Raw Milk - History,
Health Benefits and Distortions
Milk, Civilization and the Ancient World
“And the Lord said, I am come down to deliver my
people out of the hand of the Egyptians and unto a good
land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” -
Exodus 3:8[i]
Human
consumption of animal milk is usually linked to the beginnings
of grain farming some 10,000 years ago.[ii] Most
treatises on the history of the human diet assume that
animal husbandry began with the dawn of agriculture, making
dairy products a relatively recent human food. But archeological
evidence indicates that 30,000 years ago people in the
High Sinai Peninsula at the north end of the Red Sea used
fences to aid in confining and breeding antelope for their
milk.[iii] They likely were one of many cultures
that used milk long before the beginnings of agriculture.
Physically, civilization rests on the soil, because the
soil produces the nutrients for the grasses that feed the
animals that feed the people. Fertile soil ultimately provided
the milk upon which civilization was quite literally built.
In
the whole range of organic matter, milk is the only thing
purposely designed and prepared by nature as food. Early
humans did not hesitate to appropriate this gift of nature
for their own use. No state of civilization has ever been
attained without the subjugation of animals and the subsequent
use of their milk; from the infancy of human society, distinction
has been assigned to the bovine species in history. Those
species include the bison, buffalo, yak and domestic animals
of the genus Bos, like cows and bulls. Where people have
gone, the ox and his kind have followed. In every country,
bovines are either indigenous or naturalized. In most,
their milk has at one time or another been used as an essential
article of human sustenance - in many, as the chief.[iv]
The
earliest Hebrew scriptures contain abundant evidence of
the widespread use of milk from very early times. The Old
Testament refers to a “land which floweth with milk
and honey” some twenty times. The phrase describes
Palestine as a land of extraordinary fertility, providing
all the comforts and necessities of life. In all, there
are some fifty references in the Bible to milk and milk
products.[v] Milk is often used metaphorically to signify
privileges and spiritual blessings.
Cows Come to America
“A young fellow wantin’ a start in life just
needs three things: a piece of land, a cow and a wife.
And he don’t strictly need that last.” [vi]
- Old Saying
The
Jamestown colony was established in 1606, and times were
very tough for a number of years. Despite several
infusions of hundreds of new settlers, by 1610 a pitiful
remnant of 60 is all that remained. It was Sir Thomas
Dale’s arrival with a hundred cows the following
year that marks the beginning of dairying in America, and
the beginning of some prosperity for the Jamestown settlers.
An old saying has it that The cow had a pervasive
influence on America’s history and culture, and no
one has written of this more eloquently than Joann S. Grohman
in her wonderful book The Family Cow:
“The cow is a primary producer of wealth.
She can support a family. She not only turns grass into
milk in quantities sufficient to feed a family but also
provides extra to sell and she contributes a yearly calf
to rear or fatten. The family that takes good care of its
cow is well off.
“Cattle are the original stock in stockmarket. Ownership
of cattle has always been a mark of wealth. This is not
just because the cow is a primary producer of wealth, adding
enormous value to grass. In a ‘which came first,
chicken or egg’ sort of way, it’s also because
only families possessed of a hardworking, cooperative spirit
are able to keep a cow, let alone build a herd.
“The dairy cow doesn’t ask for much but she
asks every day. People who are creating wealth with a cow
either are hard working and reliable or they get that way
in a hurry. The need to milk the cow twice a day determined
the location of churches; people had to be able to walk
there and back without disruption to the schedules of cows.
It is certainly no coincidence that such a large number
of our finest American statesmen were born on farms. Important
virtues are nurtured on the farm, including a graphic understanding
of the relationship between working and eating. I have
come to understand and accept the words of that great 19th
Century agricultural essayist, William Cobbett: ‘When
you have a cow, you have it all.’” [vii]
Distillery Dairies, Pasteurization, Certified Raw Milk
and the Milk Cure
“Raw
milk cures many diseases.” [viii] - J.E. Crewe, MD,
The Mayo Foundation, January, 1929
The War of 1812 with England resulted in the permanent
cutting off of the whiskey supply America procured from
the British West Indies. As a result, the domestic liquor
industry was born, and by 1814, grain distilleries began
to spring up in the cities as well as the country. Distillery
owners then began housing cows next to the distilleries
and feeding hot slop, the waste product of whiskey making,
directly to the animals as it poured off the stills. Thus
was born the slop or swill milk system.
Slop
is of little value in fattening cattle; it is unnatural
food for them, and makes them diseased and emaciated. But
when slop was plentifully supplied, cows yielded an abundance
of milk. Diseased cows were milked in an unsanitary manner.
The individuals doing the milking were often dirty, sick
or both. Milk pails and other equipment were usually dirty.
Such milk sometimes led to disease. By the last decade
of the nineteenth century, a growing number of influential
people throughout the country believed that American cities
had a milk problem.
Pasteurization,
begun around 1900, was a solution of sorts. The other was
the certified raw milk movement, which insisted on clean,
fresh milk from healthy, grassfed animals. Henry Coit,
a medical doctor, was the founder of the first Medical
Milk Commission and the certified milk movement. Physicians
in cities throughout the country considered raw milk essential
in the treatment of their patients; they worked together
to certify dairies for the production of clean raw milk.
