History of Raw Milk Ban - the Great Milk War!

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Why are armed government agencies constantly raiding peaceful family farms for producing milk? How did the war on raw milk get to where it is today, and what is the solution to procuring one of nature’s greatest foods?

Milk, Whiskey and War!

Cattle have been domesticated for 10,500 years, and Europeans started drinking raw milk around 7,500 years ago. For thousands of years the consumption of fresh nutrient dense raw milk was never a problem, until recent history. With burgeoning large scale industry, came the need for more workers. Industrialized communities drew workers from farms and the countryside into the cities. These healthy people wanted their raw milk.

As the Industrial Revolution exploded, by 1810 thirsty workers staffed factories and mills throughout the east coast. Whiskey and milk were the beverages of choice. As cities grew, so did the demand for both!

The 1812 war all but halted imported distilled spirits from Europe. To quench the common folk’s soaring thirst for alcohol, distilleries opened up in most major cities. That is when a cut-throat entrepreneur came up with the disastrous idea to inhumanely confine cows adjacent to distilleries and feed them with the hot nasty swill left over from the spirit-making process. The only way to get the cows to eat this filthy slop was to cut off all food and water and feed them salt to induce thirst. They were force-fed cold swill until they grew accustomed to it, and then weaned onto hot slop straight from the stills.

The torturous conditions of the cows confined to cramped filthy pens combined with their diet produced a pale, bluish milk so horrific in quality, it couldn’t be used for making butter or cheese. Mix in sick workers with filthy hands, diseased animals, and unsanitary milk pails and you have a concoction for disaster.

At this time, basic science regarding germs and microbes was decades away and a substantial percent of the people that drank “swill milk” became deathly ill, with many dying. Contaminated milk was fed to babies by unwitting mothers, and this is where raw milk erroneously got its bad it reputation. 

In 1870 (New York city alone) infant mortality rose exponentially to around 20%. The infant death rate stayed there for several more years as big business profited off of swill milk with no regard for human life.

The following historical events are rarely told, and extremely important. The unacceptable rise in infant deaths lead to two choices—Higher quality farming practices in city dairies, or disguising infected product from unhealthy animals.

Instead of addressing the filthy urban dairy conditions, big business sought to mask the taint using additives such as Plaster of Paris, chalk, sugar, eggs, starch, flour and color pigments to alter the swill milks watery, pale-bluish and foul tasting natural state. They even had the audacity to label it as “Pure Country Milk.”

Infant mortality languished for years until two men from different mindsets, were brought together due to milk related deaths of their children. The first, Dr. Henry Coit from New Jersey, urged the creation of a Medical Milk Commission to oversee and certify raw milk production for cleanliness. In 1893 he was able to do so.

Coit tirelessly worked with key dairy experts. He and his unpaid team of physicians were then able to enlist dairy farmers who were willing to meet the strict Medical Milk Commission standards of hygiene while producing fresh clean certified raw milk. Milk was once again safe and available for public consumption. However, it cost up to four times the price of uncertified milk.

The second, New York philanthropist, Nathan Straus. Straus had an entirely different view. He believed that only pasteurized milk could be safe. Straus had made a fortune as co-owner of Macy's department stores and spent decades using his wealth to promote pasteurization across America and Europe. Using unlimited finances, he set up and subsidized the first of many low-cost ”pasteurized milk depots" in New York City.

Straus had incredible influence beyond his wealth to promote pasteurization over healthy and humane farming practices. Straus was Parks Commissioner from 1889 until 1893, and in 1898 he was president of the Health Board as well as Commissioner of the Department of Health. Sterilizing diseased milk started to gain traction over healthy farming practices…

Greed and profit seduced government and medical professionals with corporate dollars and lies into controlling and promoting cheap mass-confinement production over healthy humane farming practices. This basically stopped the supply of nutrient-dense healthy raw milk from reaching the people.

It has only been in recent years that consumer demand and pushback against government backed, chemical-laden, and low nutrition processed foods has grown. The fight is for access to healthy, nutrient dense real foods. Consumers are now demanding their rights to choose healthy foods from the producers of their choice!

Corruption in the Swill Milk Industry

Early 1800’s. America’s largest cities kept thorough records of all deaths. New York City from 1814 to 1840 reported that deaths from children under five increased from 32% to 50%. Other major city records were similar. By the mid to late 1800’s, distillery dairies were rampant in many US cities. Tragically, these dairies caused and contributed to the high infant mortality rate including deaths from tuberculosis.

