Ep 174 What’s the deal with raw milk: Part 1

Seriously, what’s the deal? Lately, it seems like raw milk has started to pop up more and more frequently in our feeds, with influencers touting the alleged health benefits of raw milk over pasteurized milk. In this and next week’s episode, we explore the raw milk phenomenon as it has grown over the past few decades. We start this two-parter with a look at the dangers of milk in a pre-pasteurization world, how Pasteur developed the life-saving process that bears his name, the subsequent rise of anti-pasteurizers, and how the anti-science sentiment surrounding raw milk today reveals a larger and more troubling agenda.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One frequently hears the remark, look at me, I am
hale and a hearty at threescore and ten, and have
always been fond of milk and taken it just as
it comes dirt bacteria. And all such persons forget three
very important things. The first is that the fruits of
victory are not to be judged by the survivors alone.

(00:21):
We must have a role of the killed and wounded. Two,
the sanitarian so often hears the argument, look at me,
it has not hurt me that it is beginning to
tax his patients. If the health officer wants to close
and infected well, the grandfather points, with patriarchal pride to
his hail old years and hearty health as proof that

(00:42):
the water can do no harm. I once heard a
mother of four children all that remained of ten, say, well,
you cannot expect to raise them all, but we do
expect to raise them all nowadays, especially if they can
be nurtured upon fresh, clean and safe milk. The second
important thing which old folks seem to forget is that

(01:04):
conditions have greatly changed since they were young. Then the
milk was wagon hauled to town and used the same
day while fresh. Now it comes through many hands and
is often about forty eight hours old when it reaches
the household. Finally, in the old days, many a milk
born outbreak occurred. Many an infant met an untimely death

(01:25):
through impure milk, but the dangers were not known and
therefore not realized. The affliction was attributed to sewer gas,
to miasms from the soil, or to some mysterious agency,
if not the will of divine providence. The milk has
not changed so much since the good old times, but
our knowledge has.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I mean that says it all. Aaron episodes done is done.
That's it just need two episodes on this.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Or did we But no, Like that is what is
so amazing about that. I mean, there are so many
things that you could pick apart from that quote, but
the fact that it is from nineteen twelve.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I can't believe that it's so old.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Nineteen twelve. Yeah, So that was from MJ. Rosenow in
his book The Milk Question. Wow, and it's like the
same things that we're going to be saying in this
episode in next episode. Gosh, but it's amazing, Yeah, And
I think that like that, there are so many parts
like you will you cannot expect to raise them all,

(03:17):
like how much things have changed, I know, right since
that time. But anyway, Yeah, Hi, I'm Aaron.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Welsh and I'm Erin Oman Updyke and this is this
podcast will kill you. Welcome to Milk.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Milk, Milk mil Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Today we're talking about milk. We're talking today about pasteurization, yes,
and raw milk.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, as we were sort of putting
together ideas for this season, which we're trying to organize
around this theme of combating myths and disinformation, raw milk
kept coming up. It really did, and I feel like
it's everywhere these days. Made us wonder like, well, what
what's the deal? Like, why what's going on with with
raw milk? Why? What well did you do with this?

(04:08):
Hands down the best Seinfeld impersonation I have ever heard.
Thank you me or you?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Were you coming to you?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Both of us? Oh my gosh. Yeah, but no, like, seriously,
what is what's going on with raw milk? Why is
why are people talking about it? Is it good for you?
Is it bad for you? We'll get into all of that,
but but because you know, we started to do these
this research and we were like, Okay, raw milk, We'll
do that as an episode. Sure, there is so much there.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
It's so much deeper than we even realized.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Everyone, we should learn this lesson. It's the same thing
we do.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
We kind of learned it because this time we're splitting
it into two episodes.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Eric, we are, Yeah, so this episode this week, what
I'm going to do is I'm going to take us
through sort of the history of milk, like what milk
was like before pastorization, what who invented pasteurization and who
did we don't know? I mean no, I'm kidding, and
like that what impact that had, and then tracing the

(05:14):
roots of the modern day sort of raw milk movement
to that past, sort of trying to draw the line
through history. Why are people talking about raw milk today?
And what is driving this? Like what are some of
the drivers of this renewed interest in raw milk.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
I cannot wait to learn everything that you're gonna teach
me this week, Karen, and then next week I will
pick it up with like where do we stand in
terms of milk and the risks of milk borne disease today?
What does that risk landscape actually look like? In raw
milk versus pastorised milk versus ultra high temperature pastorise milk.

(05:53):
What does the legal landscape like look like? Can you
even get raw milk? How do people even get that
in the US versus is in other countries? Is it
just the FDA? It's not? Also, are there any differences
between raw milk and pastroised milk?

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Are there?

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I can't wait to tell you about it.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Nicity getting good at the teasers here, thank you?

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, we trying, there is.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
There's a lot to get through this week, and so
we should we should probably.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Start with quarantin any time.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Quarantiny time. What are we drinking this week?

Speaker 2 (06:25):
We're drinking milk in it.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
We did have a discussion like should we do milk
based drink? Should we not to milk?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
White milk?

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Should we? I mean, ultimately, the bottom line is that
there are so many amazing milk dairy free substitutes out
there these days, and.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now milk milk I think I'm just kidding Milk.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I'm a big fan of oat, that's probably my preferred.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I'm not a fan of oat milk or any of
the other milk products. If I'm being honest, but it's fine.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay, well, sorry, I'm just telling you my feelings.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
I appreciate that. Thank you for being vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
You're welcome. What is in milk in it? Erin?

Speaker 1 (07:19):
It is based off of a drink that some folks
out there might know as the Pink Squirrel. I certainly
did not know that this drink existed before googling milk
based cocktail recipes.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
I'm sorry, I'm losing it today.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
I love it. I love it. And in milk in
it aka you know, based on the pink squirrel. Squirrel,
pink squirrel. Yeah, crem day no yo, yep, white cremda,
cacao heavy cream or whatever dairy free substitute you'd like
to use. Okay, and some freshly grated nutmeg.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Oh sounds sounds I don't know. It sounds similar to
things we've done before.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Erin Yeah, I mean sounds like the Grasshopper, which actually
is It's like min minti and creme deick account and cream.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Okay, listen, it's gonna be delicious. You can find the
full recipe for that quarantine, as well as the non
alcoholic plus Ebrita version. It won't just be milk on
our website, this Podcastwekill You dot com, and on all
of our social media channels. Are you following us?

Speaker 1 (08:18):
There? You could follow us?

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Follow us there?

Speaker 1 (08:21):
You should follow us there?

