Story by Brenna Houck
Photos by Madelynn Vislocky
Sitting atop a blue milk crate, Joseph Bray looks tiny in comparison to his bulky milk cow, Grandma. While his rust-colored heifer may be small by cow standards, her 800 pounds still pose a formidable challenge to the slight, red-bearded Bray. Nearby, a mechanical milking machine pumps rhythmically, imitating a snare drum. It hisses and snaps as Bray cleans Grandma’s udders and attaches black rubber nozzles to each of her teats. The nozzles begin to mimic the action of a suckling calf, causing warm, white liquid to slowly flow through the clear plastic tubing now resting in Bray’s hands. At his feet, the creamy milk collects in a stainless steel basin, waiting for its final transfer to a glass jar.
Bray and his wife inadvertently discovered a new passion for dairy farming five years ago after realizing that their son Jackson was lactose intolerant. Together they decided to seek out alternatives to pasteurized milk, which Bray and his wife believed was causing Jackson’s congestion. A friend suggested they try unpasteurized milk, which many natural foodists claim is digestible by those with milk allergies. The Brays decided to test the theory.
They borrowed a goat from a friend and Bray tried his hand at milking. Though he had never been a fan of milk, the next morning Bray was compelled to taste the freshly chilled beverage. He was pleasantly surprised by its rich flavor. When his son tried it without any negative reactions, Bray was sold. A year later, he purchased a cow. Then, in May 2011, the family of nine made a radical change, moving 150 miles across Oregon from Bend to Cottage Grove to establish their own dairy business, Wholesome Family Farm.
The Brays are not the only ones turning to unpasteurized, or “raw,” milk. Many Americans are investing in family cows or starting small dairies because of a burgeoning niche market for unpasteurized products and an audience looking for a closer relationship with their food. “People are starting to think a lot more about the food they’re putting into their bodies,” Bray says. “I think they’re starting to recognize that we want the butter and we want the honey, not the stuff that just looks like it.”
While the exact number of raw milk consumers is unknown, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that approximately 1 percent of all milk purchased in the US is unpasteurized. The increasing interest in such products offers small dairies an exciting opportunity. However, the high number of food-borne illnesses associated with raw milk worries government officials. The CDC reports that between 1973 and 2009 raw dairy products were responsible for approximately 82 percent of all dairy product-related outbreaks of disease. Between 1998 and 2009, raw dairy led to a reported 1,837 illnesses, which resulted in 195 hospitalizations and two deaths.
As of now, all cow’s milk sold in Oregon stores must be pasteurized. State law forbids dairies that produce unpasteurized milk from advertising their products, selling in stores, and delivering to customers. Raw milk dairymen are also prohibited from owning more than two lactating cows, nine lactating goats, or nine lactating sheep.
Public health specialists view pasteurization as a key tool in the fight against food-borne illness. The process raises the temperature of milk for an extended length of time killing off life-threatening pathogens like salmonella, lysteria, and brucellosis. Pasteurization was introduced during the early 1900s in response to an epidemic of food-related illnesses associated with factory-processed raw dairy. According to an article published by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2009, in the early part of the twentieth century infant mortality rates in cities hovered around 30 percent due in part to “swill milk,” contaminated milk that was often laced with additives like formaldehyde or animal brains to prevent spoilage.
The government responded to the crisis by passing the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The law instituted new food processing regulations and laid the foundations for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Following the Act, many local governments began adopting ordinances that mandated pasteurization, leading to widespread use of the technique. Today, pasteurization remains the industry standard for safety despite raw milk advocates who argue that the process destroys important nutritional benefits found in milk like lactase-producing bacteria. By removing such bacteria, raw milk advocates say the beverage becomes indigestible for some and harmful for others.
“There’s no reason to pasteurize perfectly good milk,” says Nicole King, a 12-year dairy industry veteran who runs Polyrock Registered Jerseys, a raw milk dairy in Lorane Valley, Oregon. “Pasteurization is used to kill the bad bacteria, and unfortunately it’s killing all the good bacteria that is in there too. When the bacteria are heated, it changes how your body reacts to milk.”
Ed Starr, a raw milk dairyman and rancher at Milkin’ Deer Ranch in Colton, Oregon, has been milking cows and drinking unpasteurized milk since he was six years old. He raised his family on it and credits raw milk with keeping them healthy. “I kind of wonder why [raw milk] was okay for 2,000 years and all of a sudden now it’s not,” Starr says.
Like many raw dairy advocates, Starr sees a connection between the large commercial dairy industry and the need for pasteurization. “I’ve been to big dairies and I certainly wouldn’t want to pop the bottom of a bulk tank and drink raw milk after cruising through some of them. They’re absolutely disgusting,” Starr says, adding that others he has visited have been “incredibly clean.”
In February 2011, raw milk farmers assembled in Oregon’s capital to testify in favor of a bill that called for the relaxation of laws involving unpasteurized dairy products. Friends of Family Farmers (FoFF), an Oregon-based organization that represents independent family farms, proposed House Bill 2222, also known as the Family Farm Act. The bill aimed to ease some of the demand pressures on raw dairies by proposing changes like allowing a raw dairy farmer to own ten lactating cows, five times the number the law currently permits.
Tillamook dairy farmer Sue Emerson testified in opposition to the proposed changes. “This is dangerous,” she told the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources. “My big fear, and other dairy farmers’ fear, is that when some child gets sick and dies, USA Today and the Oregonian won’t say ‘raw milk.’ They will say ‘Milk killed this child’ and it will affect me economically.”
Jerome Rosa, an organic dairy farmer who also testified against the bill, recounted his two-year-old daughter’s two weeks spent in the hospital after allegedly ingesting E. coli-contaminated raw milk from his dairy. The bill never passed the hearing.
“I think we were half-heard,” says Starr, who attended the hearing as a FoFF representative. The testimonies were held at the end of the day and as a result, many of the legislators left before the hearing ended. “I felt that was extremely unfair,” Starr says. While he was disappointed with the outcome, he expects that FoFF will revisit the topic in the future.
To help expand their business under current regulations, the Brays began selling shares in their farm’s raw milk, butter, and cream last June. As a herdshare—a business model where the farmer sells partial ownership rights of a cow to an individual while boarding the animal on the farm—Wholesome Family Farm can exceed the two cow law and deliver directly to customers. The Brays currently own eight cows and deliver to several locations, including Bend, Portland, and Eugene. They plan to expand into the grass-fed beef and poultry business within the next year.
Back in the milk room, Bray releases Grandma from the milking machine as two of his children coax in the next heifer. “You’ve got to figure out the cows’ personalities,” he says as he sprays the udders with a hose, cleaning off the dirt and debris accumulated from a night in the wet pasture. “You can’t make an 800-pound cow do what you want. You just suggest that they want to do what you want.” It’s a tactic that may be employed in the debate on raw milk as it lumbers onward to a yet unknown conclusion.
 
 
 
 

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