This resulted in the availability of safe raw milk from
regulated dairies. Initially, from around 1890 to 1910,
the movements for certified raw milk and pasteurization
coexisted and in many ways even complemented one another.
From about 1910 until the 1940s, an uneasy truce existed.
Certified raw milk was available for those who wanted it,
while the influence of the pasteurization lobby saw to
it that most states and municipalities adopted regulations
that required all milk other than certified milk be pasteurized.
The end of this truce (detailed below)has led to the subsequent
outlawing of all retail sales of raw milk in most states
and even of on-farm sales in many.
Many
people today find it surprising that support of raw milk
among physicians was widespread in the first half of the
twentieth century. The use of raw milk as a treatment of
chronic disease has a rich and well-documented history.
In 1929, J. E. Crewe, MD, one of the founders of the Mayo
Foundation, the forerunner of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota, published an article entitled “Raw Milk
Cures Many Diseases.” Here are excerpts from Dr.
Crewe’s account of his experience with raw milk:
“For
fifteen years the writer has employed the certified milk
treatment in various diseases and during the past ten he
had a small sanitarium devoted principally to this treatment.
The results obtained in various types of disease have been
so uniformly excellent that one’s conception of disease
and its alleviation is necessarily changed.” [ix]
The Health Benefits of Raw Milk
“It is very difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary
depends on not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair
During
the early days of pasteurization, researchers showed that
scurvy often resulted when pasteurized milk replaced raw
milk in the diet of infants. “Pasteurized milk gradually
induces infantile scurvy, unless antiscorbutic diet is
given in addition,” Alfred Hess wrote in the American
Journal of Diseases of Children in 1916. “This disorder
quickly yielded to the substitution of raw for pasteurized
milk.”[x]
Thus from the earliest days of pasteurization scientists
demonstrated that heat treatment had a profound effect
on the health-giving properties of milk. A loss of nutrients
other than vitamin C was demonstrated in subsequent studies.
One article, “The effect of heat on the solubility
of the calcium and phosphorus compounds in milk,” was
published in 1925 in the Journal
of Biological Chemistry. The
author’s conclusion was unequivocal: “There
is a loss in the soluble calcium and phosphorus contents
of the milk due to heat and the amount of the loss depends
upon the temperature to which the milk has been heated.”[xi]
Other studies showed that pasteurization caused the loss
of significant percentages of many of the B vitamins and
nearly all of the enzymes in milk.[xii]
Further compelling evidence of the superiority of raw
milk appeared in The Lancet in 1937, in a report on the
work of the medical officer to a group of orphanages. The
physician gave pasteurized milk for five years to one group
of 750 boys, while giving raw milk to another group of
750. All other conditions were alike except for this one
item. During that period, 14 cases of tuberculosis occurred
in the boys fed pasteurized milk, while only one occurred
in those fed raw milk. The article also discusses the dental
health of the children brought up on raw milk: “Dr.
Evelyn Sprawson of the London Hospital has recently stated
that in certain institutions children who were brought
up on raw milk (as opposed to pasteurized milk) had perfect
teeth and no decay. The result is so striking and unusual
that it will undoubtedly be made the subject of further
inquiry.”[xiii] [xiv] Instead, the report has been
conveniently forgotten.
Very little research was done after about 1950 on the
relative nutrient content of raw versus pasteurized milk.
The move toward universal pasteurization was in full swing
and interest in raw milk was waning in agricultural colleges
increasingly supported by dairy industry and agribusiness
funding. One study, however, published in the Journal
of Dairy Research in 1967, confirms much of the earlier research.
The authors were interested in finding ways to preserve
more of the vitamin content of milk during processing and
they made a number of interesting comments.
“On leaving the udder, milk quickly takes up oxygen
from the air,” they wrote. “During subsequent
processing and distribution, this dissolved oxygen promotes
oxidative changes that degrade several important nutrients
in the milk. Thus, though potentially milk could supply
an important fraction of the daily dietary requirement
for vitamin C, average market milk supplies relatively
little. Similarly with vitamin B12, much of which may be
destroyed during heat processing. Fresh milk is also in
fact a rich source of a form of folic acid. Like vitamin
B12 and ascorbic acid, the folic acid in milk is unstable
to heating.” How ironic to see these statements in
an industry publication some 50 years after pasteurization
had been presented by the milk industry as a purely beneficial
process that did not substantially alter the nutritional
value of milk.
In the second part of her three-part series “Why
Milk Pasteurization” in The
Rural New Yorker in 1947,
Jean Darlington documented the destruction by pasteurization
of a number of other nutrients in raw milk, including:
- The “anti-stiffness” factor in raw cream,
described in a 1941 American
Journal of Physiology article
by Rosland Wulzun.[xv]
- The “anti-anemia” factor present in milk
from specially fed cows, whose milk was sufficient to prevent
anemia in infants, whereas commercially pasteurized milk
was insufficient. This was detailed in a bulletin
of the Ohio Agricultural Experimental Station.[xvi]
- “Factor X,” described in a report from the
chief of the Bureau of Dairy Industry to the U.S. Secretary
of Agriculture in 1942 as an “important unidentified
growth-promoting material in milk.”[xvii]
- The factors responsible for the germicidal property
of raw milk, as described in the 1935 textbook Fundamentals
of Dairy Science.[xviii]
The published reports Darlington refers to represent only
a fraction of the many scientific studies that demonstrated
the superior nutritional value of raw versus pasteurized
milk. As she points out, the industry has found nothing
that challenges these findings. The US Public Health Service
and the medical, veterinary, pharmaceutical and processed
food establishments have brushed aside this evidence, admitting
only to a small loss of vitamin C from pasteurization.