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
If you are following it. I mean, I don't even
know what we're doing. Website stuff is next? I know
what's back on track? We can do this. Website's full
of cool stuff. There's transcripts. There's links to bookshop dot org,
affiliate account, our Goodreads list, links to music by Bloodmobile,
links to merch links to Patreon, links to deals, links

(08:44):
to a first hand account form, links to sources for
all of our episodes. Check them out. There's a lot
of sources for this episode. Please read on. There's so much.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Thank you for checking out our website, this podcastwikill you
dot com. If you haven't already, take a moment press
pause on playing this and you can rate and review
and subscribe wherever you're listening. We would really love and
appreciate that it helps the show a lot. If you
are watching us on YouTube, hello there, make sure that
you're subscribed to the exactly right channel down below so

(09:18):
that you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
What was it smash that subsmae subscribe button.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
That's what my kid watches Minecraft videos, and that's what
they always say. They'll be like, oh wait now, so
that you can subscribe. I'm like, okay, all.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Right, well, anyways we can move on.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Please, Aaron, tell me about milk and pasteurization.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
I can't wait. Let's take a quick break and get
into it. Milk has long been a part of many
humans diets, not just cow milk, but also goat, horse, camel,

(10:09):
and so on. Humans started consuming milk probably around eight
to ten thousand years ago, and at some point, maybe
around eight or nine thousand years ago, a genetic mutation
popped up in a subset of these humans that allowed
them to keep digesting milk, specifically lactose in milk as
adults lactose tolerance. Lactose intolerance. You've heard about this before,

(10:31):
and if you want even more details on the biology
and the evolutionary history of this, check out our episode
from all the way back in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Wow, I know throw back.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Also featuring one of my favorite first hand accounts.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Probably one of the best friends hand accounts of all time.
Thank you so much, Katie.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Truly, yeah truly, But the key thing to know about
lactose tolerance, the ability to digest most dairy products the
ability to digest lactose, is that around one third of
the global population has this mutation, and that it is
not evenly distributed across the globe. Regions with the highest
rates of lactose tolerance include northern Europe, parts of North America, Australia,

(11:13):
and certain parts of Africa. But what this means is
that heading into the nineteenth century, milk was a diet
staple in certain parts of the world where it was
in high and constant demand, and it remained a staple
even when people began moving from the country to the city,
which posed a challenge to milk production and access. Right

(11:33):
before the Industrial Revolution, which is the period that we're
now entering in the story, milk didn't travel long distances,
kind of like in our first hand account, right, you
could mostly just get it from a local farm, which,
of course, I feel like I need to say, did
not mean that the milk was completely safe or free
of pathogens or just did not spoil at all. It
was just perfect pure milk.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Right, Like no, it just was like, no, that's where
you got it, that's.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Where you got it. Yeah, But with the growth of cities,
these problems of spoilage and freshness intensified, right of course,
in his seventeen seventy one novel The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker,
which by the way, has a three point four on Goodreads.
And I don't know why I find that so funny,
but it makes me because it's like my late eighteen hundreds,

(12:20):
or sorry, late the late seventeen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Oh is that like a high rating though?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Or I don't know, but it's just I think the
concept of writing a book from two hundred and fifty
years ago and being I loved it. I don't know,
I liked it.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
It was fine, two stars, and it's just like an
account of his expedition too.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Oh no, sorry, I'll keep talking. Oh it's a novel, okay.
And from this novel there's a there's a passage where
the author to buy a Smallett paints a lovely picture
of the journey that a pail of milk might take
from cow to Oh this all right, quote carried through

(13:03):
the streets in open pails, exposed to foul refuse discharged
from doors and windows, spittle snot and tobacco quids from
foot passengers from mud carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt
and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the
joy's sake, the spewings of the infant, and finally the

(13:24):
vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab
that rends this precious mixture under the respectable denomination of
the milkmaid. Ooh, not not the nicest of images. No,
I don't.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I don't want that milk, especially not for milkmaids.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
No, I know, poor thing. Yeah, I know they're working hard,
I mean, but people didn't really have much of a choice. Right.
As cities grew, the dairy industry had to come up
with solutions to meet the constant demand for milk, and
in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, this was
maybe to keep small dairy herds housed either in open

(14:04):
areas of cities or like just outside the city, like
seventy cows or so. And then as the city populations grew,
these small herds grew to like two thousand a head.
Whoa yep, And then you're not going to find more area,
like you have to some figure out how you're going
to house all these it's just increasingly cramped quarters right, right.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Like too many cows in a small space. Yeap, exactly, Okay.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
And when these larger herds were still not sufficient to
produce enough milk for a city, milk began to be
transported via rail. Keep in mind, refrigeration was not yet
a thing.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
I was just going to ask, when did refrigeration become
a thing.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
That I don't know, I can't believe. I don't have
this in here, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, but it wasn't a thing.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
It wasn't a thing. Yeah, And so milk spoilage was
a real concern, especially for the producers who introduced some
nasty ways of dealing with it, right, because like you're
going to send a whole shipment of milk, you people
to actually buy it instead of having to throw it
all away because it's spoiled, right, right, So maybe you
add some formaldehyde. Maybe you do, Maybe you do that.
That actually did happen.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
That's a great plan. That is sarcasm, Yeah, just in case,
in case that doesn't come through.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, milk formaldehyde and milk adulteration period was really
a big problem.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, So anyway to bring it all together. By the
mid eighteen hundreds, we've got no refrigeration, milk being transported
long distances, harmful milk processing practices like embalming it with formaldehyde,
cows housed in crowded and filthy conditions, humans basically living
the same way in cities, and a lack of knowledge

(15:47):
about how infectious disease spreads.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay, really great setup for people to get super sick.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yep, sarcasm again, I have written a recipe for disaster,
but it truly was a disaster, and I can demonstrate
that with some numbers. So, most European cities around this
time had infant mortality rates of one hundred and fifty
to three hundred per one thousand live births.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh dear.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
In New York City in eighteen eighty, infant mortality reached
four hundred deaths per one thousand live births.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Compare that to today the US it's around five point
six per one thousand live births.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Wow, it's just it's so world's different. Yeah, world's different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Infant mortality, like you heard in our Firstean account, was
a way of life. These high infant mortality rates were
not solely attributable to milk. Of course, you know, there
was a lot of things going on. If you listened
to our last couple of episodes on childhood vaccines and
the schedule, you'll know. Yeah, but milk did play a

(16:58):
huge role, and it was a lot huger of a
role than I realized.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Actually.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, So for example, in Toronto in the early nineteen hundreds,
spoiled milk was responsible for half of the thirty thousand
deaths in children. What yeah, wow, huge, Like I think
I've also seen estimates from one third to a half
of infant mortality.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, but like what what does what does spoiled mean? Right?
How was milk causing so much illness and death?

