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With the recent announcement by Durham-area farmer Michael Schmidt that he's going on hunger strike until he's allowed to sell raw milk, what previously seemed like a one-day news oddity is turning into a full-blown debate here at Torontoist (and no doubt elsewhere). Even Toronto celebrity chef Jamie Kennedy is going to hold a press conference wherein he's expected to announce his support for Schmidt.
Most stories about Canadian raw milk contain sentiments from raw milk lovers claiming that if the general public only knew all the benefits of raw milk, they'd jump right on board and be drinking unpasteurized moo juice till the cows literally come home. Schmidt himself claims that "There is enough evidence that raw milk, if it's properly produced, is never a health hazard." We here at Torontoist, however, are Skeptical Journalist Types, and felt research was merited in this instance.
(DISCLAIMER: The author's preference is for pasteurized skim milk.)
The major health benefits of raw milk put forward by proponents of it are as follows:
- Probiotic health. This is one of the big ones - even raw milk opponents concede that pasteurization kills off the probiotic microorganism cultures that can potentially lower risk of colon cancer as well as lower cholesterol count and blood pressure - and definitely can help manage lactose intolerance. Of course, raw milk opponents also point out you can get probiotic intake from yoghurt.
- Lactase. It aids in the digestion of lactose, and gets destroyed by the pasteurization process. That having been said, the usefulness of lactase beyond the ability to drink milk seems quite debatable - and most raw milk support sites don't actually list any benefits beyond the ability to drink milk as a general good. (There is a lot of this latter boosting on most raw milk support sites, to be frank. Raw Milk Facts, for example, points out that milk has cholesterol in it, and we all need some cholesterol, so why not get it from raw milk, et cetera.)
- Factory farming. A lot of raw milk sites also point out that grass-fed cows produce healthier milk, and that pasteurization allows factory farming of milk (due to pasteurization killing any bacteria that might get into the milk from, say, a spare globule of feces), whereas raw milk cows almost exclusively are grass-fed. Grass fed cows produce milk with five times as much omega-3 fatty acids, and much more omega-6 fatty acids and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid, which is a trans fat but apparently one with benefits according to raw milk boosters).
This appaears to be an excellent argument for grass-feeding cows, but not necessarily for raw milk. Hey, if you want to end factory farming, that is great and awesome, but that doesn't de facto follow through to "and don't pasteurize the milk."
Opponents of raw milk (here's a fairly comprehensive argument from Stephen Barrett) make their case more plainly: without pasteurization, dairy producers cannot guarantee that their milk will not contain (among other diseases) salmonella, brucella, streptococcus or TB. e. Coli infections have likewise been traced back to raw milk consumption, and harmful pathogens in any cow that could not otherwise be detected can frequently be transferred to milk. The counterargument from raw milk supporters here is that the risk level of infection is so low that preventing the public from drinking raw milk is a waste of time. This appears to be debatable.
Traditonally this sort of article is supposed to reach some sort of conclusion and come out conclusively for one side or the other, but sadly nobody working for Torontoist is a professional nutritionist, and even nutritionists know that the combined human knowledge of dietary science is like a vast desert with the occasional oasis of Stuff We Know For Sure, like "don't eat rocks."
What can be said with certainty is that raw milk websites tend to be sloppily produced (rawmilk.org, for example, repeatedly boasts of scientific reports that contain "hundreds of scientific evidence") and frequently engage in arguments that are largely irrelevant to the health issues regarding pasteurization, which forces one to raise at least a single skeptical eyebrow.
Photo courtesy Marc Lostracco and the Torontoist Flickr group.
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The bottom line is this:
1. Selling unpasteurized milk to others is illegal.
2. The police and Toronto Public Health are obligated to enforce the law and protect saleable food from contamination, respectively.
3. Unpasteurized milk isn't sanitized and therefore can contain shit, among other dangerous bacterial organisms.
4. If someone got sick from any restaurant or company knowingly selling milk possibly containing feces, all hell would break loose and we'd be calling for someone's head on a stick.
This is a total non-issue. It's not illegal for the farmer or his family to drink it, but it is illegal to sell a food product to someone else that is devoid of microbial control.
Also, all the nutritional aspects that you can get from raw milk can easily and more safely come from other food sources. Hunger strike? Please. Spare the drama.
No mention of FLAVOUR?
