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Nga Ho
English Writing 1B
29th November 2012
Raw Milk: The Truth is Still The Truth
Today, people do not only care about ingredients in their food, but also are interested in
processes of producing food and sources of food. People recognize that their quality of life has a
close relationship with consumption of healthy food. Today, it seems that there's a huge demand
for organic and raw milk and products made from raw milk. That's because people are becoming
more aware of the benefits of raw milk.
However, the U.S. government has restricted the supply of raw milk on the market since
1930. This restriction was based on such arbitrary assumptions like: Before pasteurization of
milk became more or less the norm in the 1930s in the U.S., milk in this country was linked to
over 25 percent of food and water borne illness outbreaks and many infant death (Hendrick Pr.
5). Because of such biased conclusions, the Food and Drug Administration does not regulate
raw milk, it cannot be sold across state lines or internationally only within the state where it was
purchased (Hendrick Pr. 1). In his book, Seed of Destruction, Engdahl wrote about the
establishment of giant genetically modified organism (GMO) seed companies at the end of
World War II with their ambition to control the food supply in over the world. The Big Four
GMO companies are Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta. In dairy industry,
there are also giant corporations: Land OLakes, Foremost Farms, Dairy Farmer of America and
Dean Foods. With the same ambition as GMO companies, giant companies in the dairy industry
also destroy small producers of raw milk to gain full market share. In his book, Untold Story of
Raw Milk, Ron Schmid told about the war between raw milk producers with limited financial

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capacity and the huge industry of pasteurized milk with unlimited financial resources. Reading
Untold Story of Milk, we will learn about smear campaigns that giant conglomerates in dairy
milk used to ruin raw milk reputation. Through various channels, they bribed a lot of scientists
and healthcare officials to destroy raw milk producers and to promote their product - pasteurized
milk.
To make consumers keep away from raw milk, industrial pasteurized-milk companies did
not hesitate to spread rumors about diseases caused by raw milk. One campaign of spreading fear
over raw milk consumption started in 1944 with a series of articles based on exaggerated claims
about diseases caused by raw milk. With such words causing fear like "what happened to
Crossroads might happen to your town - to your city - might happen almost anywhere in
America" (Schmid 150) that Robert Harris wrote on Coronet magazine with the article Raw
Milk Can Kill You was extremely unkind and hurt dairy farming very much. Dishonestly, Harris
exaggerated numbers of statistical work. Dr. Schmid, a member of the Weston A. Price
Foundation, found out in his research: Official statistics from the U.S. Public Health Service, in
year from 1923 through 1944, records for the entire United States show thirty-two outbreak of
undulant fever attributed to milk, with two hundred fifty-six cases (151). But Harris insisted
tens of thousands of people in the U.S suffered from fever and illness because of exposure to
raw milk (151). The above example is just one of thousand intrigues they used to deliberately
spread malicious messages to public with the obvious purpose: making raw milk disappear from
the market. What forces are behind that wicked intrigue? And what other tools are manipulated
to destroy dairy farming and what is the truth about raw milk and pasteurized milk? We will find
answers in next sections.

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Undoubtedly, the food industry is the culprit of above smearing campaign who paid for
advertising and writers to spread malicious rumors about raw milk, and did lobbyist activities
that influence government policies to destroy raw milk producers. In American dairy industry,
there are four multinational companies that cover up more than 70% of market. These giant
corporations are Land OLakes, Foremost Farms, Dairy Farmer of America and Dean Foods. For
brevity, we refer to them as the Big Food. These companies with huge financial resources have
employed sinister tactics to destroy their competitors - small companies and farms producing raw
milk. By generous funding for scientific journals and research departments at most of
universities, the Big Food makes nutritionists become spokesmen for their smearing campaigns
against raw milk. In his research, Schmid pointed out the Big Foods tentacles: Most nutrition
professionals depend, to varying degrees, on the support food companies give in the form of
funds for university nutrition departments and research, professional societies and journals, and
meetings and conferences (156). Having sold their souls to the Big Food, many nutritionists did
not hesitate to describe raw milk, a healthy nutrient endorsed by thousands of generations, as a
toxic substance: In this effort, they hired writers to make the very thought of drinking raw milk
seem a lapse in ones mentality (154). The Big Food simultaneously used their unlimited
financial capacity to lobby the authorities to set up policies that promote pasteurized milk and
officially eliminate raw milk from the market. More sophisticated, the Big Food arranged their
people to hold important positions in government agencies to issues policies favorable the
industrial food. This scenario is called revolving- door job exchanges.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also experiences frequent revolving-door job
exchanges, and one series in particular directly bears on the agencys ultimate approval of
genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows. After serving as counsel to the