Most of these distillery dairies operated without oversight. In 1858 respected illustrator and journalist, Frank Leslie, published a scathing exposé on distillery dairies in his newspaper. Three days after Leslie’s exposé hit the newsstands, rather than shut down or change how distillery dairies operated, New York mayor Daniel Tieman uselessly ordered the City Police Department to crack down on milkmen with expired milk cart licenses. Leslie’s accurate portrayal of swill dairies did little to improve conditions beyond surface action.

The corrupt swill milk industry was not willing to give up their deadly but lucrative product. They hired lobbyists who convinced New York politicians to speak in favor of swill milk and block proposed legislation. A New York City official even taunted Leslie about corruption in the city legislature, "They dare not ban swill milk!’ Don't you know that every one of those cows has a vote?" A result of this government corruption--Swill milk was responsible for almost one quarter of all childhood mortality in Manhattan until 1891.

In 1894 Nathan Straus opened four depots throughout New York offering sales of sterilized milk, raw milk, modified milk and coal side by side. The milk was from a farm in Delaware County, NY. His first aim was to obtain as pure a milk supply as possible, and for this purpose the dairy was inspected by a veterinarian of the New York Board of Health, and was approved by Straus himself.

During this time, Straus sold raw milk alongside sterilized milk and there seems to be no documentation of raw milk illnesses from any of Straus’ milk depots. This supports Henry Coit’s teachings in the safe method of sanitary raw milk production and transportation standards. Nathan Strauss, the world’s biggest promoter of sterilized milk knew that a clean dairy meant having healthy milk—raw or sterilized.

With all of these claims that sterilized milk saved the day, it is more likely that sanitary farming practices and advancements in distribution were the real reason for fewer milk borne illnesses.

“The most important source of contamination is undoubtedly the dairy, where dirty and ignorant methods are almost universally employed, not only during the milking but in the subsequent care of the milk. Delay in transportation affords time for the multiplication of the germs which have entered the milk. It is evident that this danger may be met in one of two ways: best by a reformation in dairy methods and the manner of transportation, but failing in this, by sterilization.” By Rowland Godfrey Freeman - Medical Record - August 4, 1894, Vol. 46 - pg. 133

Fake News

Dr. Coit’s Certified Raw Milk program and Straus’ sterilized milk peacefully co-existed for over four decades until the truce ended in 1944 when a concerted media smear-campaign was launched with a series of fraudulent magazine article attacks dedicated to striking fear into raw milk consumers.

By the end of World War II, 3.7 million of America's farms had milk cows with the majority selling raw milk to their families, neighbors and local distributors. For years, farmers resisted the relentless pressure to pasteurize their milk. In order to increase profits, government and big corporate interests had to shut down small farms. The weapon of choice… assassination of raw milk farmers through the use of “fake news.” In 1944, 1945 and 1946 a series of dishonest articles were published in popular magazines designed to destroy the good reputation of raw milk. And it worked, until now.

The coup de grâce in the assassination campaign on raw milk began with a 1944 article in Ladies' Home Journal titled, "Undulant Fever.” This article was written without accurate documentation and falsely claimed that tens of thousands of people in the US suffered from raw milk related fevers and illnesses. A year later Coronet magazine published an article full of lies titled “Raw Milk Can Kill You.” The malicious Coronet article, written by Lieutenant Commander Harold J. Harris was then similarly repeated in articles published in The Progressive and a year later in The Reader’s Digest.

Harris’ original Coronet article claimed that a fictitious town called Crossroads had an epidemic of undulant fever. Harris wrote, “Crossroads, U.S.A., is in one of those states in the Midwest area called the bread basket and milk bowl of America. What happened to Crossroads might happen to your town - to your city - might happen almost anywhere in America.” 

Harris goes on to give lurid details of undulant fever allegedly caused by raw milk. Harris writes about a false epidemic that, "spread rapidly as it struck one out of every four persons in Crossroads.” And another lie is presented as fact in his article when he claims that, “Despite the efforts of the two doctors and the State health department, one out of every four patients died.”

To add even more frightening fuel to this Fake News firestorm, Harris’ lies were widely spread by respected newspapers throughout the United States. Much like fake news articles that go viral in today’s social media, lack of fact checking and blind trust in media took its toll. Raw milk's reputation was forever tarnished and the public demanded action.

