Fact or Fiction – Safety and Health of Raw Milk
I apologize to my regular readers for this unusual post. This is a planned post, as part of my fermented food series. It was supposed to follow another of my hard-core microbiology experiments, but I’ve needed this resource elsewhere so I’m writing it about a dozen articles early.
This article is going to take a historical and scientific look at the use and safety of raw (unpasturized) milk – something worth thinking about when considering making fermented milk products such as yoghurt or cheese. I’ve included extensive links to my sources throughout this article, so please check those out before accusing me of being a shill for the pasteurization industry.
This post going to be a long one, so here’s an index for those who want to jump around:
- What is Raw Milk
- Myths and Claims About Raw Milk
- A (Brief) History of Milk Consumption & Fermented Milk Foods
- A Microbiological & Epidemiological Look at Raw Milk
- Being as Safe as You Can
- Conclusions
What is Raw Milk
Raw milk is simply milk that has not been pasteurized – e.g. has been taken directly from an animal, and then sold (or used) without any treatment to reduce bacterial or fungal contamination. Because of this, raw milk contains more microbes than pasteurized milk.
I’ve written about pasteurization before. In short, pasteurization relies on heating a food item to a temperature, for long enough a time, to reduce the bacterial counts to below 100 colony forming units per mL (CFU/mL). Note: 1 CFU = 1 viable bacterial cell. Most pasteurization processes reduce bacterial counts well below this point, typically to 30 CFU/mL or lower. In comparison, high-quality raw milk is defined as raw milk containing under 10,000 CFU/mL. It’s not uncommon in unregulated markets (e.g. USA and Canada) for raw milk to start with over 10,000,000 CFU/ml!
That may sound scary, but is it really? The answer is…complicated. I’ll address this in detail more below, but the short version is that the risk of milk containing a pathogen scales with CFU’s. So as pasteurized milk contains very few bacteria it is therefore unlikely to have pathogens, while both the number of bacteria and risk of pathogens increases in high-quality raw milk, and increases even further in lower-quality raw milk. In other words, it’s a sliding scale of risk, rather than an absolute safe versus not-safe situation.
The difference between low- and high-quality raw milk is largely driven by how milk is collected and monitored. In countries with a regulated raw milk industry (e.g. France) there are strict rules on animal health (e.g. monitoring for mastitis and gastroenteritis prior to milking), milking procedures (e.g. milking machine and udder sanitation, milk room cleanliness standards, etc), milk storage (e.g. how quickly milk must be cooled, and to what temperatures), and active monitoring of the milk supply for pathogens. This allows much of the risk of raw milk to be mitigated. They also have a traceable milk system, allowing infections to be traced back to the farm, and actions taken to identify and correct the cause of the contamination.
Lower-quality milk is common in unregulated/illegal raw milk markets (e.g. the USA and Canada). Because there are minimal or no regulations, there are few or no standards protecting the raw milk supply. In many cases even the tools needed to ensure a safe supply are hard or impossible to come by. In the case of Canada where the sale of raw milk is outright illegal, there are often active attempts by raw milk producers to evade detection and monitoring. As you can imagine, in these markets the quality of milk can vary hugely. Some producers will take the same care and diligence in ensuring a quality supply as farmers in regulated systems. Other will not, with a corresponding increase in the risk of contamination.
But even those taking the utmost care in unregulated systems simply cannot achieve the same quality as those in regulated systems. This is largely due to “invisible” contamination, such as that coming from a low-grade mastitis. While the animal is not obviously ill, the milk will be contaminated with the bacteria causing the mastitis. In regulated markets, these low-grade infections are detected in milk plants using specialized assays for detecting bacteria. Few*, if any milk producers in unregulated markets will have access to the tools to do this themselves.
*my usual readers will be unsurprised to learn that I do this testing on my farm’s milk (see image above).
As for pasteurization itself, the process is fairly simple, but can be conducted in a few ways. The information below is generally true for Canadian provinces (each regulates pasteurization individually, so there are some minor variances), and international standards are virtually identical. There are different approaches, but the generally accepted guidelines are:
- Bulk pasteurization: Solely used by people at home. Heat a bulk supply of milk to a temperature of at least 63°C/145F. This is maintained for a minimum of 30 minutes.
- Flash Pasteurization: This is how most milk is pasteurized commercially. Milk is run through a narrow tube through a heat supply. This quickly heats the milk to a temperature of at least 72°C/161F and this temperature is held for at least 25 seconds. The milk is then rapidly cooled.
- Ultra High Temperature Pasteurization: Milk is passed through a tube at high pressure and rapidly heated to 135 C. This temperature is held for at least 2 seconds before the milk is rapidly cooled. This effectively sterilized the milk, allowing it to be stored at room temperature until opened.
- Ultra Filtration: Rather than heating the milk, it is instead filtered through a 0.2 micron filter. This is used for some high-end milks, but is more expensive than pasteurization. It can also be difficult to perform with full-fat milk.
Raw Milk Myths
There are a number of myths – both in favour and in opposition to – raw milk consumption. I can’t cover them all, but I will do my best to cover the major claims. As always, I will provide links to the studies I’ve based my “myth busting” on.
Myth 1: Raw milk tastes better. It is often claimed that pasteurization changes milk’s flavour or texture. But is there a difference?
This is a difficult question to answer, as many things can contribute to our perception of flavour and texture. This includes factors such as personal biases, packaging, and even the location where the tests are run. These confounding factors can cause people to perceive differences where none exist…or can cause people to miss somewhat obvious differences. Luckily, a German research group did a well designed experiment comparing UHT, pasteurized, pasteurized organic, and raw milk. Importantly, they compared the same peoples’ perceptions of these different milks first blinded (meaning the subjects did not know the source of the milk they were tasting), and then repeated the tests with the same people unblinded (meaning the subjects knew what kind of milk they were drinking). What they found is quite interesting:
- Blinded participants (e.g. the participants didn’t know which milk they were tasting) rated all of the milks, except for UHT milk, equally. The UHT milk was rated slightly lower than the others. That’s right – if someone didn’t know the source of the milk, they rated pasteurized, pasteurized organic, and raw milk to be equally good.
- But when the same participants weren’t blinded, and were fully knowledgeable of where the milk came from, everything changed. In this case organic pasteurized and raw milk were rated higher, while the UHT and pasteurized milk were rated lower.
In other words, the claimed differences in milk flavour (UHT aside) is entirely one of perception, and not an actual difference in taste.
Another claim is that raw milk cheese also tasted better (or, at least, different). That is a more complex topic, which I will cover in a later post.
Myth 2: Pasteurized Milk Looses Nutrition. This is another of those pernicious myths. This is also an easy question to address, as modern technologies can detect literally one part per billion changes in these compounds. In simple terms, milk can be thought to have five major nutrient groups – proteins, lipids/fats, vitamins, trace metals, and sugars.
The first, protein, is very minimally affected by pasteurization. Proteins themselves are comprised of 20 different amino acids that are strung together in specific sequences to create functional proteins. Of these 20 amino acids, 19 are unaffected by pasteurization, while one – lysine – decreases by 1-4% in concentration after pasteurization. Lysine itself makes up ~5.5% of the amino acids in animal proteins, meaning that the total protein content of milk changes by 0.055% to 0.22%. This is roughly the amount protein content varies with seasonal changes in milk. In the context of your nutritional needs, this change is meaningless – its the equivalent to less than a teaspoon difference in your daily milk consumption.
