The war over raw milk

This summer, we were visiting some Baltimore area friends when one of them took a bottle of milk out of the fridge. It was labeled "Pet Food." She poured herself a glass and drank it. It was raw milk, but it had to be sold as pet food in order to be legal. This is how raw milk aficionados get around the ban on selling the stuff for human consumption. Though I happily eat raw milk cheese, I couldn't bring myself to taste the raw milk itself; it was entirely a psychological thing, though. I didn't fear getting sick.

John Schwenkler reports on the controversy, pointing out that yes, there can be significant dangers from raw milk consumption, but that the raw milk that poses the most danger to consumers is that coming from industrial dairies. Excerpt:

Food writer Nina Planck, whose 2006 book Real Food is an apologia for the health benefits of traditional foods from butter, lard, and coconut oil to eggs, beef, and--yes--raw milk, is careful to distinguish "safe milk," which "comes from healthy cows in a clean dairy," from the milk that comes from industrial dairies. "That milk is pasteurized and should be," she says, but that doesn't mean that "clean raw milk" isn't good enough even for her toddler son. Similarly, New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle, who believes people "have the right" to drink raw milk, writes in her 2006 book What to Eat that while her "personal preference" is to have most of the bacteria in her milk killed before they get to her, it's "quite possible to consume [raw milk] safely, especially when ... you know the 'animal care standards and sanitary practices of your milk producers.'"

One crucial benefit of this more nuanced story is that it helps us make sense of how humans could happily drink raw milk for thousands of years before it became, in the language of early-20th century reformers, the "Great White Poison." It was only with the rise of "industrialized" dairying methods--in which cows were increasingly kept indoors, milked with a much greater frequency, and given unnatural feeds instead of access to pasture--that their milk became so deadly. And it was primarily in cities, where crowding and poor sanitation prevailed and milk was shipped in over a great distance, that outbreaks of milkborne disease were the most heavily concentrated. Hence even as enthusiastic a pasteurization advocate as the New York department store magnate and philanthropist Nathan Straus could essentially adopt Planck's and Nestle's position in a 1907 speech: There would be "no need" to pasteurize," he admitted, if "pure, fresh milk direct from absolutely healthy cows" could be secured. "But I am compelled to conclude," he went on, "that these conditions are for the present absolutely impossible of attainment. It now remains only to determine how best to apply the remedy--pasteurization."

I remember how shocked I was years ago to read a long essay by food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, who investigated why it was that the French had been eating raw-milk cheeses since forever, with minimal illness resulting, while in the US, they were banned. That was one of the first articles that made me think about whether or not the way we regulate food in the US is foolish. The Steingarten piece (from 2000) is not available online, but you can hear him discussing it and other food findings in this NPR interview.

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan)