Debate: The Risks of Black Market Raw Milk against the Risks of its Legal Consumption in Australia
Raw milk is defined as milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. Unpasteurized milk can become contaminated with pathogens such as salmonella spp., E. coli, and especially, Campylobacter jenuni. It has been a century-long global debate on whether or not the dangers of consuming unpasteurized milk is enough to justify its sales prohibition in major countries.
Availability and regulation of raw milk vary from region to region. In Australia, the sale of raw milk for consumption purposes is illegal in all states and territories, as is raw milk cheese with the exception of hard raw milk cheese. However, this has been somewhat undermined by legally selling raw milk as bath milk or pet milk. Ironically, the container in which you can purchase bath milk from looks exactly the same as you would purchase pasteurized milk. Despite raw milk’s legislative ban, Australian cheese maker Bowden has remarked that, “whether it’s legal or not, people are buying and drinking raw unpasteurized milk.” Several incidents associated with drinking unpasteurized milk in Australia has reached the headlines, including the death of a toddler in 2014.
Beverage? Cosmetics? Who knows!
Some decades ago, the common practice when it comes to milk consumption was that you would walk over to your neighboring farm, pump some milk out of the grazing cows into a bottle, and drink it fresh. Drinking raw milk is considered by many health experts as the only correct way milk should be drunk, as the beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus acidophilus is still present in raw milk, along with many essential vitamins, including A, C, B6, and B12, as well as minerals and enzymes.
Unfortunately, the sale prohibition on raw milk isn’t in line with all consumers in Australia, and whenever there are profitable goods for sale that’s banned by the government, the sales move underground and black markets come in. Black markets elevates the issues associated with raw milk consumption by sneakily packaging raw milk as cosmetic milk and selling them at local farmers’ markets or roadside stands. The concern with black market sales is that there is no transparency or after-sale support for the customers. Labelling for merchandise at these places are also not under strict regulations, so many consumers may not even be aware of what is exactly in the bottle they just purchased. In the end, it really comes down to understanding the risk consuming raw milk poses. Bowden advocates the legalization of selling raw milk under tight regulations, including consumption shortly after production, and possibly selling in conjunction with a bacteria-testing kit.
The problem that can occur with consuming raw milk comes mostly from not treating it in the most hygienic and/or proper manner. Degeling from Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine (VELiM) remarked that large scale production could exacerbate problems, because “often the milk from a lot of cows are mixed together and it only takes one breakdown in the hygiene and bio-safety measures in the milking of one cow for the whole batch to be contaminated.” Currently, the Food Standards Australia (FSA) are beginning to recognize the increasing demand for raw dairy and are in the process of assessing the requirements that dairy plants would need to satisfy in order to safely produce and sell raw milk.
Please click here for the original article if you are interested. 🙂
So now the question is: should raw milk on day become legalized in Australia, or even in other countries? And if not, what steps can be taken to ensure the legislation will be enforced? What do you guys think?
Meggy Li
DeniseZhang, 
cvalencia, 
ayra casuga, and 3 others are discussing.
SusannaKo 10:24 pm on October 7, 2015 Permalink |
Personally I don’t think raw milk should be legalized in Australia. However, I know that there are a lot of raw milk advocates. To appease them, I would recommend a warning label, similar to those found on cigarette packages, that would say “consumption of raw milk is linked to diseases that cause kidney failure, gastroenterities etc”. Some steps that can be taken to ensure the legislation is enforced is to have farms registered (so a record can be kept), and have food inspectors search the web for “cow shares” in which there is raw milk available. Also, having information available on Government websites about the risks involved with raw milk consumption might help too.
Michelle Ebtia 10:14 am on October 13, 2015 Permalink |
I personally know of parents who insist on feeding their infants raw cow’s milk, as they believe it would lead to less severe allergic reactions and better tolerance by their infants. However, studies suggest that there is no evidence to support this claim (Høst,1994). The bigger problem this would pose on the health of infants who are fed raw cow’s milk is the unregulated levels of pathogenic microorganisms present in the milk, as mentioned by Meggy. A quick research in the literature shows other types of raw milk are quite risky as well, for example it has been shown that raw goat’s milk can cause Toxoplasmosis in infants(Riemann et al. 1975). With such great risks and minimal benefits, it seems that the current ban on the sale and consumption of raw milk makes a lot of sense.
Høst, A. (1994). Cow’s milk protein allergy and intolerance in infancy Some clinical, epidemiological and immunological aspects. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, 5(S6), 5-36.
Riemann, H. P., Meyer, M. E., Theis, J. H., Kelso, G., & Behymer, D. E. (1975). Toxoplasmosis in an infant fed unpasteurized goat milk. The Journal of pediatrics, 87(4), 573-576.
