Raw Milk Near Damascus

Cheesemaking eliminates some pathogens reliably and leaves others largely intact. A science-based look at salt, water activity, lactic acid, and the 60-day aging rule.

One confirmed raw milk death in 15 years of federal surveillance. Cattle kill 22 Americans per year. Two numbers that are rarely considered together.

A 1946 map labeled Australia’s outback useless. Today it holds over a million feral camels and a growing camel milk dairy industry.

Pasteur never used the word “pasteurization.” Others coined it as an honorific, first in French, then in English in 1881, applied to wine. The path to milk took another decade.

Every conventional milk carton bears his name, but Pasteur never pasteurized milk. His study of fermentation developed a heat-treatment for wine in 1865 and beer in 1871.

Harold J. Harris’s 1945 Coronet article “Raw Milk Can Kill You” shaped American pasteurization law on a fictional epidemic and survey data the author knew was misleading.