Green Eggs and Raw Milk: Produce Concerns in the U.S.
As the next two-year legislative session kicked off in January in Wisconsin, the heartland of American dairy products, the Dairy Business Association publicized its policy priorities. The Association, an advocacy group supporting Wisconsin dairy farmers, favors sustaining adequate workforce reliability, expanding marketing and sales opportunities, protecting against unsanitary water, and fostering “financially viable ways to…reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Let’s talk about those sanitation concerns. For starters, they are perfectly valid. The list of possible milk contaminants is long. Sewage sludge used on farms can be contaminated with polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “forever chemicals.” There was a documented case in Maine in which such forever chemicals contaminated dairy cows and, in turn, their milk.
Pasteurization, the sanitization process of milk which involves heating the liquid to a high temperature for a short period of time, does not rid the beverage of these chemicals. They are called “forever” substances because they do not degrade easily over time. As a result, some store-bought milk contained PFAS. These chemicals mess with your hormones. They have been linked to cancer and infertility issues.
The possibility of forever chemicals in our milk isn’t the only worry. Wisconsin is known for cheeses, curds, and Culver’s. Regardless of what contaminants milk contains before pasteurization, which kills off a lot of harmful bacteria, cheese made with pasteurized dairy might be more prone to contamination after the fact since there’s an “absence of competitive microbiome.“ Germs see wide, open, unsettled spaces for colonizing and simply help themselves. Salmonella can contaminate virtually any cheese, for example. Although, more bacterial outbreaks seem to be documented among cheeses that use raw or unpasteurized milk.
This brings us to the oh-so-controversial raw milk debate. Both the CDC and FDA caution the public against the consumption of raw milk, stating that it poses a higher threat to contamination and illness than its pasteurized equivalent. Pasteurization doesn’t always kill all harmful bacteria, but it does eliminate the majority of microscopic pathogens. Despite this knowledge and the pressure of federal agencies, there are some who deliberately seek out raw milk, believing it to be a sort of superfood.
Mainstream and legacy media like to belittle this perspective, as did PBS’s William Brangham, recently referring to its adherents as a “small online community.” There is, however, the Raw Milk Institute, an organization that has accumulated a variety of sources from university studies and peer-reviewed journals (including a Cambridge journal) that argue for raw milk’s beneficial impact on ailments like colds, ear infections, and even inflamed skin conditions like eczema.
The raw milkers believe the beverage contains beneficial bacteria that, along with the bad, get destroyed in the pasteurization process. They also believe raw milk can help ward off asthma. Two separate studies have linked raw milk to lower asthma rates in kids and a lower risk of respiratory problems. Some of the praises sung by the 1% of Americans who drink raw milk might not be as farfetched as some think.
And so we have medical journals and the FDA, which always has our best interests at heart, telling us two opposing stories. It’s a sad day indeed when scientific studies and government institutions are pitted against each other and the public trust wanes. But the trust of many has flickered, sputtered, and died long before today.
If you wish to dig deeper and scour the web or talk to the right theorists, you will hear stories about cow feces getting into milk. It might only be hearsay, but some hear it and say it’s appalling. As for me, I might not know where my milk is coming from, but it still goes into my morning coffee.
Beyond the contaminants already mentioned, the scientific community is concerned about the possibility of H5 bird flu viruses infecting milk, leading to further caution over the consumption of raw milk, in particular. Hundreds of dairy herds have been infected with the virus.
Speaking of our feathery friends, now is a good time to address eggs. If you or I saw green eggs and green ham, two thoughts would come to mind. First, that someone had prepared Dr. Seuss’s adventuresome picture-book meal. Second, such a meal is not fit for consumption. Yet, many Americans can be rather picky about the kind of produce they prefer, whether it be dairy products, fruit, leafy greens, or eggs.
Within the past year or two, highly-priced and highly-coveted eggs became a meme sensation where they were presented as the best Valentine’s Day gift you could give your sweetheart. The avian flu going around (more virulently since 2022) and killing millions of U.S. chickens has not helped egg prices. In late January, I went to the Schnucks’ refrigerated egg section, where I met a sign stating customers were limited to purchasing three cartons. This applied to all egg brands.
Well before the recent H5 breakout, many Americans have been attracted to the homestead lifestyle, or at least to raising a few chickens to supply their family with fresh eggs. I know many people in Illinois who’ve opted for the latter, leading to a plentiful and accessible flow of eggs (sometimes free on account of neighborly generosity).
For some, this presents a downside. The fresh eggs, since they have not been cleaned and polished into the perfectly white pearls purchased at a store, are often covered in bird excrement. Here again, a fear of poop creeps in. When using farm-fresh eggs, right before prepping, I wash them off in the sink under warm water, scrubbing off any droppings. It’s clear the green gunk was worth the effort of cleaning off once I see the brilliant gold of the scrambled yokes in the frying pan.
Still another example of fecal matter coming in contact with the food we eat comes from the field of agriculture. From worm casings to manure, feces as fertilizer provide the rich soil makeup for many kitchen staples: corn, wheat, oats, peanuts, and more. And those products are then whipped up into other common foodstuffs like bread and butter.
Perhaps a fear of poop is healthy. After all, that dairy farm in Maine was contaminated with forever chemicals from sewage sludge. But today I share with the American public a startling reality — that nearly all the real food we consume (that means you’re out, Twinkies and Ho Hos) has come in direct contact with or close proximity to poop in some form. It’s an occupational hazard. The poop producers are often the producers of milk, eggs, and meat. And the poop producers add to fertilizer, which in turn helps plants produce.
However you take your milk and eggs, let’s raise a glass to the people who make their way through the chicken yard and the bovine droppings to bring us the edible furnishings that make the American home what it is.
