Dear Editor, I could not help but respond to your article about why fluid milk consumption is falling in America. Here is an alternative and objective view of your milk market.
As much as this might hurt a little bit, I am going to say it anyway: One of the biggest reasons that fluid, pasteurized milk is in decline is because it is listed as a top allergenic food by Mayo Clinic and others. It is simple science.
When bacteria are killed during pasteurization, the resulting pieces of dead bacteria are foreign protein wastes that our bodies react against. MAST cells release their histamines; asthma bronchial spasm occurs; mucus is released that creates the bed for ear infections, and allergies rage. Doctors are telling many patients not to drink milk (pasteurized).
I am a producer of organic, raw milk in California, where it is widely sold in 400 stores and consumed by about 60,000 to 70,000 people every week. They report no allergies and, in fact, the opposite is true … allergies and asthma are improved dramatically. This highly beneficial raw milk physiology was demonstrated by the peer-reviewed and published PARSIFAL study of 15,000 kids in the European Union that drank raw, farm-fresh milk.
The dairy industry needs to connect to their consumers (and listen to them and their physiologic and digestive needs) and fire the processors and their big-lie campaigns. They do not work because the human body does not lie to its owner. The science project performed every single time someone drinks pasteurized milk comes through within minutes with irrefutable result. Either it is mucus forming from MAST cell release of histamines or it is lactose intolerance.
Mucus from histamines and lactose intolerance are not associated with raw milk consumption.
Living dairy products are doing well … dead dairy is dying.
My advice: Stay with yogurt (add as many probiotics as possible into it and process it as little as possible and make medical claims about its digestive and immune rebuilding properties just like Dannon and Kefirs, and make more cheese, as naturally as possible.
Pasteurized fluid milk is on a downward plane. The information is out there, but the industry is in deep denial. Denial that is killing farmers and the American farm family.
One last little tidbit for you. I am organic and grass-fed with $6.8 million in sales (growing at 15 percent per year) and selling out every week at $160 per hundredweight (cwt) equivalent farm value. Every single effort I make for quality at our farm results in a return. The efforts of the average dairyman are lost when it is commingled with 75 other dairies’ milk at the creamery tank.
This is tough medicine, but it is the most valuable information you will ever get, and it was for free. No milk marketing guru sent you this. Have a very serious talk with others about this.
We have demonstrated in California that raw milk can be very safe to produce and consume. This must be acknowledged in order to move forward. Heads in the sand will get more of the same – bankruptcies of wonderful family farms that deserve better leadership and better information.
I have been told that speaking of raw milk to the dairy industry is like entering a Catholic church and screaming there is no God.
It is a shame that the delicious raw milk produced and then destroyed by America’s dairy processors is the dairy industry’s own salvation (if they knew how to do it right and used the right set of conditions), yet they deny it passionately, because the processors lose out and do not make a dime.
I hope this dose of medicine goes to good use. It is sent with deep respect and hope for a better future for hardworking American farmers that are desperate for a better future. PD
Mark Mcafee, Founder CEO
Organic Pastures Dairy Company
Fresno, California
www.organicpastures.com
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