Page 98 - Winter2014

American in plastic bags) complained that she had had to serve everyone, the raw milk from The Farm

commercial difficulty cooking the chicken fully—she had Family was mixed with chocolate syrup in the
problems with her oven heating properly, and had same plastic jugs as the commercial chocolate
chicken, as attempted to complete the cooking on an outdoor milk. When pasteurized milk gets contaminated,
we know, is grill. Whether the cooking completed properly it is often after the fact, via flavorings.
nearly all is uncertain, but what The Farm Family mom
is certain about is that the team arrived about WAS IT THE WATER?
contaminated twenty minutes early for the dinner, ravenously The next night, when the team was sup-
with hungry as teenage boys often are, and the moms posed to play its football game at a neighbor-
campylobacter in charge ignored The ing high school, it
rained, and the team
Farm Family mother’s
or salmonella, concerns and served took shelter in the
as well as the chicken before it strange high school.
other bad was fully heated. When team mem-
When The Farm

bers started drinking
bugs. Family mom recount- water from faucets,
ed her concerns later they were warned by
to a nurse at the high members of the other
school, she was told team not to drink the
that the chicken was water, that it was bad.
fully cooked, but the There is no word that
nurse didn’t explain the water was tested.
how she knew that.
American commercial chicken, as we know, NO SIGNS
is nearly all contaminated with campylobacter Now, having run through all this, it is worth
or salmonella, as well as other bad bugs, when noting that public health inspectors tested milk
it leaves factory farms, according to a Consumer from The Farm Family immediately after ill-
Reports survey earlier this year. The only way to nesses were reported early the following week,
counter the pathogens is, you guessed it, to cook and found no signs of campylobacter. Six days
the chicken completely through. later, inspectors from the Wisconsin Department
The team was also served commercially of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection
prepared pasteurized chocolate milk that a parent came and took manure samples, and say they
brought in. Because there wasn’t enough of that found the same strain of campylobacter (techni-

RAW MILK PROTECTS AGAINS RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS

Half a dozen studies out of Europe over the last ten years all point in the same direction: raw milk provides powerful
protection against asthma, allergies and eczema. Now we have evidence that raw milk protects against respiratory infections
as well.
A study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology followed a cohort of almost one thousand infants
(the PASTURE cohort) from rural areas of Austria, Finalnd, France, Germany and Switzerland for the first year of life. Con-
sumption of different types of cow's milk and the occurrence of rhinitis, respiratory tract infections, otitis (ear infections)
and fever were assessed by weekly health diaries.
When contrasted with ultra-heat treated milk, raw milk consumption was inversely associated with occurrence of rhi-
nitis, respiratory tract infections, otitis and fever; boiled farm milk showed similar but weaker associations; and industrially
processed pasteurized milk was inversely associated with fever. Early life consumption of raw cow's milk reduced the risk
of respiratory infections and fever by about 30 percent.
Of course, the researchers were obliged to warn against the "dangers" of raw milk, but in fact concluded, "If the health
hazards of raw milk could be overcome, the public health impact of minimally processed by pathogen-free milk might be
enormous, given the high prevalence of respiratory infections in the first year of life and the associated direct and indirect
costs" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2014.08.044).
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