Heather Bedard, C.H.E.
Inevitably people who do not want to give milk up entirely have questions about changing to a “healthier” milk. Let’s see if there’s a difference between organic vs nonorganic milk in health outcomes.
Organic vs nonorganic milk
Organic milk often has to do with what the cows were fed leading up to the milking. This would affect the quality of the milk as well as increase or decrease the pesticides that were ingested through the grains and grasses. Because dairy cows are often given antibiotics, the residue from these is often found in the milk. I’m going to just leave this little nugget here, but make sure you haven’t recently eaten. The FDA has established how much infection can be in milk. In 8oz of milk there are allowed, 180 million pus cells and white blood cells. The average somatic cell count in U.S. milk per spoonful is 1,120,000. Because pus cells are very concentrated, you can expect about 1 drop of pus in the average glass and maybe 2-3. Ugh, one drop is one too many in my opinion.
There are no long-term studies that have compared the effect of drinking milk from cows treated with bovine somatotropin with cows that have not been treated. The interesting caveat here is that Canada and EU banned the use of this bovine growth hormone because it was bad for the cows - not because studies showed that it was harmful to humans. Additionally, both organic and non-organic dairy farms milk cows while they are pregnant and this increases sex hormones found in the milk.
What I am trying to get at, is that whether the cows were fed organic grass or not does not change casein levels, sex hormones, protein content etc. It doesn’t matter if it’s pasteurized or raw, fortified, or not, organic or conventional the milk constituents, and therefore the concerns, are the same. In other words, cow’s milk is not designed for humans and not to be consumed in any form.[1]
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[1] Mummah S, Oelrich B, Hope J, Vu Q, Gardner C. “Effect of Raw Milk on Lactose Intolerance: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study.” Ann Fam Med. March/April 2014 vol. 12 no. 2 134-141.