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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regarding the safety of home dairying for raw milk, is there any data on the risk of contracting lyme disease from raw milk from a goat or cow pastured in an area where lyme disease is prevalent?
I just want to say that I have been drinking 2 gallons of Raw Cows Milk a week for well over 9 years and not once have I been sick and that’s because the raw milk’s benefits and builds a healthty immune systems like mine and has been since I found that great (White Blood,) (Whey,) enzymes, minerals, vitamins and amino acids it provides my 72 year old body.
I am in disbelief that the “head lines read” Raw Milk cheese makes people sick in Minnesota. This is an opportunistic and unsuported claim. Epidemeologic evidence has not linked anything yet….and this is illegal cheese and not tested and regulated legal raw milk!!
If you want to see problems keep things in a black market condition. Nothing like exploitation of a set of conditions set up for just for these types of inflamatory news cycles.
Raw milk for human consuption has nothing to do with ILLEGAL MEXICAN CHEESE….nothing.
All of our raw milk products are regulated and tested….unaged raw cheeses are illegal, not regulated, not tested, and fail to follow any sort of standards.
This is an act of oppressive missinformation and corruption at its FOOD INC worst.
Mark McAfee
Chairman Raw Milk Institute.ORG
Founder Organic Pastures Dairy Co. CA
“Cornell university studied this and found that 1100 people had been sickened by raw dairy since 1972, but 422,000 had been sickened by pasteurized cheeses or milk since 1972. Thats a no brainer…”
does this take into account how many millions MORE people drink pasteurized milk than raw?
Unfortunately, all too often raw milk is blamed for sickness by association, without any real proof that it was actually the cause. They are no doubt also including people that got sick from consuming a raw milk cheese that was produced in a very unsanitary fashion, in a bathtub, as I remember hearing the story..
First, I admit that I did not read the entire article or all the comments. I also want to state for the record that I’m a fan of yours, Chris, and I have referenced your work in some of my posts. That said, as much as I WANT to support raw milk, and as much as I believe it is a superior food to pasteurized milk and to most foods in the grocery store, I no longer drink it or buy it for my family, and that is because my entire family was sickened by raw milk just a little over one year ago. We drank raw milk from trusted farmers who I still believe to be honest, reputable farmers. It was a fluke. But I just can’t drink it anymore, or give it to my children in good conscience. While I realize that all foods have the potential to make us sick, I have never been sick from any other food. We drank raw milk for only about 2 years, and got very sick. I was almost hospitalized. others who were sickend from the same farm were hospitalized and still suffer the ill effects. I completely support the legalization of raw milk and understand why people drink it. But I also know from first hand experience that it is possible to get very sick from it, even when purchasing from a trusted source. And I am so very conflicted on the issue. I felt the need to state my piece. Thanks for your research and hard work on this article.
I challenge this and ask you to name the farm and when you all became sick. It will be in the public record. Everyone wants verification these days and so do I when someone makes claims like this.
Jo-Lynne, I can understand your misgivings about raw milk, but I suspect that the reason you got very sick was partly because the medical profession refuses to acknowledge the benefits of very large frequent doses of vitamin C, which the body uses to knock out such an infection. The story of how they stonewall this treatment is appalling! There’s a brief summary of the importance of vitamin C in this review of a book about it http://www.doctoryourself.com/ascorbate.html
I also have several other links about vitamin C on my website
http://home.roadrunner.com/~krisjohnson/Recipes/Odds&Ends.htm#Vitamin%20C
If you read “Curing the Incurable” or “Vitamin C, the Real Story” you’ll see what I mean. I take 500-1000 mg of C 3 or 4 times a day to avoid getting sick.
I am not so sure how any one can claim that raw milk has caused more illness than pasteurized since 1972. Cornell university studied this and found that 1100 people had been sickened by raw dairy since 1972, but 422,000 had been sickened by pasteurized cheeses or milk since 1972. Thats a no brainer…
Also, 70 people had died from pasteurized dairy products and NONE from US raw milk!!!
Thats also a no brainer.
A new EU food risk assessment classification study was just published in the last few weeks. As soon as I have the link, I will post it.
The EU CODEX risk assessment says this ” raw milk for human consumption is among the lowest risk foods and is not associated with misscarrage in pregnancy”. Yes they said that….they found that raw milk is not associated with LISTERIA…yet pasteurized milk adn cheeses are.
