Warning: the following article may be hazardous to your peace of mind, complacence and tranquility. Persons who dislike controversial subjects, or who have hardening of the mental arteries, should avoid reading.

Is there no end to the controversy about raising goat kids on pasteurized milk—or raising them on bottles versus on their dams—or, for that matter, about the milk that we humans should be drinking? In the August, 1985 issue of the UnitedCaprine News we read—on the first page—'Texas Considering Ban on Raw Milk Sales.' Turning to page 40, we see an article titled 'Dam Raising Kids' and subtitled 'how can people do it?', an article which relates a host of troubles presumably caused by kids left to nurse their dams, and following that, the very fine, thought-provoking article by Saanen breeder Betty Black titled 'Has ADGA Gone Commercial.' Sprinkled throughout the UCN—as well as the Dairy Goat Journal and every other periodical on goats one encounters, are ads stating 'all kids raised on pasteurized milk' or words to that effect. In recent past issues of all these, we are treated to letters and articles, relating experiences goat keepers have had with kids raised on their dams or on bottles; with kids raised on pasteurized milk or on raw (whole) milk, with CAE, Mycoplasma, Chlamydia, udder edema, and a host of troubles from swollen knees through mastitis, all blamed on the 'evils' of letting kids- horrors–'nurse their dams'–or feeding them–horrors again–'raw goat milk.' Doubtless the writers of these articles are quite sincere–they really did have the experiences they related and wanted to share with readers; doubtless they really did have deep concerns; suffered losses of loved and prized animals; experienced 'improvements' after changing their former practices, if they did. In a burst of compassion for their fellow goat-keepers and their goats, they put pen to paper and submit letters and articles with the best of intentions. Bless 'em all, for their humanity, their willingness to rise above personal grief and share their concerns and problems with all of us.

But–are these sincere, well-intentioned folk really able to, as the old saying goes, step back far enough from the trees to see the whole forest? Well, there is one man who is, and who has written a book about issues that include, but transcend, whether or not one's goat kids should be raised on their dams or not; whether we humans should drink pasteurized cow milk or not—a book that addresses issues that are of major—national—worldwide, even—importance to each and every one of us, whether we are city folk that regard any contact with any animal as unhealthy and unclean, to those of us (including we goat-keepers and goat fanatics) that will unhesitatingly plunge into a waist-high manure pile with bare hands and pitchfork, sleeves rolled up, as just one part of workaday animal husbandry. This man is an M.D.—Dr. William Campbell Douglass—and his book is titled The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. Dr. Douglass has made a study of milks of all kinds, and anyone who has the least interest in health, as well as anyone who produces milk from his or her own animals, would greatly benefit by reading his book. Published 1985 by Last Laugh Publishers, 2550 Windy Hill Road, Suite #315, Marietta, Georgia 30067, the book is available from the publisher for $14.95 postpaid, also from the I.D.G.R. Inc., P. O. Box 309, Chickamauga, Georgia 30707. Some amazing statements are to be found in this very interesting work, which is written in a chatty, friendly, but no-nonsense style.

Dr. Douglass' book should be required reading in every school and university in America. It should sit on everyone's home library shelves or on the coffee table, readily available for quick reference. Equally important, it should be on the desk of every legislator, every doctor, veterinarian, every person who is in a position of power and influence over what foods we Americans eat. The world being as it is, the book will doubtless not be in these places; being from a small publishing company without a multi-million-dollar advertising and distribution network, will remain in relative obscurity; and therein lies the true tragedy. Yes, tragedy—for the messages in Dr. Douglass' book could impact on the health of the entire human and animal population of the world, if they were heeded. But as from time immemorial, seekers of truth have always had to dig deeply, searching for the diamonds among the mounds of chaff.

With every passing year, research efforts confirm, deny, or try to lay to rest some of the folk beliefs—the 'folk wisdom'—of the past. This is not to say that every conclusion arrived at is to be thereafter engraved in stone, although if such research results in the passing of laws that touch all of our lives, the effect may be the same. In the December, 1987 issue of UnitedCaprine News Judy Kapture's excellent article on goat milk points up the need for much more research, for the rather negative articles and reports she uncovered in her search, many being from 'authorities,' may well be translated into laws; and they fly in the face of not only thousands of years of practical human experience and observations, but in some cases are directly contradictory to opinions expressed by other researchers with equally good credentials. One example concerns the statement made by a doctor from the Denver National Jewish Center For Immunology and Respiratory Medicine who was quoted as saying he would definitely recommend a soy-based product for children allergic to cow's milk. This is in direct opposition to a number of studies cited in our collection of books on human nutrition that indicate that soy-based substitutes are both woefully inadequate nutritionally and can even be dangerous to health. As for the 'placebo' effect; can this possibly be operative in very young children?

