The udder truth

Raw milk really is a wonder tonic, say devotees, who meet secretly to buy it and swear it reverses chronic diseases. But is it safe to drink? The official word: No.

By Hannah Wallace

Read more: FDA, Cheese, Life, Eat and Drink

Jan. 19, 2007 | Thirty-four-year-old Brigitta Jansen, a statuesque brunette with radiant skin, is no stranger to unpasteurized milk. She grew up in a tiny German village, where she and her grandmother, pails in hand, would fetch milk fresh from a neighbor's farm. But over the years, after moving to a bigger town and then, ultimately, to New York City, she unthinkingly switched to pasteurized milk, which was more convenient and easier to find.

Two years ago, however, while pregnant with her first child, the eczema that had always plagued her got a lot worse. "My skin grew so sensitive. I would stand in the shower and scratch my arms and legs," Jansen says. After a lengthy Internet search, she came across the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes the nutritional philosophies of a Canadian dentist who advocated eating traditional foods such as grass-fed beef and raw dairy products. Price's 1939 book, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration," showed -- with photographic evidence of implausibly straight and cavity-free teeth -- how the nutritionally rich diets of so-called primitive cultures were far healthier than the diets of Western industrial nations.

Jansen bought "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and read it cover to cover. After that, "I had to have raw milk," she says. And through the New York City chapter of the WAPF, now 600 members strong, she found a farmer who produced it. After a few months of drinking the milk on a daily basis, Jansen's eczema was gone. She guzzled it throughout her pregnancy and now that she's breast-feeding, craves it even more. "I drink about a quart a day," Jansen says, laughing.

Jansen is part of a growing movement of health-conscious consumers who say that unpasteurized milk -- as long as it's from grass-fed cows -- is capable of reversing chronic diseases from asthma to irritable bowel syndrome. According to raw milk devotees, pasteurization -- which zaps the milk to 145 degrees (or even higher with ultra-pasteurization) -- destroys vitamins A, B12 and C as well as beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus, enzymes such as phosphatase (which facilitates proper calcium absorption), and an anti-arthritis compound called the Wulzen Factor. Lactobacillus, in turn, breaks down into lactase, an enzyme that helps people digest lactose, making raw milk easier for even the lactose-intolerant to imbibe.

Many people come to raw milk as a last resort; one man I spoke to for this article had terrible asthma, one woman had debilitating arthritis, and another had osteoporosis (which pasteurized milk hadn't improved) -- and all saw complete reversals of their diseases after a few months of drinking it. Their stories were persuasive, but in an age where E. coli is turning up at Taco Bell and even in organic spinach, I wondered: Is it really safe to drink unpasteurized milk?

In a word: no. A scan of the CDC's Web site turns up several recent bacterial outbreaks traced to raw milk: Last year in Washington and Oregon, four children were sickened by E. coli O157:H7; in 2002, there was a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype typhimurium; and in Wisconsin, in 2001, 70 people were infected with Campylobacter jejuni. Such outbreaks were the reason pasteurization was introduced in the first place, of course (it was only an added benefit that the process also extended milk's shelf life). As early as 1908, cities such as Chicago and New York required the pasteurization of milk -- and in 1948, Michigan became the first state to ban raw milk. Today, though pasteurization is not compulsory on a national level, it is required of any dairy hoping to ship its wares across state lines and has become the law in states that have adopted the Food and Drug Administration's pasteurized milk ordinance, an operating manual for the handling and production of milk. Public health officials unanimously agree that pasteurization has dramatically reduced infectious diseases.

Still, despite the risks, remarkable recovery stories like Jansen's abound -- and demand for raw milk is increasing. The Weston A. Price Foundation, founded by nutrition activist Sally Fallon in 1999, already has 400 chapters around the world and more than 9,000 members. According to Fallon, anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 people join each month. "People are sick and searching for answers -- and they're getting better," Fallon says. Pam Laine, a 45-year-old from Silicon Valley, was headed toward diabetes when she began drinking raw milk. "It eliminated all my cravings for sweets, refined foods and alcohol," she told me. "My blood sugar levels are now normalized." A 53-year-old New Jersey man I spoke to was so impressed with his own turnaround on raw milk (he was diagnosed with hepatitis C, with viral counts at 15 million, and after nine months of drinking it, the virus was undetectable) that he starting giving it to his four grandchildren, all of whom had asthma. "This is the first winter they're not getting sick," says the man, who asked to remain anonymous, since raw milk is illegal in New Jersey. "They don't need their inhalers anymore."

It's hard to ignore such compelling anecdotal evidence -- even as the FDA, the American Medical Association and most of the scientific community caution that raw milk contains deadly pathogens. Despite the recent outbreaks of E. coli in the American food supply, none of the raw milk drinkers I spoke with were concerned about bacteria lurking in their milk. "I'm from Europe," Jansen told me. "I wasn't brainwashed about stuff like that." Instead, people spoke of "lusting" after the rich, creamy, "living" milk and knowing and trusting the dairy farmers that produce it. Some compared living without raw milk to being deprived of a vital medication. Laine, the near-diabetic, said, "If I can't get my one-half to one quart per day, I feel the sweet cravings begin to return. Traveling can be a problem for me."

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It's a Wednesday night in a brick office building near Manhattan's Union Square, and a cross-section of New Yorkers -- a Dominican family from the Bronx, an African-American woman in her 30s and a young mother with an Australian accent -- are traipsing up a stairwell with empty bags and boxes in hand. On the second floor, a hipster couple in their 30s inquire about a delivery of colostrum, while an elderly woman steps gingerly over a cooler full of half-gallon jugs of milk.

A few times a month, members of this private "milk club" come here (and to several other drop-off locations across the city) to pick up raw milk and other natural foods -- like grass-fed meat, organic vegetables and fermented foods such as kim chee, sauerkraut and kvaas -- that they've ordered directly from local farmers. Their reasons for seeking out the milk are as diverse as the members themselves -- some are chefs who crave the quality and rich flavor, or immigrants who miss the raw dairy of their homeland, or people of all income levels with health problems, or problems digesting pasteurized milk, who find that raw dairy helps. The timing of deliveries is not publicly advertised, and members learn about drop-offs and sites a few weeks in advance on the club's Web site.

While such clubs may be reminiscent of Prohibition-era speakeasies, what their patrons are doing is not technically illegal. Each state has the right to regulate its own raw milk -- though the FDA banned the sale of raw milk across state lines in 1987 -- and in New York state, on-farm purchases of raw milk are legal. The difference is that, rather than commute to the country fields for their weekly fix, milk club members place their orders over the phone with the dairy and mail their checks. The club then hires a middleman to deliver the prepaid orders to the city.

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