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Pathogens it's bottom line. Yeah, but cow's milk carbon pathogens.
And so when that milk was not safely treated to
prevent the growth of pathogens, people who drank this milk
could get very, very sick. The sugars, fats, and protein
in milk provides a substrate. It provides food for this
pathog for these pathogens to grow. Right. You think about

(17:56):
like a glass of water. And it's why I mean
of course is a huge, a huge root of transmission
for many different pathogens. But milk the pathogens can grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, where.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's just milk is like a beautiful growing medium.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yes, it's like what you would want to culture bacteria exact.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
So it's not just like the ones that get put there,
you know, from the milking process or from the storage
process or from the handling process. It's like once they're there,
they will just exponentially continue to grow because they love
all the nutrients and milk as much as our bodies do.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, And among the most vulnerable to these pathogens of course, infants.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah. Maybe why we're.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Infants drinking so much milk.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
I'm guessing we didn't have formula.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well, we did have some early formulas. But it comes
back again to the Industrial Revolution. So women increasingly had
to work in factories to help provide for their families,
which meant that they would be gone for long, long
stretches of time. It couldn't bring their babies with them,
and they couldn't breastfeed their infants, and so as a result,
breastfeeding declined around fifty to seventy percent during this time.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Oh, Wow.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Okay, yeah, huge decline, and babies were instead fed or
like cow's milk alone or cow's milk supplemented with early formula,
or they were supplemented with cow's milk. But this cow's
milk had not undergone any treatment for disease prevention, right, right, right, right.
So there was a nineteen o five epidemiological study of

(19:34):
infant mortality between breastfed and cow's milk fed infant and
they found dramatic differences in babies that were zero to
three months old. Infant mortality was one point nine percent
in breastfed babies and ninety two percent in cow's mokefil babies.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
I mean that makes sense too, just in terms of
like nutritional differences in cow's milk versus human breast milk
in a baby that young.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, at one year old. Just to carry this further,
six point two percent of breastfed babies died compared to
thirty six percent of cow's milk only.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Huge, I mean these are huge differences. Yeah, babies fed
cow's milk were fifteen times more likely to die than
breastfed babies alone.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
And again you know this was pre modern day formula, right,
This is a very different time, right.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
They didn't have other options, They didn't know as much
about the nutritional differences, but it was like this is
all we've got. It's one or the other.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yea. And of course this was used to shame working women, oh,
of course, or women who had no other option than
to feed their baby cow's milk, like it was. It's
always used to shame, yeah, anyway. But these differences in
in mortality were not due solely to nutrition. Mostly they
were due to pathogens.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
A number of different outbreaks were tied to milk, typhoid fever, diphtheria,
scarlet fever, septics or throat and of course tuberculosis.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Tuberculosis also diphtheria what I know, I know, but yes, okay,
tpia awful.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, So tuberculosis was a huge killer during this period
and it was greatly greatly feared. In the late eighteen
eighties in the northeastern US, tuberculosis infected twenty percent of
all cattle. WHOA, yeah, and I'm assuming they didn't mention

(21:29):
this specifically. I'm assuming this is bovine tuberculosis, yeah, probably,
which can still cause infections in humans. Yes, absolutely, And
I know that you'll talk more about that probably next week.
A little bit different, okay, okay, But anyway, from the
same time period late eighteen eighties, fifteen percent of all
cans of milk were contaminated with the tuberculosis bacteria. No,

(21:51):
thank you, Okay, but believe it or not, like those
are some those are some decent numbers like those are okay,
not bad, right, I mean? Yeah, well, yeah, I know.
I know because in eighteen ninety three, around fifty percent
of the milk that was supplied to the city and
county hospitals of San Francisco contained active tuberculosis bacteria. Why

(22:15):
because it was it was rampant in the cattle.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh my goodness, gracious.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, yep. Yeah. In nineteen hundred, I'm going to keep going,
teny percent of all cases of tuberculosis in humans were
attributable to infection from bovine tuberculosis. Who I mean in
nineteen hundred tuberculosis. Everyone had tuberculosis, right, it was everywhere
I do. It's a huge number of cases.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Right, yeah, Spoiled.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Milk in general. This is just to give you some
you know, to harken back to what we were talking
about it as milk being a food for bacteria. Also,
spoiled milk was found to have five hundred million bacteria
per cubic centimeter inc.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
I don't know if I drink milk again.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
I mean, you can always oat milk, era can I guess?
But like, how was this happening?

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Let me paint you a picture please? Okay? So remember
how I said that herds were kept in cities and
really crowded and filthy conditions. So these herds often went
hand in hand with distilleries, like whiskey distilleries. All distilleries, right,
the leftover mash from making whiskey would be fed to
the cows, right, So it was just like a okay,

(23:32):
here's like a you know, a cycle.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
The resulting milk from cows that were fed this, you know,
the old grain was called swill or slop. Love that, yeah,
swill milk. And so a lot of distilleries actually housed
cows on site, like Johnson's Grain Distillers of Manhattan, which
had up to two thousand cows.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
In Manhattan, Manhattan.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Isn't that wild to think about it?

Speaker 2 (24:01):
I can't imagine it.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
I know, I know the life of these cows and
the milk that they produced is best illustrated by this
quote from a nineteen eighty paper by Frederick Sten. You
ready for this, I'm ready quote. The cattle stood in
a huge building in rows of seven to ten head
to head, in stalls three feet wide. The cow consumed

(24:26):
thirty two gallons of slop and three pounds of hay.
In such surroundings, the cow was rarely washed. Its excrement
clung to its tail and hindquarters. It was reported that
the people of Berlin consumed three hundred pounds of cow
dung in their milk daily. Ulcer I know ulcers developed

(24:50):
in the mouths of the cows. Their tails often fell off.
Tuberculosis of the glands, lungs, and intestines followed. The stall
became a spool. One Brooklyn distillery indicated that out of
one eight hundred eleven cows, two hundred and thirty died
in ten weeks.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
No mm hmm oh.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
No milk obtained was pale blue, often turbid, and melodorous.
Speculating dairymen conceal their wickedness not so much as by
diluting the milk with water, as by adulterating the swill
milk with plaster of Paris, charcoal, starch, sugar, flour, and
egg making bad matters worse.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Dear, I feel like I remember you talking about this
in another episode.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, the poison scad episode. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, but we talked about it something else too, arsenic.
Maybe because you talked a lot about just like the
contamination of things in that episode. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
I don't know it was something else, but yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
And this just to remind myself, this is like, yeah,
mid to late eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
This is I would say, late eighteen hundreds, late eighte hundreds.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Okay, gross, So glad I don't live then.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Most city milk came from distillery cows. Like that is,
if you lived in the city. What's what I just described.
That's that's where your milk is coming from. This was
not sustainable, basically killing off their customers. Something had to
be done to improve milk safety. Fortunately the solution already existed,