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FDA, attorney Michael Taylor went to a law firm that represented Monsanto, the huge
agricultural and biotechnology company. He returned to the FDA as Deputy
Commissioner for Policies in 1991 to become part of the teams that approved the use of
Monsantos bovine growth hormone and issued the agencys very favorable policy on
food biotechnology (Schmid 162).
Thus, government agencies instead of protecting customers interests become a tool of the Big
Food and serve for their profit. In addition, scientists and nutritionists who received money from
the Big Food through funding channels disguised under noble names have sold their souls to the
devil and bent the truth to spread fear over raw milk consumption. John F. Sheedan, Director of
Dairy Food Safety Food and Drug Administration, wrote: Raw milk should not be consumed by
anyone, at any time, for any reason (Schmid 325). How is the truth about raw milk? We will
learn about the benefits of raw milk versus pasteurized milk next.
It is true that raw milk is safer, healthier and better than pasteurized milk in disease
prevention. As we know, raw milk is the first food in life of mammals. When considering the
safety of food, we should learn about food source. Raw milk is from grass-fed cows at small
farms where cows live a natural, healthy life in grass fields with open space. In these small
farms, we still enjoy seeing cows roaming and grazing in fields from spring through autumn.
Cows are natural herbivores so they are healthiest when they eat grass. Raw milk is produced
from healthy cows so it must be higher-quality than pasteurized milk from factory cows that are
fed with grain in confinement dairy operations. Indeed, we learned about bad living conditions
for dairy cows at factory farms. Through clips on YouTube, most people would feel bad upon
seeing cows at factory farms are treated cruelly and inhumane in many ways. Factory cows are
crowded into manure-laden holding pens where they are more likely to suffer from stress and

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painful infections. How can we expect high-quality milk is produced from such cows? Above
comments can be considered as emotional expressions. We should find scientific evidence about
raw milks benefits. According to Schminds research: Since 1938, researchers found that raw
milk would not support the growth of a wide range of pathogens (265), and nowadays scientists
proved that old theory is true and added: The two major components, which form the backbone
of this amazing system, are the enzymes lactoperoxidase and lactoferrin. The lactoperoxidase
uses small amounts of free radicals to seek out and destroy bad bacteriaThe second major
antimicrobial enzyme in milk is lactoferrin, which works by stealing iron away from pathogens
and carrying it through the gut wall into the blood stream. Thus, this enzyme does a double duty,
killing off a wide range of iron-loving pathogens while helping the infant to absorb all iron
contained in milk (265-266). As mentioned above, milk from huge factories of the Big Food
must be pasteurized, and everything seems to be done by machinery. Pasteurization largely
wipes out these numerous protective factors, inactivating the various leukocytes, antibodies,
enzymes and binding proteins, while reducing the activity of medium-chain fatty acids,
lysozymes, oligosaccharides, hormones and growth factors, and beneficial bacteria (269). High
temperature in pasteurization process destroys almost good enzymes: Lactoperoxidase loses
biological activity at 178 degrees Fahrenheit. It therefore survives pasteurization (about 160
degrees Fahrenheit) but not the ultra-high heat treatment (UHT) used in production of todays
long-life milks (269). In short, if considering the benefits of nutrition and disease prevention,
raw milk is clearly superior to pasteurized milk.
In a world where money could be capable of distorting the truth, the story of raw milk
and pasteurized milk is like a war between truth and falsehood. The production of raw milk
requires a lot of factors such as: extremely sanitary conditions, cows fed with grass, daily

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delivery, etc., those are suitable for small-scale farms. Such conditions can not be expected by
the industrial agriculture with mass production. Therefore, giant conglomerates in dairy industry
have destroyed raw milk producers by spreading fear over the consumption of raw milk with
excessive aids of bribed scientists and nutritionists. The Big Food simultaneously arranged their
people to enter government agencies to set up favorable policies for mass production of
pasteurized milk. However, the truth is still the truth, so more and more health conscious
consumers are becoming aware of the value of raw milk and raw milk products. In California,
customers are still able to buy raw milk at organic food stores. My only concern is the price of
raw milk. I hope I can afford it in a near future.

Works Cited
Schmid, Ron. The Untold Story of Milk. Washington, DC.: NewTrends Publishing, Inc., 2005.
Print.
http://www.ncsl.org/documents/agri/NCSL_Raw_Milk_Memo.pdf