Raw milk advocates (and bona fide cheese snobs) will insist that both commom heat treatments (UHT and HTST) induce off-flavours with "cooked notes" in pasteurized milk.
What it comes down to, as Marc said, it that it really is a food safety issue of the microbial sort that makes pasteurization a requirement.
Unfortunately, our government makes some decisions for us - and they'd rather we deal with the cooked notes than be at higher risk of acquiring food borne illnesses.
I'm perfectly happy with my government making scientific decisions on keeping my food supply safe since we aren't informed enough and can't be entrusted to do it ourselves. Now if they'd only start regulating supplements and herbal remedies -- like they should have been doing for decades.
Everything we eat should be trackable every step from source to plate.
why are we still drinking the milk of a cow at all?
Whether or not it's bad that our government makes decisions like these for us, you know that the first time a 6 year old dies from some fecal poisoning that the parents AREN'T going to sue the producers, but the government for allowing them to buy such a product in the first place. If I were politically involved, I'd tell people they could drink raw milk only if they sucked it directly out of the cow.
Kevin - "We" are still drinking it because we have a mutation on chromosome 2 that effectively extends our weaning period well beyond the mammalian norm. The majority of humans adults are lactose intolerant, in fact. It's just us European and Middle Eastern mutants who are the freaks stealing milk from the mouths of calves.
In college I developed some sort of lactose intolerance that lasted a few years. All milk smelled sour and didn't go down too well. It's mostly gone away now, but I only pick up milk once every couple of months when I crave breakfast cereal.
The government is far too paranoid about these food issues. I'm not a scientist and I don't understand what the likelyhood is of becoming ill from raw milk, but I don't think that the politicians are much better informed than I am. They might have good intentions, but after the attempted ban on non-blast-frozen sushi, I don't have a lot of faith.
I agree with Schmidt to a pretty large degree. When it's properly produced, raw milk is an absolutely negligible health risk. That proper production pretty much demands grass-feeding and avoiding many factory farming techniques. It also requires consumers pay attention to the best before date on their carton or bottle.
Pasteurized milk is about as likely to contain shit as unpasteurized; the difference is that one of them will have had all the bacteria in the faeces cooked out. It's really gross both ways.
Huge numbers of people worldwide drink raw milk and seem to be doing alright, especially since the introduction of proper sanitation. I personally don't drink milk anymore as I could never get used to the change in/loss of flavour of pasteurized skim when we moved to Canada.
You wrote: "Opponents of raw milk (here's a fairly comprehensive argument from Stephen Barrett) make their case more plainly: without pasteurization, dairy producers cannot guarantee that their milk will not contain (among other diseases) salmonella, brucella, streptococcus or TB."
You want to talk about guarantees? Should we talk about people who have gotten sick from eating/drinking any number of food items--including pasteurized milk? Beef, poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables...there is no guarantee that any of these are safe because people still get sick from eating them. The question is, why single out raw milk?
1. History. Pasteurization was a good thing in the era of swill dairies.
2. Money. Traditional commercial dairy farmers (feedlot, antibiotic, hormone) don't like seeing these organic, sustainable farmers getting more money for their cows' milk.
Thank God we have a bunch of nannies to make the decision for us. I'm obviously so stupid I can't decide for myself.
We pasteurize our milk for the same reason we cook our meat. Unpasteurized hard cheese can be compared somewhat to curing meat, but drinking unpasteurized milk is like licking a raw steak: if you're healthy, it probably won't kill ya and you may not even get sick, but it's a pretty stupid thing to do.
Grass-feeding cows and avoiding factory farming have nothing to do with avoiding bacteria in the milk. Other than being more humane, it's a red herring argument. Cows still make the same poop and carry the same dangerous micro-organisms.
Todd: I am amazed that you say people should drink raw milk because we get sick from other food items too, as if it's a proportionate argument. We do everything possible to santize our food supply, and the occasion that people get sick is because of mistakes in that process.
Miro: you say "the government is far too paranoid" immediately followed by "I am not a scientist," which is the whole point. I agree that politicians aren't particularly informed either, but health boards consist of scientists and decades of scientific research. The dangers of coliform bacteria, salmonella, tuberculosis, strep, brucella, campylobacter, escherichia, listeria and yersinia are crystal clear.
