On
Saturday mornings, my mother would put us in the car and drive to McIlhaney’s
Dairy in the north valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to buy a few bottles of
milk. My mother was a milk connoisseur who
had been raised on raw milk as a young girl.
And even though McIlhaney’s milk was not raw, my mom felt nothing tasted
better. To her, it was worth a special
trip to get it.
When
people think of dairy cows, they most often think of the large black-and-white
Holsteins, which comprise ninety percent of today’s commercial dairy herds. Holsteins are favored in the modern dairy
business because they produce the most milk of all the breeds of dairy cows, up
to nine gallons per day. More milk means
more profit.
McIlhaney’s herd, though, was
composed of Jerseys, not Holsteins. A
Jersey cow is much smaller than a Holstein and golden-brown in color. Not only is it smaller in stature, but it also
produces a lot less milk per day, about six gallons. Due to their lower production, Jerseys are
not preferred by today’s large commercial dairies. Less milk means less profit.
The distinctions don’t end there,
though. The milk itself is quite
different between the two breeds, something my mom could tell just by tasting
it. Holstein milk is composed of about four percent fat and three percent
protein. Jersey milk, by contrast, is
more than five percent fat and nearly four percent protein, earning Jerseys the
nickname “butterfat champions.”
Indeed, it was the Jersey milk’s fat
that gave it the flavor and texture that my mother and a lot of other people
loved about McIlhaney’s milk and why they would drive across town to buy a few
bottles.
Few people are as particular as my
mother when it comes to milk. But like my mother, milk still represents a
tasty, wholesome beverage to most people. And while the consumption of milk has
ebbed and flowed over the years because of changing consumer preferences,
war-time rationing, and the Covid-19 pandemic, it remains a staple in American
homes and school lunches. Consuming several daily servings of dairy is even
recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate nutrition
guidelines.
It is hard to imagine milk as
anything but a healthy part of the American diet. But the story of milk has
always been controversial, and it is no different now.
While many, if not most, people consider milk
to be an essential part of a healthy diet (as recommended by the federal
government), this wasn’t always the case. In the past, cow’s milk was often
associated with disease, not with good nutrition. As late as 1938, milk was
responsible for twenty-five percent of all disease outbreaks associated with
contaminated food and beverages, so there is little wonder people questioned its
consumption.
That milk could be responsible for
disease is not surprising, because science could not have designed a better Petri
dish than a bottle of raw milk. Raw milk is loaded with high energy protein,
fat, carbohydrates, and sugar. It is also
rich in minerals including potassium, calcium, phosphorous, and sodium. And, it is full of vitamins including A, B2,
and B12.
Consequently, bacteria such as E.
coli, salmonella, campylobacter, C. diphtheriae, and mycobacterium thrive in
raw milk. These bacteria cause various human diseases, including tuberculosis, diphtheria,
scarlet fever, septic sore throat, and typhoid fever. Similarly, the H5N1 virus,
which causes bird flu, has been found to be present in the milk of H5N1-infected
dairy cows. In addition, Stanford University researchers found that a strain of
human influenza called H1N1 PR8 could survive in refrigerated raw milk for up
to five days.
In practice, these bacteria and
viruses can arise in milk from a variety of sources: unclean conditions such as
with dirt and feces; from within the cow itself such as with the mycobacterium
bovis bacteria that causes tuberculosis in both cattle and humans; and from
dairy worker mucus such as with the H1N1 virus.
Contamination by bacteria wasn’t as much
of a problem when milk came from the family cow, because the family cow could
be kept clean and well cared for and its milk only had to be transported from
the barn to the refrigerator (or icebox). Moreover, the milk was consumed by a
single family, not the public at large, which limited the spread of
contamination. Therefore, the risks of disease were minimal.
By the late 19th century,
though, for the first time more Americans lived in the city than the
countryside. My mother witnessed this firsthand when her family moved from their
small farm in the rural south valley of Albuquerque to a housing subdivision on
the city’s west mesa, leaving behind the family cow.
As a result of America’s urbanization,
the development of commercial dairies accelerated, replacing the family cow.
Milk from these commercial dairies came from cows that were more likely to be
kept in crowded and unsanitary conditions. And their milk also had to be
transported longer distances and, prior to refrigerated trucking, stored at
higher temperatures than ever before. In the process, milk became a major
vector of human disease.
