According to a 2006 European study called Parsifal, raw milk can help protect children against allergies, asthma and eczema.

The study followed about 15,000 children in five European countries. The study’s results showed that drinking raw milk (or “farm milk”) actually seemed to reduce the incidence of asthma and atopic allergies.

Other studies - mostly from the 1920’s and 1930’s (before the legislated requirement to pasteurize was widely adopted) also show that raw milk can have health benefits.

In addition, recent studies showed that drinking raw milk could help those with lactose intolerance.

So why all the problem with raw milk?

At issue is the chance that E. coli or some other harmful bacteria could be present in the milk, particularly if the farming operation is not hygienic enough. As a result of the perceived risk, Canada made the sale of raw milk illegal in 1991, but that has not stopped people from consuming it. Farmers started programs where people could buy a share of a cow - and therefore, could drink the milk from that cow raw if they so chose.

A recent court case against an Ontario farmer who had just such an operation recently decided in the farmer’s favor, upholding the legality of such cow-share operations.

Raw milk advocates often point to the fact that pasteurization destroys not just pathogens but also enzymes and other nutritional factors in the milk. Factors such as probiotics (friendly bacteria) are also destroyed when milk is pasteurized.

Source: CTV News