The FDA lies are being exposed one by one. As far as Mary Martin is concerned…..ask her if her child ever had ecoli found in his fecal sample or his body.
The answer is NO HE DID NOT. There was epidemeologic questions, but causation was never shown. That is why the State of CA wrote a big fat check to OPDC to avoid liability from a non confirmed recall in 2006. None of the products or even the cows manure was found to have a matching ecoli pathogen!!
Mary…leave this dog to rest and sleep…enough is enough. The fact that CDFA never published a Press release when 1600 people were sickened from Campylobacter at a CDFA pasteurized creamery literally 2 months earlier in 2006 and restarted the creamery in 3 hours tells me everything. They hate raw milk and being fair or unbiased does not matter.
The fact that 13 kids in New Orleans ate a spinach smoothie in September 2006 and got Ecoli from a different strain of CA spinach but the CDC does not associate these illnesses with the CA spinach outbreak tells me that their where multiple spinach pathogens and not one.
I have never lied and neither has Sally Fallon.
Mark,
Do you have the documentation on the phantom 13 children you refer to? If you are claiming that 13 children became ill as part of an outbreak, there were be documentation of this? Where is it?
As for finding E.coli 0157:H7 in Chris’ stool sample, you really need to educate yourself about this subject. This is a common occurrence. Children and adults develop HUS without testing positive for an E.coli infection. http://www.cdph.ca.gov/data/statistics/Documents/stec-episummary.pdf
From the years 201-2008 there were 336 cases of HUS in California. That averages 42 illnesses a year. Of these only 179 were accompanied by a laboratory-confirmed E. coli 0157:H7 infection. That is 53%. The others could not be confirmed. I am not a scientist and don’t know what is involved in growing out the cultures, but obviously it is not easy to grow.
More on the how the government misinterprets and distorts data on raw milk safety. This press release today by the WAPF:
http://www.westonaprice.org/press/flawed-government-report-thwarts-state-raw-milk-initiatives.
I’m living in Mexico and would really love to start using raw milk, however, I’m not sure that it’s safe…. especially after all the talk of Mexican bathtub cheese. I found a supplier in a market but they actually told me that I should boil it. Are there any suggestions/guidelines that I could use to help ascertain whether the dairy farm I’m interested in is producing safe milk?
The CDC conveniently also omits the 197,000 people sickened by pasteurized milk and salmonella in 1993 in one incident.
The CDC unfortunately is not a scientific organization. It is an organization that does favors for the FDA to further an agenda. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to them several years ago demanding data on the two deaths that they attributed to raw milk since 1972. The response was this: the deaths were associated with imported illegal Mexican Style bathtub cheese. They agreed that there had been no deaths from any American fluid raw milk since the start of their data collection database in 1972!!
That is not American Raw Milk! This was illegal Mexican Cheese. Cheese made from God Knows What under conditions that are highly questionable….this is quite a deliberate fraud on behalf of the CDC data collection process.
Chris,
Congrats on a great article. It could be written in so many ways and you took the high road. I would also add that the CDC carefully selected their time periods for data selection. In 1985 at least 300 people were seriouly sickened and 49 died from pasteurized cheese in one outbreak. The Jalisco Cheese incident. The CDC does not even show this in their data base. The CDC also does not show the 1600 inmates that were sickened by Campylobacter from a CA prison creamery that was inspected by the CDFA. The same agency that inspects OPDC. In fact…the CDFA did not even release a Press Release on the incident.
If you really want to see some amazing data….see http://www.rawmilkinstitute.org the rw dairy producers that are LISTED at this website adhere to the COMMON STANDARDS and so far none of them have had any illnesses or recalls or outbreaks associated with them. RAWMI has published standards, requires routine testing and a written audited food safety plan. This is the way forward.
Chris….please consider this, official records show that at least 8 children have died from allergic reactions to properly pasteurized milk since 1998. I would argue that pasteurized milk is defective and does not contain the biologic and metobolic elements needed for digestion. Children by definition do not have the developed digestive tract to be able to digest pasteurized milk. Raw milk is a WHOLE complete food that is the product of 200 million years of mammalian evolution and contains all of the proteins and enzymes and good bacteria needed for the childs immature and developing GUT.
This is not my idea….this is a quote from Dr. Bruce German PhD at UC Davis Milk Genomics Consortium. He is the most published PhD in the world on the subject of mammals raw milk.
