The pasteurization of milk, on the contrary, will not prevent any of the cases of undulant fever contracted by occupational workers which, as already shown, make up the great majority of cases. Milk regulations which advocate pasteurization as the cure-all and neglect to require the much needed Bang’s testing, therefore serve only to promote the disease by removing one incentive to Bang’s testing and making the dairymen feel that such a safeguard is unnecessary, hence unimportant.
From the health standpoint, as in the case of tuberculin testing, insistence on Bang’s testing of all herds producing milk, whether or not it is to be pasteurized, would solve the problem of bovine undulant fever. It is quite evident that the propaganda which is put forth to emphasize the danger of disease to the few (milk drinkers), while ignoring the danger to the many (occupational workers), is motivated by considerations other than health.
If the pasteurization of milk causes so much nutritional loss and at the same time offers no greater security from milk- borne disease than is shown by the 1945 report of the U.S. Public Health Service, has it then no merit? Is there no place for the pasteurization of milk in the scheme of things? In one of the ablest books yet written about the milk industry, Dr. Roland W. Bartlett, Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of Illinois, cites the study made on milk ordinances by Dr. M. J. Prucha, Professor Emeritus in Dairy Bacteriology, University of Illinois. (61) Dr. Prucha, recalling the early days of pasteurization, has this to say:
“There was much opposition to pasteurization of milk and at best, it was looked upon as a temporary expedient to obtain a safe milk supply until the time when the dairy industry would learn to produce clean and safe milk.”
Thus pasteurization was originally adopted as a means to a proper end, and then defended only as a temporary expedient. It was naturally assumed that the dairy industry would discontinue the destructive process of pasteurization when it had leaned how to produce a clean and safe milk supply and as its acquired knowledge was put into effect. It did not take the industry very long to learn how to produce a clean and safe milk supply, and the knowledge has been on hand and available for many years. Dr. North (54, p. 128) recalls the discovery of the principles involved, and the illuminating fact that the technique of sanitary milk production can be transferred to any dairy farm, together with the even more encouraging fact that it will be practiced by any dairyman in return for a bonus. Looking back, Dr. North describes these findings in the following words: “Here was a perfect mechanism for control of milk sanitation that could be expanded indefinitely. The simple sanitary technique, the bonus, and the laboratory test, each played their part in a perfect system of control.”
Much of the credit for the successful application of these principles to milk production on a large scale can be given to Dr. North for his untiring efforts to promote it under the title of Grade A. Further, he confirms this fact that the technique can be applied on a large scale and expanded indefinitely, when he cites the case of New York City where “politics ignorant of the meaning of Grade A destroyed this clean milk supply.” A few years ago, there were one million quarts of clean milk of Grade A quality coming into New York City from 6,000 dairy farms.
Clean and safe milk is vital to health. Opposed to this obvious fact, the propagandists for pasteurization have made it appear that it is not important to produce clean and safe milk. This is not true. Nor is it true, as they would also have the public believe, that it is economically impossible. Immunity from Bang’s disease and sanitary milk handling constitute the simple answer to the pasteurization fanatics. When pasteurization was first put into effect, every possible effort was exerted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the dairy industry to determine just what was necessary for clean and safe milk production. After extensive experiments it was discovered what those requirements should be, the four most essential factors being:
1. Sterilized utensils.
2. Clean cows with clean udders and tests.
3. The small-topped milk pail (the newer milking machines have the pail completely covered).
4. Refrigeration at 50 degrees after milking.
Other important factors were found to be clean and healthy milk handlers and an unpolluted water supply. Wherever these recommendations have been observed, the results have been excellent. In fact, through these experiments it was learned that any farm and any farmer can, with proper incentive, produce clean milk.
The same ideas underlay the original development of Certified milk under the Medical Milk Commissions, and numerous local examples of a successful application of these principles of clean and safe milk production can be found all over the country, whether it be called Grade A, Certified, Inspected, Approved or Guaranteed. Care must be taken, however, to distinguish Dr. North’s principles of safe milk production from those in the U.S. Public Health Service Ordinance, and others like it, which are designed primarily to promote pasteurization.
Pasteurization has been amply demonstrated to be a retrograde process. It may be useful when adopted only as a temporary means to a worthy end, but it can never be justified as an end in itself.
This is precisely the dilemma which faces its promoters. Because their position cannot be defended by logic or reason and thus appeal to man’s higher faculties, these promoters have been obliged to resort to the scare technique, appealing to man’s more primitive instinct of self-preservation. Since the truth about raw milk and pasteurization, when brought into the open (as it never is but as has been in these articles), does not even provide sufficient evidence to warrant exploitation through fear, the evidence has to be either manufactured, made up out of whole cloth, misrepresented, or so distorted that the real truth will go unrecognized.
Very properly, it may here in conclusion be asked; “Why Milk Pasteurization?” Pasteurization is destructive of many of the essential nutritional values in milk. Nor can it be defended as a preventive of undulant fever because it does not even pretend to meet the danger of that disease where its incidence is greatest. The only possible defense that could ever have been offered for pasteurization is that it did act as a temporary expedient pending the acquisition of more knowledge of methods insuring a safe and clean supply. That defense cannot, however, be availed of today when the requisite knowledge is at hand but for some reason has been prevented, or at least delayed, from being properly and adequately applied to the benefit and for the health of the entire nation.
When, as in the case of milk, the truth is plowed under and only seeds of fear are sown, the harvest is a barren one for those who are most dependent upon it. On the other hand, the harvest is rich indeed for the monopoly interests, whether they be engaged in business for a profit or fanatically devoted to the cause of government control.
