Take home message
- Raw milk quality has changed enormously over the years. 150 years ago, we knew nothing about what was happening beneath the surface of milk and could only gain knowledge by smelling and tasting it. Nowadays, we can measure and monitor everything. Modern raw milk cannot be compared to raw milk from the 19th century. However, the fear of raw milk has remained.
- When livestock farmers participate in control programmes focused on the consumption of raw milk, this milk is generally very safe. Measurements and controls should alleviate the fear of such certified raw milk.
In the past, milk was obtained from the farmer in the village, warm, every day if necessary. For people living in cities, this became a problem at the end of the 19th century. The distance to the city increased and there was no good way to cool the milk. The hand-milked milk, which was rich in bacteria at the time, was prone to spoilage. The once local market in the village expanded with the construction of a network of railway lines. Special milk trains with refrigerated wagons brought raw milk to American and English cities, milk that was on the road for a long time. Swill milk produced by sick dairy cows in dark stables next to or below distilleries in the cities themselves was therefore the answer to the long, poorly refrigerated transport routes of rural milk. Entrepreneurs saw opportunities.
So at the end of the 19th century, two poor forms of raw milk were ultimately offered: milk from cows that had been transported (too) long, and urban swill milk. Infant mortality was extremely high. In 1878, 20 out of 100 children in Chicago died in their first year of life. Especially in the summer, children fell victim to diarrhoea and dehydration after consuming raw milk. Increasingly long transport routes for poorly refrigerated raw milk were directly correlated with rising mortality rates. Confidence in the consumption of raw milk continued to decline, partly due to the discovery of bacteria present in milk. A year earlier, Louis Pasteur discovered that heating milk killed most germs. This had major consequences for the debate on making milk safe.
Conflict from 1880 to the present
The fear of raw milk originated in a time of fraud, excessively long transport routes, lack of refrigeration and urban growth. There were two camps in which doctors made proposals to make milk safe. The proponents of pasteurisation wanted to heat all milk in order to kill all germs. They insisted on heating as a generic measure, so that all milk in circulation, regardless of its excessive and harmful bacteria, could be made ready for safe consumption. Mandatory pasteurisation of all drinking milk, as is still enforced in Canada, for example, was intended to reduce infections, especially in young children, and restore confidence in milk as a foodstuff.
Medical doctors, who were advocates of raw milk, wanted to preserve the fresh, unheated product because of its protective and restorative ingredients. As opponents of pasteurisation, they insisted on regulation and control of raw milk. Medical Milk Committees around cities established rules for the production and supply of controlled raw milk. Such milk could no longer be transported to the city in bulk, but had to be bottled and cooled directly from the cow on the farm. The entire cooling and transport chain had to be guaranteed to remain below 7 oC, the milkers on the farm had to be clean and healthy, as did the cows, the delivery points in the city had to be hygienic, as did the people who sold the chilled milk. The milk had to be free of tuberculosis. Cows had to be tested for the tuberculosis bacterium. If sampled, raw milk was not allowed to contain more than 10,000 bacteria per ml, many times less than the “normal” milk that was in circulation and often contained more than 1,000,000 bacteria per ml. The latter milk “had” to be heated to be safe and durable.
Enforcing the controlled raw milk sales was difficult due to the large number of suppliers. The logistics and manpower, as well as laboratories with sufficient speed to carry out tests, were still largely lacking. Control measures were (too) expensive, especially for small producers who relied on the sale of raw milk as their source of income. Nevertheless, this raw milk gradually gained ground thanks to the efforts of pediatrician Dr Henry Coit (1854-1917). The selling price of such milk was twice as high as regular milk (12 cents per quart instead of 6 cents; 1 quart = 0.95 litres), (Obladen, 2014).
Safety through knowledge, cooling and hygiene
All these aspects – direct cooling, transport only in sealed packaging, maintaining the cold chain, healthy, disease-free cows, healthy milkers and standards for the number of bacteria in milk – are still elements of the current regulations governing ‘Vorzugsmilch’ in Germany. So-called ‘Modelmilk’ in the Netherlands in the 1950s was also subject to similar regulations. Due to increased technical capabilities, but above all increased knowledge about bacteria and zoonoses, the safety policy surrounding the consumption of raw milk has not changed in principle, but is now more focused on measuring certain bacterial groups and zoonoses in order to be able to supply milk that is as safe as possible.
Countries have also “devised” additional rules, the purpose of which in terms of food safety is questionable. Germany considers it necessary to give raw milk (Vorzugsmilch) a use-by date of only 96 hours. In contrast, in the US, raw milk is given a use-by date of 9-10 days. The Dutch legislator believes that greater certainty can be achieved by freezing the milk before it is offered for sale in shops or transported further. In the Netherlands, raw milk may only be collected directly from a farm, usually via a milk tap. Transport to a shop in the city is prohibited and is apparently considered a hazard in the Netherlands. It is completely unclear why states in the US and countries in Europe assess the same raw milk so differently and estimate the risks so differently.
Removing fear and generating trust
Global experience has shown that raw milk is safest when farmers gain specific knowledge, understand the risks and routes of contamination, know how bacteria grow, and are trained in the ins and outs of raw milk; and act accordingly.
For raw milk, rapid, forced cooling immediately after milking is important in order to store the product safely. For raw milk, it is better to cool it to below 4°C. Milkers must be trained in personal hygiene and hygiene during milking in order to keep the number of germs in milk low. The most important thing is the hygiene of the udder and teats. The milking equipment must be in good working condition and, in principle, the equipment must be made virtually sterile after each milking (through the use of cleaning agents and heat). The cows must be healthy, their udders shaved and their tail hairs short. Smearing of manure is unacceptable.
There must be regular checks for bacteria in the raw milk. Simple tests such as the total bacterial count and the Enterobacteriaceae group should be carried out several times a week or even daily. These measurements are an important indication of whether the measures taken by the farmer in relation to milking, cleaning and hygiene are (still) effective. In addition, it is advisable to check regularly, several times a year, whether there are any zoonoses present in the milk. This gives consumers confidence. In principle, the udder health of cows can be maintained by monitoring the cow’s milk cell count, and in particular its progression. For all data, the more often milk is routinely sampled, the easier it is to maintain standards and the faster corrections can be made.
In order to be able to continue to produce safe raw milk, it is necessary to reward the farmer for this by means of a premium on the milk price. This is no different from the situation around 1900.
Raw milk in future?
Will the discussion and acceptance of raw milk follow the same path as the discussion about “milk fat and obesity”? Poor research and industrial interests in the 1950s and 1960s led to a (false) link being made between cardiovascular disease and the consumption of lard, fat and butterfat. After more than 50 years of being pushed towards sugar consumption by advertising and misinformation, obesity problems have become huge and cardiovascular disease has hardly decreased. At the same time, a large part of the population now takes cholesterol inhibitors. It seems that sugar consumption was much more important than animal fat consumption.
If raw milk and health were to be properly investigated, including raw fermented dairy products such as kefir and farmhouse cheese, it could well be that fears about raw milk are unfounded and that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.
Literature
- Maready F. (2025). The Germ In The Dairy Pail: The 200-Year War on the World’s Most Amazing Food: Milk (book or ebook).
- Obladen, M. (2014). From swill milk to certified milk: progress in cow’s milk quality in the 19th century. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 64(1), 80-87.