Raw milk producers and raw milk consumers are literally at war with the FDA and their Food Inc Processors bed partners. This war has a serious body count and the bodies are stacked at the feet of the FDA and their deep corruption.
Raw milk sales rage upward as pasteurized sales die off at 1-2 % per year and conventional dairies go bankrupt. This says it all. Consumers are dollar voting the truth.
Chris,
Thank you kindly for summing up these statistics. After a day of research on the subject, I finally have your article to put things into perspective.
We are a raw dairy family. I have been doing some study because I am being challenged by some about our consumption of raw dairy. After reading this article I went on line to fine a report I had read in the past. I haven’t found it yet but did find this from the FDA quoting the CDC. Now I would like to know who is telling the truth?
FROM THE FDA WEBSITE-
2. Have any illnesses or deaths been caused by consuming raw milk products?
Based on CDC data, literature, and state and local reports, FDA compiled a list of outbreaks that occurred in the U.S. from 1987 to September 2010. During this period, there were at least 133 outbreaks due to the consumption of raw milk and raw milk products. These outbreaks caused 2,659 cases of illnesses, 269 hospitalizations, 3 deaths, 6 stillbirths and 2 miscarriages. Because not all cases of foodborne illness are recognized and reported, the actual number of illnesses associated with raw milk likely is greater.
It certainly isn’t the FDA
Without a doubt, I have never learned or enjoyed more from a thread. I am a rapidly loyal fit and strong 52 year defender of the benefits of raw milk. My husband partakes and supports me in all this. Neither of us have had a cold, sickness or illness in over a decade.
As for my love life. . .well, God bless his virile 64 yo arse!
Stoney Cold…
How is your “love life” with your dear wife???
Love and support her. Her instincts are based on what she thinks is right and pro-biotic for your kids. Your anger towards her does not help at all.
What you have described is not so helpful. Filth is not helpful either. I do not know of many people that are into filth and also raw milk. Fermented raw milk saved humans ( many human cultures would have died off if not for mammals and grass all driven by the sunshine ) on earth some tens of thousands of years ago. Human genetics prove it. We share much of our human biome with that of cows. This is from the UC Davis PhD’s that study raw mammals milk at the Milk Genomics research lab.
The rash that your wife is experiencing is a stress reaction from not getting any love or support from you!! Every one that I know that drinks raw milk and eats whole unprocessed foods have a remarkably strong immune system. After all…80% or more of our immune system strength comes from the biodiversity of bacteria that colonize or live in our gut. No good bacteria..not good immune system. That is very old science and not an argument for or against filth.
Suggest some respect and love for your wife and perhaps….do some reading about the immune system of your body.
Pasteurized milk is in crisis….it is the MOST allergenic food in America. Google it yourself. Raw milk is thriving and healing guts all over America.
Oh believe me Mark, My love life is just fine; after all I do have two daughters. Its their LIVES I am more concerned with at present than the esoteric value of someone’s paperback jacket opinion on how supportive I am with my wife which was not solicited from you I assure you. I am here in an attempt to present the other viewpoint to party line raw milk hacks. Nothing more.
Filth is quite common in late 30 something stay at home mom’s kitchens by the way. I wonder how much experience you have on this as it would seem filth is something you probably have had the monetary wealth to have eliminated for you, most likely from someone paid to do it for you.
But for most 98%s filth is simply the result of not having enough time or energy to clean everything, change diapers, manage the 18 half gallon mason jars in various states of dairy decay, wash the cloth diapers that you have also been drawn to, and all of the other homeopathic experiments. Something just has to give so its usually cleaning every surface etc is what is sacrificed. Clean to me means micro biologically clean whereby you would not get very good results by swabbing a surface then touching agar after 4 days; because hey, that is what’s going down with the milk, to cream to whey etc. anything that was encountered gets a chance to set up shop. I do not need any proof of that; I have grown my own cultures in Agar personally.
I share much of my genetics with pigs also, and I love bacon by the way so feel free to call me a pig to Mark, it would be expected of you at this point from me. The rash my wife has is most likely an allergy to the various products and scientifically backwards mysticism being peddled online by profit hungry, Deepak Chopra, Birkenstock wearing Chinese Medicine pushers. If I had a dime for every silly ointment, shake, herb, crystal, oil or supplement that she takes I would possibly be able to afford the copay’s to all of the Dr.s office visits she makes with the kids, visits that you and your ilk claim should never be due to the milk ingestion.