Even this is said to be unimportant because other foods
provide vitamin C.
Many researchers have reported on the actual effects of
raw versus pasteurized milk in both human beings and animals.
A study of the growth of Scottish school children was published
in Nutrition Abstracts
and Reviews in 1931. [xix] Children
drinking raw milk had a significantly greater increase
in height and weight compared to those drinking pasteurized
milk. “ . . . pasteurized milk was only 66 percent
as effective as the raw milk in the case of boys and 91
percent as effective in the case of girls in inducing increases
in weight; and 50 percent as effective in boys and
70 percent as effective in girls in bringing about
increases in height.” The authors gave the following
explanation for the results, referring to another study
that had recently appeared in the Journal of Biological
Chemistry:
“Kramer, Latzke and Shaw obtained less favorable
calcium balances in adults with pasteurized milk than with ‘fresh
milk’ and made the further observation that milk
from cows kept in the barn for five months gave less favorable
calcium balances that did ‘fresh milk’ (herd
milk from a college dairy).”[xx]
To this evidence I will add that for over 25 years I have
prescribed raw milk from grassfed animals to hundreds of
my patients, with outstanding results and never a problem.
Raw milk may be the mainstay of a diet that reverses chronic
diseases of every nature.
Truth and Lies About Raw Milk
“The health of the people is really the foundation
upon which all their happiness and all their powers as
a state depend.” – Benjamin Disraeli, English
statesman and social reformer
At the end of World War II, 3.7 million of America’s
5.4 million farms had milk cows. Most still sold
raw milk directly to neighbors and through local distribution
channels, a situation that would change drastically under
relentless official pressure for compulsory pasteurization
of all milk. A series of articles in popular magazines
in 1944, 1945 and 1946 served to frighten the public into
support of these efforts. A side effect of this movement
was the demise of America’s small farms.
Ladies’ Home
Journal began the campaign with the article “Undulant
Fever,” claiming - without any accurate documentation
- that tens of thousands of people in the US were suffered
from fever and illness because of exposure to raw milk.[xxi]
The next year, Coronet magazine followed up with “Raw
Milk Can Kill You,” by Robert Harris, MD.[xxii] The
outright lies in this article were then repeated in similar
articles that appeared in The
Progressive[xxiii] and The
Reader’s Digest[xxiv] the following year.
The
author of the Coronet article represented as fact a town
and an epidemic that was entirely fictitious:
“Crossroads, U.S.A., is in one of those states
in the Midwest area called the bread basket and milk bowl
of America….What happened to Crossroads might happen
to your town - to your city - might happen almost anywhere
in America.” The author then gives a lurid account
of a frightful epidemic of undulant fever allegedly caused
by raw milk, an epidemic which “spread rapidly…it
struck one out of every four persons in Crossroads. Despite
the efforts of the two doctors and the State health department,
one out of every four patients died.”
But there was no Crossroads, and no epidemic! Author Harris
admitted this in a subsequent interview with J. Howard
Brown of Johns Hopkins University.[xxv] The outbreak was
fictitious and represented no actual occurrence. Harris’ own
public statements both before and after the Coronet article
show that not only was the article a complete fiction,
but that he knew that such a thing could not possibly happen.
In an article he wrote in 1941, Harris stated: “Mortality
in acute cases of undulant fever was formerly about two
percent, but this has been greatly lowered by modern methods.” [xxvi]
In a 1946 paper he read before the Maine Veterinary Medical
Association in Portland in 1946, he stated, “The
small proportion of deaths from acute illness, varying
from two to three percent, rarely higher, can be made almost,
if not quite zero.” [xxvii]
Official statistics of the US Public Health Service, which
compiles such information on a nationwide basis, show the
possible extent of any undulant fever problems associated
with raw milk in the years prior to the Harris article.
In the years from 1923 through 1944, there were recorded
in the entire United States 32 outbreaks of undulant fever
attributed to milk, with 256 cases and a total of three
deaths.[xxviii] [xxix] It is clear that Harris’ synthetic
epidemic had no counterpart in reality. The claim that “what
happened to Crossroads might happen to your town - to your
city - might happen almost anywhere in America” was
not only completely false but indeed malicious.
These claims and many others like them were repeated in
subsequent magazine articles read by tens of millions of
people, as well as in countless newspaper articles in the
ensuing years. Writing in The
Rural New Yorker in 1947,
Jean Bullitt Darlington made a particularly fine effort
to set the record straight with an article titled “Why
Milk Pasteurization? Sowing the Seeds of Fear.” [xxx]
Darlington exposes the lies and distortions in the magazine
articles referred to above.
Present day claims against raw milk are often more subtle
but no less vicious. This is best exemplified in the story
of Francis Pottenger.
Francis Pottenger MD, Raw Milk and “The Hazards
of a Health Fetish”
“Pasteurized homogenized
milk? Might as well drink water with chalk in it.”