Obviously, just because a thousand, or a million, people may believe something doesn't mean that it is either right or wrong. However, goat milk has been used for so many centuries and by so many different cultures that it is difficult to believe that every single one of these users have been duped, or experienced placebo effects, or have received no benefits from its consumption. But as long as their health improved and their nutritional needs were met, who cares, other than scientists, if it was a 'placebo effect' or not? So what, if some ulcer sufferer does experience a 'placebo effect' if he or she gets relief resulting from from the consumption of a harmless substance like goat milk? We doubt that such relief would be obtained, no matter how strong the placebo effect, if the consumer was drinking turpentine, or diesel fuel, or shoe polish, just as we doubt that every observation made by millions of persons (also including many doctors) that have claimed health improvements from the use of goat milk is wrong just because a few other doctors say so and happen to write articles. The scientific community is in agreement with the general public's observations on harmful practices (scientists as well as everyone else agree that drinking gasoline will probably do you great harm;) but they seem to oppose the public mightily in conclusions about benefits obtained from helpful or at least harmless practices. However, we observe a rather distressing tendency across the whole spectrum of American society for responsibilities to be transferred from individuals to specialists. Increasingly, corporations, organizations and institutions, often aided and abetted by state and federal governments, assume they know more about what is good for us than we know ourselves, and in some cases this becomes quite 'Big-Brother-ish' when laws are passed. Even more distressing is the increasing willingness of people to let themselves be so led; and to abrogate their responsibilities. Let a few people burn their hands on a wood-stove, and you will eventually find that every new one on the market carries the warning, often indelibly cast into the surface, 'hot when in use.' This is insulting to the intelligence of all of us on the face of it; I'd be willing to bet that every reader of this magazine knows the difference in a stove and, say, a refrigerator, and knows that stoves get hot! Let one deranged person poison some medicines and as a result every container thereafter has to be fitted with some type of tamper-proof or child-proof lid, to the annoyance of everyone and the detriment of some, who have died while trying to open bottles of heart medications to ward off an attack. It has become a national joke, that parents often give bottles with 'child-proof' lids to their children to open for them! However—where powerful vested interests—meaning big money—is involved, somehow these warnings seem to go by the wayside, don't they? There's an anti-tobacco crusade ongoing at present; and some popular magazines have smugly stated that they will no longer carry tobacco advertising, in articles displayed next to full-page liquor ads. How many people have been killed by 'smoke-driving' in our society? How many by drunk driving—one every 27 minutes around the clock, every day of the year, so say the latest statistics.

In actuality, most such issues are much too complex to be resolved by simple legal or authoritative-source pronouncements. The stove-manufacturer may be forced to put warnings on his product, but burned hands are going to continue to happen. Young children unable to read them, and accidents will happen. In our increasingly litigitous society, individuals will continue to sue manufacturers for accidents that could not be prevented by any modification in designs; i.e. by the inherent nature of the products—that is to say, they will increasingly seek to shift responsibility for their own actions, or the actions of those under their care, onto others.

In the early days of OSHA, many machines had to be provided with so many guards under OSHA regulations that it became impossible to use them. The annoying 'beep' that greets you when you do anything to your car—reminding you to close the door, fasten your seat belt, or whatever—not only removes some of the pleasure of driving, but also is really saying 'you're too stupid to remember these things.' We currently drive a 1985 cargo van, which we use to transport goats in; and have named it 'Old MacDonald' after the children's song. (Remember the lines, 'with a beep-beep here, a beep-beep there, here a beep, there a beep, everywhere a beep-beep?') Mechanics used to be glad to disconnect these buzzers or beepers, but now the ones in our area anyway are afraid to. Yes—afraid to; lest they lose their jobs, or worse, get sued!

Goat milk, especially raw goat milk, as Ms. Kapture's article points out, is experiencing similar pressures. Since there are not millions of dollars to be made selling it, and no corporate giant to come forth and pay for research and promote it nationally, goat milk will, as it is, inevitably suffer the effects of zealous promotion of substitutes, the results of research uncovering 'dangers,' and neglect.

