Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows, the Ultimate Sacred Food

Wise Traditions 2009 1

Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows, the Ultimate Sacred

Food

Ted F. Beals, MS,MD

Honoring the Sacred Foods

Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows, the Ultimate Sacred Cows, the Ultimate Sacred

FoodFood

Ted F. Beals, MS,MD

Honoring the Sacred Foods


There is nearly unanimous agreement, supported by unquestioned science that breast milk is the best food for the newborn baby.

Suckled milk is designed to be the only source of nutrition and water for a significant period of growth and critical development in the newborn.

Likewise there is overwhelming agreement that milk should be a consistent component of our diets throughout life.


I have seen nothing that disputes these

statements.

Not in the dozens of Power Point Presentations, Media Releases, Editorial Comments, Invited

Review Papers, Staged Milk Safety Conferences, and Invited Professional Association Declarations


Over untold generations of human development the persistent

consumption of milk has become integrated into the complex

relationships we have with the microflora of our bodies.


Historically the consumption of milk conferred significant

competitive advantages to communities that incorporated

milk into their society


Some values of traditional diets/foods becomes more understandable as our understanding of the complexity of the

natural interactions/dependency we have with our environment becomes known


Setting the Record Straight

• Milk was initially pasteurized to keep industrially produced milk from spoiling before it could be delivered. It was about shelf-life then and it continues to be about shelf-life!

• Initial opposition to mandated pasteurization was from industry and physicians

• The principle zealots for mandated pasteurization were independently wealthy individuals with personal horrific experiences, not physicians and scientists.

• The campaigns to force pasteurization of milk where, and continue to be based on fear, not on sound science.

• Requirements to pasteurize milk were instituted as a political compromise to a highly controversial debate that waged for decades. (and obviously continues)

• Following this compromise those obsessed with pasteurization systematically wrote the history to reflect their fear-based arguments as fact. And with time their campaign rhetoric has become “dogma”.


It is obvious, but needs to be constantly repeated;

If milk had been hazardous

to the individuals in communities that consume

it, the drinking of milk would have disappeared centuries

ago.


Unique components integrated into a functional, complete and nutrient dense food

Lactose – Twice as much sugar as would be possible if monosaccharides. Ready for digestion by enzymes into both short-term and sustained energy sources..

Caseins – thousands of different proteins, containing all the essential amino acids, packaged into huge spherical micelles that concentrate and protect those proteins, with embedded calcium and phosphorous in just the correct ratio

Fats – Abundant lipid with all essential fatty acids ready to be digested and assimilated, but protected by a living membrane envelope containing critical enzyme systems, cofactors and defensive systems

Beneficial bacteria – To aid optimal and rapid digestion, colonize the intestine, inhibit other bacteria and enhance defense systems

Perfectly designed

But, never intended to be heated or pulverized.


Residual dogma originating from the fear campaigns to promote pasteurization

1. Milk is inherently hazardous

2. A kill step is necessary to make milk safe

3. Pasteurization stopped the deadly epidemics

4. Pasteurization kills pathogens

5. Pathogens must be totally killed in milk because bacteria grow rapidly in nutrient dense milk

6. Pathogens in raw milk make people sick

7. Children and the public must be protected from contagious raw milk drinkers

8. The reported outbreaks are just the tip of the iceberg

9. Don’t forget……..milk is inherently hazardous


1. Milk is inherently hazardous

They say all fresh milk contains pathogens– There is conclusive evidence that raw milk from farm

tanks sampled prior to transfer to dairy processing plants consistently contain pathogens.

– With private testing, coupled with increased regulatory testing, a different pattern is emerging from fresh milk intended for human consumption.


Prevalence of Pathogens

• Pre-pasteurized milk -- 10 -30% (at least one pathogen)

• Milk intended for human consumption, fresh and unprocessed -- stacks of negative reports and a handful of reports with presumptive presence


2. A kill-step is necessary to make milk safe

A ‘kill-step’ WAS NOT necessary over the millennia that milk has been a primary food.

A kill step may be “necessary” when milk production becomes dominated by management practices that focus on maximizing quantity, minimizing costs, and losses sight of the consumer’s health


3. Pasteurization stopped the deadly epidemics

The dreadful epidemics of the turn of the 20th century were caused by contaminated milk

Typhoid, Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Undulant fever

Infant mortality

Pasteurization rid the US of the epidemics


Examination of the original reports of “milkborne” incidents documents that the principle source of these milk-problems was the milk-handlers, NOT

the milk itself

Corrective actions involved sanitation and removing people who were infected or carriers.

In fact, pasteurization of the milk would not have prevented these incidents


Monthly Infant Mortality prior to and following establishment of Municipal Milk Stations

Dramatic reduction AFTER available milk at Stations

The original reports make the point that the milk at these stations was Certified Milk (raw), not pasteurized milk as current literature implies


4. Pasteurization kills pathogens

• Pasteurization is NOT a “Killing Step”– Any form of pasteurization reduces the

number of microorganisms.– Pasteurization is not selective for pathogens

• Far more importantly, pasteurization (heating over time) has profound effects on the highly designed constituents of milk.