The second, lipids and fats, are simply not affected by pasteurization (see page 416). In contrast, milk fat content varies greatly with seasonal and dietary changes. Commercial milk tends to be standardized to specific fat/lipid contents, so this doesn’t affect consumers much. But if you are producing your own milk, or buying direct from a farm, you will encounter these seasonal changes in fat content.
The third, vitamins, is of course a large group of nutrients. Even with UHT, no changes are seen in the amount of the major milk vitamins.
The fourth, trace metals, includes calcium, but also other metals such as zinc and iron. As with vitamins, there are no detectable change in these compounds even after UHT treatment of milk. That said, it is worth noting that calcium does undergo some microcrystalization after pasteurization. Essentially, free calcium ions end up binding to compounds such as phosphate and come out of solution. These tiny crystals remain in suspension – and we digest them just fine – so there is no change in the nutrients provided to us by the milk.
For cheese makers this microcrystallization can be an issue, as that crystalized calcium cannot be used by enzymes such as rennet. Insufficient calcium will impede the setting of curd. This is why it is common practice to add a small amount of calcium chloride to milk during cheese making. It restores the soluble (non-crystalline) calcium content, allowing rennet to work. In the context of human nutrition, the addition of calcium chloride will produce a cheese with a slightly higher calcium content than one made without added calcium.
The final – sugars – is lactose. Lactose is a disaccharide: a sugar made of two simpler sugars connected together. Lactose is a very stable compound, and doesn’t degrade unless heated well above the boiling point of water. Meaning that you’d have to boil nearly all the water out of the milk before there would be any change in the lactose composition. This means that there is no change in the lactose composition of the milk, or in its digestablity.
To digest lactose our bodies first need to split the lactose into its component sugars, which is done by the intestinal enzyme lactase. All infants have lactase (so they can consume milk), but in most adults this activity is lost. This is why the majority of humans cannot consume milk unless it’s been processed to remove the lactose (e.g. through making cheese or yogourt). A few human populations evolved to retain lactase activity into adulthood, and it is only those people who can consume milk into adulthood.
Myth 3: Pasteurized milk lacks key enzymes. This is one of those myths which is true, false, and irrelevant at the same time. While milk protein is mostly casein – a specialized protein that helps dissolve fat into the milk – a small portion of milk protein are enzymes. The major enzymes are alkaline phosphatase, lactoperoxidase, lysozyme, lipase, and proteinases. Alkaline phosphatase removes phosphate groups from other chemicals, and helps to regulate the solubility of compounds in milk. Lactoperoxidase produces peroxides, which are antibacterial, while lysozyme punches holes in bacterial cells. Lipase degrades lipids, while proteinases break down proteins.
These latter three help young animals digest the milk. Of these, alkaline phosphatase is partially inactivated by pasteurization. In fact, the decrease in this enzymes activity is used as a measure to make sure that milk has been pasteurized properly. Lactoperoxidase and lysozyme are unaffected by pasteurization. There are multiple lipases and proteinases, and the effect of pasteurization on these vary. Generally, lipases are more sensitive to pasteurization than proteinases.
So there are differences in the activity of some enzymes in milk…but this is also irrelevant from the perspective humans over the age of 2. The reason this is irrelevant is that our stomachs efficiently degrade proteins, meaning the active enzymes are destroyed before entering your intestinal tract. It is worth noting that until over the age of 1 infants have weaker protein-degrading capacity. Which is why these enzymes are in milk – to aid the infants. But, because of this, you should also never give animal milk to an infant as the active enzymes may have deleterious effects.
Coming back to cheesemaking, the inactivation of lipases by pasteurization may require that additional lipase be added to a cheese if the flavour provided by lipase is desired. Luckily, lipase powder is cheap and readily available.
Myth 4: Raw milk protects against lactose intolerance. Lactose persistence (the ability to consume lactose into adulthood) is a genetic trait determined by a well known and understood genetic mechanism. This mechanism is not affected by the things we eat. It’s a hard-wired genetic trait, as immutable as the colour of your eyes.
Myth 5: Raw milk protects against milk allergy (or allergies in general): This one is based on a tiny nugget of truth, but ignores the bigger picture. There are a few studies which have shown that people who consume raw milk have fewer allergies. Seems like a slam-dunk, doesn’t it? But these studies forgot to do one key thing – to address confounders. Confounders, in simple terms, are other factors that may account for the results. In the case of these studies, that confounder was where the people lived. Raw milk consumers were almost exclusively rural residents who lived on farms, while pasteurized milk consumers were almost entirely urban dwellers. Studies have since shown that raw milk has nothing to do with the rates of allergies. Rather, its living in a rural environment that is protective (examples: 1, 2, 3).
Myth 6: Raw milk is almost certainty deadly. Most of the myths I’ve tackled up to this point are ones spread by raw milk proponents. But they’re not the only ones guilty of using hyperbole to argue their case. It is not uncommon to see raw milk treated as though all of it was dangerous. That any consumption is taking your life into your own hands. There is an increased risk to consuming raw milk compared to pasteurized milk, which I’ll discuss in detail below, but while there is an increased risk, it is not an universal risk. This is milk we’re talking about here, not cyanide.
Myth 7: Raw milk is probiotic. I’ve written about probiotics before, so I’m not going to rehash everything again. As a quick reminder, a probiotic is a living microorganism, which when administered in sufficient numbers, has a beneficial effect on the host. While most probiotics are lactobacilli, most lactobacilli are not probiotics. Less than 1% of tested lactobacilli – and far, far less than that of other genera of bacteria – have been found to have probiotic effects.
So the likelihood that random milk from a random animal having a probiotic effect is pretty small. But even if every bacterium in a bottle of raw milk is a probiotic, you’re still out of luck. Most probiotics have a minimum effective dose of over a billion bacterial cells per day, with >10 billion typically required. Quality raw milk contains around 10,000 bacteria per millilitre – meaning you’d have to drink about a thousand litres of raw milk a day to get a probiotic effect! And again, that’s making the absurd assumption that every bacteria in the milk is probiotic.
Myth 8: The dangers of milk are due to modern farming. This is also a common claim, but one which does not stand up to scrutiny of the historical record. In reality, unfermented milk was rarely consumed prior to the industrial age. Both classical and medieval cultures had a very negative view of the consumption of milk. Our image of a pastoral past, where farmers lived off of fresh milk from cows wandering the dells and hills of medieval and renaissance Europe, simply did not exist. This is a big topic, so the entirety of the next section is centred on this history.
A History of Milk Consumption & Fermented Milk Foods
Before I go into a detailed look at modern milk safety, its worth looking at how milk was consumed and perceived historically. Much of the rhetoric surrounding raw milk is based on misconceptions of how milk was used and perceived before modern times. Raw milk proponents often claim that consuming raw milk is a return to historical norms, while pasteurization advocates will point to the lethal milk of the Victoria era as an all-encompassing example of historical “reality”.
Both, of course, are wrong.
The history of milk consumption is actually two histories. The first is the story of the peoples of the Middle East, Europe and of the western Eurasian steppe. The second is of the peoples of western Africa. The details of the latter poorly studied, so I’m going to focus on Eurasian history.
Milk in Pre-History
Milk producing animals (goats and sheep) were first domesticated in the area round Iran sometime around 10,500 years ago. Aurochs (cattle) were domesticated in Anatolia soon thereafter. The farming of these animals spread quick quickly into southern Europe and the steppe, and it was shortly after this time that the lactase persistence gene evolved. As a reminder, this is the form of the lactase gene which allows us to consume lactose into adulthood. This timeline has led some to think this a simple story: some people domesticated milk animals and developed the genes to allow them to consume milk into adulthood, and then these people (or their genes and farming practices) spread across Eurasia.
