Raw Milk Prohibition - Will it ever end?

Conditions had only marginally improved by 1893 when Straus established the first of his "Milk Depots" for the distribution of low-priced pasteurized milk.

The yearly death rate in infants and young children was about fifty percent of the birth rate. Many of those deaths were from diarrhea and infectious diseases, including typhoid, cholera and diphtheria.

Some died of tuberculosis, then the leading cause of death in the population at large. Straus, Jacobi and others were convinced that many of these diseases were spread by milk and that many deaths could be prevented if the milk supply to the cities were pasteurized. I

n the absence of official action, Straus began his own crusade to pasteurize the milk supply of New York City.

For Straus and those officials who backed him, pasteurization was a matter of economics and practicality.

Most recognized that certified milk was safe and healthy, but it was expensive to produce and sold for two to four times the cost of ordinary milk.

As a practical matter, the enforcement of strict rules of hygiene on the 40,000 independent dairy farms that supplied milk to New York City was impossible. Pasteurization was seen as a quick, technological fix that would make New York's milk safe to drink.

The popularity of Straus's milk depots grew rapidly, and several more were established in the city. Coincident with the increasing use of pasteurized milk, the death rate among infants and young children dropped dramatically, circumstantial evidence that poor quality, contaminated raw milk was indeed the cause of much illness.

Infant mortality began dropping in the years immediately following the establishment of the first milk depots.

With widespread pasteurization, it fell further, from a rate of 160 deaths under one year of age for every 1,000 births in 1906 to 90 in 1916. Deaths from typhoid fever in New York fell as well, from 15 per 100,000 in 1908 to 4 in 1916.

But chlorination of the water supply to New York City began during these years, eliminating a potential source of typhoid. Automobile use grew, and fewer horses and their excrement polluted city streets and water supplies. Other changes as well led to more sanitary conditions in New York and other cities, and it is impossible to know to what degree these factors and pasteurization itself affected the mortality figures.

The push for pasteurization in the late 1800s and the early 1900s is best understood in light of an understanding of the conditions of the era. Some advocates for raw milk argue that the pasteurization of milk is an unmitigated evil, that all raw milk is safe, and that there was never any reason for public health authorities to advocate pasteurization. The authoritarian and often deceitful excesses of the push for compulsory pasteurization of all milk came later, in the 1930s. Advocates for raw milk should understand, however, that sloppily produced and contaminated raw milk in America's circa 1900 cities caused considerable disease and death. Pasteurization began as an apparent solution to this acute problem.