(26:26):
did it? It did? Louis Pasture. You know, we've talked
about him a million times before on this podcast. His
role in developing germ theory, his Rabi's vaccine, his work
on tuberculosis. Needless to say, we all know this dude's name,
we do, I hope we know it. Yeah, but we haven't,
at least as far as I can remember, ever talked

(26:47):
about the process that bears his name.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
I don't think so pasturization. I don't think we have
maybe in lactus and hearts, but if that minimally, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Really don't remember think we did. Yeah, Okay, So broadly speaking,
what is pasteurization. It's a process, right, It involves heating
up a product such as milk to a certain temperature
for a certain amount of time to destroy pathogenic microorganisms
for many different like you know, subtypes of pasteurization. Yeah,
I know. You'll talk a little bit more about that
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
It does not kill all of the microbes. It's not sterilization,
which is why pasteurized milk can still eventually spoil. But
it does kill off a great number of them, making
the milk safer and lasts longer, while also preserving nutritional
qualities and taste. That's that.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's pretty simple, Aaron, pretty simple pasteurization, though it works
on the knowledge that pathogenic microbes cause foods such as
milk to spoil.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
In the mid eighteen hundreds, this knowledge wasn't really widely
known or accepted. So people had observed microbial life since
at least Van Lavenhook and his microscope, but the jury
was still out on what role the microbes played. Most
scientists thought that the microbes seen in spoiled milk or
fermented wine were a byproduct of spoilage or fermentation, not

(28:08):
the cause of it, Okay, But Louis Pasture wasn't so sure,
did not intend for that to rhyme. But in eighteen
fifty four, Pasture began studying fermentation, specifically in beer and
wine to try to understand what the microbes that he
observed were doing. And he demonstrated that grape juice would

(28:30):
not ferment into wine if you prevented environmental yeast from
depositing on grapes.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
And he also demonstrated that broth would only turn cloudy
and thus teeming with microbial life, as you could see
under the scope, if you exposed it to air. Ok So,
he showed that these two products, these two the result
of this was microbes, right like, they caused it. They
caused fermentation, they caused spoilage.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Those didn't happen without those present. Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, and they also weren't the product of that, right,
exactly right, And so he and this was also I
think integral in the in germ theory itself, right, basically
connecting exposure to pathogens and disease.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
And so with this knowledge, he connected the dots between
microbes and food products like wine and eventual spoilage. And
this was a huge deal for the wine industry and
the beer industry for sure, because he saw that, you know,
if there was a way to kill off those putrefying microbes,
you could preserve the wine. So science had known for
decades this part I did not know, and the general

(29:39):
public for likely much much longer that heat treating food
would help to keep it from spoiling. Like people knew
to heat up milk.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
People did that. They heated the heated their water, heated
their whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
And even like heat canning for vinegar and stuff, okay
had been around. Yeah, there was a text from seventeen
oh two that recommended boiled milk for infants.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah. And also it was just like it was daily
It was known much much longer like in daily life
for you know, in common knowledge for centuries. But Louis
Pasture was the first to really formalize the practice and
explained why it worked, like what was the heating actually
doing to these microbes? So he did it first with

(30:38):
wine in eighteen sixty eight in a public demonstration. He
loved public demonstrations, where he shipped a cargo of pasteurized
wine around the world without a single bottle spoiling, which
was unheard of. And he later applied it to beer.
But it doesn't seem like he ever tried it with milk. Okay,
that's so interesting. He just didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
We I mean, so many things like that we eat
and drink today are pastureized, but like so many thing,
the thing that I think most people think of is
milk and milka. Yeah, so that's so interesting.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
It wasn't Pasture who applied it to milk, ok Yeah. Yeah.
That instead fell to a number of doctors, researchers and
passionate civilians around the world. And it started kind of slowly, right,
just a few people trying it out, but it grew
more and more popular over the eighteen seventies, and so
that in eighteen eighty two, the first commercial pasteurization process

(31:34):
was developed in Germany for milk for milk, and from
there the practice spread to Sweden and Denmark, with pediatricians
recommending home treating your milk, as well as commercial producers
incorporating it into their processing. But perhaps the most outspoken
and well known advocates for pasteurized milk were Lena and

(31:54):
Nathan Strauss. Nathan, does this name sound familiar to you?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Are they related to Lee Vice Strauss of the Jeans
or of the Strauss Dairy. I'm guessing no, neither.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
They're they're the Macy's Strausses.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
I don't know the store, the department store. They're also Strausses. Yeah,
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Okay, okay, I have some fun trivia. Well maybe not fun,
I have some trivia free. So Nathan, along with his
brother Isidor, were the co owners of Macy's apartment store.
Isidor and his wife died in nineteen twelve on the Titanic.
Oh huh. You know the movie the old couple lying

(32:37):
in bed.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Uh huh?

Speaker 1 (32:38):
That's them.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Oh that's so sad.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Isn't that really sad? That was always like the most
I mean that, I sob at that movie.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
But anyway, so that's my trivia. Back to Nathan and
Lena Strauss, the other Strauss couple. Uh. I think there
was a third brother, but I'm not going to talk
about him. In the eighteen nineties, the Strausses became very
vocal supporters of pastoration because they had lost two of
their children to milk born to berculosis, and they learned
about pastoralization. They learned about it extensively from a very

(33:09):
prominent American pediatrician named Abraham Jacoby and who was also
a huge proponent of pasteurized milk. And so they were like,
we need to tell everyone about this, We need to
do something about this. And so they were like, let's
spread the word. They would visit different cities and they
set up milk stations in New York City where pasteurized

(33:29):
milk was distributed and they only charged those who could
afford to pay at the low price of a penny
a pint, and everyone else would just get it for free.
They also established a pastorization unit in eighteen ninety seven
on Randall's Island at the city's Free Hospital for Children,
where the mortality rate was forty four percent forty four

(33:52):
oh yeah. After pasteurized milk was introduced, it dropped within
a year. To twenty percent.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Oh my goodness, erin Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
It continued to decline in subsequent years.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
By nineteen hundred, they had distributed half a million bottles
of pasteurized milk, and by nineteen oh six they had
opened seventeen philanthropic milk stations in the city.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Wow, philanthropic milk station.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
I know, not a phrase I have ever said before. Yeah,
but it's great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
And they were intent on launching similar programs and passing
pastorization policy across the nation. But with this, with this goal,
they were at least initially in the minority. Huh yeah,
early nineteen hundreds. So while other countries much more readily
adopted pastorization beginning in the eighteen eighties, including Pastor's home

(34:47):
country of France, the US was much more reluctant, as
was the UK, which only required pastorization starting in nineteen
twenty two. I think even then it was really slow
to catch on. We're just like, no, I'm not going
to do this to my milk. In nineteen oh eight,
Chicago became the first US city to require pastorization unless

(35:09):
a farm. Nineteen oh eight. Yeah, but there was a
there was an asterisk there which was unless the farm
could prove that it was tuberculosis free and then that
farm could sell what they called certified milk. And after Chicago,
other cities followed, so you know, New York passed an
ordinance requiring full pastorization in nineteen ten, and then Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Boston,

(35:30):
San Francisco introduced laws in like nineteen fourteen nineteen fifteen.
These pastorization laws began in the cities and gradually made
their way into more rural areas with the passage of
many laws prompted by various cattle epidemics or outbreaks and
humans tied to raw milk. So it was just sort
of like a kind it was. It was a strange
thing because it was a lot of people dragging their feet.