- Dan Logue, Dairy Farmer, Woodbury, Connecticut for over
50 years
“People need this
milk. They want it real bad. You should hear the stories
they tell me.”
- Anonymous raw dairy farmer in a state that outlaws all
sales of raw milk
The impact of quoted work is often influenced by the reputation
of the person quoted. But what makes a reputation, in particular
that of a person who died many years ago? Certainly in
part the accuracy and importance of the written work left
behind. But when a person’s life and work is ignored
by most of society, much less maligned by prestigious segments,
reputation suffers. What yardstick may we use then to evaluate
the import of the life? We may be left with only our judgment
of the work itself. If the work is complex and perhaps
not readily available, as is Dr. Pottenger’s, making
that judgment may be difficult.
Thomas Hotchkiss knew Francis M. Pottenger from the time
Thomas was eleven years old in 1912. His “Personal
Memoir” of Francis, written after the doctor’s
death in 1967, is the source for many of the following
details about Pottenger’s life.[xxxi]
Two years before his death, Francis received the Distinguished
Alumnus Award at Otterbein College in Ohio. In presenting
the citation, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees praised
Francis’s distinguished career in medicine and public
service.
Service indeed. By the time he received that award, Francis
M. Pottenger, MD, had published over fifty peer-reviewed
articles in the scientific literature, mainly in the fields
of medicine, chronic disease and nutrition. He had served
as president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association,
the American Therapeutic Society and the American Academy
of Applied Nutrition. “Francis was among the first
in his profession to recognize the hazard to health caused
by air pollution in Los Angeles County,” Hotchkiss
wrote. “He worked indefatigably over a period of
many years to mitigate its deleterious effects upon human
health. His efforts were widely recognized and as a result
he became a member of the Los Angeles County Air Pollution
Control District’s Scientific Committee on Air Pollution.”
Pottenger received a rather unusual accolade for a medical
doctor. In 1951, the Texas State Dental Association honored
him with an award for the Advancement of the Science of
Dentistry in Texas. He had written a number of brilliant
articles on the effect of raw versus cooked foods, including
pasteurized milk, on the dental and facial structures of
animals and human beings. The articles had a powerful and
lasting impact on the many American physicians and dentists
who were actively interested in the effect of nutrition
on human health and disease.
In 1940, Francis founded the Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.
Hospital at Monrovia, California for the treatment of asthma
and other nontubercular diseases of the respiratory system.
And beginning in 1945, he was Assistant Clinical Professor
of Experimental Medicine at the University of Southern
California.
Dr. Pottenger also served as a volunteer as Medical Service
Chief for the Civil Defense Area surrounding his home during
World War II. Japanese invasion of the West Coast of America
was considered a real threat in the dark days just after
the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The project to set up
the first portable hospital in Los Angeles County under
simulated disaster conditions was directed by Pottenger.
In 1940 he began what became known as the Pottenger Cat
Study, the work that brought him fame. There’s no
money these days in making famous a man who proves the
value of raw foods; in the last forty years or so, Pottenger’s
fame in the conventional medical and nutritional establishment
has faded as surely as the stocks of processed food companies
have risen. Yet he remains an icon to those who understand
his work and its importance, particularly in relationship
to the work of Weston Price. Let’s look now at what
Pottenger had to say in one of his many professional papers,
and an example of how his work has not only been misunderstood,
but indeed sometimes deliberately misrepresented.
For
many years, advocates for raw milk have pointed to Pottenger’s
research as perhaps the most important proof of raw milk’s
benefits. Those who would outlaw all sales of raw milk
have meanwhile disparaged and distorted his work. An example
of the latter is found in an article titled “Unpasteurized
Milk-The Hazards of a Health Fetish” that appeared
in the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) on October 19, 1984.[xxxii] The choice of the word fetish
is interesting; one meaning of the word is “a thing
evoking irrational devotion or respect.” Let us see
whether Pottenger’s respect for unpasteurized milk
is indeed irrational.
The JAMA authors refer to a 1946 Pottenger article from
the American Journal of
Orthodontics and Oral Surgery, “The
Effect of Heat-Processed and Metabolized Vitamin D Milk
on the Dentofacial Structures of Experimental Animals.” [xxxiii] The
authors of the “Health Fetish” article state:
“Numerous
studies of the relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized
milk have been conducted in animals and humans, and no
differences were detectable. One animal study deserves
particular attention because a misrepresentation of the
results has become prominent in the raw milk folklore.
In 1946, Pottenger published a report about his observations
on cats fed varying combinations of raw and heat-treated
milk and raw and cooked meat. In his first and largest
series of experiments, Pottenger observed many diseases
in cats fed raw milk and cooked meat. Raw milk advocates
have erroneously cited this article as having reported
that disease occurred in cats fed pasteurized milk. Smaller
experiments in the same article showed that a diet of one-third
raw meat and two-thirds milk (pasteurized or not) did not
provide adequate nutrition for the cats.”
Based
on this quote, one might reasonably think that perhaps
the diseases Pottenger observed in the first series of
experiments were caused by raw milk, and that the smaller
experiments showed that raw milk was not superior nutritionally
to pasteurized milk. Publication in so prestigious a journal
by two medical doctors and two veterinarians lends further
weight to the pronouncements.
The Cat Study
Let
us examine what Pottenger actually had to say in his article.
