THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF RAW MILK FROM GRASS FED ANIMALS. BY RON SCHMID, ND

[Guest guest]

The Health Benefits Of Raw Milk

From Grass-Fed Animals

By Ron Schmid, ND

In 1970, I went to live on the island of Martha's Vineyard. I was

quite ill with gastrointestinal problems. I began living mostly on

seafood, fresh vegetables and salads, and raw milk and eggs purchased

from a local farmer, with a little meat and whole grain bread. My

health problems, which had been intractable for years, disappeared.

 

Raw milk remained a mainstay of my diet. Since 1981 I have strongly

recommended raw milk to thousands of people who have seen me in my

practice as a naturopathic physician. I practice in Connecticut,

where we enjoy the right to purchase certified raw milk throughout

the state (with the exception of the town of Fairfield, where a

fascist local health board has instituted an unchallenged-for-lack-of-

funds town ordinance prohibiting the sale of raw milk.)

 

The raw milk available in the part of Connecticut where I live is

from Debra Tyler's farm in Cornwall Bridge, called " Local Farm. "

Debra has nine cows on fourteen acres. Eight health food stores in

central and northern Connecticut pick up milk regularly at Local

Farm. There are about a dozen other certified raw milk dairies among

Connecticut's 210 dairy farms.

 

Debra has Jersey cows. Most farms have Holsteins, which provide large

quantities of milk, but milk that is lower in protein, fat and

calcium. Jerseys were originally bred by the French to produce milk

for cheese making. The fat content of Debra's milk during the warm

months is about 4.8 percent, well above the normal 3.5 percent for

whole milk. Debra's cows eat mostly grass in the spring, summer and

fall, and mostly hay in the winter (each cow consumes a forty pound

bale a day!), with a few pounds a day of ground corn and roasted

soybeans (five to one corn to soybeans ratio).

 

Local Farm milk is certified organic. Certification costs several

hundred dollars a year in fees and considerable paperwork. It also

means that Debra must sometimes pay more for certified feed from

faraway places than for locally produced feed she knows to be organic

but which is not certified. This raises the question—if you know and

trust the local farmers who produce your food, does it really have to

be certified?

 

TESTIMONY ON RAW MILK

The last time the right of the people of Connecticut to purchase raw

milk was seriously threatened was in 1994 when the state

Environmental Committee held public hearings on the certification of

raw milk, before voting almost unanimously to continue licensing new

farms and allowing raw milk to be sold. I testified at those

hearings. My testimony was framed to respond to objections to raw

milk raised by the state health department and to document the

benefits of raw milk. To quote from that testimony:

 

" The state epidemiologist writes that `It has yet to be demonstrated

that raw milk has any beneficial health effects. . . ' He cites

articles attached to his letter. In one article, `Unpasteurized Milk,

The Hazards of a Health Fetish' (Journal of the American Medical

Association, 10/19/84), the authors make a series of misstatements

about the research of Francis Pottenger before concluding that raw

milk has no health benefits. I detail these charges as follows in the

paper I've given the members of the Committee.

 

" Now what Pottenger actually did in some of his experiments is this.

He used four groups of cats. All received for one-third of the diet

raw meat. The other two-thirds of the diet consisted in either raw

milk or various heat-treated milks. The raw milk/raw meat diet

produced many generations of healthy cats. Those fed pasteurized milk

showed skeletal changes, decreased reproductive capacity and

infectious and degenerative diseases.

 

" Now just who was Francis Pottenger? He was the son of the physician

who founded the once famous Pottenger Sanatorium for treatment of

tuberculosis in Monrovia, California. He completed his residency at

Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930 and became a full-time assistant

at the Sanatorium. From 1932 to 1942, he also conducted what became

known as the Pottenger Cat Study.

 

" In 1940, he founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital at

Monrovia. Until closing in 1960, the hospital specialized in treating

non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.

 

" Dr. Pottenger was a regular and prolific contributor to the medical

and scientific literature. He served as president of several

professional organizations, including the Los Angeles County Medical

Association, the American Academy of Applied Nutrition and the

American Therapeutic Society. He was a member of a long list of other

professional organizations.

 

" Pottenger's experiments met the most rigorous scientific standards.