But this is not what happened – the story is more complex and interesting than that! While farming and farm animals spread across Eurasia like wildfire, lactase persistance did not. As one example, sequencing of of skeletons in central Europe found that the lactase persistence gene arrived somewhere around 2500 BCE – five thousand years after animal agriculture arrived in the area, and four thousand years after the first unambiguous evidence of cheese making in the area. A recent study has found evidence that lactase persistence most likely spread during a period of frequent famine and disease, potentially as people with this trait could consume milk products without aggravating diarrheal disease. Amazingly, the same study found that lactase persistence didn’t appear in most regions of Europe until between 1000 and 500 BCE!
In other words, Europeans found ways to remove the lactose from milk (and to preserve it) long before they developed the biochemistry needed to consume large amounts of lactose after infancy. It was thousands of years from when our ancestors figured out how to preserve milk and convert it into a consumable form, to when they received the genetic tools to consume milk itself. And this isn’t unique to Europe. In fact, today there are cultures where milk is a major source of nutrition despite these cultures’ people being entirely lactose intolerant. Genetic analysis of the organisms used to make cheese and yogourt show that the microbes we use to prepare these foods evolved as unique organisms around 10,000 years ago. That this microbial domestication occurs at the same time that animals were domesticated, but long before the genes for consuming milk were common, is unlikely to be a coincidence.
In other words, we domesticated microorganisms which could remove the lactose from milk (and also preserve the milk as cheese, yoghurt, and related product), thousands of years before we had the capability to drink unprocessed milk.
The Classical Period
Fast-forward a few thousand years and we run into the first written record of milk consumption. This was in the form of cheese making, and was recorded by Homer in the Odyssey. By the Roman era cheese making was commonplace, and somewhat interestingly, so was a very strong bias against drinking milk. Romans derided the milk-drinking culture of Germanic and Celtic tribes. They were particularly aghast at the large volumes of “curdled milk” those barbarians would quaff. While the “barbarian” tribes didn’t leave written records of their own, Roman sources are clear that they consumed large amounts of curdled milk. We don’t know exactly what this was, but the fact it was curdled indicates that it was fermented, and likely something akin to yoghurt or kefir.
The Medieval Period
In the medieval period there was a strong link between a persons social class and the foods they would consume, with chroniclers diligently recording the foods “worthy” of different classes. In some cases there are even recorded laws dictating what can be consumed, and by whom. As in the classical era, while fermented milk products (especially cheese) were central to the diet of medieval Europeans of all social stations, milk was looked upon negatively. It was considered a food for the very poor and very sick. And even then, people were generally drinking whey or soured milk, rather than milk straight from an animal.
So for most of European history humans consumed fermented or cooked milk products, but not milk itself. Moreover, milk had generally negative connotations starting at least in the early Roman period if not before.
So when did this change?
The Modern Era
The widespread consumption of unfermented milk didn’t really take off until the mass urbanization of the industrial era that took place in the mid-1800’s. The need for a cheap protein source that could be easily transported by rail was the driver of this change. This also led to many issues. A mixture of poor storage, adulteration, and outright fraud led to mass infection – largely of poor people – with several foodborne diseases. The worst of these was bovine tuberculosis, which killed an estimated 3,000 people a year in the city of London alone! Once this link had been established, laws mandating that all milk be pasteurized became commonplace, with these laws first appearing in the early-1900’s.
TL:DR
From the start of human agriculture until ~200 years ago milk was generally not consumed unless fermented or cooked. It was considered an unsafe – and often uncouth – food. Drinking of milk is very much a modern development. It’s also a development which was fatal to hundreds of thousands of people until pasteurization became common.
A Microbiological & Epidemiological Look at Raw Milk
So that was a lot of writing to get to this point – a look at what recent scientific and epidemiological research tells us about modern raw milk.
The Microbiological Perspective
Don’t forget, the point of milk is to provide young animals with an energy and nutrient dense food source. Which means that bacteria also find it an energy and nutrient dense food source. We microbiologists often take advantage of this fact and use milk as part of microbial growth media. If you’ve ever had milk spoil you’ve experienced this growth first hand. But this fact alone doesn’t make milk dangerous. You can just as easily grow harmless bacteria in milk as you can pathogens.
The other thing to remember about milk is where it comes from – the udders of ruminants. Which are located below the anus of the animal, and we all know what comes out of there. The positioning of the udders under the anus may not even be accidental, with some studies identifying the fecal-udder-milk-calf transmission route to be critical for colonization of a calf’s intestinal tract with the proper microbiota. Whether this is something that evolved specifically for this purpose, or is a “happy accident” remains unclear. In either case, fecal bacteria are commonplace on the udders of milk animals, and indeed, makeup the majority of a healthy udders microbiota.
Risk from Resident Bacteria
This brings us to the first danger of raw milk – resident fecal (gut) bacteria. While these bacteria are a safe and critical part of the ruminants microbiota, we humans are not ruminants. Bacteria which are perfectly safe (and even necessary) in a cow can be deadly to us. As one example, E. coli O157:H7 is a common bacteria in the guts of cows. Here, it is a harmless and normal part of the cow’s microbiota. In us, it produces shigga toxin, leading to kidney failure and death in 2-7% of infected people. Fecal and udder-resident bacteria like E. coli are found in the majority of raw milk samples tested. Campylobacter is another kind of bacteria which can be transmitted in this fashion, and causes a food poisoning illness that lasts about a week. In some cases, long-term injury or illness can result.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to control these bacteria at the level of a farm as they are normally present on the udder, and are a very normal and important part of the animals gut microbiome.
Risk from Animal Pathogens
The second danger of raw milk is infectious bacteria – as in bacteria which make both the animal, and people, ill. This includes some of the “scarier” foodborne bacteria including Listeria, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella sp., and Brucella.
Listeria is probably the most dangerous of these, and quite frighteningly, can even grow in refrigerated milk. It is the deadliest forms of food poisoning, on average killing 20% of infected people. Listeria is a master at invading and killing immune cells, allowing it to disseminate throughout the body.
Brucella is much less of a concern than it was historically, as it has been exterminated from cattle herds throughout much of the developed world. It does remain an occasional infectious agent amount sheep and goat herds. Brucella is rarely deadly, but it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, liver damage, and in some patients establish chronic infections that can lead to arthritis and other issues.
Staphylococcus aureus is the most common cause of mastitis (infection of the udder), and is also a common infection in humans. Staphylococcus can infect many tissues, causing everything from minor skin infections, through to lethal infection of bones and heart valves. When consumed orally (e.g. in milk) it can cause an acute (appearing in hours) and usually short-lived (hours to a few days) food poisoning. While unpleasant, this form of food poisoning rarely leads to severe complications or death.
Salmonella are, unfortunately, rather common. Salmonella also come in two major forms – non-invasive and invasive (the latter is also known as typhoid fever). Non-invasive Salmonella is probably the most common form of food poisoning among humans, accounting for most cases of “stomach flu” that people experience. Salmonella food poisoning is unpleasant, but rarely leads to severe complications or death. Invasive Salmonella is a much more dangerous disease, but thankfully this bacterium is almost unheard of throughout North America and Europe, where people tend to be vaccinated for this disease and where this bacterium is uncommon.
A critical note: For several of the diseases I wrote but rarely leads to sever complications or death. Some people tend to interpret this as meaning that they are harmless, but this is not the case. Infections put an immense burden on our bodies which have long-term consequences. The stress from a bout of food poisoning can accelerate the development of heart disease, promote cognitive decline, complicate diseases such as diabetes, and even causes some forms of cancer. So while you may survive the initial infection seemingly unscathed, your risk of developing oft-fatal diseases later in life has increased.