(35:52):
There were a few very prominent, outspoken supporters of pastorization,
but and there and a few very prominent attractors, but
for the most part, people were like, I don't really
know how to think about it. Is the technology is
so new, and this has a lot of parallels with
other food technologies that have been introduced, like food irradiation GMOs,

(36:16):
which is we should do an episode on but like
this sort of thing, the slow, like, Oh, I don't know,
it's a little early to say. This person says this.
There's a fascinating article that I read for this about
New York Times coverage of these three different technologies pastorization, food, irradiation,
and GMOs and sort of the rhetoric used like over

(36:38):
time as these technologies become more accepted. Fascinating stuff. Anyway, interesting.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
History echoes. It's almost like we can learn from it.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
What about that? Wow? Anyway? Okay, So in just to
give you a sense of timing for pastorization in the US,
so by nineteen twenty six, one hundred percent of the
milk in cities with over half a million people was pasteurized,
but only forty five percent of milk was pasteurized in

(37:10):
American cities with fewer than twenty five thousand people. Okay,
so it was like still a very urban rural divide.
Did you know that my grandma grew up on a
dairy farm in northern Michigan.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
I don't know if I did know that.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Aaron and I was talking to my mom and I
was like, Mom, would she have would Ama have drink
raw milk or like pasteurized milk?

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Did they?

Speaker 1 (37:30):
My mom was like I don't know, it was a
huge she visited, My mom visited there like much much later,
but I don't know when they would have started dotation pasteurization.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, yeah, how interesting, I know, I know anyway.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
But pasteurization when it was introduced, even if it was
like a little bit staggered, it was clear what a
huge impact that it made. And it's hard today to
quantify that. But we do have a few different figures
that we can look at. Because there were other things
going on at the time, right that contributed to the
decline in infant mortality.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, vaccines, vaccines.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
General sila, sanitation especially, Yeah. But in New York City,
for example, the Commissioner of Health attributed the drop in
infant mortality from twelve per one thousand births in eighteen
ninety three to three point eight in nineteen sixteen to
the compulsory pastorization of milk. A huge drop.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
They said that just from the milk, that's from pastoralization. Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Undoubtedly other medical and public health improvements played a role,
but there's no denying that pastorization was saving the lives
of some of the most vulnerable members of society. And
despite this, pastorization continued to be a contentious issue, especially
in the US, and continues to be why why why? Okay,

(38:58):
that's a great question.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, I have so many thoughts and questions about this.
Aired please tell me, I know.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Okay, So historically at the time, so let's say, let's
frame this into nineteen tens to nineteen thirties or so,
there were four basic arguments against pastorization in the early
twentieth century. The first three were more dairy industry based.
Number one, expense. Pasturization required additional equipment which might be

(39:24):
prohibitedly expensive for small farms, putting them out of business
and letting the big farms take over. And they claimed
that this cost would also trickle down to the consumer,
who may be priced out of buying milk.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Okay, all right, that's so interesting in the context of today,
but anyways, continue.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
There was also a if they want to drink raw milk,
let them like' just let them have that kind of sentiment, like,
what are you requiring these laws?

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Are you to tell me what I can and can't drink?

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Yeah? Then number two necessity. Many people claimed that pastures
didn't ultimately solve the issue of a dirty farm, that
all it was doing was allowing the farmer to sell
dirty milk under a false promise. And they argued that
enforcing pastorization would just make farms even more disease ridden,
and that since it was such a new science, you

(40:15):
couldn't even be sure that pastorization was doing what it
was supposed to be doing. I mean, new science is
a stretch because it was you know, eighteen sixty eight
was when it was like really used. Okay, sure, yeah.
Number three taste, pastorization was said to ruin the taste
of milk, to take the life out of milk unquote,
and farmers worried that people would stop buying milk because

(40:38):
of this changed taste. It's alleged change taste, okay. The
fourth argument against pastorization is kind of an extension of this,
and it came from the medical community. Actually nutrients, So
some doctors believed that pastorization destroyed the nutrients in milk
and would ultimately harm the infants consuming it. I think

(41:00):
it's important to place this in context, right. So, the
pasteurization debate was happening as researchers were finally beginning to
piece together the components of nutrition, like proteins, fats, amino acids,
vitamins and so on, and so there was extra sensitivity there.
People were like, what happens.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Who whoa, whoa. Now we know there's a lot in
this milk. It's not just milk. It's a bunch of
stuff in there. And what happens if you heat it up?
Do you mess up all the stuff?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yes? Okay, yeah, Like scurvy was one special fear especially.
It was like, people are gonna get scurvy with pasteurized milk.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
By the way, milk is a terrible source of vitamin
C exactly, but they didn't know that at the time.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Okay, they didn't know that, or maybe they did because
they knew about scurvy, they knew about vitamin C.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
So, I mean, there is vitamin C in milk exactly,
but it is a very small amount and it is
quickly oxidized just from exposure to air, and so it
is not stable. Sorry, I could go on, because I
went too deep of a dive on like the profiles
of milk versus rock. Yeah, don't get your vitamin C
from milk, raw or pasteurized.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
I mean, you won't be able to like you, you will.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Get skirty, you will get scirfy no matter if your
milk is pastized or not.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
But yeah, that was a big sticking point for Okay,
interesting and you know, also on top of this, some
doctors just doubted the milk disease connection entirely, which was
really frustrating to proponents of pasteurization, who pointed out, Number one,
disease outbreaks are linked to specific milk, like that came

(42:36):
from that batch of milk, right. Two outbreaks are explosive,
which point towards a common exposure. Number three, populations that
drink more milk tend to have more milk related disease.
And number four, within households, milk drinkers have more milk
related disease. The evidence was there, right.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Like they were like, it's always been there, it's.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Here, it's here, you go on a platter with pastor milk.
But the other arguments could also be refuted, right, Producing
certified raw milk was which was like, okay, you're your
pharm is tuberculus is free, blah blah blah. It was
actually more expensive than pasteurization given the frequent inspections that