“In
the first series of experiments, one group of cats was
fed a diet of two-thirds raw meat, one-third raw milk and
cod-liver oil. The second group was fed a diet of two-thirds
cooked meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil. Within
the ten-year period, approximately nine hundred cats were
studied. The amount of data accumulated is large.
“The
cats receiving raw meat and raw milk reproduced in homogeneity
from one generation to the next. Abortion was uncommon
and the mother cats nursed their young in a normal manner.
The cats had good resistance to vermin, infections and
parasites. They behaved in a predictable manner. Their
organic development was complete and functioned normally.
“Cats
receiving the cooked-meat scraps reproduced a heterogeneous
strain of kittens, each kitten of the litter being different
in skeletal pattern. Abortion in these cats was common,
running about 25 per cent in the first generation to about
70 per cent in the second generation. Deliveries were in
general difficult, many cats dying in labor. Mortality
rates of the kittens were high, frequently due to the failure
of the mother to lactate. The kittens were often too frail
to nurse.”
Based
on this quote, one might reasonably conclude that the problems
observed were due to differences in the nutrition provided
by raw versus cooked meats. We see here how a true statement
in the “Health Fetish” article (“Pottenger
observed many diseases in cats fed raw milk and cooked
meat”) may be placed in a context designed to lead
the reader into making false conclusions.
The next half-truth is even more subtle: “Smaller
experiments in the same article showed that a diet of one-third
raw meat and two-thirds milk (pasteurized or not) did not
provide adequate nutrition for the cats”. Further
examination of Pottenger’s article is required to
understand the subterfuge involved.
Again quoting Pottenger: “We did three other series
of feeding experiments. In these series we used the following
kinds of milk: raw milk, raw metabolized vitamin D milk,
pasteurized milk, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed
milk. Roughly, our results corresponded with those of the
previous experiments; animals on raw milk and raw meat
reproduced a homogenous strain, the usual causes of natural
death being old age or injuries from fighting.
“The
male cats fed on [raw] metabolized vitamin D milk (from
cattle fed irradiated yeast) and raw meat showed osseous
disturbances very like those on pasteurized milk…Young
males did not live beyond the second month, and adult males
died within ten months….The cats fed pasteurized
milk as their principal item of diet, and raw meat as a
partial diet, showed lessened reproductive efficiency in
the females, and some skeletal changes, while the kittens
presented deficiencies in development….Later, we
made a comparative study of several types of milk on white
rats, the general results of which coincided with those
found in the cats.”
We
see that Pottenger’s own words describe clearly the
superior value of raw versus pasteurized milk for the animals.
Yet the “Health Fetish” authors statement that “a
diet of one-third raw meat and two-thirds milk (pasteurized
or not) did not provide adequate nutrition for the cats” is
strictly speaking true, because of the use of the phrase “pasteurized
or not.” One experiment used raw metabolized vitamin
D milk, and like the pasteurized, evaporated, and sweetened
condensed milks, this resulted in diseased animals. The
metabolized vitamin D (a synthetic form of the vitamin
present in the milk because the cows had been fed irradiated
yeast) proved to be so toxic that it overrode the benefits
of the otherwise optimal all-raw diet that were obtained
in the animals fed plain raw milk. Thus one type of milk
that was not pasteurized had indeed not provided adequate
nutrition. Had the “Health Fetish” authors
used the phrase “pasteurized or raw,” the statement
would have been false, because the word raw would be referring
to both raw milks tested - the raw metabolized-vitamin-D
milk that did not provide adequate nutrition, and the plain
raw milk that did. The choice of the word “not” makes
the distortion possible without actually making a false
statement. Very clever indeed. There is no discussion of
the toxicity of the synthetic vitamin D in the “Health
Fetish” article, and no mention of the sparkling
health seen in generation after generation of cats fed
raw meat and raw milk free of synthetic vitamin D.
The “Health
Fetish” authors make one other statement that may
not be called an untruth, yet is obviously designed to
lead one to false conclusions: “Raw milk advocates
have erroneously cited this article as having reported
that disease occurred in cats fed pasteurized milk.” I’ll
repeat what Pottenger reported: “The cats fed pasteurized
milk as their principal item of diet, and raw meat as a
partial diet, showed lessened reproductive efficiency in
the females, and some skeletal changes, while the kittens
presented deficiencies in development.” Pottenger
indeed does not use the word “disease” here
or anywhere else in this article in reference to animals
fed pasteurized milk (the article is about effects on the
dental and facial structures of the animals). Yet his finding
of the superiority of raw versus pasteurized milk is clearly
presented. In fact, in one experiment described briefly,
13 cats fed pasteurized milk all died within several months.
The “Health
Fetish” authors make no mention of a number of other
relevant findings published in the Pottenger article. For
example, an autopsy photograph shows the internal organs
of a cat that had been fed a diet of one-third raw meat
and two-thirds pasteurized milk for eight months before
being sacrificed. The caption reads, “Note poor tone
of skin and inferior quality of fur. Fair heart. Slight
fatty atrophy of the liver. Lack of intestinal tone: moderated
distension of uterus. Note the disturbance of the skin
with a shift from the creamy color of the raw-milk fed
cat to the purplish discoloration of congestion.”