Because these bacteria also cause disease in farm animals, the risk they present to people is directly proportional to the attention and care a farmer puts into their animals. All of these produce signs of disease, meaning an observant farmer can avoid milking these animals. Signs of disease can vary depending on the organism, but most of these either produce diarrhea or mastitis (inflammation of the udder and teats). Never consume milk from a sick animal, even if it has been pasteurized.
The Epidemiological Perspective
The above section defines and describes the major pathogenic organisms that can be present in raw milk. These represent the hazards that are potentially present in raw milk. But what that doesn’t tell you about is the likelihood of exposure to those bacteria. At the end of the day it is the risk to us that we’re worried about. Risk is determined by the combination of hazard and exposure. After all, a great white shark is a deadly hazard…but if you’re standing in a corn field in Iowa the risk to you is zero.
Complicating this further is that risk is not consistent between regions due to regulatory differences, differences in enforcement, and the use of testing. I mentioned in the beginning that France has a very rigorous monitoring and safety program for their raw milk market. This makes their market one of the safest in the world. Canada represents the opposite of France, in that it does not allow raw milk sales or use outside of some very limited commercial cheese making applications. This means that all raw milk sales are illegal, and as such there is a lack of a safety framework and there are deliberate attempts by raw milk producers to avoid detection by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The USA falls somewhere in the middle and has a patchwork of regulations, ranging from no legal sales, to “farm gate” sales…but with no overarching regulatory or testing system like that in France. Thus, these three countries give us some very different “lenses” to use to look at risk.
France: The regulatory environment in France offers us an excellent opportunity to see what a well-regulated and safety-conscious raw milk industry looks like. ANSES (the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety) recently performed a detailed analysis of the association of foodborne illness from raw milk cheeses over the decade spanning from 2008-2018. Note that these are outbreaks only – e.g. events that affected multiple people, not individual cases. I’ve summarized their findings below.
| Organism | From Raw Milk | Other/Unknown |
|---|---|---|
| E. coli | 6 | 4 |
| Listeria | 14 | 23 |
| Salmonella | 18 | 32 |
About half of those raw milk associated outbreaks were linked back to poor or failed hygienic practices. The remainder were not ascribed to an underlying cause. In either case, those numbers clearly show that raw milk cheese is a major source of foodborne illness in France. Unfortunately, while France is quite rigorous in regulating their raw milk industry, they don’t do a great job of tracking what portion of products sold are raw versus pasteurized. As such, while they have shown that 48.4% of outbreaks are from unpasteurized products (with an additional 20% of outbreaks from products with an unknown pasteurization status), we cannot easily convert that to risk. The NYT claims that 18% of milk products in France are unpasteurized (I couldn’t find verification of this). Assuming this is true, French raw milk products are 270 to 380 times more likely to cause foodborne illness than French pasteurized products.
USA: A recent review by the CDC sought to assess risk, drawing from data recorded in the national database of foodborne illness. This was a more complex analysis that the one done in France, as in addition to looking at the number of outbreaks, the CDC also used population and consumer data to determine the risk to individuals who consume versus do not consume raw milk products. The findings are striking – 96% of foodborne illness caused by dairy products were from raw milk and raw milk-derived products, despite raw milk representing only 3-5% of the total dairy market! In terms of relative risk, raw milk and raw milk products were 840 times more likely to cause foodborne illness than were pasteurized products.
Canada: That brings us to my home country of Canada – where, as a reminder, raw milk sales are illegal. This makes estimating risk extremely hard as researchers are tracking what amounts to a criminal activity. A recent study attempted to do just this. 62.5% of milk-product associated outbreaks identified in this study were due to unpasteurized products, and accounted for 78% of disease cases (e.g. raw milk outbreaks were both more common, and larger, than outbreaks from pasteurized products). Taking into account the estimated size of the Canadian raw milk industry (1.2% to 2.3% of total milk sales), this makes raw milk between 1,400 times and 2,600 times more dangerous that pasteurized products.
The Bigger Picture
Clearly regulation makes raw milk products safer. Raw milk products in France are up to ten times safer than they are in Canada, with the USA falling somewhere in the middle. But it is also clear that even with a rigorous regulatory and testing regime, raw milk remains significantly more dangerous than pasteurized products. In the broader context of food safety, raw milk is by most measures, the most dangerous food product consumed in the Western world on a per-serving basis.
Being Safe as You Can with Raw Milk
Pasteurizing is the best way to be safe when using milk products. But what can be done if you want to use raw milk, but don’t live in a country with a secured and regulated supply? The answer is “not much, unless you own your own animals”. Keep in mind, a trusted supplier only has to make a minor mistake for milk to become contaminated. If you own your own animals, you can collect raw milk in a manner which should produce a relatively safe product. For that matter, a lot of this advice is good for maintaining healthy and safe animals even if pasteurizing your milk.
Maintain healthy animals and a clean environment
This one is rather obvious, but still needs to be stated. Keep your barn (or wherever your animals live) as clean as you can. Feces and soiled bedding should be removed daily. Areas where the animals urinate should be allowed to dry completely each day, and if the area is sand or soil, the sand/soil replaced annually. Animals should be inspected before each milking for signs of disease, looking for things such as:
- Soiled rump, anal area, udder, or area between the hind legs. This can be a sign of diarrheal or other intestinal disease.
- Inspect the barn for unusual feces (e.g. clumped feces in animals that normally produce pellets). Again, this can be a sign of diarrheal or other intestinal disease.
- Sores on the teats or udder, or patches of hair loss on the udder. These are signs of cellulitis (bacterial skin infection).
- Red, swollen, or sensitive teats, or signs of solid material or blood in the first milk expelled when milking is started. All of these are signs of mastitis (infection of the mammary gland/udder).
- Lethargy, excessive coughing, poor eating, or general signs of malaise. All of these are general signs of infection.
Milk from animals showing these signs should never be consumed raw or pasteurized. Infected animals should be quarantined to limit the spread of disease throughout the herd, and if necessary, a veterinarian consulted to ensure proper treatment.
Milk Collection
While some contamination of raw milk occurs within the udder itself, contamination is also introduced during the milking process. This often occurs when debris fall into the milk as it is collected, or from bacteria on the skin of the teats. These risks can be mitigated fairly simply:
- Use a milking machine, rather than hand milking. Milking machines are closed systems, making it impossible for materials to fall into the milk once it leaves the animal. In contrast, hand-milking into an open container leaves the milk exposed to contaminants falling off of the animal, or from the environment.
- Pre-sanitize the milk collecting equipment before use. Contamination doesn’t just come from animals, it can also come from equipment. Sanitizing all parts of the milking machine that will contact milk will reduce this risk.
- Hand-strip the teats before milking and closely inspect the stripped milk. To hand-strip, manually milk a small amount of milk out of each teat onto a clean rag or shallow dish. Inspect the milk for white clumps or pink colourization. Animals showing either or both signs likely have mastitis. The milk from these animals is unsafe for consumption and should be discarded. Moreover, this milk should not be collected using equipment which will be used to collect milk for consumption (raw or pasteurized). Dispose of the pre-stripped milk – pre-stripping will expel the milk closest to the duct, which is the milk most likely to be contaminated.
- Use a teat dip before milking. These contain skin-safe sanitizing agents which will reduce the number of potential contaminants on the teat. Teat dip should be used immediately before attaching the milking machine, but after hand-stripping.
- Chill the milk as it is collected. E.G. by placing the receiving container in an ice-bath.
