More About Raw Milk

My mother, Carolyn Lee wrote the following article based on the material in the references at the bottom of this posting. We have her to thank for putting a tremendous amount of time and effort into doing this. She does this for the health and freedom of all Americans.

If you have not yet read the other posting Raw Milk - A Health Freedom Issue, I recommend doing so. You can access it here.

Cows and Grass Help with Global Warming
For encouraging information about how COWS and GRASS could help solve the Global Warming problem by taking atmospheric carbon and putting it back into the Earth, see this blog posting, here, here, and here.

Return to the What Are the Issues? blog here.
Sandra

Health Freedom: the Battle over Milk

"Congressman Ron Paul introduced HR4077 on November 7, 2007, a bill to 'authorize the interstate traffic of unpasteurized milk and milk products in final package form for human consumption when the milk or milk product originates in a State that allows the sale of unpasteurized milk and milk products in final form'.

The purpose of the bill is to initiate the elimination of the federal regulation (21 CFR 1240.61) that prohibits raw milk and raw milk products for human consumption in interstate commerce. This regulation has hindered the ability of raw milk dairies to market their products; and it has made it more difficult for consumers to find sources of raw milk.

As the FDA's warnings increasingly fall on deaf ears, the regulation looks more vulnerable to a challenge. Getting rid of it would remove a major obstacle to prosperity for small dairy farms. HR4077 has been referred to the House Committtee on Energy and Commerce." (Wise Traditions, vol. 9, number 1, Spring 2008, p. 90)

Milk: Nature's Finest Health Food
Human societies on six continents have been nourished by the milk of various ruminant animal herds for thousands of years. Many made butter and cheese. Most of them consumed their milk in some fermented form, such as clabbered (soured) milk, kefir, or yogurt. In fact, one could say that these wonderful animals, who have the astonishing ability to turn indigestible grass into a glorious foodstuff for humans, have enabled entire civilizations to grow and prosper.

When you do a little research, you find that untreated, unprocessed milk, preferably from a grass-fed cow (or goat), has wonderful growth-promoting and healing properties. After all, isn't that what mother nature created milk for, to nurture and protect the young of many species? That's why breast milk is recommended for babies. Of course, new mothers who are poorly nourished produce poorer quality breast milk, as we are what we eat. (You can find a great deal of information about the proper nutrition for expectant mothers and new mothers at the Weston A. Price Foundation website, if this is a subject that interests you.)

In fact, it was the medical community that fought the hardest to preserve their patients' access to raw milk in the early days of the battle over milk, as fresh, whole milk was a highly recommended cure for many illnesses in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Milk was recommended for patients suffering from tuberculosis, heart disease, edema, obesity, high blood pressure, prostate problems, diabetes, all manner of gastric disorders, worms, allergies, to name just a few of the conditions helped by raw milk. Present-day health practitioners have added asthma, autism, neuralgia, brain and nervous disorders, paralysis, ulcers, periodontal disease, and liver, kidney, and bladder diseases to the list. Raw milk is curative because it contains essential amino acids (proteins) very similar in composition to those in human milk; various important enzymes; growth factors; immunoglobulins (antibodies); anti-bacterial factors; anti-viral agents; plus every vitam in and mineral known to be needed by the human body.

Has anyone ever died from drinking raw milk?

The answer to this question can be found on p.27 of Joann S. Grohman's book, Keeping a Family Cow, c. 2006, Coburn Press:

"But to keep things in perspective, when it comes to the safety of raw milk, it's reassuring to know that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which has tracked disease from many sources for many decades has no record of anyone of any age dying as a result of having drunk unpasteurized milk.

Untreated (raw) milk has considerable bacteriostatic activity (it destroys bacteria all by itself). When promptly chilled, contamination would have to be massive to cause illness. Once soured by harmless or benign acid loving bacteria, as for yogurt or cottage cheese making, or by ordinary room temperature souring (clabbering) when exposed to air, the acidity goes to work on the harmful bacteria, knocking them out rapidly. During the aging of hard cheese they are also destroyed."

Modern Factory Dairy Farming
Now, if unprocessed milk -- or raw milk -- from grass-fed cows is such a perfectly natural and healthy food, why is the government so intent on preventing consumers from buying it? Why all the resistance at the state level, nationwide? Why all the intimidation of raw milk farmers? What is really going on here? Why is the federal government so insistent that the U.S. milk supply continue to be pasteurized, when clearly pasteurization is no longer necessary, due to modern technology and sanitation procedures? Could the answers be money and corporate control of our food supply? I think so!

