A Simple Message to Consumers: Don’t Drink Unpasteurized Milk

By her own account, Jean Weese grew up a sickly kid on a farm in rural eastern Kentucky.

Had it not been for her parents pasteurizing the milk their family drank from dairy cows raised on their farm, she doubts she would be alive today. That’s why she is so dumbfounded by a growing demand among some “health-conscious” Americans for unpasteurized milk.

By most accounts, pasteurized milk is one of the noteworthy scientific advances of the 20th century. By eliminating many of the pathogens associated with unpasteurized milk — E.coli, salmonella and listeria, for example — pasteurization has gone a long way toward reducing infectious disease rates by more than 90 percent in the United States within the last century.

Even so, some opponents of pasteurization simply aren’t convinced. They say this cleaning process, which subjects milk to a short blast of intense heat, also removes vital bacteria and enzymes.

This view simply doesn’t wash with Weese, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System food safety specialist and Auburn University professor of nutrition and food science.

From her own experience, Weese has seen too many dirty udders to discount the merits of pasteurization.

“Speaking as an old dairy farmer from way back when, I know that cows go out in the pasture and lay down wherever — in a cow patty they dropped or some other cow just deposited,” Weese says.

“They also wade through streams that are often highly polluted.”

Weese says it’s an illusion to assume that this filth can be completely washed off a dairy cow prior to drawing milk. Our own personal hygienic failures speak volumes about this fact. Studies have shown that despite our best efforts at hand washing, we never succeed in removing all of the pathogens that remain in the “tiny nooks and crannies” of our hands. The challenge proves considerably more difficult for dairy cattle.

“Consider the huge bag — the udder — of the cow, which is covered in hair.”

Without pasteurization, tiny particles that attach to these hairs and get into the milk ultimately remain, posing all sorts of risks to consumers, Weese says.

“You can look back before pasteurization and find extremely high numbers of illness linked with consuming unpasteurized milk,” she says.

But, of course, that is why she finds this small but vocal opposition to pasteurization so perplexing, if not maddening.

“I suppose the argument could be made that you should be permitted to drink unpasteurized milk just as you should be allowed to drive without a seatbelt,” Weese says. “But sometimes you still need to talk to people about what they don’t understand.”

Simply put, people who don’t understand or appreciate the benefits of pasteurization are sadly misled, she says.

Moreover, even though pasteurization has been shown to destroy enzymes, it doesn’t mean these enzymes are necessarily conducive good health, she says. In fact, the benefits of pasteurization far outweigh any benefit one is likely to derive from bacteria or enzymes that are removed in the course of pasteurization.

Another important issue to bear in mind is that pasteurization does not remove the most important ingredient in milk — the reason why most people drink it in the first place — calcium.

“Calcium content doesn’t change, and that is the main component that we get from milk — the positive nutrient we need desperately in this country.”

In fact, Weese cites research that has shown calcium is an effective safeguard against several chronic conditions including osteoporosis and hypertension.

Even if some valuable enzymes and bacteria are lost through pasteurization — which she doubts actually occurs — the risks of consuming unpasteurized milk far outweigh any presumed benefits.

“Adults can do anything they want to — I suppose that’s their right — but keep it away from kids and people with compromised [immune] systems,” Weese says.

She says anyone who has dealt with a child who has suffered from kidney failure as a result of exposure to a foodborne pathogen, such as E. coli O157:H7, would have an easier time appreciating this.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at March 15, 2007 03:09 PM | TrackBack