In many ancient cultures the cow is sacred and so is her milk. The Hindus for instance believe that the cow is so sacred that they are allowed to roam free in the countryside.
“After generations of this pasteurised, homogenized, two percent spirituality, the body-politic has lapsed into a deep cattlepsy. And without this direct connection to the Fodder, we’ve allowed a powerful few to bulldoze Mother Nature and seek immortality in their own creations… and that’s why the sacred cow is nowhere to be found, but the bull is everywhere.”
Swami Beyondananda in Duck Soup for the Soul
In many ancient cultures the cow is sacred and so is her milk. The Hindus for instance believe that the cow is so sacred that they are allowed to roam free in the countryside. They are caressed and pampered and never slaughtered for their flesh. The Egyptians also make reference to the sacredness of these animals. The Sumerians and Babylonians worshiped the cow as a Goddess. There are numerous reference to milk in the Bible, for instance The Old Testament refers to a “land which floweth with milk and honey” as often as twenty times!
Most prized possession
There is no question that the cow, very early in human history, became a most prized possession because of her placid cooperative nature and abundant produce of milk, butter and cheese. Cattle were the original stock in the stock market! Ownership of cattle has always been a mark of wealth.
Raw un-pasteurised milk has a long history of promoting healing and health. In 1857 Russian and German physicians popularised raw milk. Dr Inozemtseff wrote a book entitled “The Milk Cure”, and in 1905 Charles Sanford Porter MD published “Milk Diet” as a Remedy for Chronic Disease. Porter emphasised that the milk must be raw; he wrote:
“What is required is good clean milk as it comes from the cow, without removal or addition of any substance whatsoever.”
Pasteurising milk makes it unfit for human consumption
Milk which has been boiled, sterilized, pasteurised or artificially preserved in any way cannot be used for this treatment. Puppies fed on pasteurised milk only are liable to have mange and other disorders, while others of the same litter thrive on raw, sweet and sour milk.
Porter also claimed to have only good results from the treatment in the 39 years he had used it. He claimed to have treated patients with heart and kidney disease, brain and nerve disorders, blood clots, paralysis, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative processes in various parts of the body, gastritis, chronic poisoning due to lead, mercury, arsenic and various other toxic medicines used at that time. He had never seen any injury or bad results from the milk diet, but advised against giving the diet to anyone who had recently had surgery for fear that the increased blood volume caused by the milk might cause increased bleeding. He strongly advised complete rest with the diet. He also said that he worked with a number of dentists and they found the diet to be of great benefit to the teeth and in preventing periodontal disease.
2 – 4 quarts of milk a day (for adults) for 4 weeks with the total exclusion of any other food was essential for the diet to work, said Porter. There are numerous cases of people living on milk alone for various reasons, they all had abundant health and not one of them reported a day ill; furthermore they had much more energy than their fellow men. Nearly every medical problem is accompanied by stomach trouble of one sort or another. This is due to inefficient digestion and lack of enzymes to digest the food.
I do my best to live on a diet of at least 80% raw vegetarian (preferably organic) and raw organic dairy, and I have abundant energy and am in very good health.
It appears that one of the main causes of disease is too much cooked or processed foods. The reason for this is that most cooked food is devoid of enzymes and we need enzymes to live.
In 1922, Dr Laird reported in the Medical Record:
“In living cells, the dynamic, driving power, which apparently introduces the spark of life, is found in their enzyme contents.”
Pasteurised milk is almost totally devoid of any enzymes and as a result is not easily absorbed by the body. The principal enzymes present in raw, unpasteurised milk include galactase, peroxidase, catalase, amylase, lipase, lactase and phosphatase.
Around the age of three, humans stop producing the enzyme lactase necessary for the digestion of pasteurised milk and milk products. Raw unpasteurised milk has an abundance of enzymes for easy digestion. Pasteurised milk is dead food and is like a poison to the body, which reacts with allergies and excess mucous. Mucous produced by the body is a natural system for the elimination of these and other toxins.