In contrast, another photograph shows the internal organs
of a cat fed a diet of one-third raw meat and two-thirds
raw milk all of its life. The caption reads, “Note
excellent condition of fur and creamy yellow subcutaneous
tissue with high vascularity. Moderate heart size. Good
liver, firm intestines, and resting uterus. Note the muscle
of the raw-milk-fed animal has a deeper red color and appears
more vascular that that of the animals receiving the heat-processed
milks.”
Another experiment began with 13 cats in excellent health
that had been raised on raw meat and raw milk. A table
is used to show how long these cats lived after being placed
on a diet of one-third raw meat and two-thirds pasteurized
milk. The average length of life for the males is 4 months
11 days, for the females 3 months 27 days. The calcium
to phosphorous ratio of each cat’s femur (thighbone)
is shown, and all are abnormal.
Two X-ray photographs depict the results of another experiment
that used two rats, one fed raw milk (rat A) and the other
pasteurized (rat B). The caption for the raw-milk animal
reads, “Note advanced maturity, greater diameter
and length of the olecranon process [part of the elbow]
of the ulna [the long bone in the foreleg].” The
caption for the pasteurized milk animal reads, “Note
smaller olecranon process and delayed maturity when compared
with rat A.”
Another photograph shows a number of bones from one of
the cats, previously healthy, that died four months after
being placed on the one-third-raw-meat and two-thirds-pasteurized-milk
diet. The caption reads, “Note missing teeth, chalky
appearance of bone, squaring of the bases of teeth and
marked root resorption. Osteoporosis. Lack of completion
of orbital arches [the orbit is the eye socket]. Malar
bones [the cheek bones] have become separated at suture
lines [where the bones come together].”
An X-ray of the jaw of a living cat fed the raw-meat/raw-milk
diet all of its life is presented. The caption reads, “Normal
jaw structure, good distribution of trabeculae [part of
the bony structure], well developed condyle [a knob at
the end of the bone], and well developed pterygoid process
[a little outgrowth of bone] of the mandible [jaw bone].
Alveolar crest [the alveolus is the bony socket for the
root of a tooth] of normal height; even distribution of
teeth.”
My object here is not to give a lesson in anatomy, but
rather to make accessible to the reader some of the details
of Pottenger’s findings. In this article he focused
primarily on the effects of heat-processed foods, including
pasteurized milk, on the bones and jaws of his experimental
animals because the article was written for a dental journal.
In many other articles published over the course of some
fifteen years, he emphasizes the diseases that result in
cats and other animals when fed diets that include pasteurized
milk.
Another statement by the “Health Fetish” authors
deserves further comment: “Numerous studies of the
relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized milk
have been conducted in animals and humans, and no differences
were detectable.” This appears to be a simple statement
of fact. Since in reality numerous studies of the relative
nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized milk conducted
in animals and humans have shown clearly the nutritional
superiority of raw milk, one is tempted to declare the “Health
Fetish” statement to be untrue. But in fact it is
a true statement! Now how can that be? To answer this question,
we must do a little exercise in logic.
Examine these two statements:
1. “Numerous studies
of the relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized
milk have been conducted in animals and humans, and no differences were detectable.”
2. “Numerous
studies of the relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized
milk have been conducted in animals and humans, and vast differences were detectable.”
It appears that if one statement is true, the other must
be false, right? Wrong! Both statements may be true - it
all depends on what “numerous studies” the
writer is referring to, and when he doesn’t tell
us, he isn’t pinned down. Even if the writer is aware
of numerous studies that favor both sides of the argument,
statements 1 and 2 may both be defended as true statements
(in a court of law, for example, or in a subsequent article).
Understanding this element of logic is necessary when writers
employ logical tricks. Young people who go on to medical
school usually study logic as undergraduates.
Notice that although the authors refer to Pottenger’s
animal study in the very next sentence, they carefully
do not say it is one of the “numerous studies” to
which they have just referred. We get the impression that
it is, of course. But they do not say this, for to do so
would be false; as we have seen, Pottenger’s study
undeniably shows the nutritional superiority of raw milk
as compared to pasteurized.
But it is almost as though someone played a game of perverse
(dare I say fetishistic?) logic, devising technically true
statements which would disguise Pottenger’s findings,
distort the meaning of his words and trick the reader into
false conclusions. I’ve studied Pottenger’s
work for over twenty years, and it took me hours to untangle
the web I’ve described.
It is indeed a fact that a number of researchers supported
by grants from the dairy industry have published research
that claimed to find no significant differences in the
relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized milk.
In other parts of this book I detail reasons to question
the validity of research funded by corporate money or conducted
by individuals funded by corporations. No references are
given for the “numerous studies” mentioned
above, so it is not possible to examine them.
The “Health Fetish” authors carefully avoided
any simple, straightforward statement to the effect of, “None
of the reasonable studies in animals or humans of which
we are aware have shown that there is a significant difference
in the relative nutritional merits of raw and pasteurized
milk.” They also avoided words to the effect of “The
Pottenger study under discussion showed no significant
difference in the relative nutritional merits of raw and
pasteurized milk.” Either statement would have been
patently false, because scores of reasonable studies, obviously
including this Pottenger study, and many others examined
in this book, demonstrate the nutritional superiority of
raw versus pasteurized milk.