– I have news for those of you that believe that crushed Tiger Bones cures low Testosterone also by the way: They did a study and the results of that paper are: -you really need to stop killing tigers.
I have not for one moment attacked the presence of cultures in guts, enzymes or anything else. I am simply no fan of Bacteria. And Bacteria are much more present than car crashes. Whether or not they cause illness and impact you based on your assumptions that your immune system has somehow become calloused to the bacteria is your own business.
Ironic this discussion is occurring simultaneous to Chris’ latest post on the benefit of fecal transplant – and need by some to regain health by recolonizing the gut with feces from another person (this is done either orally, through the rectum, or via nasal tube).
http://chriskresser.com/poop-the-cure-of-the-future
Perhaps it would be useful for you, Stone Cold, to learn about the essential role bacteria and other microbes play in bringing about vibrant health for human beings. We are 10% human and 90% microbes.
**Update** and Happy Valentines Day Mark; did you get YOUR wife anything?
My family physician had a “talk” with my wife days after my last post and the raw milk consumption has been ceased.
Also the rashes cleared up and so has the strange kefir obsessive behavior with all I had mentioned; we now have a clean fridge that we can store food in again; organic food; food which i rinse and cook if need be.
I asked Wifers by the way what was said to change her mind by the doc.
She said that he said “well, yes people have consumed it for years, but do you really want to risk this with a 2 year old and 4 year old when there are no proven benefits?” he then advised against it – for the children. For the record, our Dr. is no fan of ANY kind of milk consumption as well as coffee but I break the coffee rule every morning; because the BENEFIT of caffeine is scientifically proven. Carry on all and happy V day.
I was referred to this website by my rabidly loyal to defending the completely Snake Oil “benefits” of drinking raw milk wife. I will add some additional comments to the mix that I don’t think have been covered. It is my experience that most raw milkers don’t stop with just the milk. They all become poor man’s yogurt, sour cream, whey, butter and cream makers, right out of their less than sterile and often extremely messy kitchens, often fermenting things away here and there and then feeding them to their 2 and 4 year old daughters as if they are doing them some kind of favor. When the only possible clinically (at this time unproven) benefit of raw milk is not farting as much when lactic intolerant I can honestly say it’s the benefits that should be under the microscope here. I could claim eating my own feces never hurt me when I was a baby and made me able to kill a taco bell volcano Nacho later in life without any issues magically and that those feces are safer than a car crash… But come on people.. why risk anything for a benefit that cannot be any more proved than prayer? I stand before you all today with a 37 year old wife covered from head to toe in a rash with a 2 year old and 4 year old that both have had fevers over 103 and projectile vomited all over us and our house. My wife refusing to go see the Dr. because she fears addressing the concern that its the milk and not wanting to lend herself to the statistics that Chris holds so dear. could it be that the raw milk drinkers are so driven by their compulsory need to consume raw milk claiming it gives them magic abilities actually prevents them from reporting illness? So far the only born again believers in Pasteurization I am reading stories on got that way from losing a child. What a terrible game to play just to believe in homeopathic theory and conjecture. So I ask you Chris et al, is it OK to feed your children all of these things in the way I just described?
Stoney:
Thank you for posting your story and perspective. In CA one of the families in an outbreak at ODPC had made kefir and two of their young sons were greatly affected by e.coli. Kefir is raw milk sitting on a counter fermenting and it needs to be warm…perfect for e.coli 0157-H7 to proliferate.
I was your wife just a bit over a year or so ago. That is why Mark McAfee and I are contentious, I went to a raw milk rally for heavens sake! My husband was just as frustrated as you are that I gave it to our young children. I hope that your wife and children are okay. I hope you can convince her to get to a doctor. The children should definitely be seen ASAP. Projectile vomit is never a good thing!!!
Best,
Kristen
Thanks Kristen,
the symptoms were that of possible bacterial food poisoning which happened after visiting another Raw milk friend of my wife’s house whom also “home brews” all of the other dairy products you mentioned. The children’s bottles co mingled and they drank another cows milk. They also attended a VERY heavily populated restaurant this past weekend. The issues here are two fold. Its either the milk or products, or the lack of immunity from disease encountered by the other children or restaurant.
