Study highlights dangers of raw milk
Published 5:04 pm, Friday, March 23, 2012
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sujatha Kattimani, a Redwood City, Calif., software engineer, drives regularly to the Cupertino Farmers Market to buy raw milk at $7.25 per half-gallon. It's about three times as expensive as regular milk and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could make her ill. Kattimani drinks two glasses a day anyway. And she's one of a rapidly growing number of raw milk enthusiasts.
Raw milk has not been pasteurized, or heated to kill bacteria. A recent CDC study says raw milk products accounted for 36 percent of individuals sickened in milk-related disease outbreaks between 1993 and 2006. That's a large percentage considering that only an estimated 1 percent of milk drinkers consume raw milk.
In all, 4,413 people were sickened in dairy-borne outbreaks — although that is just a small fraction of the 48 million people the CDC estimates are sickened by food each year.
CDC epidemiologist Adam Langer, lead author of the study, noted that research does not support any special health benefits of raw milk.
"It's just not worth the risk," he said.
But raw milk's popularity persists among its devotees in California.
"I think it worked wonders for me," said Kattimani, 43. Raw milk is the only milk she's been able to drink since becoming lactose intolerant to both conventional and organic pasteurized milk. Of the CDC's warnings, she says, "I don't disregard them completely, but more like I always take it with a grain of salt." She's never had a problem with raw milk and said if she ever did, she would probably still drink it.
On its website, the pro-raw-milk Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit organization, criticizes the latest CDC study for stopping just before 2007, when tainted pasteurized milk killed three people.
Langer says they used the most recent data available. In the same week the study was published, raw milk sickened at least 78 people in a Pennsylvania outbreak.
California is one of 12 states that allow raw milk sales at retail stores, while 20 states prohibit sales outright. Other states permit raw milk with varying restrictions. Federal law prohibits selling raw milk across state lines.
Some European studies have linked raw milk consumption to fewer childhood allergies. But many of those same studies cite milk-borne pathogens in recommending against raw milk as preventive treatment.
Federal health agencies say that while the benefits are yet unproven, the risks of raw milk are clear. Improper handling can still taint pasteurized milk, but the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration say high-temperature treatment is an important first line of defense.
"Raw milk does have a checkered history of safety issues," acknowledged McAfee, alluding to incidences of milk-borne illnesses before the 1900s. But with modern sanitation, he believes "we know now how to produce very safe, very clean raw milk."