Growing a Farmer

by Kurt Timmermeister

  What did happen, though, was much more interesting. The bacteria present in the milk reproduced over and over again throughout the night as the milk slowly cooled down. By morning there were millions upon millions of bacteria in the milk. These bacteria are not harmful to humans; we can consume them without a problem, as the acids in our stomach subdue them.

  At the same time the bacteria were invading this lovely milk, the cream in the milk was also rising to the top. By morning, part of the cream was at the top; by the next day, even more; and by the third day it had all settled on the top. The result of three days of cream rising to the top of five gallons of Jersey milk after slowly cooling it over many hours was the most exceptional cream imaginable. It was crème fraîche.

  I could easily have floated a quarter on the top of the thick, thick yellow cream and it would not have fallen to the bottom of the milk. I could scoop the cream out with a large ladle and it would not drip, not run, but rather hold up like ice cream, full scoop on the ladle. The flavor was grassy, nutty and a bit sour, full of complexities unheard-of in the cream from a commercial dairy. The sourness comes from the lactose that has been eaten by the bacteria and converted into lactic acid. This thickness in the crème fraîche is literally the bacteria; the cream has been cultured by the bacteria, thickening the cream in the process.

  I miss crème fraîche. I miss the super-thick cream, the deep yellow color, the hint of sourness that gives it depth of flavor. Occasionally I pull a few gallons before it goes to the super-fast chiller and hold it back, let it slowly cool down naturally and allow the bacteria to take over in order to make myself a bit of crème fraîche.

  Now that the milk is chilled within the allotted two-hour time frame, the bacteria do not have the opportunity to fully culture the milk. The temperature of the milk quickly plummets in the first hour from ninety-eight degrees to fifty or sixty degrees and the rate of reproduction slows to a near halt; by the end of two hours, very little bacteria have regenerated. There is certainly still cream that will rise to the top, but it will be thin, nothing like the crème fraîche of the old days.

  Crème fraîche is for sale today in the marketplace, but it is not the super-rich cream with the deep yellow color and a hint of sourness that I know as real crème fraîche. An industrial process separates the cream from the milk mechanically, then pasteurizes the cream to rid it of any bacteria and then raises the temperature to a point where added cultures can survive and thrive. Once the cultures have regenerated throughout the cream, it is quickly cooled. The resulting product looks very much like crème fraîche, but the depth of flavor is missing.

  Almost every drop of milk sold in America today is pasteurized and has been since the 1930s. Pasteurization is the outgrowth of a troubled milk industry from the mid-nineteenth century on the East Coast. A couple of factors caused the production of especially poor-quality milk and led to pasteurization.

  The first shift was the realization by dairymen and whiskey distillers that they could profit from each other. At the beginning of the nineteenth century distillers had popped up around the big cities to supply recent immigrants with cheap whiskey. These factories used grain, fermented it to make alcohol and then needed to get rid of large volumes of the spent grain mash. They quickly learned that cows would eat this slop of wet, sweet grain and would produce milk from it.

  Dairies realized that if they moved their cows to the cities and fed their cows this cheap slop, they could realize a higher profit than if they kept their cows on pasture. Their customers were the recent immigrants in the big urban centers of the East Coast.

  Eventually there came to be a great deal of these slop or swill dairies, keeping cows alive for a short period of time on the waste of distilleries. As you can imagine, this is not the diet a cow would prefer, and it produced hugely inferior milk, eventually killing the cows in a ghastly fashion.

  As the goals were to maximize profits exclusively, the conditions in these dairies were deplorable. These unsanitary and unscrupulous dairies contributed to the rise of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria and diarrhea in the cities. High mortality rates among infants were indicative of the poor diets and living conditions of the urban poor. Milk from swill dairies was part of this poor diet.

  At the same time as the rise of the swill dairies, farms outside of the city continued producing milk and delivered in into the cities, although at a higher cost. The milk of these farms was of far greater quality and more likely to be free of disease.

  The states, the federal government and local activists began to take notice of this problem and stepped in. The technology existed to render the poor-quality milk safe through heating. Louis Pasteur had established methods of heating wine to destroy all bacteria by 1862. This same practice, later to be labeled pasteurization, could be used to make unsafe milk drinkable.

  As children in the cities grew ill from tainted milk from swill dairies, the countryside dairies began to set standards for their milk. Dairies began to be “certified”—their practices found to be of a quality level deemed adequate by the government.

  Regulators were not looking to pasteurize all milk, only that which was of low quality. The certified dairies were considered a safe alternative to the pasteurized milk and continued throughout this period.

  Dairies were not immune to the pressures of industrialization and population growth in the United States. Farms were becoming big business. The expense of pasteurization equipment led the large producers to push for universal mandatory pasteurization, in order to capture a larger share of the market. Interstate movement of milk would also have been impossible without standardization of the milk supply. The certified dairies lost out even though their milk was considered to be of fine quality. And a shift occurred culturally: the nation as a whole, and especially public health professionals, came to believe that pasteurizing milk was the only way to produce a safe, drinkable product. The original supporters of pasteurization had no intention of requiring pasteurizing of all the milk, only the dangerous, poor-quality milk produced at swill dairies. But thanks to this obscure agricultural history of the middle nineteenth century and early twentieth century, today almost all of the milk in the national milk supply is pasteurized.