To protect themselves from milk-borne
illnesses, people took steps to purify milk.
The simplest and most effective way to do so was simply to boil it,
which killed the harmful bacteria and viruses, rendering the milk safe to drink
and to use in milk products like cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.
An important innovation that used
boiling to sterilize milk was evaporation. A Swiss dairyman by the name of John
Meyenberg, known as “Cheese John,” is credited with the innovation as well as
the formation of the Carnation Milk Company.
In 1899, working with Kent, Washington, dairy farmers, Cheese John
developed a process in which boiling was used to evaporate sixty percent of the
water in milk, yielding a concentrated milk fluid. The concentrate was then canned, which also
required boiling.
Evaporated milk met a lot of consumer
needs. Importantly, it was free from pathogens. And it could be substituted for
conventional milk in many recipes or even diluted with an equal part of water
to resemble fresh milk. Since it was canned, it could be safely transported
long distances and stored at room temperature.
Evaporated milk had one big
disadvantage, though: it had what people felt was a “cooked” or “caramelized”
flavor. Consequently, the public did not
accept it as a substitute for fresh milk.
Another innovation, known as
pasteurization, fixed not only the milk contamination problem but the taste
problem, too. The process of pasteurization pre-dated evaporation, but it
wasn’t adopted for commercial use until many years after evaporated milk came
to market.
The French scientist Louis Pasteur is
credited with creating pasteurization. In 1857, he identified microscopic
organisms, or microbes, in milk, beer, and wine that were responsible for making
people sick. In 1863, Pasteur further discovered these microbes could be killed
by raising the temperature of milk, beer, or wine to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and
then quickly cooling them down.
Today, pasteurization uses a higher
temperature (160 degrees Fahrenheit), but the idea is the same. The big advantage of pasteurization over
evaporation is that the milk is not actually cooked (boiled), which preserves
its natural flavor.
Despite the advantages of
pasteurization, it was not immediately adopted by the food industry. In what
may be one of the biggest cliches of food processing, the Frenchman Pasteur
focused more on wine than milk. Pasteurization of milk languished, and it
wasn’t until the 1920s when market regulations finally required it in every
corner of the country that it became the standard for milk safety and
preservation.
With the widespread adoption of
pasteurization, it appeared the problem of eliminating harmful contaminants
from milk while still retaining its taste was finally solved. This was not the
case, however, as new substances found their way into the milk supply, ones
that were not eliminated by pasteurization.
Pasteurization solved the microbial
problems that plagued raw milk; however, even milk that has been pasteurized is
sometimes home to a variety of other substances with questionable, if not
actually negative, effects on humans.
These substances include artificial hormones, antibiotics, and toxins,
all of which are passed along to humans through the consumption of milk.
It is important to note that all
milk, including human milk, contains a range of naturally occurring hormones
including estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and insulin-like growth factor 1
(IGF-1). Even soy milk contains nonsteroidal plant hormones called
phytoestrogens.
About twenty percent of farmers,
however, also inject cows with an artificial hormone to increase their milk
production. More milk means more profit. This artificial hormone is called recombinant
bovine somatrotropin (rBST), also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone
(rBGH). rBST was created in the laboratory by the food company Monsanto, using
genetic engineering to insert the DNA sequence of the cow’s natural growth
hormone (BST) into the DNA of the bacteria E. coli. rBST can increase milk production
by as much as ten percent.
Even though rBST is injected into the
animal, not added directly to the milk, the hormone shows up in the milk of
injected cows. Naturally, many people are concerned about the health effects of
rBST on the human body. It is important to note that rBST and BST are not active
in human bodies, so scientists do not believe they directly cause health
effects for people exposed to the hormones through drinking milk.
Cows treated with rBST, however, have
higher levels of the hormone IGF-1 in their milk, and several scientific
studies have found that IGF-1 at the high end of the normal range may influence
the development of certain cancers, including prostate, breast, and colorectal.
To date, however, scientists have not proved a definitive link between rBST,
IGF-1, and cancer in humans.
Regardless of what scientists now
believe, news of this possible correlation created a major backlash against
rBST in the milk market. As a result, by 2010, one hundred of the nation’s top
dairies, major grocery stores, and fast-food restaurants went rBST-free.
Tillamook, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, and Chipotle are but a few of the names of
companies rejecting the artificial hormone.
