The ‘Milk Scam’ That’s Fooled the World Since 1945

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The campaign against raw milk began with a fabricated 1945 article in Coronet magazine claiming a deadly brucellosis outbreak in a nonexistent town, leading to restrictive laws against raw milk starting in Michigan in 1948
• A 2007 PowerPoint presentation by an FDA official falsely maligned raw milk using flawed reports; none of these reports proved pasteurization would have prevented alleged outbreaks
• The 2024 USDA announcement attributed symptoms in dairy cows to avian flu without confirmed viral presence in milk, relying on questionable PCR testing methods
• Despite claims, there is no peer-reviewed evidence supporting transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza from raw milk to humans
• While pasteurization is promoted as making milk safe, the actual diversion or destruction of milk from infected animals suggests that pasteurization may not guarantee safety

Few of us were born when the forces for milk pasteurization launched the first major attack on Nature’s perfect food. In 1945, a magazine called “Coronet” published an article, “Raw Milk Can Kill You,” blaming raw milk for an outbreak of brucellosis in a town called Crossroads, U.S.A., killing one-third of the inhabitants. The “Reader’s Digest” picked up the story and ran it a year later.

Just one problem with this piece of “reporting.” There was no town called Crossroads and no outbreak of brucellosis. The whole story was a fabrication — otherwise known as a lie. And lies about raw milk have continued ever since.

Unfortunately, the fictitious Crossroads story paved the way for laws against selling raw milk, starting with Michigan in 1948.

Here’s another example of lies against raw milk (which I referenced in an earlier post,¹ but it is worth repeating). In 2007, John F. Sheehan, BSc (Dy), JD, US Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (USFDA/CFSAN), Division of Dairy and Egg Safety, prepared a Powerpoint maligning raw milk; it was presented to the 2005 National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) by Cindy Leonard, MS.²

As shown in the table below, all of the fifteen reports associating outbreaks of foodborne illness with raw milk that Sheehan cites are seriously flawed. For example, in two of the fifteen, the study authors presented no evidence that anyone consumed raw milk products and in one of them, the outbreak did not even exist. Not one of the studies showed that pasteurization would have prevented the outbreak.

Fast forward to the present and the ruckus about bird flu in dairy cows — more lies, very clever lies, but lies nevertheless.

In a press release dated March 25, 2024,³ the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state veterinary and public health officials, announced investigation of “an illness among primarily older dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico that is causing decreased lactation, low appetite, and other symptoms.”

The agencies claim that samples of unpasteurized milk from sick cattle in Kansas and Texas have tested positive for “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).” Officials blame the outbreak on contact with “wild migratory birds” and possibly from transmission between cattle. The press release specifically warns against consumption of raw milk, a warning repeated in numerous publications and Internet postings.

According to the press release, national laboratories have confirmed the presence of HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) through testing, but it does not reveal the type of test used to detect this so-called viral illness.

Lie No. 1: Researchers Have Found HPAI Virus in the Milk of Sick Cows

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