Fascinating Story of Raw Milk in the "Land of the Free" from 1776 Until Now
How the 1987 ban came about in America and what it means to your food security today.
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(This story was originally published in 4 parts. I am republishing it as a whole for those who asked for it this way. Thank you for reading.)
A “scientific” ideology banned raw milk and vilified mothers who chose it anyway. Behind this, was a wealthy philanthropist pushing his agenda and setting the stage for the demise of the small farmer and food security in America.
An age-old food
In the opening scenes of the famous musical Fiddler on The Roof, our hero–Tevye–arranges his milk cart.
As the overture plays, drawing us into the scene and his inner musings on “Tradition!” he and his horse drive through the village serving his community with the milk from his cows and the cheeses he makes from that milk.
He is a farmer. A milkman. He is central to his community.
He dips his ladle into his milk can and pours the liquid into the waiting pitchers of the women. The activity of feeding his community is a small detail almost lost in the background of the plot–an illustration of a challenging time in 1905 Imperial Russia. It is lost in the background because of its normalcy. In this illustration of a time long ago, there was nothing unusual about a milkman feeding his community. It was what happened in many civilizations for millenia. The drama of the story unfolds as a controlling ideology comes closer into village life, destroying what they treasured and leaving them to ruin.
This is not a story about imperialism. It is about raw milk. It is about how this life-giving food has become a villain in modern America.
What Happened To Change How We View Raw Milk?
Raw milk–it is a food that is obscure to many Americans. Do you fear it? Despise it? Are you curious about it? We’ve been told that raw milk is dangerous. Is it?
Forgotten details of American history allow us to explore the topic and untangle our societal prejudice against it. Perhaps understanding the facts of our history will help us to understand how we got here and how we can make better decisions for the future.
The history is a tangled web of greed, deceit, and control.
Raw Milk Is a Significant Food for Civilization
Raw dairy is a perfect food–one of the two foods designed by nature to nourish the young (honey is the other). It is rich in nutrients humans need–filled with protein, fats, and sugars. It contains vitamins and minerals. It has vital enzymes that help our bodies absorb and use these nutrients. For example, lactase helps us digest the lactose (sugars), while the phosphatase helps us absorb phosphorus. Raw milk is probiotic, containing bacteria that help our own microbiomes thrive and that allow milk to change into other desirable foods.
There is nothing more basic between a mother and child than milk. Historically, a mother nurtures her child on the milk she produces. For the first few months of life, the child gets all the nutrients he or she needs from this wonderful mechanism our creator bestowed on all mammals.
We humans are not special in this regard.
For millennia, human civilizations have relied on a relationship between us and other mammals–most notably cows, goats, sheep, camels, water buffalo, and horses.
Not every civilization developed these relationships. But in those civilizations that did, milk became a fundamental ingredient in their food security.
There were 2 things that were true across the cultures that had dairy:
It was local.
It was primarily consumed raw.
In some lands, because these were warm climates, there was no way to keep dairy cold. It would immediately begin its fermentation process. Cow and water buffalo milk turn to clabber (drinkable yogurt), goat and sheep milk become yogurt, while camel and horse milk transform to a sour kefir-like drink.
These fermented dairy products brought life to the cultures that depended on them. They were often revered.
In time, cheese became a way we learned to preserve milk. All types of milks could be crafted into cheeses specific to their regions.
What happened that changed raw milk from a staple of civilization to something obscure, scary, reviled, and even criminal?
It all started with whisky…
The Entangled Relationship Between War, Whisky, and Milk
You are probably asking “What does whisky have to do with milk?”
We must understand whisky production in America to understand our history with milk.
In 1800s America, high taxes (to pay for the Revolutionary War) on imported spirits led to the rise of whisky distilleries in America. American farmers said “We can do this!” and they did. American whisky skyrocketed in popularity and production.1
Whisky distilleries popped up everywhere. Even in certain cities. Transportation was a big cost, so putting the distilleries near the people seemed like a good idea. 2Disposing of the spent grain used to make whisky was expensive and cumbersome. This led to the concept of putting dairies right next to the distilleries and feeding the cows the spent grain from the whisky-making process. Spent grain is not a cow's native food. Her native food is a diversity of grasses, while she roams the fields in the sunshine.
For those profiting from both the whisky and the milk, this seemed like a great idea. However, these abominations on agriculture led to disastrous results for cows and humans.
What ensued from this situation was predictable. The cows spent most of their short miserable lives indoors, in filthy conditions, unhealthy and producing milk that was of terrifying quality. There were no closed milking systems at the time. Workers hand milked into open pails.
This milk became known as “swill milk.”
It is not shocking that infant mortality was unacceptably high during this period. Sanitation was poor, there were no closed milking systems and no refrigeration. Public voices began to implicate the milk from the distillery dairies as a factor in the infant mortality rate.