One of the problems may be that no one is willing to come right out and say the unthinkable—that is, that the genetics of people parallels that of animals; that there will continue to be individuals born with defects as well as superior characteristics or traits; and those 'defects' may include some comparatively minor traits such as poor digestion or assimilation, and/or lowered resistance to disease or infection. We goat breeders study our animals in great detail and try to make matings based on constant improvements; this is not only not done in humans, it is almost taboo in conversation! It can be safely assumed, therefore, since incest taboos are operative in most of the world's societies, that most people are what animal breeders would call 'outcrosses.' This means that there is great genetic diversity among people the world around. A tiny bit of what animal breeders would call 'selection' may occur in humans—for example, a tall woman might feel less comfortable with a short man for a husband, and may therefore 'select' a tall man, thus increasing the genetic chances for tall children—but probably few people make coldly-calculated decisions about genetic traits in their choice of mates, in opposition to the way they would make such decisions about animals they were breeding. (Also, such decisions would more likely to revolve around the wisdom of having children, if it was discovered that one or both was a carrier of one of the heritable diseases.) Combine this with the fact that human genetics have not yet been mapped out in such detail so that we know the location and function of all the genes, and it is inevitable that there will be a small but present number of individuals in any society, especially one made up of millions of people, with unusual strengths and/or weaknesses of myriad types.

Out of such a large and diverse population, how many people would really be at some sort of risk, drinking milk? The question really should be restated as to how many would be at risk drinking raw milk versus those that shouldn't drink pasteurized milk, and yet currently may believe they should also not drink raw milk, but who in reality might benefit from, or be able to tolerate, raw milk. Definitely there would be some; let's say for sake of argument that maybe 1% of the population is at some risk drinking raw milk. (We really don't know, as it has not been tried on many of these.) 1% of 1,000,000 people is still 10,000 people; that's the population of a fair-sized town! Since basically healthy people are 'conspicuous by their absence' from doctors' offices, can we also assume that most people the doctors see are suffering from some kind of health problems, and if we set accidents aside, many of these may be linked to either poor nutrition, genetic weaknesses, or a combination of both. The threats of poor nutrition, increased levels of toxins in the environment, and the increased denaturing of the nutritional value of virtually all foods, (if only due to processing, setting aside the many artificial 'foods' people ingest such as soft drinks) all have their effects on the human organism; at the very time when people need increased nutritional quality in their diets to help ward off environmental insults, their food is of poorer nutritional quality than their ancestors got. Given these conditions, it is little wonder that our national health, despite megadollars spent on medical care and research, is way down the list among nations of the world; that many so-called 'third-world' or underprivileged countries exhibit better national health than our vaunted world-leading, high-tech society.

Of our hypothetical 10,000 people per million that maybe shouldn't drink raw milk, what percentage would be made seriously ill by such consumption? That's a different story altogether, and the answer is not a simple one, as many variables are involved. First, how about the quality of the milk? If we are speaking only of 'certified' raw milk, currently produced in only two cow dairies in the country, we can assume a high level of quality and hence a very low risk even to the 1%; if we include the raw milk produced, sold or given away and/or drunk on tens of thousands of small cow and goat farms across the country, where the only 'quality control' depends on the education and dedication of the producer, that's another story altogether. One can imagine that gravely ill persons, particularly the very young and very elderly, might not be able to cope with milk, raw or pasteurized; the bottom line is, we really don't know. As Ms. Kapture's article says, the the research she has uncovered deals with infants; none surfaced dealing with the effects of raw goat milk on adults.

We won't steal Dr. Douglass' thunder by quoting some of his interesting and amazing reports here, except for one example: in dealing with the virtues of raw cow milk, in one study where inmates on a penal farm were milking their animals and the milk was being served unpasteurized to the rest of the prison population, a measurable increase in health was observed, despite the fact that the production of this milk was performed under conditions so unsanitary as to be unbelievable. Cow manure and urine running into the milk pails, for example. Yet the raw milk not only boosted the general health of the prison population but protected them also against the overwhelming load of bacteria, debris and viruses that were being 'injected' into the milk from lack of even rudimental care. Dr. Douglass' book is not primarily about goat milk, and in fact only mentions it briefly; it is a book on the value of milks of all types, what happens during the various processing stages, the politics of the dairy industry and the government's role, and the value of breast-feeding. In short, it's a book about milk. (If you want to read about human grandmothers and even grandfathers that produced milk for infant feeding—see the book!)