(43:17):
had to happen.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
It also didn't really prevent tuberculosis. Because you could if
you go through you know, if you're inspecting only every
three months, right, you're you could be selling tuberculas what anyway? Yeah, taste,
I can't speak to that, but when weighing potentially deadly
diseases on one hand and taste on the other, I
think it's reasonable to sacrifice a little bit of taste
for safe food. I mean, my feeling.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Can I also can I sorry because guess is jumping
ahead to what I'm going to talk about next week,
But like, you also have to take into consideration what
types of farms are you talking about? Are you still
talking about grody farms in the middle of New York
City with two thousand cows standing on top of their
own poop? Okay, if you pasteurize that milk, yeah, it's
probably still going to taste bad.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Well. But that's the thing too, is that that is
what I think the proponents of raw milk we're saying
is that they were like, oh, you're just making this
dirty milk. No, there were still quality, cleanliness.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Right standards that were going into place.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Clean milk was being pasteurized. Yeah, Like that was the
bottom line. You couldn't you could not pasteurize dirty milk.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
You can't keep doing what they were doing. It was
like other things have to change, and hey, guess what.
Even your supposed clean, certified farm is still getting people sick,
so you still have to pasteurize it.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
And there were still safety standards across the board. Right,
whether your farm was selling certified milk or pasteurized milk,
you still had to meet the same safety standards.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Right, yep, still too okay.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
At the end of his book The Milk Question, Rosa
Now we heard from in our first hand account summarized
what he viewed as the answer to the milk problem.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
To keep milk clean, we need inspection. To render milk safe,
we need pasturization. Inspection goes to the root of the problem.
Through an efficient system of inspection, the milk supply should
be cleaner, better, fresher, and safer. Inspection, however, has limitations.
These limitations may be guarded against by pasturization. A milk supply, therefore,

(45:23):
that is both supervised and pasteurized is the only satisfactory
solution of the problem. Love it end quote yeah, I
mean yeah, done. And yet and yet this debate continued
long after pasteurization laws were widespread across the US. I mean,

(45:45):
those four arguments for raw milk and against pasturization are
essentially the same exact talking points of raw milk proponents today. Yeah,
just a little bit. There are a few extra ones
thrown in there. I know you'll talk about it. Yeah,
raw milk has never disappeared. In fact, it's grown in
supporters over the years. So like, what gives why is

(46:06):
this such a sticky idea in the face of all
of this evidence that pasteurized milk is safe and healthy.
Who are the people pushing raw milk? Is what is
happening there?

Speaker 2 (46:19):
And why?

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah? Well, okay, first of all, they're not a monolith, right, Like,
there were and continue to be many different drivers for
why people buy raw milk or attack pasteurization laws. So,
for instance, many pro raw milk folks argue that raw
milk sales help small farms and local economies. Price of
a gallon of raw milk is typically two to three
times that of a gallon of pasteurized milk.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
I feel like that's an underestimate based on things I've seen.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
It is, and it also uses that it uses that
tried and true psychological link where you think that because
something costsmart, it must hire better, and they say that
the direct farm to consumer sales helps the farm cut
back on processing costs.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Okay, I mean I believe that.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah. I have not read through any economic analyzes comparing
raw to pasteurized milk. I don't doubt that there's some
basis too, yes, especially considering how popular of an argument
it is. But I have to wonder, and I guess
you'll talk about it next week what the legal and
financial repercussions are if you sell a batch of raw
milk that makes people sick or.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Die then you Yeah, yeah, I don't have an answer
to that next week either, Aaron, just you know.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
And I think that, like raw milk does sort of
signify an overall desire to have better health, So like
what does that mean in the society, right, like micro
tuning every part of your life?

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Uh huh right.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
But I'm not really going to get into that aspect
of it. What I want to talk about for the
rest of this episode is not economic claims, not sort
of the general sense of dissatisfaction and all of that,
but rather the ideological arguments that people make for raw milk,
what underpins them, and the dangers in this rhetoric. Before

(48:05):
doing this episode, I thought of raw milk in the
US as like this fringe idea, like a fad carried
over from the hippies of the nineteen seventies, like kind
of a misguided, crunchy granola type of alternative health interest.
Like that was my perception of the vibe of raw milk.
I had no idea just how much raw milk is

(48:27):
used today by the far right and white supremacists as
a dog whistle. I didn't know. Maybe that means that
I just am not online enough, or I don't know,
I'm not paying enough attention. I don't know, but I
think it's so fascinating because it kind of is shares
so many parallels with anti vaccine sentiment, and it kind

(48:49):
of reveals that the spectrum, or what we think of
or what I was thinking of as a political spectrum,
is really a circle. And I don't know what that means,
but anyway, yeah, so yeah, But as I started to
research for this episode, I found traces of this link
between raw milk and fascism going all the way back

(49:10):
to the early twentieth century eugenics and Nazis. And so
how did this trend in the US go from eugenics
to its crunchy granola era to now it's the links
to the far right and white supremacy. Yeah, it's a
great question. Let's see if we can connect some of
these dots. So from the very beginning of the twentieth century,

(49:31):
there was considerable pushback against pasteurization, as we just talked about,
and one of the key medical objections was that pasteurised
milk was viewed as less nutritious than pasteurized milk and Aaron,
I know that you'll talk more about this next week.
But yes, there are some nutritional differences between the two,
but they are very minor and would be addressed with

(49:52):
other foods. Very minor, yes, yeah, yeah, But these differences
were exaggerated by some vocal anti pasteurizers throughout the decades
of the nineteen hundreds. While most pro pasturizers felt that
a minor, nearly undetectable loss of nutrients was an acceptable
trade off for not dying of a deadly disease, others,

(50:12):
like Halliday Sutherland, were more concerned with what that nutrient
loss meant for future fertility. In a nineteen thirty eight
correspondence to the British Medical journal, He wrote, quote, the
shadow of depopulation and national decline is looming in the
near future. Milk is a staple food, and before pasteurization

(50:33):
is adopted as a national policy, I suggest that it
would be wise to test the effects of pastorization on
the fertility vitamins led us experiment on animals before experimenting
on the nation.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Oh dear, okay quote at least he said animals. I guess, Yeah,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
And people had done experiments and there was no detectable difference.
But he misreported the results of those. Of course, Yes,
but this view didn't come out of nowhere. The implication
that pasteurization would accelerate depopulation was tied to the general
belief held by eugenesis that whole, unprocessed, unpreserved foods were

(51:15):
fundamental to the fertility and overall health of the desirable
subset of a population.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Just the desirable subset, of course.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Right, Like, yeah, the implications between the lines kind of
a thing. Yeah, Some anti pasteurizers loosened to their stance
to allow exceptions like oh, yeah, okay, we can pasteurize
maybe for those who are impoverished, or we can pasteurize
for in cities specifically, which is, of course, you know
where you're going to see the highest population of impoverished individuals.