After collection
Raw milk should be used quickly after collection as it is much less shelf-stable than pasteurized milk. Milk should be transferred from your milking machine to sanitized containers and chilled to 4C (39F) or cooler as quickly as possible after collection, and maintained at this temperature until used. Ideally, if making cheese, make the cheese the same day as the milk was collected. If you need multiple milking days to collect the milk for your planned batch size, make sure you are collecting this milk over the minimum time frame and that you make the cheese as soon as you have enough milk.
And most importantly, use your senses and dispose of any milk or milk product you think may have issues. Unusual colour, texture, or aroma may be a sign of contamination – if in doubt, throw it out!
Conclusions
I think at this point the conclusions are obvious, but are worth stating in a clear form:
- There is no meaningful nutritional, gastronomic (flavour/aroma), or health benefits to consuming raw milk compared to conventionally pasteurized milk.
- There is no meaningful nutritional differences between raw milk and pasteurized milk – not even with UHT pasteurized milk.
- Raw milk is much more likely to cause foodborne illness than is pasteurized milk.
- While regulations and good practices can reduce the risk presented by raw milk products, they cannot eliminate this risk.
- Pasteurization is a simple method of eliminating most of the risks present in raw milk.
Dear Bryan
Very good detail. One factor that is changed in a lot of commercial milk is homogenisation this does affect the balance of the milk compared to raw or unhomogenised which is commercially available.
You don’t mention Tuberculosis in your milk contamination bacteria and that has historically and in parts of the world is an ongoing significant issue.
Duncan
The impact of homogenization is fairly minimal – all homogenization is, is the forcing of milk through a fine mesh. This breaks up the fat globules, making it harder for the globules to coalesce and rise to the surface. Some animals (e.g. goats) are “naturally homogenized” simply because their milk fat globules are smaller than those of cattle. In terms of nutritional value, homogenization has no measurable impact. In terms of cheese making, homogenization can alter the balance of calcium in the milk fat globules versus in the liquid portion of the milk which can affect the speed of the set, but has no measurable impact on the final texture, pH, or other measurable aspects of the curd.
As for TB, I did mention it in the “The Modern Era” section of the post, where I explicitly describe it as a major problem during industrialization and give an example of London where it killed ~3,000 people a year. As the post was focused on (largely) “Western” myths surrounding raw milk, I didn’t discuss the issues commonly found in raw milk in places like Africa and India, where diseases like bovine TB are much more common. Thankfully, Bovine TB is nearly extinct in North America and Europe.
On the matter of culturing / fermenting time of the raw milk at ambient room temperatures,…. however long it takes, depending on the temperature, and how much pre-cultured milk you add to the fresh milk batch,…. sometimes could be within a week, sometimes could be longer. I’m looking forward to see how long and what happens with milk culturing for longer times.
I do this because the results and enjoyment are great.
UHT treatments, besides the greater congestiveness result/effect in the body are also more inflammatory in the body. Congestion is a type of inflammation, but ‘finer’ sorts of inflammation occur with UHT. And, homogenization(the high pressure fat molecule breaking treatment),…. that puts the congestion factor of the top,… slam dunk.
Choose your disease/diseasement gamble. I do. You do too. As long as we have options.
Keep prudent options available.
Btw, I cook most animal products I consume (or someone cooked it). And, to be clear, on occassion I have some melted cheese, such as with eggs :))
But, yes, pasteurized milk/homogenized milk,…. in its various offerings still gives nutrition, and we can still do ‘well enough’ with them, if consumed in moderation, mainly till under age 40,… depending on ones criteria of judging results, and individual biological / genetic / physiological coping/buffering abilities.
Sincerely/Geuinely/Honestly,
Scott
Some of the conclusions you stated are largely false, as a matter of the effect of the type(how processed if processed) of milk consumed in our bodies, how our bodies handle them, and how the milk is useful to our bodies.
The problems with pasteurized milk are congestiveness (of which, btw, is also true of starches,… the negative effect is dependent on ‘the dose’), to a much greater degree than non-pasteurized / non-heated milk. The congestiveness factor (of which phlegm is the most prominent indicator) with pasteurized milks, and more specifically milks heated beyond 142.7F, besides the 161F pasteurization protocol, is a substantial cause of much disease, in that most disease at least in modern civilized countries is due to congestive dietary, and which has occurred for some thousands of years in human societies, on which congestive condition diseases/diseasements proliferate. Common cold, to flus, to cancers,…. congestion due to congestive dietary is the main cause. Viruses, bacteria, and sundry,… are part of that ecology in response, acting on the congestion.
Also, while non-cultured raw milk can be good food, leaving raw milk to ambiently culture/ferment at ambient variable ‘room temperature’, is a substantial improvement in food value, so I find with my body, with milk. I consume raw milk, I don’t refrigerate raw milk, I let it sit at ambient room temperatures, with the cap on, in the plastic containers which I buy it in. I don’t get sick. I thrive.
Pasteurized milk reduces my virility substantially, so I avoid it. I’ve tested/experimented,… and it’s quite clear,… and common with starch consumption also with advancing age. That matter of issue, is most prominent beyond age 40, apparently due to gradually reduced hormone production within the male body. I’m age 55, doing very well.
Again, leave raw milk to ambiently culture/ferment at ambient room/environmental temperatures for several days or longer,…. I have yet to find it to ‘go bad’.
If raw milk is refrigerated(below 45F? below 40F? below 38F?…) for more than a week or two, it tends to go bitter-ish in flavor, not so pleasant, rather than the exquisitely nicely flavored cultured/fermented flavor and texture quality which the milk becomes in ambient wild culturing…. just in the container you purchase it in,.. with container on. (although I do open the container and distribute the milk into other containers to speed up the process, and it may be best to not just leave the milk in the purchased container without opening,…. – but maybe, I haven’t tried tha).
For best health, and crucial at that I have found for myself, if you consume milk: quality raw milk, prefereably cultured/fermented within a week,… though drinking some fresh is fine too.
Again, I avoid pasteurized milk as a matter of results.
Beyond 142.7F processing of milk, the milk becomes more congestive in our bodies, which results in reduced body integrity, and more so when processed beyond 161F.
I’m speaking from my personal experience, of which other people have also experienced with their own bodies.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
In other words, you’re just making shit up, and just because others believe the same as you, doesn’t make it true.
I provided numerous citations to scientific studies that provide evidence in support of my claims. You’ve provided nothing but personal anecdotes and what amounts to medieval humorism.
Unless you can provide quantified, reproducible evidence for your claims, than all you’ve got are opinions. Opinions are like assholes – we all got’em, and they typically stink.
I’m not making shit up. You’re being obstinate. The science you’re referring to is incomplete.
Results of the lived experience is what I’m sharing.
I’m very familiar with your type of incomplete science, and insistence on ‘show the studies’, and ‘medieval humorism’.
I reproduce these results. You can too.
Lot’s of systematically reproduced ‘anecdotal’ consistency,….. how many, how much, does it take?
Try doing what I’ve shared about.
Gain the experience of hands-on actual doing with quality raw milk, raw milk culturing,… and see the results. Raw milk is not necessarily a magical cure for anything. The total diet and dietary practices matter. And, raw milk (and cultured usually/preferably) can be a great addition to ones health. For each person to determine.
You’re indicating a substantial lack of awareness on details of human body integrity in relation to diet.
And your evidence that the science is wrong or incomplete is…nothing.
Let’s be honest. The science clashes with your personal beliefs. But, because you have zero evidence yoy can provide to support of your beliefs, all you can do is disparage the science. You can whine and complain its “incomplete’ all you want – it’s still infinitely more proof than what you’ve provided.