Milk can be as safe as other foods without pasteurization

• Milk comes with built-in mechanisms to discourage bacteria growth.

• You do not need a “killing” step if you can successfully minimize the presence of virulent bacteria.

• It is essential that the process of collecting and supplying fresh unprocessed whole milk is managed so as to minimize the chances of dangerous contamination

• The existing factors in fresh unprocessed milk that combat infections must be encouraged so they are not overwhelmed,


5. Pathogens must be totally killed in milk because bacteria grow rapidly in nutrient dense

milk

Even if there is only one pathogen in the milk it will rapidly multiply into huge numbers. Therefore, there must be a zero tolerance for pathogens.


• If the presence of even one bad bacterium is unacceptable because pathogens multiple rapidly in milk

• Why is it that the initial step in all culture techniques to determine the presence of pathogens in milk is to transfer to a specially formulated enriched growth environment ?

• Because unless you enhance the special formulations to allow pathogen growth and suppress the growth of all the other bacteria, you can not isolate the pathogen from fresh milk.


Doyle & Roman

Applied and Environmental Microbiology Vol. 44 (5), page 1155, 1982


Decline in numbers of PathogensY axis in arithmetic scale

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1400000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Days

Beals

Doyle

Decline in numbers of PathogensY axis in log scale

1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

1000000

10000000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Days

Beals

Doyle

Display Format can be very deceiving

Percent decline in Campylobacter jejuni:

Day 1 = 8%

Day 2 = 31%

Day 3 = 62%

Day 4 = 93%

Day 5 = 99.69%

Day 6 = 99.98%

Day 7 = 99.998%

93% gone

93% gone


Doyle & Roman

Applied and Environmental Microbiology Vol. 44 (5), page 1155

------------------- 93% gone

-------------------------------------------- 99.997 % gone

--------------- 50% gone

6. Pathogens in raw milk make people sick

{A very, very brief primer on naming bacteria }


There are at least 6,000 different named bacteria and estimates are that this is less than 1% of the actual number of different kinds out there.

Bacteria with “official” status are given a genus and a species official name.

Escherichia coli ( E. coli )

Campylobacter jejuni ( C. jejuni )

Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes )

Salmonella spp. ( many species )


Escherichia coli O157:H7

• The “O” and “H” are categories of serotypes based on different surface features of the bacteria

• Different researchers use different characteristics and when one of these becomes common then gets official designation


In reality there are large numbers of different subtypes of each common named pathogen

Subtypes

Serotypes (functional - based on reaction to antibodies)

Genotypes (genetics - based on DNA analysis)

Virulence types (behavior – based on activity)

Phage type (susceptibility – based on killing)


“Finger-print” Patterns

Genotyping


Bacteria have their own microenvironment

• Phage infect bacteria (these are like viruses)

• Bacteria and phage have developed complex interrelationships.

• Phage are capable of transferring genetic material between bacteria, even different bacterial species.

• Many of the virulence factors in bacteria are traced to residual DNA from phage and similar entities.


The point is that the characteristics for distinguishing and naming bacteria are not the same as the characteristics that enable

a bacteria to cause people to get sick

A crude but perhaps understandable analogy

You can group people by size and hair texture, eye colorand even favorite restaurant type.And its possible that there was a murderer that was short, with curlylong hair, blue eyes that really like sushi. But certainly short sushi lovers with long curly hair are not all murderersAnd the reason is that murdering is a behavior that is not linked to all those distinguishing characteristics


7.Children and the public must be protected from contagious raw milk drinkers

• Recently the FDA has started adding the comment that they are finding outbreaks in which people are becoming sick, that didn’t drink any of the suspect milk.

• Conclude that these folks where infected by those who did drink the suspect milk, became infectious and passed it on to their contacts.

• They conclude that this adds further fuel to their argument that raw milk outbreaks are a public threat.

• Secondary infections are certainly possible in any case of bacterial

enteritis with diarrhea.

• However, milkborne outbreak investigations show that if this occurs it is extremely uncommon.

• For a contrast: outbreaks of Norovirus are almost entirely secondary infections


Making a mountain out of a mole hill

76 million people become ill each year from consuming food (CDC)

CDC, bacterial cases in 2007 (confirmed and suspected etiology)

– 7,031 total cases– 678 hospitalized; – 11 deaths (3 from milk that was pasteurized)

32 illnesses attributed to raw fluid milk (0.5%) 2 hospitalized (0.3%); and no deaths


8.The reported outbreaks are just the tip of the iceberg

• This is a newer argument.

• CDC documents that most illnesses are not outbreaks and are not detected.

• They extrapolate this general observation and conclude that raw milk outbreaks are under reported.


First need to recognize unusual cluster of illnesses

• Based on recognizing abnormal clusters of illnesses

• Alerts from County Health Departments through State surveillance systems.

• CDC surveillance data-gathering projects

• FoodNet -data from designate centers across US

• PulseNet –isolates investigated from designated laboratories

Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows, the Ultimate Sacred Food

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