I also am showing you a more accurate comparison by including the 97.7% estimate of the ratio. This is not a double standard, this is a fair comparison.
[quote=Chris]
If you want to stick with only empirical data, then we should be discussing safety numbers based on reported illnesses adjusted for consumption. That’s what this article does.[\quote]
We can discuss only empirical data if you want to stay away from the estimate of the unreported/reported illnesses. In my opinion, this is the most fair and accurate thing to do. That means we can’t argue the absolute risk of getting sick from raw milk at all. We don’t have any data that shows the total number of illnesses from drinking raw milk. We can still compare the relative risks of drinking raw milk to other foods and to pasteurized milk which the article has done. But we can not compare raw milk safety against any other activities!
As the article stands now, it is incorrect. You need to either correct your numbers or take out the absolute risk comparisons with other activities. Maybe it doesn’t change the basic thrust of the article, or maybe it does. That’s up to the reader to decide. Regardless, the numbers have to be accurate.
Joe seems to have his own agenda. He keeps going on (and on) about the 99.97% of foodborne illnesses that go unreported and how this skews the comparison to car accidents. Do we report 100% of car accidents… every little scratch and dent? I don’t think so. I do not understand why keep ranting about it. In my mind unreported means not significant enough to report, be that food or car-related “injury”. I do not see why we should be concerning ourselves with unreported illnesses.
You say “you can’t pick and choose data or throw out certain data points or else your work is not objective and is actually harmful to the community…”. Yet, that’s exactly what you seem to be doing.