Sadly, after the damage was done, the truth came out when Harris admitted in an interview with J. Howard Brown of Johns Hopkins University that there was no town of Crossroads, the outbreak was fictitious and represented no actual occurrence. His article was entirely fabricated, a lie…

Why would Lieutenant Commander Harris lie about something that had the potential to affect millions of people adversely? This raw milk assassination not only gave big corporations huge profits, it gave them control over people's freedom of choice. A devastating side effect of the milk sterilization movement was the death of hundreds of thousands of America’s small farms.

During Ronald Reagan's administration, a judge put the nail in the coffin for raw milk choice when, at the behest of Ralph Nadar, a court case and ruling allowed the FDA to ban the interstate transportation of raw milk for human consumption.

Government agencies, influenced by big business, continually use draconian measures to harass and attack our local farmers. Our bureaucracies use 75 year old lies-- bolstered by modern regulations--as a way of suppressing access to our choice of healthy foods.

Mothers, through government sanctioned warning labels, can legally smoke and drink through pregnancies. They can legally feed their children soda pop and fast food three meals a day. But, it is against the law for a farmer they know and trust to provide the milk they choose for their children. This is about choice--our choice to choose what is best for our families without the risk of government aggression and harassment to criminalize this normal, peaceful human interaction.

Draconian Attacks Upon Peaceful Farmers

Dozens of raw milk farmers across the country suffer from the brutal enforcement of outdated and oppressive regulations. Millions of consumers suffer daily for not being able to secure the foods they seek from the producers of their choice, and/or from the artificially inflated prices of a scarce black-market product.

Our farmers, and the people they serve, are modern victims of gross misuse of abusive powers. Our small farms and farmers are increasingly being shut down, are facing overwhelming charges, and are spending valuable time and resources defending themselves. All at the hands of government agencies.

How do we keep the government from raiding, fining and shutting down the farms that we depend on to feed our families?

The Solution—A Beginning

Part of the key to consumer choice lies in making sure that our laws and regulations align with our values. If we value a direct relationship with the producers of our food, our regulations should not interfere with that relationship. Sadly, the FDA has been known to use fake news and outdated regulations to keep our farmers suspended in anticipation of when or where the next attack will come.

Farmers and consumers coming together creates a voice strong enough and loud enough to take back our choices. For example, on April 26, 2017 RFCC and Johnathon W. Emord, Esq. submitted a citizen’s petition to the FDA for considering a rule change where they would not enforce against raw milk farmers who carry a specific label on their products.

Raw Milk Citizen petition explained

Citizen’s Petition For Exemption of Raw Milk Interstate Transportation Ban--When the Milk is Labeled as Indicated

Advocates for direct farm to consumer food rights and the Real Food Consumer Coalition (RFCC) filed a citizen’s petition with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This petition, if accepted by the FDA, would have eliminated an important layer of FDA regulatory burden against raw milk farmers—the agency’s ban on interstate transportation or sale of raw milk--if farmers provided warning labels and a recipe for pasteurization on raw milk products.

The warning labels are similar to labels currently required in many states. The recipe for pasteurization is included so that individual consumers can make their own choices about how to best handle the milk.

This petition asked the FDA to accept such labeling for raw milk products, as an alternative to its extreme prosecution of Amish farmers and others who for centuries have produced and consumed raw milk products.

Emord and Associates, a Washington DC law firm with extensive experience in food regulation, filed the Citizen’s Petition with the FDA on April 26, 2017. The FDA legally had 180 days to respond.

While awaiting the answer to the petition, attorneys for any farmers cited during this waiting time for non-compliance with CFR1240.61, could file a motion of stay of enforcement for their clients pending the response to said petition. This option seemed to work for many farmers, but a lack of follow through with farmers and consumers weakened the strength of a legal change. Those changes, if implemented, would have gone a long way to giving farmers peace-of-mind while they produce the food that consumers are asking for so desperately.

Again our farmers are finding themselves in the frying pan. We ask that you join with us, join our efforts to free our farmers from the burden of a history of raw milk lies and deceit.

Overreaching government interference in our peaceful transactions for food—something that should not be criminalized to begin with if the farmer is practicing quality testing and health related responsibilities—must stop. And it can stop with us. The time for that to happen is now.