Again, the plural of anecdote is not data.
You’ve had two chances now to provide proof of your claims. And all you brought was “trust me, brah”.
But hey, keep on pretending that your personal experiences are somehow superior to 150+ years of scientific enquiry performed by literally tens of thousands of microbiologists.
The evidence is major. The science you uphold is incomplete, grossly so.
Let’s be honest, the science clashes with your personal beliefs in the incomplete science.
I’ve consumed milk since I was very young, and I’ve been consuming raw milk since I realized the problems with pasteurized milk with my body, between 2009 and 2015.
The evidene is very clear to me,… as have many other people found for themselves.
The science you uphold are anecdotes also, and are incomplete in relevance given the range of contexts.
I’ve proven with my body what you’re pushing is contextually false,… and also contextually true, I undertstand,…. and therefore anecdotal.
I’m not pretending. Some of us base our choices on our unbiased experience and results,…. and we honestly are aware of the results,… we experience the results,… and make our choice.
You make your choice.
But hey, keep on being belligerent in the face of reality, with your head in the ground of incomplete science. Come up for air on occasion, if you can muster the will.
Btw, also, side note: I’ve dealt with people as you on the matter of Argentine Ants,…. of which I have much experience in landscape environment contexts, as a professional horticulturist and landscape contrator, working in many kinds of residential and wild-interface landscapes, for over 30 years. There’s a similar sort (with a few of the people)(like your ‘red-faced’ pushing against raw milk) of belligerent incomplete science narrative which in a number of common landsape contexts is relevantly incompletely understanding, misapplying of landscape practices, and obliviousness with the environmental links, in regard to provided environment factors with Argentine Ants and whether they proliferate destructively, or are practically/effectively benign, and under control by the dynamics of the ambient environment.
Sincerely,
Scott
Correction: On the 2nd from top line of the last message/comment, I meant ”the results I’ve experienced(and many other people)”, – not: ”the science”
You’re coming across like the science you’re upholding is complete,…. but it’s not.
Why are you so ‘blind’ about that? Our bodies reveal.
How familiar are you with body integrity in relation to diet, and, how the many common diseases/diseasements take hold? And which, btw, are due to the congestiveness of some foods consumed, and quantities,……. which again are the practical/effectual cause of the disease/diseasement.
Our bodies reveal.
Again, nothing more than “trust me brah” from you.
If something is real, it can be measured and reproduced. That is the fundamental nature of reality. Meaning, if there was one iota of truth to what you were saying, you’d be able to point to evidence supporting it. And, if what you were claiming was true, you’d also be able to explain the data from the multiple scientific studies in my post within the conceptual bounds of your paradigm. This is now your fourth comment where you failed to meet either of those very minimal evidentiary standards. From which, it is obvious that you have no evidence to provide.
You can deny the science all you want, but in the absence of any evidence from you, combined with your deliberate ignoring of evidence provided to that runs contrary to your beliefs, it is patently obvious that your claims are both false, and lack any evidence in support of them what-so-ever. “I’ve experienced” and “others experienced” is not data – its anecdotes. And, as said earlier, the plural of anecdotes is not data.
And while science is never complete, at the end of the day the data we do have is consistent with what I wrote and runs contrary to your claims.
As for your final point – I run a biomedical research lab for a living. I can guarantee that I know far more about the cause, pathophysiology, progression, and treatment of diseases than you.
Bryan, are you still obstinately thinking the same way regarding quality raw milk, in opposition?
Pasteurized milk / dairy, per mine and many other people’s experiences is much less healthy for our bodies; drastic difference in effect on our body integrities.
Here’s what happens, here’s a description of the results:
Pasteurized milk or ‘thermized’ milk makes the milk / dairy substantially congestive within our bodies, which reduces vein flow and leads to various ‘gunking’ of the dariy-material in our body, whether reducing the flow in veins and collecting/gunking in other portions/areas of our body, in a non-vital capacity,… which leads to / causes diseasements, whether reduced vein flow causing erectil dysfunction (for example, of which pasteurized dairy is not the only dietary cause, – starches are the other major cause)(post primary ‘youth-hormone’ stage is when thes issues became common, – after age 35).
And again, ambient fermentation of quality raw milk makes excellent fundamental food.
Sincerely, honestly, genuinely, truthfully,
Scott
And only great vitality with quality raw dairy, especially when ambiently fermented(takes a couple or few days depending on temp and whether put in a previously used ‘dirty’ container which already had the fermented dairy, per my experience, and many other people’s experiences.
The ambient fermented milk is like high quality yogurt-kefir,… and will vary depending on the details of the culturing physicality of whether or how shaken and the temperature of course.
Refrigerate when the fermentation is to the desired degree.
And, Bryan,… as for your ignorant ‘trust me brah’,….. you’re being pathetic, and you’re apparently following faulty science / ‘science’. I go with results, in real life, with quality products, and of which human history abundantly supports.
Truthfully,
Scott
Man, I must be living rent-free in your head – nearly a year since your last reply, and you come back with two more.
Sadly, despite the ample time you’ve had, your replies are the same as before – empty claims without any evidence beyond “trust me brah”, but now with an added side of science-denialism.
I supported the claims in my article with:
1 – multiple citations to sources describing how raw milk and milk consumption was viewed in multiple historical periods.
2 – multiple citations to the health agencies of three different countries.
3 – numerous citations to scientific studies, systematic reviews, and similar sources.
You’ve come back with “science is fake” and a variety of unevidenced and nonsensical claims.
As I said in my reply to your last comment If something is real, it can be measured and reproduced. That is the fundamental nature of reality. Meaning, if there was one iota of truth to what you were saying, you’d be able to point to evidence supporting it.
If you’ve got data supporting your claims, than post it here. Otherwise, you’re just spouting nonsense.
Thanks for the previous answers. But allow me to make one more question.
I’m still searching for a simpler alternative. What do you think of L. helveticus and L. casei shirota? These are quite available here. It seems that they can produce lipases and other important flavour compounds.
Won’t know unless you try! L. casei shirota is a probiotic strain, so its cheese making characteristics are unexplored. L. helveticus is a classical cheese-making species, so I’d expect it to work.
Nice post!
Is there a way to use pasteurized without using industrial cultures (meso and thermo) and enzymes (lipase)? I mean, is there some natural source of microorganisms that can work to cheesemaking like a raw milk culture (the good part of it)? Yogurt/kefir would work properly?
If a recipe needs lipase than you have to add it – the lipase normally present in milk is partially destroyed by pasteurization. As for industrial” cultures, why would you think that they would be any different than a yogurt or kefir culture? They’re all made and maintained in the same way. “Industrial” is simply bigger in scale, and has quality control.
FWIW, yoghurt cultures and thermophilic cultures are essentially the same thing and are generally interchangeable.
Kefir, IMO, makes boring cheese.
Thanks for the answer. I don’t have problem without industrial cultures or enzymes, except that where I live, it’s difficult to find these things in a small scale, so would be nice to find an alternatively simpler solution for cheesemaking at home.
So, do you think can i use yogurt as a source of lipase for cheesemaking?
Ahh, that’s a different issue. Yogurt would also lack lipase, but can be used as a thermophilic culture. You can also use kefir as both a mesophillic and thermophillic culture, but my experience with it was lackluster – it makes cheese, but all your cheeses end up tasting largely the same.
While not cheap, it may be worth mail-ordering a proper cheese culture. You can maintain it on your own afterwards, nearly indefinitely, by “backslopping” the culture, which is is how cheese cultures were maintained historically. Historically, cheese was made nearly continuously, and a portion of the previous days cultured milk would be held-over to the next day. It would then be added to the new days milk, ensuring that the new milk got a good dose of a healthy culture.