Carissa Li 12:09 am on October 17, 2015 Permalink |
When there is something being banned, there is always someone who try to break the law! Therefore, getting the regulation strict is a very important step to make in order to control the selling of raw milk to people. However, to really stop the consumption of raw milk, we need to let everyone knows why it is being banned. Some people don’t understand the potential risk of drinking raw milk since they never get any food poisoning which leads to people not following the rules. With good reasoning and education, people will understand the reason for setting laws and follow them.
Carissa Li 11:07 pm on October 16, 2015 Permalink |
When there is something being banned, there is always someone who try to break the law! Therefore, getting the regulation strict is a very important step to make in order to control the selling of raw milk to people. However, to really stop the consumption of raw milk, we need to let everyone knows why it is being banned. Some people dont understand the potential risk of drinking raw milk since they never get any food poisoning which leads to people not following the rules. With good reasoning and education, people will understand the reason for setting laws and follow them
Carissa Li 12:08 am on October 17, 2015 Permalink |
When there is something being banned, there is always someone who try to break the law! Therefore, getting the regulation strict is a very important step to make in order to control the selling of raw milk to people. However, to really stop the consumption of raw milk, we need to let everyone knows why it is being banned. Some people dont understand the potential risk of drinking raw milk since they never get any food poisoning which leads to people not following the rules. With good reasoning and education, people will understand the reason for setting laws and follow them.
Carissa Li 12:09 am on October 17, 2015 Permalink |
When there is something being banned, there is always someone who try to break the law! Therefore, getting the regulation strict is a very important step to make in order to control the selling of raw milk to people. However, to really stop the consumption of raw milk, we need to let everyone knows why it is being banned. Some people don’t understand the potential risk of drinking raw milk since they never get any food poisoning which leads to people not following the rules. With good reasoning and education, people will understand the reason for setting laws and follow them.
ayra casuga 10:51 am on October 24, 2015 Permalink |
This article is very intriguing as the topic of selling raw milk has always been controversial. Primarily because although the risk factors are obvious (Food-borne pathogens), there is no general consensus of the benefits of consuming raw milk. Michelle’s comment about parents feeding their infants raw milk is very interesting as I can see how some people would find that absurd, while I can also see how one could rationalize feeding infants raw milk. Providing infants in a young age with raw milk may be able to strengthen their food bacteria tolerance by building their child’s microflora in their gut with a variety of bacteria. I remember learning in my MicBIO202 class that theres a correlation between children’s gastrointestinal system to be “too clean” and an increase in allergies present in children. So by exposing them to some harsher bacteria may be beneficial, although the risks are high.
In terms of viability of selling raw milk, I believe that selling raw milk should be allowed, although the suppliers of raw milk must undergo more stringent regulations in their procedure. I believe that by banning raw milk will cause some small suppliers to want to sell it in the “black market”, which would be more dangerous as the supplier might not have prepared it in the cleanest way possible. With the high demand of raw milk, it is impossible to eliminate the demand by banning its supply, if anything that would increase the demand and producers would start selling it under the table.
Therefore, I think a good solution would be that suppliers would need to have a specific license in order to sell raw milk and thus would obtain a special “raw milk certified label”. Analogous to how farmers would need a “Regulated organic license” in order to sell their produce as organic. That way, the suppliers would undergo strict regulations in order to maximize food safety in their raw milk products, and consumers would trust that their raw milk is produced by the highest quality.
cvalencia 4:27 pm on December 4, 2015 Permalink |
I also think the consumption of raw milk is quite dangerous, but I had a friend who visited Nepal, and lived there with the locals. She said that the family gave her raw cow’s milk to consume, and she did. Thankfully she did not get sick at all. I also think that it depends upon the person, whether they have been brought up drinking raw milk (and therefore have immunity against potential bacteria in it). However, I will personally not take the risk of consuming raw milk, especially with the associated risks involved.
DeniseZhang 9:24 pm on December 15, 2015 Permalink |
I think this post is really interesting. I personally appreciate the freshness of foods, therefore I like eating salads, raw oysters, sashimi, etc. However, when the same situation comes to milk, I will say no to unpasteurized or raw milk. I know that these fresh raw milk have a greater chance to contain pathogens and it has definitely more cons than pros.
In the meanwhile, I somehow understand that the reason why the regulation of raw milk is not that restrict in Australia, as there is still large portion of people believe that drinking raw milk is better. Considered that, I think officials can make difference firstly by changing packages of raw milks and labelling them clearly. Then officials can work on letting public know more about the risks of consuming raw milk.
Working step by step, I believe eventually people will start giving up drinking raw milk 😀