The Tea Party wants ‘milk freedom’
But as more states liberalize raw milk laws, related illnesses are going up
To celebrate the passage of a law that loosens restrictions on consuming raw, unpasteurized milk, West Virginia lawmakers recently cheers-ed each other with cups of — what else? — raw, unpasteurized milk.
Then they got violently ill.
It might be coincidence. Some lawmakers noted that a stomach bug had been flying around the state Capitol last week. But for public health advocates who have issued stern and sustained warnings about the dangers of consuming raw milk, the timing was just too suspicious.
Milk triggers emotions. It’s the first thing most of us eat. It’s mother’s milk. A kind of sacred, mythical elixir.
It also happens to be the substance that first prompted an organized public health response to prevent food-borne illnesses — and, ultimately, the formation of the Food and Drug Administration. (Or, as Jon Stewart put it, the “FDA started 100 years ago to make sure the milk bottles you got were full of milk instead of white paint and rat shit.”)
Yet, still, a century later, public health officials and raw milk advocates, supported in part by Tea Party-ers, are locked in battle.
On one side: People who believe pasteurization kills beneficial bacteria and nutrients in milk — nutrients that can cure everything from ADHD to asthma — and that the dairy industry and the government are conspiring to destroy “nature’s perfect food.” (Think survivalists, libertarians, back-to-the-landers, hippies.) When the government raids Amish farms in Pennsylvania or beloved health food markets in Venice, Ca., they get angry.
On the other side: Food safety advocates, the dairy industry and government regulators who point to the hundreds of illnesses each year linked to raw milk, which are particularly devastating to children and sometimes fatal. This camp notes the obvious physiological reality of the cow: the orifice from whence dung comes is dangerously proximate to the ones from which milk also comes. If dairies aren’t exceedingly careful, things can get messy — and milk, contaminated — PDQ.
At the turn of the last century, as people poured into American cities, dairy cows got pushed farther and farther from urban areas. That meant milk had to travel, unrefrigerated, to reach consumers. As more people got sick from spoiled milk, cities across the country started requiring heat-treatment, or pasteurization, to kill nasty microbes. Eventually, in 1927, Congress passed a law requiring that only “Grade A,” pasteurized milk be sold between states. Six decades later the FDA banned interstate sales of raw milk altogether.
Today some states, including California — a milk-producing powerhouse — allow sales of raw milk or “cow shares” in which people buy a share in a cow or a herd for access to to their milk. More states are starting to relax laws as raw milk proponents push for change. West Virginia’s recent law allowing cow shares is just the latest to ride the pro-raw-milk momentum, which worries food safety experts.
“The trendline for loosening laws on raw milk is going in the wrong direction,” said Bill Marler, a prominent food safety advocate and attorney who’s represented dozens of people sickened by raw milk.
For decades, few people paid attention to raw milk, which was mostly consumed by dairy farmers. If anyone got sick, it barely registered. But in the late 1990s, convinced of raw milk’s healing powers, raw milk advocates started to organize. By the late 2000’s prominent lawmakers began making bold statements about its benefits.
“In 2009, there was the rise of the Tea Party, and you also had Ron Paul, a doctor, advocating for raw milk,” Marler said, referring to the Texas Republican. (“What we really need to do is call it the ‘Teat Party’,” Marler jokes.)
With Tea Party fervor and a growing local food movement behind them, raw milk advocates started to gain steam. More states passed laws allowing greater access to raw milk, and now roughly half of US states allow some form of raw milk sales. Over the last several years, members of Congress have also introduced bills — or “milk freedom legislation” — that would overturn the federal ban on interstate sales, most recently the Milk Freedom Act of 2015.
“A lot of people want to buy fresh, unpasteurized milk and regulations shouldn’t get between them and a farmer who wants to sell it,” said US Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine who co-sponsored the bill, in a written statement. “It just doesn’t make sense to spend money cracking down on small, local farmers who are producing natural, raw milk and I think the enforcement of raw milk regulations has been overzealous and needs to be reined in.”
Indeed, some believe that blocking sales of raw milk — the only food banned in interstate commerce — is unconstitutional.
But food safety advocates and the FDA remain convinced that raw milk is dangerous stuff. Legalizing raw milk, they reckon, creates the illusion that it’s uniformly safe, when in fact careless dairies — particularly those lured by the $15 a gallon price that raw milk fetches — may not be taking all the right sanitary precautions.
Since the rise of the raw milk movement, the number of outbreaks blamed on raw milk has shot up. Just this month, the California Department of Public Health confirmed 10 illnesses related to a rare E.coli strain, linked to the country’s largest raw milk producer, Organic Pastures Dairy Co.
“That’s the largest raw milk dairy in the country,” said Marler, “the most heavily regulated, and they still had an outbreak.”
The trouble, as Marler sees it, is that children are the ones who most frequently, and seriously, get sick.
“They think they’re doing a wonderful thing for their children,” Marler said, referring to well-intentioned parents. “The risks just didn’t register.”
They may not have registered in West Virginia, either. But some noxious bacteria may have tried to send a message: If you’re going to drink raw milk, better know just where it comes from.