The modern version of that is you add the cheese culture to some pasteurized milk, incubate it at the cultures preferred temperature for an hour, and then freeze that milk in an ice-cube tray. One cube will give you enough culture for ~4L/1gallon of milk, and you simply toss the frozen cube into the milk to use it. When you get to your last cube, use it to make a new “mother” culture that you then freeze. Doing that, you can keep a cheese culture going essentially forever.
Bryan, the Industrial cultures are of isolated strains are they not? So, quite different to the assemblage present in yoghurt or kefir. Why would kefir produce ‘boring’ cheese and what is your experience of kefir cheese making? During one year using kefir, in place of a 4-strain culture, I’ve had great cheese although somewhat variable – which could be due to the kefir variability. For insight into the potential of kefir as a cheese culture I would suggest reading David Asher’s book on the subject.
Even though they are made of isolated strains, commercial cheese and yogurt cultures tend to have *more* variability than do historical cultures. The thing to keep in mind is that historical cultures were/are maintained largely through backslopping, which will preferentially grow out the faster growing strains. As such, it doesn’t take long until there is only three or four strains of bacteria left in the traditional cultures. Some even get selected down to a single strain. In contrast, most commercial products contain 2 to 5 species, and for reasons related to large-scale production (issues with phages – viruses of bacteria that can kill off desired strains/species in the culture) they usually contain multiple strains of each species. One example of this: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/AEM.02199-17
As for kefir, I made 8 or so cheeses with it. They were OK, but despite being supposedly very different styles of cheese, all tasted fairly similar. At the end of the day, kefir cultures contain 3 or 4 species of cheese-relevant microbes (most of the microbes in kefir don’t’ do much in the conditions cheese is made/aged at), meaning that you’re limited to the flavour compounds that small number of species produce. Among cheese making cultures you’ll find over a dozen species, and thousands of strains, which have been selected by cheese makers over centuries for specific flavour, aroma, and texture profiles. Kefir simply cannot compete with that.
Bryan, thank-you for a valuable article. I’m a smallholder and cheesemaker, previously a research biologist although for microbiology I’d be casting my mind back to undergraduate days nearly 40 years ago! Here in England we have regulated raw milk sales and cheesemaking, perhaps similarly regulated to the French situation. I’d really like to find an English equivalent to the French study that you cite.
Your statement on taste based on peer reviewed blind testing may well be correct but is only part of the story, for the UK marketplace at least. In addition to pasteurization almost all of our shop milk is also homogenized and separated/reconstituted to specific fat concentrations, ie 3.5% for “whole” milk. Currently the milk from my two local registered raw suppliers is around 5% fat, and has a very different taste from regular shop milk (ok, not a formal test but the difference is immediately clear). So, this could be down to %fat, homogenization, reconstitution or other (age/storage temperature possibly, as the shop milk is older and travels from farm to dairy processor to shop). One raw supplier has a traditional dairy breed and the other has Holsteins; again, there’s a clear taste difference. One further local farm sells direct, this time pasteurized, which tastes different again. My point is, for the UK marketplace at least, there’s additional processing that comes along with pasteurization for mainstream milk sales, the sum total of which results in rather a different product.
I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that if people were served those milks blinded, that they would be unable to reliably tell them apart. The German study I mention in the post is not alone in that – its a pretty common trend across markets and suppliers.
Thank you for this interesting article! I started my fermentation adventure with yoghurt, fermented vegetables etc. The first book about fermentation I read was from Sandor Katz (The Art of Fermentatation). Not sure what you think about this book. He is of course no biologist so I’m interested in your opinion. In his book he writes about “Clabber”. I successfully made Clabber according to his instructions and I liked it. I bought raw milk (here in Switzerland you can buy it in the organic super market) and I just let it ferment at room temperature. It got sour but in a pleasant way. Do you consider this to be “safe”? My thoughts were (up to now 🙂 ): The laco bacillus lower the PH and “automatically” make it “safe”. Of course the wrong bacteria could take over but then you smell it and you can throw away the milk. What do you think about that?
Sorry, I missed this comment. Hopefully you see my reply.
Sandor Katz is OK, but he does tend to over-state things which show potential benefits of fermentation, and tends to understate risks or evidence that shows fermentation to be “neutral” in terms of our health. As one example, he often states that fermented foods are probiotic. While this can be true, it is unlikely to occur with a ferment using the natural bacteria present on a food, and even if you use a probiotic culture, the amount of bacteria present in the finished food are unlikely to be present in sufficient numbers to be have a measurable probiotic effect.
As for clabber, it is no more or less safe than raw-milk cheese – its essentially the same concept, expect you’re relying on the acidification of the cheese by the bacteria to form a “curd”. The lowering of the pH by the lactobacillus does have a preservative effect, and this effect is stronger than you see in cheese as the pH of clabber is lower (around 4.5, versus cheese at 5.0-6.0). However, the pH of clabber is just on the threshold of being preservative, so its not an overly good preservation. For comparison, for other preserved foods, you want a pH below 3.5 for preservation, with foods between 3.5 and 4.5 typically being heavily salted or steam (or pressure) canned to add an extra layer of protection.
The other potential issue with clabber is that you can have pathogens grow in the milk before the milk gets to a pH that will then suppress their growth – while many bacteria stop dividing at the pH of clabber, that pH is insufficient to kill them and instead they enter dormancy. If you consume such a food, the bacteria can begin to regrow and make you ill. There are also some pathogens which are unaffected by the pH of clabber, including Listeria.
Long story short, clabber is less risky than raw milk cheese or raw milk, but will be more risky than pasteurized milk (or clabber made with pasteurized milk + cultures). As I mention in the article, risk is relative – not absolute – and clabber falls mid-way between raw milk and pasturized milk in terms of the risk it presents.
Wonderful article! Would you have the time to write an article addressing raw milk safety testing that could be done on a small herd at home? I periodically test scc and coliform via a lab, but I would love to have a home set up where I could test each batch. If such a thing is feasible.
Unfortunately, there isn’t really a good way to test for bacteria-of-concern at home. About the only test out there that is simple enough to be done at home is the methylene blue reduction test (what is shown in the header image), and it only informs you of total bacterial load. There is no way to tell whether those bacteria are harmful or harmless. Tests specific to coliforms, or scc tests, require a fair amount of specialized materials and equipment that aren’t really practical in the home environment.
Thank you for answering my question! I guess my follow up question would be that if the milk passes the methylene test and indicates a very low bacterial load, even if it had one of the dangerous pathogens (e coli, listeria, etc) would it still be enough to cause harm? Is there a minimum amount needed to cause damage? As you can tell, I don’t know much at all on this topic. But we do aim for extremely low scc and coliform counts. I’m not sure if that’s safe enough though?
Even with a low methylene blue test, disease from low-abundance pathogens is possible. The main use of methylene blue is to confirm that pasteurization worked, rather than to assess milk risk, although it can be used as a proxy measure for the latter.
Strictly speaking, 1 viable bacterium is sufficient to cause disease as they can reproduce in the host. While that can happen in theory, in practice you generally need to consume more than 1 bacteria to become ill. Clinically, we measure this using the “minimum infectious dose”, which is the number of bacteria people would need to consume for half of them to develop disease. This value can be pretty variable for different organisms. A few examples:
* I know this sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that Listeria can grow at refrigerator temperatures, and this would be equivalent to the amount of bacteria present in ~2 cups of modestly contaminated milk.
