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.

Raw milk enthusiasts want you to drink a bacterial stew. Yum.

Sometimes it is astonishing how ignorant people can be. Now it's the turn of fans of "raw milk," a new fad that is sweeping the U.S.

I still remember reading milk cartons as a kid, and asking my parents what "pasteurized" meant. While I don't remember exactly what they said, I'm sure they told me that it made the milk safe by killing bacteria. Even as a kid, I understood that bacteria in my milk were probably a bad thing.

Louis Pasteur is one of the most famous scientists in history, and rightly so. In 1862, he invented the process of heating milk to kill the bacteria in it. Pasteurization, as we now call it, has saved millions of lives in the 150 years since. Pasteur also created the first vaccine for rabies. He was a true giant.

Fans of raw milk appear to be stunningly unaware of Pasteur's achievements, and equally ignorant of the dangers of bacterial infections. Many of the health and safety claims for raw milk can be found on sites such as RealMilk.com, a site that is chock full of

• Conspiracy theories: the Government is hiding the truth from you.
• Denialism: raw milk never hurt anyone, and even protects you against bacteria.
• Shifting the blame: infections are caused by other contaminated foods, not raw milk.

One of the more chilling facts about RealMilk.com is their emphasis on feeding raw milk to infants, who are at the greatest risk of dying from infections.  Their "Campaign for Real Milk" advocates

"universal access to clean raw whole milk from pasture-fed cows, especially access for pregnant and nursing mothers and for babies and growing children."

We have plenty of good science about raw milk. CDC review of infectious disease outbreaks across the U.S. from 1993-2006 found that

Langer et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases 18:3 (2012).

Among other findings, a

"The rate of outbreaks caused by unpasteurized milk (often called raw milk) and products made from it was 150 times greater than outbreaks linked to pasteurized milk."

Dr. Robert Tauxe, an infectious disease specialist at the CDC, debunks some of the myths about raw milk in an article freely available on Medscape. John Snyder and Mark Crislip have both written compellingly about the dangers of raw milk at sciencebasedmedicine.org.

If I were being cynical, I might say that the wild-eyed proponents of raw milk deserve whatever infections they get. But their children don't. 3-year-old Kylee Young, who the Washington Post wrote about this past Sunday, didn't deserve to suffer kidney failure and a stroke after her mother fed her raw milk that was infected with E. coli O157:H7. Kylee can no longer walk or talk and needs constant care. Her mother now says

"If I had known what I know now, I would never have fed [raw milk] to my daughter." 

Louis Pasteur and his wife had five children, three of whom died of childhood infections. These tragedies were Pasteur's motivation for studying infectious disease. Thanks to his work 150 years ago, no one today needs to die from drinking unpasteurized milk. The raw milk movement insists, despite the evidence, that they know better.

So go ahead, drink your raw milk and eat a paleo diet too, while you're at it. But don't ask our modern medical system to pay for your treatment when you get sick. And most of all, don't subject innocent children to the unnecessary risks of raw milk.