The fact that people so easily swallow any old supplement, eat bear penises because they think it will improve their sex life, and don't care that our meat is full of hormones shows that the public is nowhere near informed enough to make all of the appropriate decisions.
The risk inherent in unpasteurized products is particularly significant to pregnant women, children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Disseminating information that unpasteurized milk is safe and more healthy is irresponsible and very dangerous.
Selling unpasteurized milk is illegal for a reason, and this farmer is breaking the law and should be charged like we expect everyone else to be when they break the law. People are trying to make this into a folky David and Goliath story, which it isn't.
(1) This is a total non-issue. It's not illegal for the farmer or his family to drink it, but it is illegal to sell a food product to someone else that is devoid of microbial control.
I thought that the end users of this product were shareholders in the venture. If so, there is no sale of the product and therefore not illegal.
(2) Unfortunately, our government makes some decisions for us - and they'd rather we deal with the cooked notes than be at higher risk of acquiring food borne illnesses.
This is disturbingly passive. When the decisions don't make any sense, it is entirely reasonable and admirable to challenge the basis of the decision. My quibble is that those opposed to raw milk are willing to grant a whole lot of discretion to the government to make decisions based on the nebulous "public safety" argument.
(3) They might have good intentions, but after the attempted ban on non-blast-frozen sushi, I don't have a lot of faith.
I'm glad someone brought this up because it is really the same issue, except sushi has a much larger market so it is seen as less of a deprivation to ban raw milk. It reduces most of the arguments here to: "I don't drink raw milk, and my safety may (under certain implausible circumstances) be threatened by those who do".
(4) why are we still drinking the milk of a cow at all?
I love this argument. It is usually followed by the evidence that "humans are the only mammal that drinks the milk of another mammal". Just this morning I saw a raccoon with a pail and some vaseline attempting to milk a cat, but then it realized it lacked the brain power and necessary opposable thumbs, and abandoned the project.
(In short, we continue to drink milk because of certain perceived health benefits).
(5) Why is everything centred on this page now? It looks like shit.
The whole cow share venture is an attempt to get around the legal issues behind what it essentially is, which is selling milk. It's splitting hairs saying that you're not paying for the milk but you're paying for part ownership in the cows. The bottom line is that people are paying the farmer to provide them with raw milk. Calling it something else doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
As for the government, I don't think it's a passive reason to trust them as long as they are publicly accountable and everything they do is transparent. A lot to ask, I realize, but the systems are in place. Raw milk has been studied over and over again and the scientific opinion in its safety as a public food product hasn't budged.
Jamie Kennedy doesn't use raw milk in his restaurants, nor is he saying that he wants to (he is supporting the farmer and wants the option to drink it himself). Even if it were legal, if he were to serve it in his restaurant without explicitly outlining the known risks to customers, he'd be in jail.
I find it somewhat amusing and mildly alarming that the only politician in this city screaming about the restrictions is our finance minister who owns some of the cows in question, and that he's getting the press he is.
The sushi argument also isn't entirely valid, since there have only been three reported cases of infection by the particular parasitic roundworm in a decade, none of which can be traced back to sushi. The original ban was based on poor scientific information, and there should be virtually zero threat when prepared by a trained sushi chef who knows how to spot worms and their eggs.
The province backed-off the sushi ban because the threat was miniscule, if a threat at all, and because their scientific information was limited. This is not the case with unpasteurized milk which can contain known dangerous organisms by not being sterilized. Even raw milk proponents don't claim it is free of these microorganisms.
"The whole cow share venture is an attempt to get around the legal issues behind what it essentially is, which is selling milk. It's splitting hairs saying that you're not paying for the milk but you're paying for part ownership in the cows. The bottom line is that people are paying the farmer to provide them with raw milk. Calling it something else doesn't necessarily mean it's true."
The purpose of the government prohibition on the sale of raw milk is to protect the consumer who may not be aware of the risks of drinking raw milk. You said yourself that nothing prevented the farmer and his family from drinking the product themselves. The only theory which grounds this is that the farmer and his family are presumed to know the risks and assume them. The exact same reasoning applies to a shareholder who has invested in the venture. Where the individual is aware of the risk and assumes them, there is no role for governments to interfere with the choice of that individual (aside from the general public health risk, the magnitude of which we disagree about).