In your case, you’re already monitoring for pathogens and general signs of infection, so you’re already well ahead of what others are doing to monitor for safety. A methylene blue test may be useful as a way to monitor your herd between more formal testing – e.g. it may identify days where your milking routine is less effective at keeping things clean, or if you take samples from individual animals, may help you identify early onset of disease. I’ll look at putting a post together on the topic.
Very well-written and one of your replies to a comment explains why it’s such a good article.
Thank you.
But also, it’s ‘lose’, not ‘loose’.
All off the above is true. However, the really big picture shows us that food safety creates weak species, and thus a weak human race that will need better and better food “safety” after every generation to come. Right up to the level that they can’t stumach anything annymore. What is good for the individual, is not always good for the species!
That’s some nice post-hock rationalization you got there. Be a shame if someone came along and dropped some science on it.
But before I do, it may be worth pointing out that in real life I run a research lab that investigates human-pathogen interactions. We’ve even published studies on how pathogens have shaped components of the human immune system. Hell, I even teach this stuff to budding new scientists. In other words, we’re now talking about the thing I do for a job…
Your claim, while common, is completely and utterly false. It is false from the perspective of how our immune systems work, and it is false from the perspective of how evolution works.
Contrary to what people thing, our immune system does not require continued challenge by pathogens to remain “strong”. And the reason for that is simple – our immune system doesn’t differentiate between pathogens and non-pathogenic organisms, and the entirety of our skin, guts, lungs, and several other organs, are completely filled with bacteria, fungi, viruses, archeans, and parasites, which continually challenge our immune system. Moreover, an absence of pathogens does not lead to weakening of our immune system either – in fact, the opposite is the case. To be pathogenic, a organism must have ways to overcome our immune systems. These mechanisms are often damaging – permanently – to our immune system. Get infected with measles, most of your B cells die and you loose much of your immunological “memory” of past infection. Streptococcal bacteria produce superantigens that will kill or permanently inactive a large portion of your T cells. Heck, even a run-of-the-mill bacterial infection can lead to a general immune suppression that can last for months, through nothing more than the stress it places on your immune system.
So that’s how your rationalization is wrong from an immunological perspective, now for how its wrong from an evolutionary perspective.
Central to you claim is the idea that without being continually challenged by gastric pathogens, the lack of selection will lead to loss of the genes required for gastric immune function. This concept is flawed on many different levels. The first is the idea that you must be challenged at a specific tissue for evolution to maintain immunity at that location. This is simply wrong – there is ***an*** immune system, not ***many*** immune systems. Evolutionary pressures from respiratory, skin, or other infections affect the same genes as does evolutionary pressures from gastric infections. After all, it is the same immune cells, sensing the infection by the same immune receptors, and responding in the same immunological manner, which eliminates infections in all sites within our bodies. Moreover, and as I mentioned above, an absence of gastric pathogens does not equate to an absence of gastric immune stimulation – our microbiome continually stimulates the gut immune system, through all the same receptors and pathways as do pathogens.
But your misunderstanding of evolution is more fundamental than that. The fastest we can evolve at is defined by our mutation rate – the speed of evolution, after all, is measured by the rate of genetic change in a population. Selection is a “break” on evolution – it slows down evolution by reducing the number of genetic variants in a population. Disease is no exception to this – mass outbreaks of disease like the black death lead to the massive “genetic pruning” of the populations gene pool. And this is not a good thing; the loss of genetic diversity in response to one pathogen can open a population up to infection by another pathogen which infects via a different mechanism. As a general rule, the broader the genetic diversity of a population, the better a chance that population has of surviving introduction of a deadly pathogen. Less selective pressure in the form of gastric infections today means that we are not having a lot of kids die before they are 8. It means that the novel genetic mutations they carry (each of us has 100-200 not found in our parents) therefore have a better opportunity to move forwards and enter the broader population. Which means that we, as a population, are developing the genetic tools to resist new pathogens faster now than at any time in our history.
generally speaking, and i’m not a scientist..However, I believe you AND George Carlin to be correct. And science? Who’s science? Dr. Faucci ‘s “science”? To question HIM is to question SCIENCE i think he was quoted?? That selfish fool is a prime example of politically motivated NON science that was and IS doing major harm to our society and world and yes..Jan, our species as a whole.
No human to human transmission, no mask needed, masks needed, children need masks, wear three masks. It’s a total bullshit in the name of science. If you get the vaccine you can’t get covied. That was thrown around a lot. How about dropping THAT science right?? lol
I see people walking around with cloth masks on, or those stupid blue ones, not even covering their noses..carrying children and infants all masked for because they were lead down a long trail of BAD science. It’s really sad.
So Jan, in the name of good science, which is to always question what we think of as axiom, I give you a solid thumbs up!
LOL Peter, you may just as well go away now. For the record, I run a biomedical research lab where we’ve studied COVID-19 for the past 2 years, and consult with businesses on managing COVID-associated absenteeism in their workforce. You’ve clearly allowed yourself to be spoon-fed lies that agree with your beliefs and never once critically analyzed those beliefs or the “facts” you think support them. You wouldn’t recognize science if it walked up to you and slapped you with a rotting fish.
I can’t believe that I’m going to waste time with this, but the quick breakdown of just how wrong you are here:
1 – no human-to-human transmission. I don’t even know what to say to that. Where do you think all of the COVID patients in hospitals are getting the disease – eating bats? That claim is just about as stupid as stupid can be. None-the-less, human-to-human transmission has been proven time and time again: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323514/
2 – the original clinical trials of the covid vaccines showed 95% efficacy against the original strain, and subsequent trials showed that they were less efficacious against emerging strains. At no point did anyone actually familiar with those trials claim that vaccines were sufficient on their own – they are part of the solution, not the entirety of the solution. One example: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
3 – Masks, even cloth ones, provide protection against infection. It is of no surprise that filter-style masks like KN95’s work better, but even flimsy paper and cloth masks reduce risk of infection (in the wearer) by over 50%; protection is even higher if the infected person is wearing the mask: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
So yeah, that’s what the science says. Although, given the nature and tone of your “reply”, I don’t you’ll read them, nor try to incorporate them into your belief system.
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
You write that people largely consumed fermented milk until relatively recently, which makes sense to me. But you focus on Europe. Was this equally true in Africa and India? I seem to remember reading that lactose tolerance evolved independently in northern Europe and Africa. And my impression, from stories like this:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/cattle-praise-song
Is that Africans sometimes drink unfermented, unpasteurized milk. I don’t know how far back that tradition goes, though. (And I mean, it’s a fictional story.)
My other question is, let’s say you’ve got some raw milk of unknown safety (but not noticeably spoiled). Could you bulk pasteurize it yourself and then consume it safely, or would some of the toxins created by pathogenic bacteria be persistent in the milk? Or are there other concerns?
As I stated in the article, the African “story” of historical milk consumption and the evolution of the lactase tolerance gene is poorly understood, so I cannot answer that question. The African example is also quite different – there are scattered populations of lactase persistent individuals in a region otherwise dominated by lactose intolerant individuals. So unlike the European case, in Africa the spread of the gene was more limited. Unfortunately, research into this area has been minimal, so there isn’t much else we can say about it at this time.
As for spoiled milk, even after pasteurization it should not be consumed. Bacteria can produce a number of compounds which are unaffected by pasteurization. This may include some toxins (proteins produced by bacteria which are intended to harm the host) as well as toxic metabolites such as biogenic amines. I’ve written an article on the latter: https://suigenerisbrewing.com/index.php/2019/01/22/biogenic-amines/