LETTER: Raw milk is safe and healthy: Here's why

Do you wonder why so many Montanans prefer raw milk to pasteurized milk and are willing to risk buying it through the underground market? Could it be the difference between living and dead food?

Living, raw milk is intended as food for newborns, providing both nourishment and immunity to both the newborn and anyone who drinks of the milk. Its caloric, vitamin, mineral, enzyme and other nutrient content provide nourishment; its living microbes (probiotics) provide immunity.

Raw milk’s microbes use chemical messengers to distinguish friendly from unfriendly microbes (pathogens). If it weren’t for milk’s army of good-guys who activate their weaponry — antimicrobial substances that attack, immobilize and destroy the enemy — the newborn would wither and die because bad microbes are opportunists.

Dead milk (heat-treated above 145 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature known to kill microbes and enzymes) has lost its probiotic defense against bad microbes avidly looking for a safe home in pasteurized milk where they wait for an opportunity to make someone ill.

It has also lost much of its nourishing value by heat’s destruction and degradation. E.g., vitamins are destroyed and proteins undergo bio-molecular change. Living proteins each have a unique shape (from winding and coiling of its long chain) that gives the protein its unique ability to do its work. When the protein is heated, it begins to unwind, changing its shape to one the body doesn’t recognize, triggering an allergic response (like mucous), or illness (like asthma). But even more importantly, the protein loses its nutritional value because the body’s enzymes no longer recognize it as food — the jigsaw puzzle piece no longer fits the puzzle.

Additionally, damaged proteins harm milk’s food value. For example, cheese makers know that pasteurized milk will not form a curd (cheese) unless calcium chloride is added. Why? When milk’s calcium is bound by the degraded casein protein (from pasteurization), it is no longer available to support the curd. It is also not available to support the skeletal system, among other functions. Instead, it passes out of the body, un-utilized. The “Got milk?” people got it wrong.

It’s no wonder there have been ZERO deaths from FLUID raw milk, and only two from raw Mexican cheese in 43 years, compared with at least 70 deaths from pasteurized dairy products, according to a 2013 analysis of CDC data (beginning in 1972) by Mark McAfee. This doesn’t count the three recent deaths from pasteurized Blue Bell ice cream earlier this year.

Support living, raw milk. It’s good for you.

My credentials: BAs in biology and chemistry (Pacific Lutheran University), plus five years postgraduate work in molecular biology (University of Oregon) and quantum chemistry (Portland State University). —Catherine Haug, Bigfork