  Milk is a commodity that is transported throughout the United States. Fluid milk and especially powdered milk are routinely trucked across state lines from where they are produced to where they are needed most. Because of this interstate commerce, the federal government controls milk, along with most other food products.

  The production of milk is governed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The specific document that addresses it is the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO). Even with my little five-cow raw dairy, I have a copy of the PMO in the milk room and am governed by it. The federal government gives the states the right to decide whether to allow raw milk within their state. Because all states do not agree on the issue of raw milk, it cannot be shipped across state lines.

  Twenty-eight states allow the sale of raw milk in some form and with some restrictions. The remainder of the states ban its sale, although raw milk sold as animal food can circumvent these state laws.

  The argument for pasteurization is simple: heating the milk destroys all of the bacteria in the milk, both pathogenic and not, making it safer for human consumption. If milk is not pasteurized, there is always a chance of pathogens sickening consumers. It is a compelling argument, without question.

  I agree that pasteurization is the safer route to take for milk. Anyone who does not have the immune system to bounce back from bad milk should not drink raw milk, specifically the very young, the elderly, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems. For healthy adults, I think it is another matter. The state’s policies do not account for the beneficial elements of the milk, namely enzymes that are destroyed by pasteurization.

  Raw milk is a perfect example of the tricky role the state plays in food regulation. Raw milk is both healthy a
nd potentially hazardous to your health. It is very much like all foods in that regard. Ground beef can potentially harbor life-threatening coliforms, and spinach and tomatoes can as well. Bean sprouts, chicken eggs and salad greens all have their potential pathogens. In their purest forms, these foods are perfect: whole foods, close to the source, unprocessed and they’re what our bodies need for existence. And yet, all can be deadly or sickening if poorly produced or processed.

  I want to believe that if the state just stayed out of all food production, life would be grand. No regulation, no oversight, just good folks living off the land. Possibly in 1750 that all would have worked, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is unrealistic.

  Large businesses control most of the food production in this nation. These multinational corporations—Cargill, Tyson, ConAgra—are publicly held and driven by profit, not necessarily by a sense of “goodness.” The goal of my small business is also to be profitable. I do not want to imply that large business does not care about the consumer, but rather that because I interact with my customers individually and know them personally, my level of interest in their health is greater.

  We do need government oversight to maintain a sense of order, to guarantee that the food that is sold meets a basic bar. All Americans want to know that when they pick up a package of ground beef in the supermarket it is safe for human consumption: this is the proper role of government regulation.

  A culture of government oversight has developed from such regulation. The state decides what is immediately harmful in raw, whole and processed foods. Pathogens, coliforms and harmful bacteria are expected to be eliminated from market goods. Overall, the state is successful in that pursuit.

  Highly processed foods generally pass all government standards for basic safety. They aren’t generally of a high value from a health standpoint, but you won’t die from them. Some foods that are great for you, yet also could be hazardous, are removed from the market. If we have to destroy much of the potential goodness in a food in order to make sure that it is not harmful, as a society we accept this trade-off. Raw milk is a great example of this.

  I look to Lord Northbourne in his book Look to the Land for a great perspective on health and food. In 1940 he wrote:

  Hygiene is all very well, but it is no substitute for health. We have got into the habit of thinking that health can come from the mere avoidance of germs or dirt, while we neglect the foundations of health and so get more and more into a state in which we cannot withstand bacteria or dirt, and so we get more and more terrified of them. As always, negative policy directed solely to the avoidance of evil is useless in the absence of constructive work for good [page 42].

  Raw milk’s principle threat is a specific coliform—usually referred to as 157. Although other food-borne illnesses can be carried through milk—tuberculosis, Johne’s disease, Q fever, campherbacter—157 is what you hear about in the media. Honestly, I am not quite sure why—my gut tells me that it is a litigation issue. In downtown Seattle, just minutes from my farm, is the nation’s largest E. coli law firm. Their stock-in-trade is in personal injury work, specifically E. coli–based. They right the wrongs of unscrupulous food growers, processors and sellers who sicken their clients.

  I highly doubt that there is a law firm in this country devoted to personal injury work based on campherbacter. My guess is that E. coli is tremendously more profitable. It primarily affects children, it is rare, but still occurs frequently enough to keep it in the news, and it originates in manure—no one can argue that manure should be in food. All of this plays well with a jury.

  This is the basic nature of 157: coliforms are ever-present in the intestines of cows. They are part of the fluids that break down food. They can be shed in manure and all can potentially end up in food. Our own stomach acids have the ability to kill most any coliforms that are present in our food. But 157 is different in that human stomachs cannot kill it.

  In the case of milk, the method of contamination is fairly simple. The explanation I have heard from public health officials is that, as the udders of a cow are located at the rear end of the animal, they will always be dirty from defecation. Sadly, this tells me that those who regulate food do not have much primary contact with food.

