Let’s Consider The Benefits Of Raw Milk

As reported this past week in the New York Times and elsewhere, more than half the states in the U.S. now allow the sale of raw milk. In some states, you can only buy raw milk at a farm, but in 14 states you can buy it in stores.

So why are some people excited about raw milk? Well, the implication is that if’ it’s less processed, it must be better, right? After all, we learned recently that ultra-processed foods are pretty bad for you. (There’s pretty good evidence for that.) And milk is one of those products that people associate with health. For the first few months of life, we humans live entirely on milk–but that’s milk from a woman’s breast.

Cow milk is a different matter. It’s not nearly so, shall we say, clean.

It only took a minute for me to find claims that raw milk has all kinds of benefits: supposedly it helps you digest food better, it has more vitamins and minerals, it boosts your immune system, and it’s better for people with lactose intolerance. (I won’t link to any of those claims because they’re all bogus, and I don’t want to give scammers any more web traffic.)

Before listing some of the special properties of raw milk, let’s consider how it’s processed. The main thing we do to milk is pasteurization: a very simple process where the milk is heated just enough to kill any bacteria in it. It’s not boiled, and the mild heating doesn’t destroy any of milk’s nutrients.

Pasteurization is named after the French scientist Louis Pasteur, who invented the process in the 1860s. Originally it was used to preserve wine, but people eventually discovered it worked just as well for milk and other foods. Back in the 1860s, people didn’t even know that bacteria caused disease, and Pasteur was one of the pioneers who figured that out.

So what does raw milk have in it? Well, it can carry a long list of delightful bacteria, including the ones that cause tuberculosis, brucellosis, scarlet fever, salmonella. And of course there is E. coli, including strains that can cause terrible diarrhea.

Bacteria just love milk, it turns out. Raw milk is teeming with them, and many of them are really not good for humans. Fortunately for most of us, pasteurization kills bacteria very effectively.

And there’s one more special thing you get in raw milk that you won’t get in pasteurized milk: cow poop. Funny thing, though: on the advertisements I found for the benefits of raw milk, none of them mentioned this.

So sure, get your raw milk and live like it’s 1850 again! Never mind that pasteurization has saved countless millions of lives. Seriously, folks: there’s no reason whatsoever to drink raw milk. And states that allow the sale of raw milk are endangering the health of their own people.

GMOs versus antibiotic overuse: which is the greater evil?

People who worry about eating healthy food (and who doesn't?) have recently been very worried about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.  Meanwhile, industrial livestock producers feed enormous quantities of antibiotics to cows, chickens, and bigs, as a way to make them grow faster.  Which of these practices poses the greater risk?

This one isn't even close. The threat of GMOs pales in comparison to the overuse of antibiotics, which are creating dangerous superbugs that already kill tens of thousands of people each year.

The anti-GMO forces have been making a big push recently to add "GMO" labels to foods. This particularly campaign is based on the hard-to-disagree-with notion that more information is always good. People have a right to know what they're eating, right?

Well, sure. But how many people out there understand what genetic engineering means? How many understand that virtually all the food we eat is genetically modified - including the most wholesome organic foods? Unless you live out in the wilderness eating wild nuts and berries, you're eating plants and animals that have been genetically modified over the centuries by humans, by selecting which ones to plant and breed.  The term GMO is meant to refer to something else:  precise genetic engineering, designed to alter just one or two genes. This creates genetic changes that are far less dramatic than the ones that turned ancient maize into today's modern corn, for example.  Thus the problem with "GMO" label is that it won't inform people unless they have a solid grounding in molecular genetics.

Teosinte is un-modified corn. Not so yummy, is it?

GMO opponents claim that GMOs are bad for you.  So far at least, there's no scientific evidence for this claim.  If GMOs were so bad, people would be dropping like flies every night after dinner.

But in the world of infectious disease, a different, far more deadly scenario is unfolding. Drug-resistant bacteria are spreading fast. Scientists have been warning for years that we are blindly marching towards an era when people start to die of previously treatable bacterial infections. Antibiotics, one of the greatest technological advances in the history of civilization, are losing their effectiveness.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that "nightmare bacteria" are real and on the rise.  In the U.S. alone, over 23,000 people died last year as a result of drug-resistant bacterial infections, according to the CDC. The CDC report implicated the use of antibiotics in animals as one of the primary causes.

Also last week, the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health issued a report looking at how we've responded to report 5 years ago that recommended ways "to curb the threats to human health posed by modern industrial agriculture practices." How have we done? According to Dr. Robert Lawrence, director of the Center:

"There has been an appalling lack of progress.  The failure to act by the USDA and FDA, the lack of action or concern by Congress, and continued intransigence of the animal agriculture industry have made all of our problems worse."

Can the FDA regulate antibiotics in livestock? Not really, thanks to intensive lobbying by industry. One of the authors of the Hopkins report commented that the FDA is “almost pleading with industry to make voluntary changes.”

But industry isn't going to do this on their own, and so far the government has been utterly ineffective.  The study points out that:

"Congress has killed every effort to restrict the feeding of farm animals the same antibiotics used in human medicine ...  even as antibiotics have grown less effective in treating infection."

So listen up, GMO alarmists: you're protesting the wrong thing. If you really want people to eat healthier food, start raising Cain over the use of antibiotics in livestock.  If you want labels on our food, insist on labels showing whether our food animals were raised antibiotic-free.  Stop worrying about a hypothetical fear of a few genetic changes in soybeans, and worry instead about the very real rise of superbugs.  You're right to worry about how we raise our food - you're just looking in the wrong place.