"This Amish family’s system is different from an outsider coming to the farm to purchase and consume raw milk. This family lives with the animals and comes from a lineage of farmers living a natural, farm life. Their immune systems have built up immunities to pathogens."
This quote comes from an interesting and provocative stream of comments in response to recent blog post on David Gumpert's The Complete Patient. The post was about a Pennsylvania raw dairy farmer whose fluid raw milk was recently exposed as the source of an outbreak of Campylobacter that sickened something like 35 of the farm's loyal customers. The post was mostly concerned with the farmer's admission that his milk was to blame, and his honorable behavior in the aftermath, cooperating with government officials and taking full responsibility. This is uncommon behavior in the raw milk game, partly because raw milk does take an unfair amount of flack as an "unsafe" food, and government officials have been singling out and harassing small scale raw dairies that pose minimal risk while industrial foods that sicken thousands or tens of thousands of consumers are still allowed to continue their unsanitary, inhumane, environmentally destructive practices. This is the real heart of the issue for raw dairy activists and supporters. They want to support the small scale, local, environmentally friendly alternative to industrial ag, regardless of whether or not the relative risk can be defined or quantified. Or do they?
In a crusade against negative propaganda, many raw milk advocates have sought to create the image that raw milk from happy grass-fed cows on small dairy farms is fundamentally safe. The caveat that consumption of any food comes with some level of risk could be considered to be implied, but perhaps it needs to be more explicitly expressed. The reasons that people support raw milk are varied, and the population that supports it is growing. With all the mixed messages out there, it's kind of hard to believe that people are getting an accurate picture of the level of risk they are assuming. Some may even truly believe that they are not assuming any risk at all.
Erroneous an attitude as this may be in any walk of life, it is not uncommon. Raw milk advocates still need to take it upon themselves to educate people, especially those they hope to convert, on the risk involved in drinking raw milk. I am always struck by the similarity of issues regarding raw milk to those regarding illegal drugs. Here is another one. Unbiased information is extremely hard to come by. However, unlike for illegal drugs, there is no Erowid for raw milk. Maybe there should be. People could post their anecdotal experiences, positive and negative, with raw milk, and scientific research could all be pooled into one place. People need to know about the various benefits and pitfalls of drinking raw milk, and they need to know that everyone is an individual, and their mileage may vary.
Anyway, this case is so interesting because it defies all of the arguments typically made in response to allegations that raw dairy is an unsafe food. The farm in question is the type of idyllic farm that most raw dairy enthusiasts would proudly support. It is run by a Mennonite family milking an (arguably) small number of cows. It is a grass-fed operation that prides itself on having happy, naturally raised cows, and as a Grade A dairy it at least should have been following the best of modern safety and sanitation protocols to minimize risk of illness. Raw milk advocates can not cry conspiracy, as in this case, the raw milk has been nearly unquestionably proven as the culprit. The dairy is explicitly intending to produce and sell fresh raw milk, unlike other outbreaks which have come from conventional dairies that sell raw milk on the side to make a little extra cash. All of this begs the question, how could this have happened?
One answer is quite simple, that food-borne illness happens on occasion even when safety precautions are taken. At the same time, there are many factors that contribute to the ability of pathogens to become established in food products and sicken consumers. Ultimately, even the most educated cannot fully understand all these factors and explain why sometimes people get sick and sometimes they don't. Some things seem clear to those who observe the situation attentively. The risk of food-borne illness does increase as production scale increases and sanitation becomes harder to control. Technological safety precautions (such as pasteurization and systematic use of sanitizers) can help reduce this risk. While the specific circumstances that lead to specific outbreaks can be debated ad infinitum, I suggest that the root of the problem is cultural.
I believe that increased incidence of food-borne illness has to do mostly with the fact that modern consumers are disconnected from the farm environment and the microbiological world that accompanies it. For clarity, I'm not talking about chronic illnesses like tuberculosis. I'm talking about acute infections by omni-present bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella. If you live and work in the environment where milk (or any food) is produced, then any environmental contamination is going to be something that you are exposed to every day anyway. You will have developed immunity to it. Drinking raw milk may actually play a significant role in the development of that immunity as it delivers the environmental contaminants directly to the intestinal tract (where the majority of the immune activity is located) along with other immunological factors in the milk which are not currently well understood. That is, in fact, what a lot of people are looking for when they buy raw milk. They want the bacterial contamination and immunological factors that are killed or denatured during pasteurization. Even though probiotics have been shown to have some benefits to immunity, eating pasteurized yogurt just doesn't do the same thing as consuming raw milk or cultured raw milk products. It just isn't the same as wrangling your local microbiota and establishing a relationship of mutual respect.
This is what happens when you drink raw milk. You give the immune cells in your belly the chance to get to know the local microbiota and learn how to respond to them, keep the rowdy ones in check, and let the ones that have an important function to perform go ahead and do their thing. The problem comes when the uninitiated receive too high a dose of a pathogen their body is not accustomed to. Some have argued that any time one begins to consume raw milk from a new source, one should start with a very small quantity, and work upwards from there to let your body get used to it. This is a great idea that applies to more than just milk. Always start small. My argument is that the real problem only appears when milk becomes a commodity to be sold, and there should just be more family/community cows. This closes the disconnect between the consumer and the food since everyone who drinks the milk is in close proximity to the environment and the animal. It also, in my humble opinion, is a much fairer way to distribute the work of dairying, a craft fewer and fewer people are willing to perform as it becomes simultaneously more difficult and less profitable.
At any rate, be careful if you are new to raw milk or if you switch sources. Also, go outside and work/play once in a while. Eat some dirt. It's good for you. Pay attention to everything you do, always. If it makes you feel ill, stop. If it doesn't, bottoms up! Your mileage may vary.