Whether you see it as legal trickery or simply good legal structuring, their is no "sale" of milk and therefore no power for government to prevent the shareholders from drinking the stuff, same way their was no power for them to prevent the farmer and his family.
It's technically illegal for the farmer to serve the milk to his own children as well as any guests in his home, even if the latter consent.
The public is not accurately aware of the risks, which is why this dissemination of bad science and misinformation is alarming.
As for the farmer, I question the judgment of a father who goes on a very public hunger strike when he's got children at home. Not that I think he'd ever let it get past a point where it seriously threatens his health...it's all for the media. Lame.
Anyone here (intentionally) read the Sun? I can't help but wonder what their spin on this is.
Marc: you are ducking and weaving:
We are not talking about whether the public is adequately informed about the risk, rather whether the consumers of the product are (who also happen to be shareholders in the very venture).
Also, you may think that the farmer's response is disproportionate, but think what lengths you would go to if a government took away your livelihood in an arbitrary manner. And the initial "raid" had police media stunt written all over it - other regulatory actions based on public health (including shutting down infested restaurants, which present a far greater threat to public health) are done quietly.
@Marc Lostracco: I'm not saying anybody should drink raw milk. To the prohibitionists I'm saying why single out raw milk if there are problems with other foods, too? There are ways to minimize the risks of getting bad stuff in raw milk, it's just that the hysteria surrounding raw milk blinds people to options other than pasteurization.
Put a label on it like we do for cigarettes and alcohol, or don't sell it to people under 18, or only sell it directly from the farm (assuming that precautions like testing are taken--remember Michael Schmidt has been selling raw milk for 20 years without incident, and Organic Pastures in CA has been selling it too, with a better food safety record than pasteurized milk), but please don't infringe on my liberty.
And BTW, healthy cows give higher quality milk than sick cows.
grounded,
The consumers of the raw milk are not being adequately informed of the risk, because the producers of the raw milk are telling them that there is no risk, and that, my friend, is a lie.
First off this shareholder business is just a poor attempt to disguise the buying and selling of raw milk. It doesn't matter how they go about it, it's still a farmer supplying raw milk to customers for a fee (there is an additional milking fee above the initial 'investment').
Secondly, pointing out that restaurants are closed up quiety, or that there are other public health risks in the food industry, is no reason to not act against this guy's illegal and dangerous raw milk business. If anything, considering how poorly informed people are about the real risks of raw milk, the disproportionate attention paid to this is fitting.
rek:
the shareholder "business" is not a poor attempt at anything. In any other of the trillion transactions that are processed daily in our economy, the legal structure and the identity of the entities determine the characterization of the transaction. unless there is a specific provision in the statute which deems a shareholder who receives raw milk as owner of the cows as a "sale", you don't have one. This is elementary. If the government thinks it is a disguised sale they are entitled to amend the statute.
second, you completely missed that the restaurant example was provided in response to Marc's suggestion that the farmer was a media whore. I was not making a relativist argument that since there were worse things, this was good.
Here, the very rule they are applying doesn't work because their is no sale, and the rationale behind the rule doesn't fit because there is no potential harm to an unwitting consumer. The only quibble left between the pro- and anti- factions here is whether the risk of communicable disease is significant enough to justify the infringement of the farmer's liberty. The anti-crowd seems quite content at the arbitrary application of a rule which on its face should not apply to the farmer and quite content to trust the nebulous science backing such a rule (even if none of us have seen the science - the article above comes at the issue from a comparison of websites on the topic, which is particularly asinine. No mention is made that the sale of this stuff is permitted the world over).
I am perplexed that the anti-crowd is so eager to use the strong hand of government on the basis of so little evidence. As I stated elsewhere, if the government was taking a way a right of privacy on the same public safety basis, or (gasp!), as I have seen here, advocating gating an alleyway, you all would be apoplectic. All of which confirms my impression that what the Left really wants is to be the final arbiter on whose rights are worth protecting.
Rek helpfully provides a perfect example of what I refer to above, here, in a forum regarding security cameras on that other (nearly identical) toronto blog:
"Trading away your privacy for *potential* safety? How about a national RFID card, finger print scanners at every door, and metal detectors and armed checkpoints on the sidewalks?"
Note the exact parallel, though myself, I would have excised the slippery-slope hyperbole.
"Just because you don't care about your rights doesn't mean you get the sell the rest of us down the river."
My point exactly.
