Interesting article from the Internet...

[Guest guest]

>From www.latimes.com (the Los Angeles Times on line newspaper)...

 

> Is Milk Still Milk?

> In the name of safety, our most ancient food has been changed almost

> beyond recognition.

>

> By EMILY GREEN, Times Staff Writer

>

>

> Milk.

> KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles Times

>

> Most of us consume milk. We put it on cereal and add it to coffee. We

> give it to our children by the glassful to build up their bones. Women are

> encouraged to drink it throughout adulthood to maintain those bones.

> We select this milk from an ever-expanding range. Milk comes in

> whole, reduced-fat, low-fat and no-fat versions. We have organic milk and

> milk labeled as coming from farms that do not use hormones.

> But to Northern Californian dairy farmer Ron Garthwaite, these milks

> aren't milk at all. They are "reconstituted milk-flavored beverages."

> Garthwaite runs Claravale Dairy in Watsonville, a farming community

> somehow holding on in the path of the dot.com wealth south of Santa Cruz.

> His 60 Jersey cows are the last of California's 1.4-million herd providing

> milk that, aside from filtering, goes straight from cow to bottle.

> "We don't add anything to it," says Garthwaite, "and we don't take

> anything out of it."

> The result is slightly golden, exceptionally rich and almost sweet.

> At its freshest, it has a perfume of hay. When it is left to stand, a full

> head of cream rises to the top of the bottle.

> It reminds us that milk is variable. Change the cow to a Brown Swiss,

> a Welsh Black or an Ayrshire and put that animal on grass instead of dried

> hay and the milk would change, becoming less creamy, more flowery,

> ever-varying. Old-time farmers will say they can tell where their cows

> have been grazing by the taste of the milk.

> By contrast, the milk we buy in supermarkets will be uniformly white.

> Its cream won't rise. And a lactic perfume will be detectable only if the

> milk is boiled. Chances are it will have come from Friesians, the black

> and white Dutch breed prized for the volume, rather than the quality, of

> the milk they produce.

> This Friesian will typically have been kept in herds of about 800

> cows and fed not grass but standardized mixes of grain, minerals, old

> citrus, alfalfa and nut husks. Today, according to UC Davis estimates,

> about a third of the herds in California are treated with hormones to

> increase production.

> The milk will be standardized, fortified, pasteurized and

> homogenized. Translated, this means that it will be taken apart and put

> back together again, not always in the same proportions. Then it will be

> cooked and emulsified.

> Is it still milk? It is the milk we know. Garthwaite says that he

> runs Claravale Dairy to keep alive the memory of milk Americans knew right

> up until World War II: raw milk. It is a kind of milk that is on the brink

> of extinction.

>

> OLD MILK

> Garthwaite was educated as a geneticist and took to farming only

> after becoming interested in the history of California's old coastal

> dairies. In 1995 he apprenticed himself to the founder of Claravale Dairy,

> Kenneth Peake.

> Peake was something of a local hero. He started the dairy in 1927

> and, in the 69 years that he ran it, he steadfastly refused to process his

> milk.

> In 1996, Garthwaite bought the herd, equipment and right to the

> Claravale name. When Peake died last year at 91, Garthwaite suddenly found

> himself the only man in the state willing and able to bottle raw milk. He

> kept on doing it. "It's our heritage," says Garthwaite.

> True to the dairy's tradition, Garthwaite refuses to use hormones.

> When dairy nutritionists tell him that he can increase output of his

> Jerseys by using commercially formulated feeds, he declines. His cows dine

> on hay. He says he'll register as organic when he gets around to it.

>

> Like Peake, he is clearly an animal lover. His brown Jerseys wear

> bells, not ear-tags, and have names, not numbers. "This is Chloe," he

> says. "She's my favorite cow. She's a very serious cow."

> The milk from Chloe et al. will be bottled and distributed the same

> day. Way back, Peake used to deliver it in an old Chevy. Garthwaite has

> distributors who pick it up.

> At the milk's freshest (the first two days of about a five-day life

> span), its richness would delight a connoisseur. Dairy technology

> literature confirms Garthwaite's claim that Jersey milk has half again

> more protein and fat than the milk of a Friesian.

> At a recent tasting held at UC Davis by dairy economist Bees Butler,

> students marked Claravale highest for "mouth-feel" but surprised Butler by

> scoring it lowest for appearance. It wasn't white. They had never seen

> cream-colored milk.