Bad Milk and the Distillery Dairies
The story of “bad milk” and reason for pasteurisation started in America in the early 1800’s. The 1812 war with England resulted in the permanent cutting off of America’s whiskey supply from the British West Indies. As a result a domestic liquor industry was born.
By 1814, grain distilleries began to spring up in cities and in the country. Cities began to increase hugely in size and the demand for milk, which up until this time had largely been delivered by small dairies into the cities.
The milk was raw and of excellent quality. As the numbers in the cities grew so did the demand for milk and the available pastures shrank. It was at this time that it became popular to house cattle next to distilleries and to feed them the “distillery slop”.
This product was the waste from the fermentation process. The grain had the starch and alcohol removed and what was left was an acid refuse of chemically changed grains – “distillery slop”.
Hardly ideal food for cattle, which are grass eaters.
The cattle became diseased and emaciated, but this was not a deterrent as it was cheap. From small beginnings the slop milk business grew, especially in the 1830s when the distillery owners found themselves battling financially. The filthy over-crowded and cruel conditions that the cows had to endure are beyond adequate description. Diseased cows were milked in unsanitary conditions and the milk pails and other equipment were usually dirty.
Contamination with salmonella and numerous other pathogenic organisms lead to diarrhea and disease in the individuals most susceptible, especially babies and small children. Diarrhea was the most frequent cause of childhood death during those years, and many infants contracted TB, scarlet fever, diphtheria and other numerous infectious diseases that were sometimes passed on in the milk.
From this the “raw milk is dangerous” story came to be, and it was certainly justified with conditions such as they were. Pasteurisation became popular, and was encouraged, and as the levels of disease and mortality dropped so the popularity of pasteurisation and fear of raw milk increased. To find raw milk now is virtually impossible unless one lives close to a dairy!
In the late 1830’s Robert Hartley wrote a number of articles about the problems of distillery dairies.
“Nothing can be more certain, than the quality of the milk is greatly influenced by the state of health of the animal producing it,”
said Hartley, and the state of health of the animal is directly influenced by the food which they eat and the conditions in which they are kept.
Of the distillery dairies Hartley wrote:
“Such is the barbarous and unnatural treatment of this docile, inoffensive and unfortunate animal, that is destined to supply us with nutriments, which is one of the most valuable gifts of Providence to ungrateful men.”
The shocking truth is that distillery dairies were still in existence in the 1930s, and I question the treatment of animals in our modern day dairies that are fed unnatural food, antibiotics, growth hormones and tranquillisers and kept in unnaturally confined spaces to ensure that excess exercise does not reduce the condition of the animal.
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but rather will interest his patients in the care of the human frame through lifestyle and diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease,”
are famous words of Thomas Edison. The basic choice that lies before us is whether to choose foods that are nutrient-dense, or which have been rendered sterile!
Much of the controversy about raw vs. pasteurised milk in modern times involves the current paradigm that “germs cause disease”. Illness manifests when the immune system of our bodies is not functioning properly, not from germs, and the way to build a powerful immune system is to live a healthy lifestyle and eat a healthy diet.
Most people believe that it is infectious microbes, viruses, bacteria and parasites that cause disease.
Over the last 30 years there has been an abundance of information available about the immune system – and a strong belief that a strong one will protect us against any infectious disease. Since the time of Hippocrates healers knew that the cause of all disease ultimately lay in the life and habits of the individual and when the body is sick, it will cure itself if we provide the proper conditions.
The germ theory came to be during the time of Louis Pasteur aided by the sophisticated and powerful microscopes developed by Robert Koch. Pasteur became a French hero as he discovered that heating wine to a particular temperature partially sterilized it and killed the germs that caused it to go off. This same process was introduced into the milk industry and so pasteurisation began.
So find yourself a cow that feeds on untainted organic grass, is allowed to roam free and be at peace, is treated with the love and respect that all animals deserve and you will find that she will give willingly of her precious milk. Make sure she is milked in clean calm conditions and let your body heal with her wonderful gifts.
Reference and recommended reading:
The untold Story of Milk…..Green pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Foods” by Ron Schmid, ND, New Trends Publishing