This tragic situation had an easy-enough solution: stop feeding cows spent grain. Return cows to their native diets. Give them adequate lives out on pasture, and provide clean milking conditions. Have healthy workers milking the animals. Bring clean milk to the cities from the surrounding countryside.
But that was not the proposed solution.
A Wealthy Philanthropist “Saves” The Children
By the late 1800s, Nathan Strauss, a wealthy philanthropist and co-owner of Macy’s department store, advocated for and then subsidized the pasteurization of all milk in New York City.
Several doctors spoke out against this policy noting that clean raw milk was highly nutritious and great for children. Leading the campaign for clean raw milk was Dr. Henry Coit. He saw the terrible conditions of the “distillery dairies,” and the health consequences that were blamed on the raw milk. He proposed an entirely different solution: establishing a “Medical Milk Commission” that would have doctors certify raw dairies outside the city. These doctors would ensure the farms had clean practices and produced healthy, safe milk.
His approach was a decentralized approach to feeding communities. Farmers remained in control of their own farms, the Medical Milk Commission simply became a certifying agent.
Many doctors participated in this endeavor and they had great results.
These doctors advocated for proper nutrition for children and proper animal husbandry. The results were a win-win.
But Strauss’ argument against this was that certified clean raw milk was more expensive than Strauss’ subsidized, “efficient” pasteurized milk. It was often double or quadruple the cost of the swill milk or the subsidized, pasteurized milk that Strauss offered.
The obvious solution is a dual approach. But that is not what happened.
The “public health” campaign, backed by Strauss' deep pockets, prevailed. Pasteurization won out on the better “efficiency” although most all players recognized that certified clean raw milk was the better option. (One can only wonder what types of influence Strauss’ “philanthropy” led to.)
What ensued was a decades-long battle. Many doctors advocated for clean raw milk. Those in Strauss’ camp campaigned for “public health” and compulsory pasteurization without focusing on the underlying quality of the product.
The doctors who advocated for clean, certified farms were vilified, ridiculed, and bullied. The “public health advocates” who spoke about the dangers of raw dairy and pushed for mandatory pasteurization shifted policy in many cities.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.
The Rise of Propaganda
Journalist Edward Bernays published his book Propaganda in 1928. Bernays was not an ordinary journalist. He was Sigmund Frued’s nephew and acutely aware of this new field of study. He is infamous for writing, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”
Post WWII, Bernays realized that if propaganda could work during war time, it could be applied outside of war efforts as well. But, the term “propaganda” had certain connotations. He re-coined the same ideas as “public relations” to make it more palatable to a discerning population. One of his infamous campaigns portrayed cigarettes as “freedom torches” for women to increase the sales of cigarettes to female consumers.
During this time, many American farms still offered raw milk directly to consumers. But this wouldn’t last long.
How much did Bernays’ research factor into the next 20-30 years of vilification of America’s dairy farmers? The propaganda against raw milk was relentless. One begins to wonder if there was something more sinister at play? Could the strategies that altered the perceptions of women smoking also shift public opinion of an age-old food?
During the 1930s “commercial dairy interests, segments of the medical community, politicians and public health agency officials and their allies in the media [began] a campaign first to smear all raw milk and then to eliminate its availability and sale.” (Schmid 57)3
They did this through a series of articles–many in magazines targeted towards women. The articles claimed, with no documentation, that raw milk was dangerous. The most prominent article was in Coronet magazine in 1945. The headline blazed “Raw Milk Can Kill You.” It was about “Crossroads, America” and told the story of an epidemic in this town caused by raw milk and that “one out of every four patients died.” Except that it was entirely made up. There was no such city. “The outbreak was fictitious and represented no actual occurrence.” (Schmid 144).
But, the scare tactics worked. Fear took hold. Compulsory pasteurization laws passed in most states. Few continued to push back against the propaganda. It was politically and socially expensive.4
“With widespread pasteurization came the notion, fostered by the public health authorities and the media, that all milk must be pasteurized, the good with the bad, and that somehow pasteurization would take unhealthy milk and make it not only safe to drink, but also healthy. The acceptance of this mantra led to compulsory pasteurization, confinement dairying, and the demise of milk and its products as vital health sustaining foods.” (Schmid 58)
In less than 2 generations, the raw milk issue, seemingly, sank into oblivion.
The “science” was settled: raw milk was dangerous. Those who drank it, gave it to their children, or provided it to their communities were relegated to the fringe. They didn’t care about health. They didn’t care about their community. They were labeled “nut jobs” and worse. They were censored and ignored.
Would this dogmatic ideology prevail over thoughtful examination of the facts?