Didactic logic thereby proves the following:
The milk is dangerous or
The milk provides no immunity enhancements nor magical properties.
Take your pick Mark and explain. And before you ask my wife has been feeding hectoliters of this stuff to my kids. Shouldn’t they basically be bullet proof now if what you believe is true? And there it is… its just NOT factual. And by the way all, I assure you I am telling the truth. come to my house you can help me clean up the puke.
StoneyColdCreamy,
Typically with a foodborne illness you will have diarrhea. Do the kids also have diarrhea with the vomiting? If your kids have been ill like this for a few days, I would get your kids to the doctor. You don’t have to mention that you give them raw milk.
The description of your wife having a rash from head to toe sounds like the measles.
I have asked my PhD friends at the Milk Genome Consortium research lab ( Dr. Bruce German PhD and Dr. Lemay PhD ) to give me their read on A2. After all, UC Davis claims to now have the patent privileges for testing A2 traits. For many years the ability to test was patented and even if you wanted to test…it was not possible. I have not ever been able to connect with the UC Davis division that does this testing.
If any one should know about A2…it should be the Milk Genomics people at UC Davis. We will see what they think.
Mark,
I wouldn’t bother checking with UC Davis, as they are licensed by A2 Corp to perform the tests. There are other testing methods available to test for A2 without using their “patented” methods.
SC
By the way…..
Dr. Kresser,
I do not understand the repeated statement made under your name on this comment thread. It appears to be a repeat comment. Is this a glitch?
Loved your presentation at WAP….packed full of great information.
Mark
SC,
I agree….A2 nothing wrong with it at all as long as the cows are healthy, the pastures are green, the management is organic and the processing is 100% raw.
Same checklist on my end.
Dear SC,
Four fold healing is written by Dr. Tom Cowan. Several years ago, Tom came to me at a conference and said this: ” If I had known now that A2 research is what it is….I would never have written the foreward to the book The devil in the Milk”.
Tom was even duped.
If you have never seen pictures of pasteurized milk please see the slide show of these pictures at http://www.rawmilkinstitute.org they will change your perspective 100%. Pastuerized milk looks like fine sand paper while raw milk looks like human blood or a well structured coral reef. The destruction is total and complete with high heat. The proteins are changed and the enzymes are gone. The cassein is literally toast.
The differences between A2 and A1 on one little amino acid is irrelevant. Although my comment is high level and not supported by studies, the A2 corp claims are not supported by any studies at all.
Why is it that our protein sensitive autistic consumers have no problem drinking OPDC raw milk and have severe reactions to A2 pasteurized….think about this. It is a huge scam.
There was no A2 genetic cleft 5000 years ago. Where is any evidence of this….there is nada…nothing to support this. Nothing. There was a change in processing and feeding 100 years ago.
http://rawmilkinstitute.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Raw-Milk-is-just-like-Blood-RAWMI.pdf Fascinating. I am totally enjoying the education I am receiving on this thread. “Toasted casein”, that’s a good one.
I would not drink A2 Pasteurized but would prefer A2 Raw over A1 Raw all day long.
I agree that the science behind A2 is poor. Mat LaLonde and I were discussing this recently.
Agreed but it still passes the smell test…why not play it safe until the jury is out if you have an A2 option plus the A2 cows typically have more cream than the Holsteins. Arguably, a better quality better tasting milk.
I agree, Mark. But there are some folks who have access to and have tried good raw milk but still have problems with it, but they often can tolerate goat milk (A-2). Those who have been getting raw milk, but then drop out may have a similar problem, but we don’t hear from them usually.
Raw milk will be unsustainable for a large population.
How will it be transported without contamination?
How will it be transported quickly enough to prevent widespread bacterial growth?
Will you be happy using sterilising agents (alcohol or Peroxides) on all parts of the supply chain?
There is no physical way you could produce raw milk on a mass scale with ZERO contamination in an economical and environmentally sound way.
It is far better for the environment for one dairy to process milk, than many small dairys. Just as its better for 30 people to travel on the bus, than all drive individual cars.
Sure raw milk might not be dangerous for YOU. But it would be if it was distributed on the same scale as pasteurised milk.
That is exactly the point. Distribution should be local by multiple farmers/dairies not super commercial dairies. Not ONLY is Raw milk not dangerous it is better for the consumer. Hey, let the chips fall as they may but selling raw milk being illegal is plain wrong.