You see, dairy farming just isn't what it used to be. It's factory farming, in confined operations, just like pig and chicken farming nowadays. Giant conglomerates produce more and more of this nation's milk, with many operations holding thousands of cows, often in overcrowded conditions. Their cows live in the most unnatural conditions possible for a ruminant animal who mother nature designed to eat grass, then lie down in that grass for hours to digest that meal and to sleep. They eat grains and other feedstocks that their digestive systems weren't meant to handle. Most have to sit or stand on a cement floor for the greater part of their shortened lifespans. They're pumped full of antibiotics, because they often get mastitis, an infection of the udders, and have laminitis, a painful inflammation of the hooves, because of the hours they spend on hard concrete. Now, how nourishing do you think th eir mik is going to be?

Thomas Jefferson would truly be appalled, if he could see how we Americans have turned our backs on our family farmers, whom he considered to be the backbone of this country. We have allowed the small landholder, the caretaker of ten to thirty acres, to be displaced by large agricultural corporate interests whose intent is the absolute control and ownership of this entire nation's food supply. It's up to us, individually and as a collective, to take that power back from them. We will all pay the price of less and less choice, and poorer health, if we don't.

The battle over raw milk is a key component of that struggle. Right now, most dairy farmers are not permitted to market their milk freely. They are forced to sell their milk to consortiums, under government-regulated, fixed contracts. This must change. Also, in 1986, an FDA ruling banned the interstate shipment of raw milk, butter, and cream across state lines. This is the ruling that HR4077 attempts to overturn. Finally, at the present time, officials in every state are pushing for laws banning all raw milk sales, strongly supported by the CDC and FDA, citing false, misleading, and erroneous data.

It has been demonstrated that a thirty-acre farm can be completely self-sustaining, ecologically beneficial, and provide its owner with a generous living and the local community with healthy food, if the farming methods now being taught to small, grass-feeding farmers are employed. This is a threat to the mega-corporations. They can see the consumer moving more and more toward local farmers and small-scale sustainability, and they are using our government, as they always have, to give them the edge. If they can keep the independent, small farmer from selling his wares to the public, they can squeeze him out of the food production loop and put him out of business for once and for all. Only the voices of millions of consumers can stop this from happening.

How can you help?

Tell your Congressperson to support Ron Paul's bill, HR 4077. Ask him/her to co-sponsor it. Be sure to send them this information first, and ask them to look into the truth of the matter.

Tell your local and state legislators to sponsor legislation guaranteeing consumers in your state access to certified raw milk, if it is not available at this time. Make the effort to educate them as well. After a century of falsehoods, and propaganda about the benefits of pasteurization, you can't expect cooperation from public officials at any level of government until they are better informed.

Fortunately, that information is readily available from the following organizations:

1. A Campaign for Real Milk, realmilk.com;

2. The Weston A. Price Foundation, westonaprice.org; and the

3. Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, ftcldf.org.

Please consider making a donation to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Raw milk farmers are under attack nationwide. They need legal assistance badly, as do other small family farmers. And we need them desperately, as they are our best hope for clean, nourishing, unprocessed, and locally-grown food in the future.

Recommended Reading:

The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows, and Raw Dairy Foods,

by Ron Schmid, N.D., c. 2003, New Trends Publishing, Inc.

Keeping a Family Cow, by Joann S. Grohman, c. 2006, Coburn Press, Dixfield, Maine.

Milk Diet as a Remedy for Chronic Disease, by Dr. Charles Sanford Porter, M.D., and additions by Heather A. Zimmerman, c. 2005, published by God's Whey, LLC. (262) 692-3086.

The Raw Truth About Milk (formerly The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is not Pasteurized), by William Campbell Douglas II, M.D., c. 2007, Rhino Publishing, rhinopublish.com.

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, 8th edition, by Weston A. Price, D.D.S., c. 2008, the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, price-pottenger.org, (619) 462-7600.
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If you have not yet read the other posting Raw Milk - A Health Freedom Issue, access it here.

Cows and Grass Help with Global Warming
For encouraging information about how COWS and GRASS could help solve the Global Warming problem by taking atmospheric carbon and putting it back into the Earth, see this blog posting, here, here, and here.

Return to the What Are the Issues? blog here.