A Brief History of Milk Pasteurization
We hear why pasteurized milk is good or bad for you, but I think it’s important to understand the history of pasteurization to be able to make an informed decision on what kind of milk to drink. The following is an introduction to the history of why the FDA eventually mandated milk be pasteurized for interstate commerce.
For thousands of years, people drank raw milk from their own cow on their small farms. No one was there to tell them to stop or that they could die from it. And while science wasn’t up to the standards that it is now and I’m sure some people did get sick, we didn’t see a mass sickness or death rates from drinking the raw milk.
All of this changed with the industrial revolution.
Before we get into that, let’s back up a bit and talk about how pasteurization came about. The first pasteurization was not intended for milk, rather it was for wine. Louis Pasteur was a French chemist who was subsequently claimed as the “father of bacteriology” because of his research into bacteria and germs. Because of spoilage of wine, he found that heating it to a certain temperature for a certain period of time decreased the bacteria in it and made the wine last longer. His theories and experiments truly did revolutionize our ideas on germs and helped in keeping people safe from harmful bacteria. Though today, wine is rarely pasteurized due to the alcohol content and proper handling.
Back to milk and the industrial revolution. While most people previously to the industrial revolution lived on homesteads or farms or ranches, the higher paying jobs in the cities, drew people to them. The cities quickly became crowded, yet people still longed for milk for themselves and their children. Instead of riding out to the country to obtain the milk (which was impractical for most), they brought the cows into the cities. The first feedlots were born. To maximize profit and minimize waste, breweries and these milking feedlots were joined together. The grains like wheat, corn, and barley were first used to make beer then the leftover brewers mash, which was now depleted of it’s nutrients, was fed to the cows. In his book, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, David E. Gumpert states that a man, Robert Hartly was an advocate for the poor that investigated these feedlots and the current dairy industry. Hartly stated that the cattle didn’t at first like the brewers mash so the animal caretakers would deprive them of water so they would be left no choice to eat but to eat the slop to satisfy their thirst. Their milk production increased, but the animals were sick from their feed and housing conditions. Once too sick to produce milk, the were butchered for meat.
Hartly reports on the feedlots as follows from his manuscript, An Historical, Scientific, and Practical Essay on Milk as an Article of Human Sustenance:
“If the wind is in the right quarter, he will smell the dairy a mile off; and on reaching it, his visual and nasal organs will, without any affection of squeamishness, be so offended at the filth and effluvia of his unutterable loathing the remainder of his life, His attention will probably be first drawn to to a huge distillery, sending out it’s tartarian fumes, and, blackened with age and smoke, casting a somber air all around. Contiguous thereto, he will see numerous low, flat pens, in which many hundreds of cows, owned by different persons, are closely huddled together, amid confined air, and the stench of their own excrements. He will also see the various appendages and troughs to conduct and receive the hot slush from the still with which to gorge the stomachs of these unfortunate animals, and all within an area of a few hundred yards.
Just that account alone can make you see that this was not an ideal situation for clean milk. But, unfortunately, it does get worse for milk quality. In addition to sick animals, and they were quite sick, the people milking the cows were also sick, often with tuberculosis. The packed dirty cities made TB soar throughout people. These people milked the cows and if they did not personally spread it to the cattle, their likely less than ideal prep and sanitation practices spread it to the milk from the milkers themselves.
Needless to say, due to the horrific living conditions of the cattle, the nutrient-poor feed, and the sick milkers, people drinking the city cow’s milk were getting sick. As the germ theory developed, they applied Pasteur’s practice of pasteurization to milk. People no longer were getting sick from the pasteurized milk. The first city to implement pasteurization of milk was Chicago in the early 1900s, and Michigan was the first state to require pasteurization state wide.
For a time being, pasteurization of milk benefited people’s health greatly. But is it still necessary?
We’ve learned a lot about animal welfare since the industrial revolution. Even on mass dairies, while many of the milk cows don’t go out to pasture, they are in clean, well ventilated barns. Their feed is nutrient dense and they are treated well by overall healthy people. It never benefits a farmer to mistreat their animals.
When cows are treated well, fed what is natural and good for them, are healthy, and are cleaned properly, we need not fear milk any more. With rigorous testing and proper sanitation, raw milk is not only safe, but extremely beneficial for most people.
To be clear, though I do believe that even large grade A dairy farms do a phenomenal job at their caring for their cattle, it is a different level of thoroughness that is required of a farm that produces milk intended to be consumed raw instead of intended for pasteurization. The level of testing and sanitation must exceed that of even a grade A dairy. There are some things that can be a little more lax if the milk is going to be pasteurized. To assure the milk is safe to be consumed raw, herdshare farmers put in extra effort into their sanitation, cooling, testing, and animal health. If you’re getting milk from a farm that doesn’t go above and beyond to assure the milk is safe and comply with the laws to properly sell the herdshares or milk, I personally would not get my milk from that farm. It’s worth the extra effort and maybe even price to assure that your milk is safe to be consumed raw.
While pasteurization was very helpful to combat illness post industrial revolution, we have learned from the mistakes that were made then. Many farmers have worked extremely hard to produce milk from happy and healthy cows that is safe for drinking raw. We don’t need to be afraid of this wonderful, nutritious beverage anymore.
Sources:
The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
