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There hasn’t consume raw milk. That translates into nine mil- in Massachusetts a few years ago.
Yet there hasn’t been a single death from
been a single lion Americans. As you’ll see in a little while, raw milk since at least the 1980s.
this is a very important number.
death from I went through this little exercise to demon-
raw milk since PHOTOS strate the kind of fear mongering our opponents
Before I get into the data, I want to show do about raw milk. None of it, whether about
at least the some photos, because my guess is our opponents cantaloupe, hamburgers, raw spinach or peanut
1980s. will show you some, or at least will tell you some butter proves anything about what’s happening

scary stories of people who have been paralyzed, in the big picture. For that, we need to look at
suffered kidney damage, or other lasting prob- the macro data.
lems from raw milk. They’ll no doubt tell you
about a recent outbreak in Pennsylvania in which A LOOK AT THE DATA
seventy people became ill, though thankfully, When you look at the macro data, you find
none seriously that I am aware of. it’s not nearly as scary as you would expect.
The reason I am showing you these photos First, let's look at the data on the number of
is so you can appreciate that those same stories reported illnesses from raw milk covering the
exist with every single food you can think of, last ten years. They were nearly all drawn from
any food you can buy in the supermarket. Bad the CDC by one of Mr. Pritzker’s competitors,
cantaloupe late last year put the two men into the Marler Clark law firm, which is hostile to
the hospital for two months, and even when they raw milk. So they mined the CDC data for every
came out, they still needed oxygen. One woman possible illness attributable to raw milk. What
died from her illness, and the woman pictured on you see here is that there are between twenty-five
the lower right lost her husband, whose picture and one hundred seventy-five reported illnesses
wasn’t available. In total, cantaloupe contami- from raw milk each year. In 2008 there were one
nated with listeria killed thirty-two people and hundred thirty-two, last year there were fifty.
sickened one hundred thirteen, some with lasting What I did was take a typical recent year
problems like the men at the top. for both raw milk illnesses, and total foodborne
Bad ground beef in a hamburger paralyzed a illnesses as reported by the CDC. So we are
promising dancer, Stephanie Smith, pictured on comparing apples to apples.
the left. The little girl in the middle spent weeks And here is what you get. Of more than
on dialysis, and the two-year-old boy on the right twenty-three thousand total foodborne illnesses
died—both from contaminated raw spinach. reported by CDC in 2008, one hundred thirty-
I haven’t heard anyone suggest we ban two were from raw milk and raw milk cheese.
hamburgers, spinach, or cantaloupe, or even That works out to one half of one per cent of the
limit their availability. But any number of com- total reported illnesses from raw milk.
mon foods we take for granted can, and do, kill Now, remember back to that earlier number
people. Eggs, peanut butter, luncheon meats, I quoted, about nine million raw milk drinkers,
even pasteurized milk, which killed three here or 3 percent of Americans drinking raw milk.
Yet raw milk is responsible for a much smaller
DEATHS FROM FOODBORNE ILLNESS proportion of the illnesses.
SINCE 1999 What this macro data says is that raw milk is
not a serious public health hazard by any stretch
Cantaloupe: 32 (2011-2012) of the imagination. Now, do I want to see the
Spinach: 5 (2006) number of illnesses from raw milk reduced?
Luncheon Meat: 12 (Canada, 2008); 2 (2011) Absolutely. Do I think it can? Absolutely. We
Peanut butter: 9 (2009)
Eggs: 30 PER YEAR just had an outbreak of some sixty illnesses from
Oysters: 15 PER YEAR campylobacter in raw milk in Pennsylvania. I
Pasteurized Milk: 3 (Massachusetts, 2007) spoke with the farmer yesterday who said he’s
Raw Milk: NONE totally re-done his process for cleaning milk
pipes, but also installed a high-tech laboratory so
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