Significant doses of growth hormones,
coupled with overcrowding, stress, and immobility, subject dairy cows to a
variety of health problems including infections (mastitis), muscle inflammations,
fevers, and parasitic worms. Although dairy farming practices are regulated,
they vary widely in terms of housing, feeding, milking, healthcare, and waste
management, and many dairy cows are consigned to a short, brutish life.
These difficult conditions are in
turn treated with a slew of drugs, including antibiotics (such as penicillin,
florfenicol, sulfamethazine, and sulfadimethoxine), non-steroidal
anti-inflammatories (flunixin), and anti-parasitics (ivermectin).
In many cases, the antibiotics used
on dairy cows are the same ones used to treat human infection (for example, penicillin).
And their overuse has led to medical concerns about the rise of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. The extent of antibiotic use in animal husbandry is staggering.
Eighty percent of antibiotics manufactured in the U.S. are dispensed to
livestock, not to humans. And a 2017 United Nations study reported that 141,000
tons of antibiotics were given to feed animals in that year alone.
When people drink milk in which
antibiotic residue is present, they are in effect receiving a small,
non-therapeutic dose of the antibiotic, creating an opportunity for drug
resistance to develop. Furthermore, cows excrete the antibiotics into the soil,
where bacteria in the soil can also develop resistance. When bacteria become
resistant to the antibiotics which once effectively treated them, they become
an even larger threat to human health.
Finally, cows are also exposed to a
variety of environmental toxins resulting from human activities such as
farming, burning fossil fuels, smelting, refining, and manufacturing. Independent
studies have found the herbicide atrazine, as well as the insecticides permethrin,
cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, and diazinon, in milk samples supplied by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. In that sense, not much has changed since scientist and
environmental pioneer Rachel Carson called out the presence of the pesticide DDT
in milk in 1962.
Given the plethora of contaminants
possible in milk, whether originating from nature or from human activities, it
is clear the regulation of milk is essential to ensure the product is safe for
human consumption.
The regulation of milk began in the
early 20th century. A major factor showing that regulation was needed
was the work of Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemist and physician who led the
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Chemistry (the predecessor to today’s
Food and Drug Administration) from 1882 to 1912. Wiley might be best known for
a series of experiments he conducted on human volunteers (dubbed the “Poison
Squad”) to test the effects of various food preservatives on the human body.
Wiley collected milk samples that he
showed suffered from numerous dangers. Much of the milk he tested had been thinned
with dirty water. Once thinned, it had to be thickened again; chalk and plaster
of Paris were popular choices for thickening agents. Sometimes toxic dyes were added
to make the “milk” look more golden instead of gray or blue. And finally, preservatives were used because the
resulting concoction was prone to rot. The most popular preservative was formaldehyde,
an embalming compound.
As a result of Wiley’s work to expose
unscrupulous food processors and tainted milk, President Theodore Roosevelt
signed into the law the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The act’s main purpose
was to ban foreign and interstate trade in adulterated and misbranded food and
drug products. It directed the Division of Chemistry to inspect those products
and refer offenders for prosecution.
Even though the Pure Food and Drug
Act was a milestone in the federal government’s involvement in the regulation
of food and drugs, the law was primarily a truth-in-labeling law. It did not give
the Division of Chemistry the power to set food and drug standards.
Without strong federal oversight, states
and municipalities took up the cause to regulate milk. By the 1920s, milk
regulations requiring pasteurization had reached virtually every part of the
country. The regulations, however, were
a hodge podge of state and local laws: some jurisdictions restricted the sale
of raw milk, while others did not.
To address the deficiencies in the
federal law, in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act, which replaced the Pure Food and Drug Act, and gave the Food and Drug
Administration (the Division of Chemistry had been renamed in 1930) the power
to establish standards for foods, drugs, and cosmetics. The new act remains the
statutory basis for the federal regulation of milk today.
But it wasn’t until 1973 that the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), which was charged with overseeing the interstate
sale of milk, ruled that nearly all milk had to be pasteurized if it crossed
state lines. An exception to the law was
made for so-called “certified” raw milk.
Subsequent studies linked even certified raw milk with disease, however. Thus, in 1987, the FDA finally mandated that
all milk used in interstate commerce must be pasteurized.
It
should be noted that within state boundaries, the sale of raw milk is still
permissible in all but twenty-one states. Of those states that permit its sale,
some only permit on-farm sales while a handful allow retail sales, too.