> They were also, Butler noted, afraid of it. "You should have heard

> these kids saying, 'Oh, do I have to taste the raw?' They'd already gotten

> the story that raw milk was bad. So they all thought they were going to

> catch listeriosis."

>

> THE FALL OF RAW MILK

> Nothing contributed to the rise of milk processing so profoundly as

> the notion that drinking raw milk is risky. Today, selling raw milk is

> illegal in most states--it is allowed in only about 20. California is

> remarkable in that a 35-year campaign waged by the founders of Alta-Dena

> Dairy preserved the right for most stores to sell it. It can be sold, that

> is, if the bottle carries the warning that it "may contain disease-causing

> microorganisms."

> Processed milk does not require the warning. Although the sterilizing

> treatment is best known because of its use on milk, when Louis Pasteur

> developed it in 1860s France, it was to check fermentation in wine. Soon,

> however, it was clear to a burgeoning public health movement that the

> process could treat widespread contamination of milk.

> Turn-of-the century medical literature is rife with reports about

> wretched town dairies run by tubercular milk handlers. By 1913,

> pasteurization stations were common in New York City, and one of the

> founding fathers of the American public health movement, physician Milton

> Rosenau, had declared: "Next to water purification, pasteurization is the

> most important single preventive measure in the field of sanitation."

> But raw milk did not go quietly. It took until 1947 for Michigan to

> pass a compulsory pasteurization law. By 1972, raw milk was still legal in

> 28 states. When the federal government tried to ban interstate

> transportation of it, protesters stymied the effort for more than a

> decade.

> By 1985, the lobby for the right to drink milk in a traditional

> manner was so embattled that public health officials derided it in the

> Journal of the American Medical Assn. as a "health fetish." Within two

> years, the FDA had banned interstate sale of raw milk.

> Robert Tauxe, chief of the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases branch at

> the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, still quotes

> the 1913 argument, even though the old scourges of tuberculosis and

> brucellosis are now largely in check. In their stead, he points to new

> foes such as campylobacter, salmonella, listeria and Escherichia coli

> O157:H7. The bacteria found in raw foods, including some feared as

> pathogens.

> "We live in a bacterial world," he says. "There are more bacteria

> than there are anything else."

> Increasing numbers of gastroenterologists question the idea that the

> bacteria found in raw foods, including some feared as pathogens, are all

> our enemies. They believe that in fact routine exposure to bacteria

> "educates" the immune system, enabling it to cope with the natural world.

> Asked about this, Tauxe replies, "I don't think we need pathogens in

> our food supply to give our guts extra stimulation."

> America's European trading partners bristle at the suggestion that

> they should emulate America's blanket pasteurization, no country more than

> France. But Tauxe objects that food poisoning is a "huge problem" in

> France, that people there simply don't admit it. "It's an odd thing that

> in French culture you don't often hear of food poisoning," says Tauxe.

> "Instead, they say they have had a crise de foie." (That they feel

> liverish.)

> Tauxe adds that though he loves French food, he gets sick every time

> he goes to France.

> How risky is raw milk? For figures chronicling raw milk-borne illness

> in the U.S., Tauxe points to a 1998 study of suspected food poisoning

> outbreaks during the two decades between 1973 and 1992. It found 46

> outbreaks in 21 states, an average of slightly less than three a year

> nationwide, affecting a median number of 19 people. There are no hard

> figures for national raw milk consumption, but during that period

> Alta-Dena sold it regularly to 300,000 Californians.

> In California, raw milk has such a devoted following that repeated

> attempts to ban it have failed. Shirley Fannin, director of disease

> control for L.A. County's Department of Health Services, says there were

> food poisoning problems when Alta-Dena Dairy used to bottle it. "[The

> problems were] at a low level," she admits. "At our highest, we would have

> 20 to 30 cases [a year]. It wasn't like hundreds or thousands of cases.

> But when you have a risk product, people should be aware of the risk."

> Fannin fought throughout the 1980s for a warning label on milk. "My

> job is to give people the facts and let people deal with them," she says.

> "I was perfectly happy when they labeled the product."

> Fannin is less alarmed by small farms along the lines of Garthwaite's

> than by the sizable raw milk operation once run by Alta-Dena in Southern

> California. "A family farm that knows their small herd by name and is good

> with animal husbandry can probably keep their milk free of bacteria like

> salmonella," she says.

>

> NEW MILK

> Pasteurization changed not only what we recognize as milk but also

> the way in which dairy farmers produce it. California could never have

> outstripped Wisconsin in milk production without the confidence that

> pasteurization offers when pooling vast quantities.

