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The Health Benefits Of Raw Milk
From Grass-Fed Animals
By Ron Schmid, ND
In 1970, I went to live on the island of Martha's Vineyard. I was quite ill with gastrointestinal problems. I began living mostly on seafood, fresh vegetables and salads, and raw milk and eggs purchased from a local farmer, with a little meat and whole grain bread. My health problems, which had been intractable for years, disappeared.
Raw milk remained a mainstay of my diet. Since 1981 I have strongly recommended raw milk to thousands of people who have seen me in my practice as a naturopathic physician. I practice in Connecticut, where we enjoy the right to purchase certified raw milk throughout the state (with the exception of the town of Fairfield, where a fascist local health board has instituted an unchallenged-for-lack-of-funds town ordinance prohibiting the sale of raw milk.)
The raw milk available in the part of Connecticut where I live is from Debra Tyler's farm in Cornwall Bridge, called "Local Farm." Debra has nine cows on fourteen acres. Eight health food stores in central and northern Connecticut pick up milk regularly at Local Farm. There are about a dozen other certified raw milk dairies among Connecticut's 210 dairy farms.
Debra has Jersey cows. Most farms have Holsteins, which provide large quantities of milk, but milk that is lower in protein, fat and calcium. Jerseys were originally bred by the French to produce milk for cheese making. The fat content of Debra's milk during the warm months is about 4.8 percent, well above the normal 3.5 percent for whole milk. Debra's cows eat mostly grass in the spring, summer and fall, and mostly hay in the winter (each cow consumes a forty pound bale a day!), with a few pounds a day of ground corn and roasted soybeans (five to one corn to soybeans ratio).
Local Farm milk is certified organic. Certification costs several hundred dollars a year in fees and considerable paperwork. It also means that Debra must sometimes pay more for certified feed from faraway places than for locally produced feed she knows to be organic but which is not certified. This raises the question—if you know and trust the local farmers who produce your food, does it really have to be certified?
TESTIMONY ON RAW MILK
The last time the right of the people of Connecticut to purchase raw milk was seriously threatened was in 1994 when the state Environmental Committee held public hearings on the certification of raw milk, before voting almost unanimously to continue licensing new farms and allowing raw milk to be sold. I testified at those hearings. My testimony was framed to respond to objections to raw milk raised by the state health department and to document the benefits of raw milk. To quote from that testimony:
"The state epidemiologist writes that ‘It has yet to be demonstrated that raw milk has any beneficial health effects. . . ' He cites articles attached to his letter. In one article, ‘Unpasteurized Milk, The Hazards of a Health Fetish' (Journal of the American Medical Association, 10/19/84), the authors make a series of misstatements about the research of Francis Pottenger before concluding that raw milk has no health benefits. I detail these charges as follows in the paper I've given the members of the Committee.
"Now what Pottenger actually did in some of his experiments is this. He used four groups of cats. All received for one-third of the diet raw meat. The other two-thirds of the diet consisted in either raw milk or various heat-treated milks. The raw milk/raw meat diet produced many generations of healthy cats. Those fed pasteurized milk showed skeletal changes, decreased reproductive capacity and infectious and degenerative diseases.
"Now just who was Francis Pottenger? He was the son of the physician who founded the once famous Pottenger Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis in Monrovia, California. He completed his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930 and became a full-time assistant at the Sanatorium. From 1932 to 1942, he also conducted what became known as the Pottenger Cat Study.
"In 1940, he founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital at Monrovia. Until closing in 1960, the hospital specialized in treating non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.
"Dr. Pottenger was a regular and prolific contributor to the medical and scientific literature. He served as president of several professional organizations, including the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the American Academy of Applied Nutrition and the American Therapeutic Society. He was a member of a long list of other professional organizations.
"Pottenger's experiments met the most rigorous scientific standards. His outstanding credentials earned him the support of prominent physicians. Alvin Foord, MD, Professor of Pathology at the University of Southern California and pathologist at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, co-supervised with Pottenger all pathological and chemical findings of the study.
"One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study is one that modern science has largely ignored. It has to do with the nutritive value of heat-labile elements—nutrients destroyed by heat and available only in raw foods.
"In his article ‘Clinical Evidences of the Value of Raw Milk,' Pottenger writes: ‘Some of the factors transmitted by milk are thermo-labile [sensitive to heat]. Though their destruction may not produce death, their deficiency may prevent proper development of the child. This may show in the development of an inadequate skeleton or a decrease in resistance. . . . delay in development of osseous centers is noted more frequently in those children. . . receiving heat treated milk. It is particularly absent from the raw milk fed children. . . . I am basing this discussion on analysis of 150 children whose parents have consulted me because of respiratory allergies. Many other workers. . . have also shown that treating milk by heating interferes with its proper assimilation and nutritional qualities. . . . The best milk from a nutritional standpoint is raw milk. . . . Heat-treating milk interferes with calcium metabolism causing. . . delay in bone age and small bones. . . . The interference with calcium metabolism as shown in the bones is only a physiological index of disturbed metabolism throughout the body.'
"I have prescribed raw milk from grass-fed animals to my patients for nearly fifteen years. Time and again I have seen allergies clear up and dramatically improved health. Particularly in children, middle ear infections usually disappear and do not recur on raw milk. Both children and adults unable to drink pasteurized milk without problems have thrived on raw milk. In hundreds—perhaps thousands—of my patients using raw milk, not one has ever developed a salmonella, campylobacter, or other raw-milk-related infection.
"In the letter cited above, the state epidemiologist states that ‘The processes of certification and/or inspection do not guarantee that raw milk will not be contaminated with pathogenic organisms.' He also lists a host of microorganisms that are alleged to be transmitted by raw milk, not mentioning that, as the literature accompanying his letter makes clear, the only organisms even potentially associated with the consumption of certified raw milk are salmonella and campylobacter. And in one of the articles he cites, ‘The Hazard in Consuming Raw Milk' (in The Western Journal of Medicine), the authors actually state that ‘Salmonella and campylobacter diseases in humans are generally not serious. But in persons with compromised health (particularly those with malignant conditions and immunosuppressed by disease or therapy), these infections may be serious.'
"So, the gist of the state's argument against certified raw milk is that it might possibly on isolated occasions cause serious disease in some people whose immune systems have been compromised by the toxic effects of chemotherapy. And because of this very slight risk, those of us who might choose to drink certified raw milk for the benefits I have catalogued should be denied that right."
Fortunately, the members of the Environmental Committee saw through the shallowness of the state's argument and voted in favor of raw milk.
About Ron Schmid
Dr. Ron Schmid has practiced as a licensed naturopathic physician in Connecticut since graduating from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1981. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well, he has taught courses and seminars in nutrition at all four of the accredited naturopathic medical schools in the United States. He served for a year as the first Clinic Director and Chief Medical Officer at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine. He is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the Connecticut Society of Naturopathic Physicians