Page 89 - Summer2015

A Campaign for Real Milk

THE JOHNS HOPKINS RAW MILK STUDY
Prepared by the Weston A. Price Foundation

Two years ago, after testimony regarding a illnesses attributed to milk, while the remainder
bill to legalize the sale of raw milk in Maryland, could be attributed to pasteurized dairy products.
the House of Delegates’ Health and Government Even though they found that almost twice as
Operations Committee called for a study of raw many illnesses were attributed to pasteurized
milk from Johns Hopkins University. dairy products as were attributed to raw dairy
The report was published in December 14, products, they argued that, since fewer than 1
2014, and it concluded that “the relative risk of percent of dairy products are sold as raw dairy
individual illness is almost one hundred fifty products, then on a per serving basis, raw dairy
times greater per unit of nonpasteurized dairy products are almost one hundred fifty times more
product, compared to pasteurized.” Widely dangerous than pasteurized dairy products.
1
circulated in the media, this figure gave the There are three principal flaws with this
Committee the rationale it needed to cease any analysis: the first is in the time frame considered;
further investigation of raw milk legislation. the second is the question being asked; the third
Since the Johns Hopkins paper is a review is in the unreasonable confidence given to the
of existing evidence rather than a presentation answer.
of any new evidence, it does not contain any A Campaign
important information that we have not already LIMITED TIMEFRAME for Real Milk
critiqued. Nevertheless, since it repeats past The Langer analysis limited its time frame is a project of
claims that raw milk is far more dangerous than to the years between 1993 and 2006. By selecting the Weston A.
pasteurized milk, we find it necessary to reiterate such a narrow time period, the data become dis- Price
some of our previous criticisms and add several torted. For example, these data do not include the
comments. nation's largest outbreak of salmonella in its his- Foundation.
tory: in 1985, a multistate outbreak of salmonella To obtain
NO STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE was traced to pasteurized milk from a Chicago some of our
The claim that “the relative risk of indi- milk plant. This resulted in over sixteen thousand informative
vidual illness is almost one hundred fifty times confirmed cases, and the investigators estimated Real Milk
greater per unit of non-pasteurized dairy product, that between one hundred fifty thousand and two brochures,
compared to pasteurized” is the one we wish to hundred thousand people were sickened. 4
address. It is derived from an analysis published Because industrialized milk is produced contact the
by Langer and colleagues in 2012. We previ- on such a large scale, small improvements to Foundation at
2
ously have criticized this analysis, noting that the system can have large effects, while small (202)
3
the researchers found no statistical difference in things that go wrong can have horrifying conse- 363-4394.
the rate of illness (as opposed to the number of quences on a massive scale, as in the case of the Check out our
“outbreaks”) attributed to raw milk or products 1985 outbreak. We would expect illnesses due to
produced from raw milk compared to those pro- small-scale milk production to be more frequent website,
duced from pasteurized milk. We would like to yet far smaller in consequence. By contrast, we RealMilk.com
take this opportunity to make several additional would expect illnesses due to large-scale milk for additional
points, emphasizing the way this analysis is used production to be less frequent yet massive in con- information
to support the conclusions of the more recent sequence. To make a fair comparison, therefore, and sources
Johns Hopkins paper. we must use as large a span of data as possible, so
The Langer analysis found that raw dairy that we include the infrequent but large outbreaks of Real Milk
products accounted for 36 percent of individual due to pasteurized milk. products.
Wise Traditions SUMMER 2015 Wise Traditions 89

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