Bill Marler, lawyer and food safety advocate, and Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, discussed the issue of raw milk on a recent All Things Considered story on NPR.
The issue of raw milk's health benefits or detriments has been a long debated issue. Recently, a raw food store in Venice, California was raided by police and the store's raw milk was confiscated because the co-op "needed a permit to sell raw milk."
Raw milk advocates like Lela Buttery, a volunteer at the Venice raw food store, argue that raw milk has nutritional value including omega 3 fatty acids and "friendly" bacteria that promote immunities which are destroyed by pasteurization. Raw milk advocates also argue that pasteurization also inactivates healthy enzymes.
Pasteurization is a process of heating food, to a high temperature and then cooling it, which kills bacteria and slows microbial growth in food. The process does not destroy all pathogenic micro-organisms, but instead aims to reduce the number of viable pathogens so they are unlikely to cause disease.
Bill Marler, who litigates food-borne illness cases, said that the bacteria in raw milk did not exist 50 years ago as they do today and if "people really want to consume raw milk they need to go and look that farmer directly in the eye. They need to see the facility. And it also needs to be regulated by state and local authorities."
Marion Nestle, responding to the arguments that pasteurization destroys nutrients and enzymes, stated that heating "certainly destroys some of the more labile vitamins, particularly Vitamin C and folate. But milk is not a major source of either of those vitamins." She also stated that the enzymes would be inactivated when a person consumes the raw product anyway "because the stomach acid inactivates them" and "if that doesn't work, they're taken apart by digestive enzymes in the digestive tract."
To listen to the All Things Considered story, click here.
To read the full transcript of the story, click here.
Posted: 08/12/2010