In addition to pasteurization
requirements, the federal government established standards for antibiotics,
artificial hormones, and pesticides in milk. These are known as maximum residue
limits, which are the maximum acceptable levels of pesticides and veterinary
drugs in food and agricultural products that will not be a concern to human
health. Specifically, the FDA approved the use of rBST in 1993.
Thus, after more than a century, it
seemed that technology and regulation finally caught up with ensuring a safe
milk supply. Having a safe milk supply would appear to be uncontroversial, but
true to its history, the debates over milk rage on today.
Until recently, one of the biggest
controversies about milk centered on conventional versus organic milk. Even though federal regulations stipulate the
maximum residue limits that are thought to be safe in milk, many people didn’t
want any level of pesticides and veterinary drugs in their milk. And, according
to an Emory University study published in Public Health Nutrition,
conventional milk does, in fact, contain low to elevated levels of artificial
hormones, antibiotics, and toxins, while organic milk does not. Therefore, as a
matter of personal choice, many consumers made the switch to organic milk.
The most recent controversy, however,
sets the milk debate back a hundred years: raw versus pasteurized. The
resurgence of interest in raw milk is a social phenomenon that is driven by a
variety of diverse groups, all converging at the same point. These groups
include health food advocates seeking unadulterated whole foods, fitness
enthusiasts trying to find the next superfood, and even status seekers willing
to pay twice the cost of conventional milk for a status symbol.
Perhaps the most influential group,
though, is the anti-science, anti-government faction that rails against
governmental regulation, sparking a backlash against pasteurization. This
group, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now the U.S. Secretary of Health and
Human Services, revels in defying the established science and ignoring the checkered
history of raw milk.
Yet, defying the federal government
doesn’t change the facts: the risks with raw milk persist. From 1998 to 2018, 2,645 people were sickened
by raw milk. Of those, 228 were hospitalized and 3 died.
Under Kennedy’s leadership, more than
20,000 employees have been terminated from Health and Human Services, which
includes the FDA. As a result, in April 2025, the FDA suspended its quality
control program for milk and other dairy products, due to the reduced workforce
in its food safety and nutrition division. This downsizing sets the country
back years in its efforts to ensure a safe milk supply and foreshadows a return
of the bad ole days.
All of this would have demoralized my
mother, who loved a simple glass of milk from McIlhaney’s Dairy. To her, there
was nothing controversial about it and nothing sinister about the federal
government trying to keep her milk free from contamination.
Today, McIlhaney’s no longer exists,
and its small herd of Jerseys is only a childhood memory. The dairy’s
disappearance is not the result of a decline in the demand for high-quality
milk. Far from it. More than ever, health-conscious consumers desire milk which
is free from germs, hormones, antibiotics, and toxins. In fact, in 2024,
Americans consumed some forty million more gallons of milk than they did the
previous year, reversing a slump in sales dating back to 2009.
Rather, McIlhaney’s disappearance is
the result of the same factors that put many other family dairies (and family milk
cows) out of business: urbanization, the rise of mega farms, and children who didn’t
want to follow in the family business.
When my mother used to take us to buy
milk, the north valley of Albuquerque was still populated with small farms and
dairies like McIlhaney’s. But McIlhaney’s was prime real estate for the growth
of the Albuquerque metropolitan area, a region that would balloon from 300,000
to 1,000,000 people. Eventually, as Albuquerque expanded, the dairy was pushed
out in favor of single-family homes, churches, self-storage units, distribution
centers, and other non-agricultural uses. Urbanization guaranteed there was no
room for a dairy with its associated smells, solid waste, and effluence.
Over the same period, the business
model for dairies changed, too. It was a
change that rendered small dairies obsolete while Big Dairy developed massive operations
to produce ever more milk. William
McIlhaney, the patriarch of the family, lamented this fact in a 1996 interview
when he noted that in his lifetime the typical size of a dairy had increased ten-fold,
from one hundred cows to more than a thousand.
Given these factors, it is no wonder that
William McIlhaney’s children didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. Dairy
farming has become big business, one shrouded in controversy. There was a time when a family dairy could
provide a decent, albeit strenuous, living, and people would drive across town
to buy its milk. Today, dairies are mostly the province of corporations filled
with lawyers, marketers, lobbyists, and accountants.
In the end, the rise and fall of
McIlhaney’s Jersey girls is the story of milk in America.
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