We’ve
seen that the “Health Fetish” authors used
technically (logically) true statements to completely distort
Dr. Pottenger’s findings. Only careful study of Pottenger’s
article would allow the choice of precisely the right words
to accomplish this while avoiding making false statements.
We may hope that the authors gained considerable understanding
of Pottenger’s work and its implications for the
health of people everywhere. Perhaps they may someday use
that knowledge in the way Dr. Pottenger intended.
Raw Milk is Best
Pottenger
concludes his article with possible explanations for his
findings, referencing his words to physiology textbooks
and articles by other scientists: “What vital elements
were destroyed in the heat processing of the foods fed
the cats? The precise factors are not known. Ordinary cooking
precipitates proteins, rendering them less easily digested.
All tissue enzymes are heat labile and would be materially
reduced or destroyed. Vitamin C and some members of the
B complex are injured by the process of cooking. Minerals
are rendered less soluble by altering their physiochemical
state. It is possible that the alteration of the physicochemical
state of the foods may be all that is necessary to render
them imperfect foods for the maintenance of health. It
is our impression that the denaturing of proteins by heat
is one factor responsible. The principles of growth and
development are easily altered by heat and oxidation, which
kill living cells at every stage of the life process, from
the soil through the plant, and through the animal.”
Dr.
Pottenger’s work leaves us with clear indications
that there is no better food than raw milk from grass-fed
animals. The clear and present danger is that “experts” such
as the health fetish article authors wield unjustified
influence with physicians and public health authorities – influence
based largely on false representations. Understanding the
truth about Pottenger’s work and the value of raw
milk is an important step in regaining our health.
Wealth, Power and Raw Milk
Raw
milk sales had been outlawed or severely restricted in
virtually every state, and the total number of farms has
shrunk to less than 2 million; less than 100,000 have milk
cows. Most of those cows spend most of their time in confinement
facilities. According to the textbook Dairy
Cattle Science, “Nearly
40 percent of all dairy cows have some form of mastitis.” (Mastitis
is inflammation of the mammary glands; these are not healthy
cows.)
The
story of what’s happened to quality milk is same
as the story of what’s happened to America’s
farmers. Both have been mostly eliminated, marginalized
by a culture that has allowed corporations to promote the
big lie that the processing of natural foods has nothing
to do with the epidemic of disease that cripples our society.
Corporate spokespersons for the food, drug and medical
industries have used billions of dollars – a drop
in the bucket compared to their profits – to convince
most of us that this rape has been carried out for our
own good. “Food safety,” cry the corporations
and their media and government lackeys. Farmers who would
sell fresh raw milk and meat raised and slaughtered on
the farm would endanger the public. Meanwhile, as Eric
Schlosser has so elegantly written of the nation’s
commercial food supply in Fast
Food Nation, “There’s
shit in the meat.” The Center for Disease control
estimates that over a quarter of all Americans come down
with food poisoning each year.
Meanwhile
all foods rich in cholesterol are maligned as dangerous.
Cholesterol is a red herring. The best foods in the world
come from healthy animals. Civilization was built on meat
and raw milk. The studies that purport to show that cholesterol
in foods is dangerous have been manipulated, misinterpreted
and propagandized by the drug industry to dupe doctors
and the public into buying billions of dollars worth of
dangerous drugs. Every year, corporations and a wealthy
few grow richer, while many Americans struggle and many
more just get by. Thirty-five million people now live below
the government’s admittedly low poverty line. We
can only guess how many millions would love to have a small
family farm if it could support even a modest lifestyle.
It’s never been easy for farmers, and the rich getting
richer and the poor getting poorer is nothing new. Class
lines grew throughout colonial times; by 1700 fifty rich
families in Virginia lived off the labor of slaves and
servants, owned the plantations, sat on the governor’s
council, and served as magistrates. In Maryland, the English
king had granted total control over the colony to a proprietor
who ruled the settlers. In the Carolinas, a constitution
was written in the 1600s by John Locke, often considered
the philosophical father of the Founding Fathers and the
American system. Locke’s constitution set up a feudal-type
aristocracy, in which eight barons would own 40 percent
of the colony’s land, and only a baron could be governor.
In New York, the Dutch set up a patroonship system along
the Hudson River, with enormous landed estates, where the
barons controlled completely the lives of their tenants.
By 1770, the top one percent of property owners in the
Massachusetts colony owned 44 percent of the wealth. “The
country therefore was not ‘born free’ but born
slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord,
poor and rich,” as Howard Zinn wrote in A
People’s
History of the United States. For all that has changed
in the last 200-plus years, in America today, the richest
one percent still own thirty percent of the wealth.
What has all this to do with raw milk? Just this: the
same repressive, reactionary forces that have concentrated
power and wealth into the hands of a few have outlawed
raw milk and destroyed the ability of small farms to survive
and thrive – and ushered in the epidemic of heart
disease, cancer and other chronic problems plaguing the
modern world.
Raw milk is the key to the health crisis, the farm crisis,
the economic crisis, the small town crisis, even the environmental
crisis, the political crisis and the educational crisis.
Farmers who could freely advertise and sell raw milk and
its products, and fresh quality meats, free of government
intervention and hassles, could prosper, and their communities
could blossom. The restoration of our individual and national
health could become reality.
[i] , King James Version, Crusade Bible Publishers, Nashville,
1975.