> The risk becomes vivid when looking at the largest milk-poisoning in

> American history. In 1985, more than 5,770 people across three states were

> sickened after a pasteurization failure at an Illinois bottling plant.

> As a result, hygiene in California's processing plants is a

> high-security operation. The general manager of one of the largest plants,

> run by a Central Valley dairy co-op, will not allow visitors. "Nobody is

> allowed in the processing plant--period," he says, before adding less

> gruffly, "All you can see is stainless steel."

> Inside that machinery, milk shipped from farms is remade. First it is

> separated in centrifuges into fat, protein and various other solids and

> liquids. Once segregated, these are reconstituted to set levels for whole,

> low-fat and no-fat milks. What is left over will go to butter, cream,

> cheese, dried milk and a host of other milk products.

> Of the reconstituted milks, whole milk will most closely approximate

> original cow's milk. When fat is removed, it is replaced with protein and

> vitamin-rich skimmed milk powder or concentrate.

> California standards for fortification are far higher than federal

> ones. "It has more [nutritional] goodies," says UC Davis' dairy economist

> Butler, who has studied complaints from other states that California

> standards constitute a trade barrier.

> Standardization also ensures that milk is consistent: that one glass

> of any given type tastes exactly like the next.

>

> Milk carrier from Collector's Antiques, South Pasadena.

> KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles Times

>

> Commonly, standardized milk is then sent by tanker trucks to bottling

> plants. Swiss Dairy in Riverside is considered state-of-the-art. Here,

> 6,400-gallon tankers disgorge milk into silos. Swiss plant manager Steve

> Bergman says the plant accepts only milk fortified with concentrate.

> "Other dairies accept powdered milk," he says, "but we think it leaves a

> chalky taste."

> Inside the plant a sterile lab tests for antibiotic residues in

> arriving milk. On the rare occasions that milk fails, Bergman says that it

> is sent back to the supplier and redirected for, say, pet food.

> Before entering the bottling area, workers must dip the soles of

> their shoes in antiseptic baths. Staff members wear smocks, hair-nets,

> jackets for the cold and earplugs against the roar of machinery. Conveyor

> belts foam with antibacterial lubricant. Banks of computers chart the milk

> flow (which goes only uphill, so raw milk cannot contaminate cooked).

> Swiss Dairy pasteurizes the milk 10 degrees hotter and 2 seconds

> longer than the 161-degree, 15-second legal minimum. What is lost in

> flavor is gained in confidence. Push it to 200 degrees, explains Bergman,

> and it is called Ultra Heat Treatment. This will have a distinct cooked

> milk taste, but it is sterile and can be sold on grocery shelves; it does

> not even require refrigeration.

> As it is cooked, the milk is homogenized by a pressure treatment that

> breaks down the fat globules so the milk won't separate and we don't have

> to shake it before pouring it.

> Once processed, the milk will last for weeks, not days. Outside

> purposefully "stressing" samples of each run of processed milk, then

> culturing them for bacteria, the milk is never handled. Workers see it

> only as it is squished into plastic bottles revolving on the conveyor belt

> and instantly capped.

>

> GOT MILK?

> American consumption of milk plummeted steadily during the rise of

> processing. Fans of raw milk blame processing. Milk processors blame soft

> drinks and say the fall was checked only recently by the cult Got Milk?

> campaign started by California Milk Processors Board.

> Bergman's boss, Steve James, is one of the heads of the board. A

> transplanted New Yorker, he was an actor before he was, he says, "bitten

> by the glamour of the dairy industry."

> This happened in upstate New York, where James became involved with a

> local dairy, Ronnybrook Farm. He still displays advertisements from that

> business reading, "No hormones, no antibiotics, 100% all-natural, bottled

> on the farm."

> Here in California, James remains attuned to public anxiety about

> industrial dairies. The only liquid milk sector now growing is that for

> organic milk. It is processed, but it comes from tiny farms and cows

> raised on regimens produced without chemical fertilizers, pesticides and

> herbicides.

> Swiss Dairy's milk, assures James, is from hormone-free herds. Set on

> a nearby shelf are prototype milk cartons bearing the claim. "They're by

> Pentagram," he says, referring to an international design firm.

> Among the mock-up cartons are other sorts of milk now on the drawing

> board, the latest idea being bubble gum-flavored milk.

>

> ---

> Scott Wilson of The Times news research library also contributed to

> this story.