His outstanding credentials earned him the support of prominent

physicians. Alvin Foord, MD, Professor of Pathology at the University

of Southern California and pathologist at the Huntington Memorial

Hospital in Pasadena, co-supervised with Pottenger all pathological

and chemical findings of the study.

 

" One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study is one

that modern science has largely ignored. It has to do with the

nutritive value of heat-labile elements—nutrients destroyed by heat

and available only in raw foods.

 

" In his article `Clinical Evidences of the Value of Raw Milk,'

Pottenger writes: `Some of the factors transmitted by milk are thermo-

labile [sensitive to heat]. Though their destruction may not produce

death, their deficiency may prevent proper development of the child.

This may show in the development of an inadequate skeleton or a

decrease in resistance. . . . delay in development of osseous centers

is noted more frequently in those children. . . receiving heat

treated milk. It is particularly absent from the raw milk fed

children. . . . I am basing this discussion on analysis of 150

children whose parents have consulted me because of respiratory

allergies. Many other workers. . . have also shown that treating milk

by heating interferes with its proper assimilation and nutritional

qualities. . . . The best milk from a nutritional standpoint is raw

milk. . . . Heat-treating milk interferes with calcium metabolism

causing. . . delay in bone age and small bones. . . . The

interference with calcium metabolism as shown in the bones is only a

physiological index of disturbed metabolism throughout the body.'

 

" I have prescribed raw milk from grass-fed animals to my patients for

nearly fifteen years. Time and again I have seen allergies clear up

and dramatically improved health. Particularly in children, middle

ear infections usually disappear and do not recur on raw milk. Both

children and adults unable to drink pasteurized milk without problems

have thrived on raw milk. In hundreds—perhaps thousands—of my

patients using raw milk, not one has ever developed a salmonella,

campylobacter, or other raw-milk-related infection.

 

" In the letter cited above, the state epidemiologist states that `The

processes of certification and/or inspection do not guarantee that

raw milk will not be contaminated with pathogenic organisms.' He also

lists a host of microorganisms that are alleged to be transmitted by

raw milk, not mentioning that, as the literature accompanying his

letter makes clear, the only organisms even potentially associated

with the consumption of certified raw milk are salmonella and

campylobacter. And in one of the articles he cites, `The Hazard in

Consuming Raw Milk' (in The Western Journal of Medicine), the authors

actually state that `Salmonella and campylobacter diseases in humans

are generally not serious. But in persons with compromised health

(particularly those with malignant conditions and immunosuppressed by

disease or therapy), these infections may be serious.'

 

" So, the gist of the state's argument against certified raw milk is

that it might possibly on isolated occasions cause serious disease in

some people whose immune systems have been compromised by the toxic

effects of chemotherapy. And because of this very slight risk, those

of us who might choose to drink certified raw milk for the benefits I

have catalogued should be denied that right. "

 

Fortunately, the members of the Environmental Committee saw through

the shallowness of the state's argument and voted in favor of raw

milk.

 

Milk in History and Evolution

Not everyone agrees that milk should be part of the human diet after

infancy. The argument is made that just as all other species drink no

milk after weaning, neither should we, especially that of another

species. Many adults have difficulty digesting pasteurized milk, and

allergies to pasteurized milk products are common. While this lends

credence to arguments against milk, such reactions are usually due to

pasteurization itself and the poor quality of conventionally produced

milk and milk products. While for some individuals genetic influences

play a role, for most people, the body's reaction to milk depends

largely upon the quality and state of the particular milk used.

 

The Swiss of the Loetschental Valley were one of the few native

groups Weston Price studied that used milk. (The others were certain

African tribes, including the Masai.) The Swiss valley-dwellers used

raw whole milk, both fresh and cultured, cheese and butter, all in

substantial quantities. The milk was from healthy, grass-fed animals

and was used unpasteurized and unhomogenized. Such foods clearly can

play a major role in a health-building program for the individual

genetically enabled to utilize these foods well. They are a rich

source of fat-soluble vitamins A and D and other crucial nutrients in

short supply in diets lacking in high quality animal fats. (Contrary

to popular opinion, liberal amounts of animal fats, particularly from

grass-fed animals, are essential for good health and resistance to

disease.)

