so what is REAL MILK ? a primer

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Got Milk? is a U.S. advertising campaign created in 1993 by the agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Board and later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. This long-running series of print ads features ethnically diverse celebrities, athletes and fictional characters sporting their own "milk mustache." But what kind of milk are they promoting? And does that kind of milk really "do a body good"? Pasteurized Milk The kind of milk this highly decorated campaign endorses is pasteurized or ultrapasteurized, homogenized conventional milk from cows in confinement fed a diet high in soy, grain, bakery waste, pesticide-laden citrus pulp and even pellets containing chicken manure. Pesticides, antibiotics, trans fats, estrogens and similar toxic substances can end up in the milk. Pasteurization or ultra-pasteurization is a quick-heat process that destroys enzymes and immune factors, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Even worse, modern conventional milk has most of the nourishing butterfat removed, and nonfat dried milk – a source of carcinogens and dangerous oxidized cholesterol – added. In animal studies, raw whole milk promotes healthy bone growth, normal organ formation and good disposition while pasteurized milk results in weak bones, calcification of the organs, high levels of stress and poor coping skills. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly, and many die before maturity. Raw Milk The milk that the Got Milk? campaign endorses is not what we call Real Milk. So, what is Real Milk?• Real milk comes from old-fashioned cows that produce lots of butterfat, such as the Jersey and Guernsey. • Real milk comes from herds allowed to graze on green pasture.• Real milk is not pasteurized or homogenized. • Real milk is full-fat milk. • Real milk contains no additives.

Today's milk is accused of causing everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer, but when Americans could buy Real Milk, these diseases were rare. In fact, a supply of highquality dairy products was considered vital to American security and the economic well-being of the nation. Is Raw Milk Safe? Today, health officials tell us that raw milk is unsafe. Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. But times have changed, and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. In fact, statistics posted on the Centers for Disease Control's own website indicate that raw milk is over twice as safe as pasteurized milk when considered on a case-per-consuming-population basis. Warnings against raw milk are based on 40-year-old science. During the past few decades, scientists have discovered that raw milk contains multiple, overlapping systems that get rid of bad bacteria and enhance the immune system. These compounds are destroyed by pasteurization, leaving pasteurized milk especially vulnerable to contamination. And pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria suspected of causing Crohn's disease in humans, the bacteria with which most confinement cows are infected.Today, much commercial milk is now ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life. Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds.Clean, raw milk from certified healthy cows eating their natural diet of green grass is available commercially in California and has a long and superlative safety record.

Testimony on the Safety of Raw MilkOn May 19, 2004, Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures Dairy, stated: "For the last four years, Organic Pastures Dairy has produced a full line of raw organic dairy products for retail sale (300 stores including Whole Foods) and consumption here in California. The state of California (CDFA) monitors and tests all of our raw dairy products multiple times per month. The state has never found one pathogen (salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 or listeria) in any of our products. Even more interesting is the fact that not one human pathogen has ever been found in the hundreds of environmental swabs that have been taken in our plant facility. ... The typical conventional milk tank had either salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 detected about 30 percent of the time. In comparison, Organic Pastures has never had one pathogen – ever."