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Raw Milk: A Healthier Alternative? - continued

By Chad Hershler published Oct 1, 2010

Press releases, websites, and medical journals—preferred haunt of the public-health official—are filled with studies, statistics, and undisguised pleas from medical health officers proving the indisputable fact that pasteurized milk is much safer to drink than raw. “It is important that all British Columbians be aware of the serious health risks associated with consuming unpasteurized milk,” Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer, wrote in an open letter to Victoria’s Times Colonist in the wake of the Home on the Range story. “Any perceived health benefits are most certainly offset by the serious risks of illness, disease or even death that can result.” Robin Smith, executive director of the B.C. Dairy Foundation, goes one step further. “If someone drinks raw milk and gets sick,” he says, “they shouldn’t use the public health care system—if you want to take risks, maybe you shouldn’t ask the public system to take care of you.”

At the same time, the blogosphere—preferred haunt of the raw-milk advocate—is stuffed with anecdotes and opinions reporting the health benefits, even miraculous cures, of switching their asthmatic child, their allergic friend, their lactose-intolerant self from pasteurized to raw milk. “Raw milk literally saved my life,” writes a Michigan woman after hearing that her local raw milk farmer might be shut down. “Four years ago I was deathly ill with a chronic digestive disorder that threatened to end my career and my life. I was able to rebuild my health to a vibrant state.” Dona Bradley, a registered holistic nutritionist from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, doesn’t find this hard to believe. “Pasteurized milk is a dead food,” she claims. “There are no enzymes, no probiotics—or beneficial bacteria. Raw milk is a live whole food. Raw milk tends to help build the immune system.” There are bacteria in the raw milk that our immune system needs, she explains; pasteurization kills these bacteria, leaving us vulnerable to our modern disease epidemics (such as asthma, allergies, and lactose intolerance).

 Somehow Jongerden’s voice rises above the din of these raw-milk wars playing out on blogs, in newspapers, and in courtrooms across North America. Jongerden with her 22 cows and two steer she’s helping her children raise. Jongerden with her half a ramshackle red barn she shares with her landlord, and her milking room the size of a suburban ensuite. Once you spend an hour or so with her—as she takes a call every 15 minutes from her children, one needing attention,  another wondering what’s for dinner (“There’s a roast in the crock-pot, it’s falling off the bone”)—she turns from raw-milk-bacteria-wielding rebel to the kind of mother you’d trust with your child in a heartbeat; the kind of parent you hope you can be.