This is just part of our idiotic socialised food system, with far too much government intrusion into farm products, especially milk and milk products.
Boutique raw milk is not a problem: it will be treated very well, sold at luxury prices, and consumed by conoisseurs who generally know what they are doing and that they need to be more careful with their milk. Mass production and delivery of raw milk would be a very, very bad idea. That won't happen given the liability risks to any large firm if a mistake happens.
Their are similar problems in obtaining raw cheeses and artisanal hams, partly out of protectionism and anti-competitive streaks in our food bureaucrats and partly from an excess of caution. Let the gourmets go, let farmers and artisans differentiate their products, but hold them responsible for screwing up especially if they're using more dangerous processes. Free people, free markets, better food.
This farmer is not having any "liberty" taken away. He doesn't have the liberty to sell raw milk in the first place; only to drink his own. He doesn't even legally have the right to serve it to his family. Saying that it should be sold since those who consume it are conoisseurs who know what they are doing is a ridiculous argument. Who decides they know what they are doing? What about children who are drinking it? Who gets in trouble if someone gets sick or dies because of unsanitary milk?
A ban on the sale of raw milk is for good reason: you can't guarantee that the milk is safe, and it is not sanitary. There has been agreement for 70 years that milk must be pasteurized, which has been supported by virtually all scientists and public health departments. We know the dangers of raw milk very well, and we know the exact benefits of pasteurization. There is no argument here.
Science is very clear on what's often in unpasteurized milk, and there are no sound scientific studies that have proven that raw milk is (1) safe, and (2) healthy. Sure, drinking raw milk isn't going to have any dangerous effect most of the time, but it's that every now and then that can neither be controlled nor predicted.
The claim that people in other countries drink unpasteurized milk safely is flawed, mainly for two reasons: first, humans living in unsanitary conditions develop immunities over time that we don't have here; and secondly (and most importantly), humans living in those unsanitary conditions DO get sick and die all the time from ingesting dangerous food and water.
As for the nutritional value of raw milk over pasteurized, pasteurization only removes a varying, very small percentage of vitamins which are then added back in most of the time. A glass of raw milk isn't even a particularly good source of these vitamins in the first place in relation to other foods in the everyday diet, and the amount boiled-off by pasteurization is nutritionally insignificant.
I can't believe there is even a question today whether pasteurization is desirable or not. It's essentially like asking for the right to sell drinking water scooped untreated out of the lake because Jamie Kennedy thinks the taste has a certain je ne sais quoi.
"But it's healthy because it's natural!" proponents cry. Well, so is sewage.
People are still going to malls and sending their kids to school. Haven’t they heard what the health officials are saying? The officials had to stop a farmer from delivering raw milk to over 100 city people. Are they now going to stop the thousands who live on farms from drinking raw milk? These people could be infecting the rest of us with infectious diseases. Indulent fever and TB were eradicated in cows. But from what people are saying, it looks like the diseases are making a come back because people are drinking cow’s milk raw. California just had another e-coli outbreak because people there are drinking raw milk with their vegetables. In Ontario we don’t hear of dangerous bacteria in milk, meat, vegetables and tap water because the government won’t allow it to happen. Doesn’t pasteurization kill all the bugs anyway? Some 30 US states and several European countries have raw milk certification and inspection programs because people have been spreading false ideas. They want to take us back to the dark ages when midwives were burned at the stake for their dangerous ideas. Kids drinking certified inspected raw milk is more dangerous than expectant mothers smoking, drinking booze and sniffing glue. We should all be grateful that the government is laying charges against the raw milk heretics. I only drink milk in coffee. “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”-
ML King
Well there is one solution: let people keep their own goats or cows as pets and hope that they can keep their own milk properly clean. No responsibility to anyone except yourself, and no government intervention. Isn't this how the free market is supposed to function?
But seriously, if people are convinced by the health benefits of raw milk, they might also be convinced by the benefits of other farm fresh foods, and life outside of the city in general. Never too late for a massive lifestyle change and migration to the country side.
As for the issue at hand, I still feel people should be able to buy raw milk if they want it. If we are going to decriminalize marujuana, what is the argument against raw milk? Certainly it would be better to have it legal and regulated rather than illegal and under the table. That being said, I agree with the comment that large scale raw milk production is not the answer. As with many things, food supply included, some degree of local sustainability is probably the key.