Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.
Let’s see if I can touch a raw nerve, for our area, without losing a bunch of patients. As I read the newspaper this week, there appeared an article on raw milk, written by someone in California. Right beside it was an article on the latest health scourge, pink slime.Now, a common sense person, when thinking of these two subjects, would probably presuppose that the article on raw milk would be a positive article on its many benefits, and the one on ‘pink slime’ meat would tell you how to avoid this convoluted product. Not so.
Instead, we have an article saying raw milk can kill you, and that pasteurized milk is no different nutritionally, and that pink slime is just a much maligned, safe product. Isn’t this just typical government misinformation at its best? Does your government really have your best health interests in mind, or is it the biggest campaign donors’ best interests?
The government and the CDC simply have a campaign against raw milk and raw milk products. They speak half-truths and suppress other favorable facts. Outbreaks from consuming pasteurized milk are responsible for many more illnesses and deaths than raw milk, yet the CDC never issues warnings about those. The FDA and CDC would like you to believe their concern is for your safety, but when you examine the facts; their first priority is protecting the super large dairy industry. Raw milk from these huge CAFO’s (confined animal feeding operations) would indeed be unsafe for human consumption as it is often loaded with pathogenic bacteria due to filthy over-crowded huge farm operations.
The Weston A. Price Foundation reveals so many mistruths from the CDC, you can’t count them all. From under reporting pasteurized illnesses, to not even recording them properly. Government agencies always seem to have an agenda. My dad always says that if a guy shows up at your door and says, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”, slam the door and get the gun.
Raw milk is a healthful, living food. It is loaded with bacteria necessary for your digestive tract. Ever heard of probiotics? It has them! Raw milk has over sixty digestive enzymes, growth factors and immunoglobulin’s (antibodies), and is rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which fights cancer. It is rich in raw fats, amino acids and proteins in a bioavailable form, all 100% digestible. It is loaded with vitamins (A,B,C,D,E &K) and has lots of minerals whose absorption is enhanced by live lactobacilli.
Pasteurization turns milk into a dead white liquid. The price of killing the pathogenic bacteria is that you also kill all the good ones which help you digest the milk and make it nourishing. The proteins, enzymes, immunoglobulin’s and vitamins are completely, either destroyed and denatured, or made biologically unusable. The worst part, in my opinion, is that the carcasses of those dead things are left in the milk, and they trigger an immune response when ingested, which is a major cause of milk allergies. Most milk allergies aren’t to milk itself, it is to the organic cell fragments it contains. Pasteurized milk is nothing more than white sugar water, completely void of any nutrition. Why do you think your milk bottle says vitamin A&D added? Pasteurization robbed its natural A & D, so they replaced it with some artificially added A & D, not necessarily bad stuff, just unnecessary in the good milk. If there is not a health difference between the two kinds as the article states, why would they do that? The huge CAFO’s routinely give their cows drugs to counter the ill health and immune problems of poor living conditions. The government tells them which drugs they will allow to come through into your milk, and which ones cannot. I’d like none in my milk, thank you. This kind of milk has to be pasteurized, because it is loaded with bacteria – and not the beneficial kind.
Now ask yourself why the CDC is so determined to declare raw milk unfit. Because if raw milk really caught on, the huge dairy operations would have to be run much cleaner, give their animals more access to pasture, and raise healthier cows. This costs money, and lots of it. Their business depends on pasteurization for their milk to be called safe by the government. I’m not talking about your average small dairy operation, many of them are very clean, it’s the CAFO’s that take this hit.
The bad news for the CDC is that raw milk is catching on. It has been gaining popularity for years. As people see the benefits of eating living, healthy food, the pink slim and dead milk looks more like the propaganda that it is. If pink slime is so good for you (and it’s been in your beef since the early nineties), why has every major grocery, and burger chain completely sworn off of it I the last few weeks? Because you, the consumer, just recently found out they were using it, that’s why? The same goes for pasteurized milk and a host of other health topics, including chiropractic care. The better people are educated on a health topic, the more they want what is best for their families.
I will gladly pay $7.00 a gallon for my milk at Happy Cow Naturals in Mifflinburg. I know this milk comes from 8-10 cows, fully grass pastured, and never fed hormones or antibiotics that get into my milk. There’s nothing better to start my day than with a grass fed whey protein shake with two raw, organic, farm raised eggs and whole raw, grass fed milk. Good stuff!