By Erika Beras, The Miami Herald
Miami yoga instructor Ximena Gonzalez grew up drinking unpasteurized milk in her native Colombia. She still does, getting it shipped on a regular basis from a farm in Pennsylvania.
“I can’t say enough good things about it,” said Gonzalez, 30, who also does a regular health and fitness segment on Telemundo. “It’s the reason I’m so healthy.”
The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t agree. But dire FDA warnings be damned, a growing number of Floridians and consumers around the nation are believed to be drinking raw milk.
A raw milk subculture flourishes on the Internet. And regulators believe that many South Florida raw milk aficionados get their product from farms and organic food outlets like Whole Foods Supermarket that market it as a treat for pets.
Two years ago, popular organic food store Delicious Organics in North Miami Beach was temporarily shut down after authorities found raw milk on its shelves.
“It was as if they were targeting us,” said owner Annie Milka, who said the milk was being sold for animals.
“They said the pets had to come in with the owners if people were buying the milk.”
Delicious Organics stopped carrying the product.
Why the concern about milk the way nature intended it?
“It’s an inherently dangerous product and should not be consumed by anybody for any reason,” said John Sheehan, director of dairy and egg safety for the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
An FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory issued this year said raw milk can contain a wide variety of harmful bacteria, including E. coli, listeria, campylobacter and brucella, all of which can cause illness and possibly death.
Migdoel Miranda, 32, a personal trainer who lives in Miramar, will take his chances rather than consume store-bought milk, which he likens to “drinking white water.” Like many raw milk fans, he owes his taste to his upbringing elsewhere.
“When I was growing up in Puerto Rico, it wasn’t an issue of raw and pasteurized. It was just milk. There wasn’t any fear involved in the food.” He pays $45 a gallon to have his milk shipped from out of state.
Raw milk is also popular among Libertarians, who believe the government does not have the right to regulate what they consume, and among evangelical Christians who adhere to The Maker’s Diet, a Bible-based diet of unprocessed food.
John Fruin drank raw milk while growing up on a farm in Central Illinois. Holder of a doctorate in food technology from Purdue, he is now the chief of the Bureau of Food and Meat Inspections for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Tallahassee.
REFORMED DRINKER
He gave up unpasteurized milk decades ago. His duties include ensuring it isn’t sold for human consumption.
“We know there’s an underground movement of people who advocate for raw milk,” Fruin said. “From a public health standpoint it’s taking a step back a hundred years. They also do it knowing that it’s illegal.”
Its popularity is high among health-conscious consumers who argue that the pasteurization process — heating the milk to boiling levels and then quickly cooling it — kills enzymes and bacteria that are beneficial. The process also destroys bacteria that causes spoilage, extending the shelf-life.
The supposed benefits of raw milk may be illusory, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author who runs the website foodpolitics.com. She has written extensively on the food industry’s influence on health and nutrition.
“You may lose some nutrients in pasteurization but they are present in other foods,” she said. “It’s a reasonable trade-off.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 1998 to May 2005 there were 45 outbreaks of food-borne illnesses stemming from unpasteurized milk or cheese made from unpasteurized milk. These outbreaks led to 1,007 documented illnesses and two deaths — though none in Florida.
Such outbreaks were the reason pasteurization started in the first place.
Raw milkers say the milk they drink comes from farms with grass-fed cows rather than from industrial dairies, making it healthier.
“When this originally became a controversy, there were filthy conditions in the dairies in the inner cities,” said Pete Kennedy, a Sarasota attorney and raw milk advocate. “The milk we drink today is not produced the way it was back then.”
Some raw milk drinkers say the laws surrounding milk are there, in part, to benefit the U.S. dairy industry, which had $60 billion in sales in 2006.
Raw milk and its products such as fresh cheese (queso fresco) were made illegal 20 years ago. Florida is one of 22 states were raw milk is legal if only for pet consumption.
SUPPLIER PROPONENTS
Many of the people who produce it also drink it, either as farmers or through cow-share programs.
That includes Dennis Stoulfouz, a father of three who was raised in Pennsylvania Amish country. He is now a Florida farmer with 20 cows. He follows a raw-milk-based diet from the Weston A. Price Foundation, which claims more than 9,000 members.
In 2005, authorities temporarily closed down his Lake County farm after discovering he was selling raw milk at $13 a gallon to distributors, who apparently resold it for human consumption.
He was not arrested, but said he had to pay $900 in administrative fines. He continues operating his farm — with a pet food license.
“We get calls from as far as Miami,” said Stoulfouz, who added he doesn’t market his milk to South Floridians.
Of his three kids, he said: “They drink it out of sippie cups.
As for himself: “I credit it to my energy, my stamina, my libido, my mental clarity.”
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