(51:47):
But this eugenic perspective wasn't limited to human consumers of milk,
but it also extended to the bovine producers themselves. Certain
breeds were hailed as producing the best tasting milk, which
is also echo today. You can see that. And it's
no wonder that this rhetoric of superiority and inferiority carried

(52:07):
into the debate about pasturization. Like you are what you drink, right.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
That's sort of the thoughts, like my I'm better than
you because I'm drinking raw milk. Gosh, yeah, I mean
that is one hundred percent the TikTok vibes today, so
yep uh.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
In nineteen forty one, British physician Lionel Picton wrote quote,
much of modern food is processed, preserved, refined, sterilized dead.
Contrast the insipid, pasteurized fluid of today to the milk
of our forefathers.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
End quoth, sorry, I can't, I'm getting so annoyed erin
I'm sorry, but especially because I should just keep my
mouse so much more. I know, I'm going to talk.
I'm going to talk about the things that are annoying
me about this rhetoric a lot next week. But it's
just it is so incredibly misguided to put the types

(53:03):
of rhetoric that they are saying on pasteurization itself. Yeah, like,
see what you want about the US food system, we're
kind of broken. Pasturization is not the broken part. Pasturization
is the part that's saving babies lives. I'm sorry, I'm
getting too No.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
That is the bottom line, that period.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
That is it. They're just picking. Why pick pastor Why pasturization?
Why is that the thing that they picked.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Well, let's let's keep going. Okay, we maybe we'll get
some clarity. I don't know. I can't promise that, but
we could try this way of talking about food, this
call for natural, unprocessed foods, subsistence farming, making food great again.
It was also how Nazi officials discussed food and nutrition. Okay,

(53:51):
they pushed for a diet consisting of food grown on
national soil, foods that they had evolved eating. Frans Werese,
professor of medicine and leader in the life reform movement,
said in nineteen thirty nine, quote, diet must be in
the position not only to preserve the continued existence of
the nation and race, but also to make them more

(54:12):
fertile and fit.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
And the group that was instructed to lead the charge
housewives through a return to a traditional lifestyle, Oh my god, share,
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
And this, this focus on healthy eating, on unprocessed natural foods,
was not counter to their goals of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
It was part of it, right. They viewed diet and
nutrition through whole natural foods as essential to the ultimate
goal of increasing the fertility and health of what they
viewed as a desirable race. The call for whole natural foods,

(54:56):
subsistence farming, and a return to traditional lifestyles, it kind
of sounds familiar, doesn't it if you've been reading the news.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Too familiar, Aaron, too familiar.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
I mean, that is the rhetoric that the far right
uses today. Just a few days ago, on March ninth,
twenty twenty five, we're recording this. On March twelfth, Trump
called for a return to subsistence farming as a solution
to rising egg prices. RFK Junior, the Secretary of the
Department of Health and Human Services has called repeatedly for

(55:30):
the elimination of ultra processed foods and GMOs and a
return to whole, unprocessed natural foods. He's also a big
raw milk fan, and, of course, in addition to being
anti vax tradwives are all over TikTok spouting the supposed
benefits of raw milk. White supremacists use milk imagery as

(55:50):
a dog whistle for racial purity. The neo Nazi, antisemitic
white supremacist who coined the term alt right, used a
milk emoji in his Twitter profile and wrote, I'm very tolerant.
Lactose tolerant. Starting to come together right. He and other
neo Nazis use their lactase persistence to claim genetic superiority.

(56:16):
My goodness, because if you're just so so depressed, I know,
I hate everything.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Like that's just so incredibly ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I know, but you can't, Like you can't. There's no
logic to it. Yeah, it's just argue. Yeah, a bunch
of weirdos. I'm sorry I.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Shouldn't say that, but like we could say that I'm
better than you because I can continue to digest lactose.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
I drink another mammal's milk into adult It's.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
A weird thing to do, to drink a milk. It's
a weird thing that we do. It is it is,
Oh my gosh, we're the weirdos. If you can do it.
Not normal.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
But that's that's the thing. So just to in case
people don't remember from earlier on in the episode or
don't know this, that this mutation, the lactase persistence occurs
at higher frequencies in people with Northern European descent, And
so this is them directly calling that out and saying, oh,
I'm genetically superior because it's seventy.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Percent of the global population cannot digest lactose into adulthood.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
But that's that's their point that they Yeah, I know,
I know, so I know, okay, but this is not
This is why milk is not a random thing, right, like.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
They intentionally chosen because of that, it's a way to
distinguish yourself as.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Not a coincidence and better and this in fact, this
type of dietary racism dates back to the nineteenth century.
In the late eighteen hundreds, another period of time where
perceived threats to traditional masculinity were high, and fears of
immigration loomed large. The medical researcher J. Leonard Corning wrote
that Western meat and dairy products were direct responsible for

(58:01):
the quote unquote intellectual vigor and superior moral courage of
the English that allowed them to quote extend their empire
throughout the world.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Oh my goodness, uh huh.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
He described non Westerners as quote unquote effeminate rice eaters.
Sounds a lot like the soy boy insults that the
all right hurls at people today, right, like, wow, it's
the parallels are so clear.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, it's yes, wow, Okay, yeah, both of.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
These, both of these things incorporate attacks on diet and
masculinity and race and race. Yeah. An agricultural history of
New York from the nineteen thirties kept with this theme.
Quote okay. A casual look at the races of people
seems to show that those using much milk are the
strongest physically and mentally and the most enduring of all

(58:54):
the people in the world. Of all races, the Aryans
seem to have been the heaviest drinkers of milk and
the greatest users of butter and cheese, a fact that
may in part account for the quick and high development
of this division of human beings end quote and gross.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Yeah, I I don't think I had any idea, Aaron,
that it was a so like that it went so
far back, yeah, and that that milk and raw milk
has always been so tied into this like white racial
superiority situation, Like that's I did not I know, I.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Know, I I just kept falling down the rabbit hole. Yeah,
and like what what do you mean? And then just
like everything how history is not quite repeating but yeah,
like kind of yeah, kind of yeah, yep, yeah, So no,
present day white supremacists using milk as a symbol for

(59:59):
racial purity not a coincidence. But where does the raw
milk aspect? It's like, why are ra right? How did
raw milk go from being a crunchy granola alternative health
item to an alt right symbol. It followed the same
path as the anti vaccine movement. Again, the spectrum is

(01:00:20):
a circle. The commonality between these two groups all right
and alternative health I guess I'm not really sure. The
labels is rejection of the traditional expertise and government regulation,
at least on the surface for them. For many of
these people raw milk and quote unquote vaccine choice represents deregulation.

