Raw Milk is Tasty, but it Might Make You Sick

Wacky congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul has introduced legislation to knock down federal laws restricting sales of raw milk.

Which, in a perfect world, would be great. All else being equal, raw milk is good stuff. Though it is an acquired taste for many, once that taste is acquired, raw milk tastes a lot better than the pasteurized stuff. It may help children â€" and even adults -- develop resistance to allergies (or it may not).

In the end, however, all else is not equal. Raw milk can make you sick, which is why interstate sales are banned and why most states either ban its sale outright or restrict sales to one degree or another. While G-Man raids on underground raw-milk sellers are a bit much, the regulations seem eminently sensible.

But raw milk has many fans, and many of those fans are fanatics.

A lot of it has to do with ideology. Many raw-milk advocates are critics of the "industrialized" food system. Others just don't want government telling them what to eat or drink. This is where Paul's brand of loopy libertarianism comes in.

But the food system is industrialized for good reasons: to get enough food to people who need it and to keep it safe. (Of course, the main reason is for corporations to make money, but that's not the point.) Big problems arise with overindustrialization, but pasteurization isn't an example of that. Milk is pasteurized so that people won't get sick.

That's the same reason that the Food and Drug Administration banned interstate sales of raw milk a couple of decades ago. And it's why 15 states ban sales outright while 26 others restrict sales (consumption is legal everywhere; raw milk is not a controlled substance). Paul's proposed legislation â€" which, by the way, doesn't have a chance in hell of passing â€" pits an abstract political philosophy against public health, with public health coming out the loser.

In 1938, fully a quarter of all food- and water-borne diseases were caused by tainted milk. In 1993, by which time pasteurization had become nearly universal, that figure was 1 percent.

Raw-milk enthusiasts make all kinds of claims about how healthy it is, and there is good reason to believe that it might fight allergies. There is much less support for the idea that it is otherwise any healthier than pasteurized milk, however.

On his blog, Bill Marler of Marler-Clark, a law firm that specializes in tainted-food claims, surveyed the peer-reviewed literature and found that there is "substantial" evidence that raw milk helps stave off allergies like asthma, hay fever and eczema. But, he wrote, "no author recommends raw milk as a preventive measure for allergies at this time because of the potential hazards due to foodborne pathogens such as EHEC and salmonella known to occur in raw milk."

In her book "What to Eat," nutritionist Marion Nestle -- hardly a fan of the industrialized food system -- writes: "I believe that it is quite possible to consume it safely, especially when, as the more reasonable proponents of raw milk advise, you know the 'animal care standards and sanitary practices of your milk producers.'"

Allowing interstate sales will make it that much harder for consumers to know how safely their milk has been handled.

"I view pasteurization as a small price to pay for not having to worry about whether milk is safe to drink," Nestle writes.

The Food and Drug Administration estimates that there are a few hundred cases of illness every year caused by the consumption of raw milk. You can bet that number would soar if restrictions were to be lifted.