[ii] Grohman, Joann S. Keeping a Family Cow. Dixfield,
Maine: Coburn Press, 1981, 272.
[iii] Ibid., 1.
[iv] Hartley, Robert M. An Historical, Scientific and
Practical Essay on Milk as an Article of Human Sustenance.
New York, J. Leavitt, 1842, 25.
[v] Crumbine, Samuel, and Tobey, James. The Most Nearly
Perfect Food. Baltimore: Williams Wilkins Co., 1930,
58-9.
[vi] Quoted in Grohman, 13.
[vii] Grohman, 4-5.
[viii] Crewe, J. R. “Raw Milk Cures Many Diseases,” Certified
Milk Magazine, January, 1929, 3-6.
[ix] Crewe, J. R. “Raw Milk Cures Many Diseases,” Certified
Milk Magazine, January, 1929, 3-6.
[x] Hess AF. Infantile scurvy: its influence on growth.
The American Journal of Diseases of Children, August 1916,
152-165.
[xi] Bell, RW. The effect of heat on the solubility of
the calcium and phosphorus compounds in milk. The Journal
of Biological Chemistry, June 1925, Vol. 64, No. 2, 391-400.
[xii] Darlington, Jean Bullitt. “Why Milk Pasteurization,
Part II: Plowing Under the Truth.” The Rural New
Yorker, May 3, 1947, p. 4-5.
[xiii] The Lancet, May 8, 1937, 1142.
[xiv] Thomson, James C. “Pasteurized Milk, A National
Menace: A Plea for Cleanliness.” In The Kingston
Chronicle, Edinburgh, 1943, p. 5.
[xv] Bahrs AM and Wulzen R; Proceedings of the American
Physiology Society, Chicago, Illinois; American Journal
of Physiolgy, 1941. In Darlington.
[xvi] Krauss WE et al. Studies on the nutritive value
of milk II: The effect of pasteurization on some of the
nutritive properties of milk. Ohio Agricultural Experimental
Station Bulletin 518, p. 11, January 1933.
[xvii] Report of Chief, Bureau of Dairy Industry to U.S.
Secretary of Agriculture, p. 13, 1942. In Darlington.
[xviii] Rogers Associates, Fundamentals of Dairy Science,
2nd Edition, pp. 27 and 281, Reinhold Publishing Co., New
York, 1935.
[xix] Fisher RA and Bartlett S. Nutrition Abstracts and
Reviews October 1931, Vol. 1, 224. In Krauss WE et al.
Studies on the nutritive value of milk, II: The effect
of pasteurization on some of the nutritive properties of
milk. Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 519,
January 1933, p. 8.
[xx] Kramer MM et al. A comparison of raw, pasteurized,
evaporated and dried milks as sources of calcium and phosphorus
for the human subject. Journal of Biological Chemistry,
79: 283-290, 1928. In Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station
Bulletin 519, January 1933, p. 8.
[xxi] Mackaye, Milton. “Undulant Fever.” Ladies
Home Journal, December 1944.
[xxii] Harris, Harold J. “Raw Milk Can Kill You.” Coronet,
May 1945.
[xxiii] Harvey, Holman. “How Safe Is Your Town’s
Milk?” The Progressive, July 15, 1946.
[xxiv] Harvey, Holman. “How Safe Is Your Town’s
Milk?” The Reader’s Digest, August 1946.
[xxv] Darlington, Jean Bullitt. “Why Milk Pasteurization,
Part I: Sowing the Seeds of Fear.” The Rural New
Yorker, March 15, 1947.
[xxvi] Harris, Harold J. “The Raw Milk Menace.” Hygeia,
March 1941, 250. In ibid.
[xxvii] Harris, Harold J. “Brucellosis.” Journal
of the American Medical Association, 1946, Vol. 131, No.
18, 1485-1493.
[xxviii] U.S. Public Health Service. “Summary of
Milk-Borne Disease Outbreaks, 1923-1941.” In Darlington.
[xxix] U.S. Public Health Service. “Disease Outbreaks
Conveyed Through Milk and Milk Products in the U.S., 1942,
1943, 1944.” In Darlington.
[xxx] Darlington, Jean Bullitt. “Why Milk Pasteurization,
Part I: Sowing the Seeds of Fear.” The Rural New
Yorker, March 15, 1947.
[xxxi] Hotchkiss, Thomas. A Personal Memoir of Francis
M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D. The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation,
1975.
[xxxii] Potter, M., Kaufmann, A., Blake, P., and Feldman,
R. “Unpasteurized Milk - The Hazards of a Health
Fetish.” The Journal of the American Medical Association,
Vol. 252, No. 15, 2048-2052, October 19, 1984.
[xxxiii] Pottenger, F.M., Jr. “The Effect of Heat-Processed
and Metabolized Vitamin D Milk on the Dentofacial Structures
of Experimental Animals.” American Journal of Orthodontics
and Oral Surgery, Vol. 32, No. 8, 467-485, August, 1946.
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, and is
on the Honorary Board of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
He is also the manufacturer of 100% pure, additive free
nutritional supplements. Dr. Schmid is the author of Traditional
Foods Are Your Best Medicine, first published in 1986.
Please contact our office by phone (1-877-472-8701)
or by e-mail if you
are interested in more information
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