 

Yet it is possible to attain optimal health without dairy foods.

Price discovered groups using no dairy foods that had complete

resistance to dental decay and chronic disease; their diets

invariably included other rich sources of animal fats, calcium and

other minerals. The soft ends of long bones were commonly chewed, and

the shafts and other bones were used in soups.

 

Modern medicine has discovered the importance of a substantial intake

of calcium. Several recent studies have linked high blood pressure

and other problems to chronic subclinical calcium deficiency,

including increased incidence of colon and prostate cancers in men

and osteoporosis and osteoarthritis in both men and women.

Paradoxically, other problems are associated with high consumption of

dairy foods; this has not gone unnoticed by researchers,

nutritionists and holistic physicians.

 

The difference between fresh raw milk from grass-fed cows and

processed milk explains the paradox. This concept has not been

considered in attempts by today's medical community to explain the

health effects of dairy foods.

 

Domesticated animals were first used for milk eight to ten thousand

years ago, as a genetic change affecting mostly people in Europe, the

Middle East and parts of Africa enabled them to digest milk as

adults. Milk from domesticated animals then began to become important

as a human food. With domestication and settlement, fewer wild

animals were available; as groups of people roamed less, they hunted

less, eating more grains and vegetables. In some cultures, milk

replaced animal bones as the chief source of calcium and some other

minerals.

 

In indigenous cultures where adults used milk, often it was used as

cultured or clabbered milk. This is similar to homemade raw yogurt,

and it is partially predigested—much of the lactose (milk sugar) has

been broken down by bacterial action. This process must be

accomplished over a period of several hours in the stomach when one

drinks fresh milk; yogurt or clabbered milk is much more easily

digested than fresh milk.

 

Adaptations in evolution are always the effects of particular causes.

Humans developing the ability to digest milk into adulthood possessed

a survival advantage; such changes are the basis of evolution. Put

simply, many human beings evolved the ability to easily digest raw

milk because raw milk from healthy, grass-fed animals gave them an

adaptive advantage; it made them stronger and more able to reproduce.

Such milk remains a wonderful food that provides us with fat-soluble

nutrients, calcium and other minerals that are by and large in short

supply in the modern diet.

 

In the six years since I presented the testimony quoted above, I have

become more convinced than ever of the value and importance of raw

milk in the diets of people of all ages. For many of the people who

eat in the manner I recommend, raw milk is the chief source of

enzymes. I believe enzymes are a critical component in recovering

from disease and establishing and maintaining health. Hundreds of

people I've seen have used Local Farm raw milk as an essential part

of their naturopathic treatment.

 

There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not thankful that I live in a

state where bureaucrats and medical monopolists have not stripped us

of what should be an inalienable, constitutional right. I mean the

right to purchase raw milk and other healthy, locally produced foods

directly from the people who produce them.

 

It's impossible to overestimate the importance of the work Debra

Tyler and farmers like her are doing. I long to see the day when all

Americans have the right to purchase locally produced raw milk, meat,

fowl and other farm products directly from the farmers who produce

them. I hope to see the day when the current yoke of prohibitions and

bureaucratic red tape will be thrown off, and we once again will be

free to produce and consume truly healthy foods. The men and women

who founded this country did not intend for commercial interests to

control the food supply and thus our health. These are rights of the

people, and they are rights that have been stripped away. We need to

work together to regain them.

 

 

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About Ron Schmid

Dr. Ron Schmid has practiced as a licensed naturopathic physician in

Connecticut since graduating from the National College of

Naturopathic Medicine in 1981. A graduate of the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology as well, he has taught courses and seminars

in nutrition at all four of the accredited naturopathic medical

schools in the United States. He served for a year as the first

Clinic Director and Chief Medical Officer at the University of

Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine. He is a member of the

American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the Connecticut

Society of Naturopathic Physicians, and is on the Honorary Board of

the Weston A. Price Foundation. He is also the manufacturer of 100%

pure, additive free nutritional supplements. Dr. Schmid is the author

of Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine, first published in 1986.

 

 

 

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A Campaign for Real Milk is a project of The Weston A. Price

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