Got Raw Milk? The politics and potential health benefits of unpasteurized dairy products is the topic of a Rutgers University seminar series. By Adam Grybowski Posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Jersey calves at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrence, where raw milk cheese is made.    

In September 2006, California state health officials issued a recall of all raw milk products. Four children had become seriously ill, and officials suspected raw milk was the cause. Ignoring the edict, raw milk enthusiasts swept the shelves, leaving little for Organic Pastures Dairy, a raw milk producer, to pick up, according to Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures.

    Failing to find a link between raw milk and the sick children, state officials lifted the quarantine seven days after it was imposed. The following day about 200 people rallied at Mr. McAfee’s farm.

    ”They were desperate for their milk,” he says. “They demanded their raw milk.”

    Why were raw milk drinkers willing to ignore a government warning issued to protect their health?

    ”Look at the news every day,” Mr. McAfee says. “The FDA has screwed up so badly by being in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies.”

    Mr. McAfee cites as evidence the Food and Drug Administration’s reassessment of the safety and effectiveness of many common medicines. The FDA most recently issued an advisory warning parents never to give cough and cold medicines to children under 2 years old. Ingredients in popular medicines had been found to cause neurological problems in young children, increased blood pressure, arrhythmias and even death, according to The New York Times.    ”People who are conscious do not trust (the FDA),” Mr. McAfee says. “It’s atrocious, these drugs make people sick.”

    Wary of the FDA, certain consumers put their faith in their relationship with farmers, trusting the quality of their food, Mr. McAfee says.

    The process of pasteurization kills pathogens that can cause serious illness, such as E. coli and salmonella. Advocates of raw milk claim that pasteurization also destroys the active enzymes and living cells that are good for you.    Such claims have propelled raw milk to become a prominent issue among health officials, farmers and consumers. To help sort through the issues and provide accurate information based on scientific data, the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station is sponsoring a raw milk seminar series. Mr. McAfee will be the featured speaker at the first seminar, “Raw Milk: Mother Nature’s Inconvenient Truth” Feb. 6.

    The Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment recently formed a “Raw Milk Working Group” to conduct research and collect information on the subject. Mark Robson, the director of the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment, hopes the group will define and qualify the most current and reliable scientific facts so consumers can make an informed choice.

    ”People came to us wanting to know if this was an opportunity for New Jersey agriculture, and consumers want to know why can’t they get raw milk,” Mr. Robson says. Raw milk sales are illegal in New Jersey. “It’s not beyond our mission to have a vetting of both sides of the issues. This is a reasonable thing — farmers see an opportunity and consumers want it.”

    Mr. Robson grew up on a dairy farm in Burlington County. His parents, who were born in the 1930s, owned a pasteurizer and they wouldn’t allow him to drink raw milk, an example of the issue’s history and complexity.

    Milk is — or once was — the very picture of wholesomeness. Its protein, sugars, fat, vitamins and calcium are ideally suited to nourish growing infants. Milk is normally the first food any mammal tastes. Milk’s evolution may have begun around 300 million years ago and people may have begun domesticating sheep and goats for dairying between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago.

    The scientists Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed the first pasteurization test in 1862 — a first step in standardizing one of our most basic foods. Today’s processed milk lacks the character and complexity of raw milk imbued by a particular animal, farm or season. Industrial dairies pool the milk of hundreds of cows, sending it through various stages of processing, making contamination more likely and thus pasteurization a practical necessity.    Mr. McAfee says pasteurization attacks the symptom without fixing the underlying problem: contaminated milk. He believes raw milk can happen on an industrial scale, but only if the practices of commercial agriculture change. Raw milk production on a small farm changes the paradigm. Food sold on a decentralized, small-scale system is more easily traceable if anything were to become contaminated. Kelly Harding, farm manager of Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrence, believes such a system is generally better compared to the centralized system now in place.

    ”I’m committed to dealing directly with the people who consume my food and not any middle man,” he says. “When you see your customers coming in every day it’s a lot easier to maintain your integrity.”

    Cherry Grove sells a variety of raw milk cheeses, using milk from a herd of 22 Jersey cows, whose milk has a high butterfat content, making it richer and more flavorful. While the sale of raw milk cheese is legal, that of raw milk is not. Despite that fact, interest in raw milk at Cherry Grove is soaring.    ”Every third person that walks in the door is interested in buying raw milk from us,” says Mr. Harding. “I think primarily people are concerned with what’s in the milk. They want stuff that’s as close to nature as possible, in its rawest form, which is just a general trend.”

    New Jersey Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow is sponsoring a bill to change the New Jersey statute to permit the sale of raw milk. Sales of raw milk for human consumption are illegal in 32 states. Raw milk sales are permitted in New York on licensed farms only. Sales in Pennsylvania are permitted on farms and retail stores. The FDA banned interstate sales of raw milk in 1986. Unpasteurized, unhomogenized raw milk is now desirable enough that it’s a commodity on the black market.

    ”Whether the reason is safety, health, taste — the bottom line, to me,” Mr. Harding says, “there are consumers who want to buy the product, and I feel they have a choice, and they should be allowed to exercise their freedom of choice.”

Rutgers University Seminar Series on Raw Milk will begin with Raw Milk: Mother Nature’s Inconvenient Truth, featuring Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures, Foran Hall, Room 138B, Rutgers University, 59 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, Feb. 6, 2-4:30 p.m. and at the Cook Student Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Feb. 6, 7 p.m.; a second seminar, Raw Milk Wars: Government’s Attempt to Dictate What Foods We Can Consume, featuring attorney David G. Cox, will take place on Feb. 20, 1 p.m.; (732) 932-7000; www.njaes.rutgers.edu