  It is true that the udders and the teats are located in the posterior of the cow. It is also true that any manure left on the teats could very well get into the milk while the cow is being milked. The teats and the udder, however, are not soiled by the act of the manure exiting the cow. Anyone who has spent time with cows would be well aware that cows are quite proficient at defecating: the manure lands rather precisely behind them on the ground; it does not strike their body. Rather, the teats are soiled when the cows lie down on ground where there is manure. Cows are rather particular about certain aspects of their lives, but they will lounge in manure. The udders of a cow could be located in just about anyplace on their body and they would still have the potential of landing in manure.

  The relative acid level of human and bovine stomachs is similar. Over our human development we have acquired the ability to eat the food around us without killing ourselves in the process. It is the slow evolution of our bodies and our foodstuffs that keeps us healthy. Recently cows have been raised differently and our bodies have not had the time to react. Or, in fact, they are reacting: 157 can kill us.

  Throughout the history of domesticated cattle, cows were fed grasses. As they are ruminants, they are most suited to the consumption of grasses. Cows will gain weight on grass, but not as quickly as when they are fed grain. As grains are simply the mature seeds of grass, this still isn’t far from cows’ preferred diet, but an extreme percentage of grain is unlike what their rumens are used to.

  Cows gain more weight on grains than by eating grasses. The fat in the muscle, known as marbling, is the basis of the USDA grading system. Meat is graded in this country at all USDA-inspected slaughterhouses primarily on one criteria—the quantity of marbling. The more grain a cow eats, the more marbling that will appear in the meat and the higher the grade. The higher the grade, the higher the price that the beef can be sold for and the higher the profit for the cattleman.

  Thus, cows are fed more and more grain and less and less grass. Grain, specifically corn, is more expensive than grass, but land is more expensive than either. Grass is fed to cows in the form of pasture. Large expanses of land are necessary in order to feed hundreds of cows. Corn can be grown much more efficiently and then fed to cows held on small bits of land: feedlots.

  Also, because cows gain weight faster on grains than grass, they produce more quickly and with a higher profit than when left for years on pasture. All of these factors have pushed cattlemen to keep hundreds of cows on small feedlots, feeding them with corn and little or no grass. Corn also has been subsidized by the federal government, making it a bargain to the cattlemen.

  On a corn-heavy diet, the stomach fluids of a cow needed more acid to digest the grain than if they had simply digested grass. The acid levels rose to respond to the new diet of corn and other grains. When the acid levels increased, the coliforms present in the digestive tracts of these cows raised their tolerance for acid.

  Unfortunately, the human digestive system did not keep up with this increased resistance to acid on the part of bovine coliforms. The acids in our stomachs do not have the ability to neutralize the bovine coliforms, specifically 157. They are therefore pathogenic coliforms to us.

  I mentioned to a lawyer recently that I didn’t want to fight the state on the issue of raw milk because the state always has the trump card: food safety. Regardless of the issue at stake, the state can always say that the regulations they impose are for public safety. It is difficult to argue that a small number of sick children is acceptable. His response was that there is the concept of acceptable risk—risk that justifies the potential benefit—and therefore I should argue that raw milk should be available despite its potential risk.

  Yes, you can eat all the pr
ocessed foods in the supermarket, cook your ground beef at a ridiculously high temperature, avoid fresh vegetables such as spinach and tomatoes, never eat in a restaurant, and you will most likely never catch any food-borne illnesses that will endanger your health.

  But what a life it would be. Beef tartar, fresh spinach, eating great street food in less-than-perfect situations and drinking fresh, sweet, fatty raw milk: those are the great joys that make eating and living great.

  I have had discussions with people involved with public health during the course of running my raw dairy. Most discussions have quickly become arguments. We approach the issue in completely different ways. Originally I thought that they were stubborn, until I realized and acknowledged that I was equally stubborn, if not more so.

  The conclusion I have reached is not that farmers are good and health regulations are bad, or vice versa. The difference is in basic attitudes toward food. I feel that food is intrinsically good. Food is from the earth. It provides nutrition for us to live. It is the source of all life, it has the power to make us healthy, to provide us with a full life. Although there are cases where food can do harm, it is the result of processing, of man’s manipulation of food. As I milk my cows mechanically, chill the milk and then bottle it, I am one of those processors. Poor processing can unquestionably cause harm to those drinking raw milk.

  The regulators for public health have a different perspective, or so I believe. Their view is that food is intrinsically dangerous. It is the role of food processors to transform raw food products into safe items for human consumption. It is the state’s role to monitor these food processors to maintain safe processing standards.

  My quick view into this perspective came at the beginning of my Grade “A” licensing process. I had applied for a license for fluid raw milk, raw cream and raw butter. The first two were approved, the third was not. As I love raw butter and knew that my customers would as well, I wanted to produce and sell it. When the state denied my request I pushed them for an explanation. I received, weeks later, a lengthy statement concerning why raw butter is not legal in the state of Washington.