The Criminalization of Raw Milk and The Vilification of the Community Milkman
Over the next 50-70 years, raw milk became increasingly harder for average, non-farming Americans to find.
Nathan Strauss, though now long deceased, had won. His flawed ideology prevailed. “Straus and his supporters ignored the fundamental relationships between animals, food and human health. As zealots and politicians often do, they repeated a mixture of platitudes, truths, half-truths and falsehoods often and loud, making it impossible for most people to separate fact from fiction. They set the stage for the epidemic of chronic disease which ironically but significantly had its start during the very years they convinced Americans to accept universal pasteurization.” (Schmid 65 emphasis added)
The emotional and ideological campaign against raw milk built the foundation for the regulatory ban to occur and stick. The decades-long vilification of raw milk, of mothers who nurtured their children with raw dairy, and of the farmers who provided it changed our culture.
It started with the zealous campaigning of a wealthy businessman whose goal was to control what other people put in their bodies. Whether or not his intentions were “good,” the results have inflicted deep wounds on mothers’ ability to feed their families.
What was once the staple of many American communities–a dairy farm that could provide food security to their surrounding area–no longer exists.
Will we be able to restore it?
Russian Roulette
Today, raw dairy is scarce. It is usually far away from those who seek it, requiring long drives and increased expense. More relevant than that, dairies in general are removed from the communities they serve.
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ideology is that no one should drink raw milk for any reason ever. They’ve said in the past that it is like “playing Russian Roulette with your health.”
This ideology removes vital choice from families and eliminates community food security.
In the 1980s, Ralph Nadar’s organization, Public Citizen, campaigned for the complete elimination of raw milk sales and consumption through a ban on interstate commerce. They eventually won, through a court case in 1986. The FDA implemented the ban in 1987 to the demise of all Americans and the erosion of farming communities.5 This tiny, obscure regulation in the federal code says that no one can cause to be delivered into interstate commerce raw milk intended for human consumption. Code.
Food choice and security for our families and our communities is in the hands of bureaucrats. When bureaucrats decide that mothers cannot choose what type of milk they can give their children, our entire food security is atop a slippery slope.
Loyalty to this bureaucratic ideology has the American government criminalizing our farmers and mothers for basic food choices. It is not simply the political or policy decision that removes our access and threatens our food security; it is the overwhelming implication that if we decide differently than the bureaucrats, we are wrong and are damaging or endangering our children.
Do we want to put our food security and future in the hands of a few unelected bureaucrats?
Perhaps this dangerous ideology is the real “Russian Roulette.” As farms become further centralized and removed from where we live, our food security is threatened.
When we understand that the story behind the bureaucratic control is a lie–a profit-seeking farce made up to pit a mother’s instincts against her own children, fueled by propaganda–we are empowered to use discernment and choose wisely.
It is our responsibility as mothers to shift an ideology that doesn’t work. It is our job to nurture our children and our communities, to live freely and to live in health. It is time to dispel harmful ideologies and shake the dust from our shoulders.
We are the mamas.
We know what’s best for our children.
In the story of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye–the farmer–was central to his community. His is the story of a horrific ideology that took hold in Russia: totalitarianism. Tevye’s family and village were abused, tortured, and driven from their homes because ordinary people blindly complied with the dangerous, prevailing ideology that destroyed this traditional milkman.
At the same time, far away in America, another dangerous ideology was shifting our communities.
The continued criminalization of raw milk threatens a similar ending to that of Tevye and his family. While seemingly insignificant, this regulatory ban removes the number one basic food choice from the American household. It represents a shift that changed how we relate to our food, to each other, and to the farmers producing our basic needs. We must remove the ideological foothold and bring back our choice to produce, purchase, sell, and consume raw milk–indeed any food–within our own communities. It’s time to bring back the dairy farmer as a central figure. It’s time to trust mamas. It is time to write the future we want to see. It is time to rebuild our community food security.
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https://americanwhiskeytrail.distilledspirits.org/american-whiskey-history
https://inthespiritofthelaw.com/2019/12/25/the-whiskey-trust/
Schmid, Ron ND. The Untold Story of Milk. First edition, New Trends Publishing, 2003
https://realfoodcc.com/raw-milk-ban-history
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-08-12-mn-469-story.html
Thanks for sharing this rundown of the history. I’m very disappointed to learn of Nader’s part in this in particular. In my youth, I was an activist in the PIRGs, which he helped found. I even had dinner with the man when he met and dined with a group of us student leaders. But I guess I have to thank him now for my difficulties in tracking down raw milk.
Goat milk is the most consumed in the world for a reason! Dairy goats are relatively easy keepers. I've kept a small herd of Nubians for years and they provide milk, cheese and manure for the garden, turning invasive weeds into food. Secure fencing and hay storage are the main considerations. Love my raw goat milk!