(01:00:41):
It represents a rejection of government oversight. It represents a
return to a traditional lifestyle. It's not really about raw
milk at all. It's about redefining expertise, about instilling mistrust
in scientists and their research. Nor is it about deregulation
and less government oversight. That's just a facade, right, Like

(01:01:03):
this becomes clear when you consider that many of these
people in the Alt rights seem to be just fine
with government regulation when it comes to women's bodies and
trans people's bodies. Well holds off my raw milk.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Also, like farms that produce raw milk also have to
be like very strictly regulated and inspected, and there's all
kinds of rules and regulations that go into that also,
So that doesn't track.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
It doesn't track. And you know, I think that one
thing that I want to make very clear is that
I am not saying that everyone who loves raw milk
or is even curious about raw milk subscribes to these
al right or racist beliefs at all. That's not what
I'm saying. Just like you said, Aaron, there are many
different reasons that people might be interested in raw milk,

(01:01:47):
in part because our food industry is broken, But deregulation
is only going to make it more broken in the
sense that like the companies, the big companies then will
have fewer guardrails to actually prevent them from hurting people. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Well, and like we talked about last week, like I
was on TikTok looking at raw milk info to kind
of understand, like, what are people even talking about when
it comes to raw milk today, like for real on
social media. And I don't think that the vast majority.
I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of people
who are sort of in the know wink wink about

(01:02:22):
the kind of where this came from or what this signifies.
But I think there's a lot of people who are
just like, is it going to be better for me?
Is it going to be is it a better nutrient profile?
Is it going to be a healthier choice for me?
Like and and it's really hard to sort through this
miss and disinformation because the aesthetics are beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
They are I mean, yeah, you're right, no, it's it
is understandable to go. But what about this I've been
hearing right about this lightly and not knowing why we
have raw milk, why we have pasteurized bilk, when most
of the stuff that you're hearing on social media is
about the purported benefits of raw mil right, right, Like
that is it, it's our algorithms, and it's it's all

(01:03:07):
of this, yeah, right, But yeah, I do want to
make a very clear distinction that there is a big
difference between that, you know, some of these ideological drivers
and some of the reasons that people might be like,
I'm interested in raw milk. I want to learn more
about it. I had no idea about all of these connections, right,
how and how deep it went. And so my my

(01:03:29):
main point here with this, with this episode, or with
this part of the episode, is just to try to
understand some of the drivers of this movement, especially in
the past few years, and a large part of that
seems to be the alt right, or at least they're
using it as this symbolic way, right as this opportunity
many people stand to profit off of deregulation, and raw

(01:03:52):
milk is just one minor facet of this, and it's
it's I think it's fascinating. I think it's important to
examine it's use as a political symbol. Right, raw milk
carries with it a lot of baggage, and that baggage
is rarely acknowledged. Like, you know, the calls that RFK

(01:04:13):
Junior makes for natural, unprocessed foods. It's hard to disagree
with that, Like it's the real harm in letting someone
drink raw milk if they want to. But that is
the point, right, Like, that is the point of these claims.
The lack of any nuance or any real substance in
these demands, in these health claims, that leaves no room
for argument, right, because what is what does natural mean?

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
What does unprocessed mean? What does it actually mean to
have unprocessed foods? How are you going to do that?
How are you going to make those affordable and accessible?
What's the plan there? What's the concept of a plan there?
Does pasteurize milk count as a processed food? Silence on
these fronts, right? Silence? And I'm in no way saying
that ultra processed foods are great for you and that

(01:05:00):
food regulation and accessibility needs no changes whatsoever. But there's
a huge difference between the processing that happens with Cheetos
or jelly beans to make food taste better like last longer,
be cheaper to make, etc. And the processing that helps
with pasturization, which is solely to prevent disease, right like
pasteurization prevents disease.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Whoop the end.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
But again, these distinctions are not made because it's not
about food. It's not about raw milk at all. It's
not about vaccines even, it's about redefining expertise who makes
these judgments. Historically it has been actual experts, scientists with
extensive training who use mountains of data to make decisions.

(01:05:45):
These experts are being replaced with hand picked individuals who
have little to know background in that subject, but are
willing to carry out an agenda, no matter how harmful
that agenda may be to the general public. To me,
the danger represented by raw milk is not restricted to
ecoli or listeria, but what it means for science and

(01:06:06):
expertise in this country and the harm that raw milk
can cause is similarly far reaching. Just like the anti
vaccine movement, raw milk prays on those who want to
make the best choices for themselves and their families. They
are being sold false promises that raw milk is a
miracle food, that it is entirely safe to drink, and

(01:06:27):
that as long as you know you're farmer, you're good.
Your milk is safe. But that's not the whole truth,
or even the truth at all. And people have lost
their lives or suffered long term consequences as a result
of being fed these lies. And so I think that's
maybe where I'll leave it for this episode. But I

(01:06:49):
am really looking forward to next week, Aaron, when you
get to talk about all of the nitty gritty of
raw milk. Is there actually a harm? Are there nutritional differences? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
I'm going to really really too deep of a deep
dive on it, honestly, And I'm really really excited about
it to like kind of go nitty gritty on what's
up with milk? Like what is milk?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
What is up with milk? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, next week though, next week. For now, for now, sources, sources,
please tell me where I can learn more. Is there
a book that I should read?

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
I didn't? There are, there are some books. I didn't
read a book for this.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
It's shocking. Will you write a book for this? I
feel like you could write a book out of what
you just said, and I would really like to read.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
It maybe maybe with all the time that I have. Yeah,
there's a book actually I read a couple chapters from
this by Peter Atkins called Liquid Materialities, A History of
Milk Science and the Law. There's so much by Bore
one hundred year year review Microbiology and the Safety of
Milk Handling. That's from twenty seventeen. Oh one that I

(01:07:57):
actually really appreciated was by Caurier and Wirdness from twenty eighteen,
titled A Brief History of Milk Hygiene and its Impact
on Infant Mortality from eighteen seventy five to nineteen twenty
five and Implications for today.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Will It's a very thorough title, great paper though.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Yeah, and there's there're a bunch more out there, like
honestly read away, Okay, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
I will.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode.
In all of our episodes, I was like, what do
I talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Thank you to Tom Brii Fogo, Leona Scolacci and all
of our video editing team as well for all of
the mixing. We love it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Thank you, yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, and
thank you to you listeners for listening. This was I
hope you like it. Tell me, tell me yeah, tell us.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
You read for next week, because we're not done.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
We're not done.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
It's gonna be good. It is it is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
And a big thank you to our patrons as well.
Your support means so much to us, it really does.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Thank you. Well. Until next time, wash your hands, you
filthy animals.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
Um um um