What can we conclude from the study cited from Dr. Douglass' book—that prison inmates are healthier than the rest of the population? That we should inject a little goat manure and urine into our goat milk? Obviously these are silly questions; but it must be said that using strictly statistical methods, such conclusions could be drawn. Remember the old saying that there are 'lies, d—- lies, and statistics.' No, there are more basic considerations that every thinking person should contemplate before joining the rush to condemn all raw milks. First: just as your car tells you that you are stupid by beeping at you, so the government and the 'experts' are telling you that you are too stupid to make up your own mind about whether or not you should drink raw milk, (it matters not that you might have read and researched the subject pretty thoroughly before making a decision) and definitely incapable of correctly concluding that you really were helped, if you were, by trying it. Why is this? Is it because our families, then our schools, have failed to teach us some of the very basic things we need to learn to function in this world—including how to eat properly and care for ourselves nutritionally? (The information on human nutrition that is presented in most school textbooks is usually about 40 years out of date.) Second: since no one warned our statistical 1%, does that mean that in order to protect them from accidental raw-milk consumption, we have to prohibit it to everyone else, including a much greater number, that would unquestionably benefit from it? And if you doubt that last statement, Mr. Doctor, Ms. Scientist, then please show me the studies that tell how many people were harmed seriously, or even killed, by raw milk, especially raw goat milk, consumption. I have looked hard for them and I can't find them! Oh yes—there was a Salmonella outbreak in the Chicago area a couple of years ago? Sent a lot of people to the bathroom with diarrhea for a few days? Yes; and what was the cause? Pasteurized milk! (But scientists already discovered years ago that some Salmonella strains grow better in pasteurized milk than in raw milk.) And yes—there was another outbreak in some cheeses in California, wasn't there? And this one did kill some people? Were these cheeses made from raw goat milk? No. Check it out.

Trade-offs will always have to be made in life. Every time you get into your car you run very grave risks of being seriously injured in an automobile accident. But we don't prohibit driving—we couldn't very well, could we? We don't even prohibit alcohol, despite the shattering number of automobile accidents drunk driving causes, to say nothing of the other negative health effects of alcoholism. (We tried that, and it didn't work—we called it Prohibition. The public rose up in arms against the law.) But there is a great hue and cry now against raw milk; Judy Kapture's researches have turned up some distressing reports. How valid are these reports; or how applicable to the general public? Where are the research projects involving hundreds or thousands of persons, of all ages, races, and sexes, on the effects of diets including raw milks, both from the perspectives of improvement of health and therapy for ailments, as well as possible harmful effects? There apparently aren't any. Where is the equivalent of the famous Framingham study, involving an entire town, on raw milk? There isn't any. Where are the reports of the hundreds, the thousands of people that have died as a result of drinking raw milk? There aren't any, because there have not been any such effects.

There is another consideration. Animal breeders as well as scientists today are presumably divided into two camps on the subject of disease resistance. On the one side, are those that believe that every harmful agent that can be removed from an animal's environment should be removed. On the other side are those, including the writer, that prefer to build genetic resistance in the animal populations, and yes, by extension—in the human population too! Because of genetic diversity, even the deadliest epidemics and epizootics have rarely if ever wiped out a whole population—there are always some survivors, and these confer their immunity on their offspring. We know of this happening with the antibiotics and dewormers that we use on our goats—some of them, that have been in use a long time, are losing their effectiveness; because the parasites and the bacteria have developed resistance. We can breed such resistance into our goats—so that we can have animals that do not have to spend their lives in sheltered environments, but can go anywhere without fear of contracting some illness. In the breeding of such animals, yes, there will be some, perhaps many, that succumb and are lost; the survivors will be the resistant ones, carrying titers to a great variety of diseases, none of which caused clinical illness in these. We accept this philosophically in dealing with animals. The same thing happens in humans too, and we are unwilling to accept this or even discuss it. With humans, we consider (at least in Western civilization) that all lives are too precious and have value; therefore the only alternative is to pull all the risks possible out of the environment. That this does not work effectively or over the long term is demonstrated routinely in animals; but we still apply it to humans nonetheless. Or, at least in part; we want to forbid raw milk on the national level but still allow alcohol. A bit inconsistent, aren't we? We know that the forbidding of alcohol would be met, as it was before, with a national outburst of protest. The fact that the forbidding of raw milk is not met with anything but blind acceptance, or even a so-what attitude, instead of a national uprising, can be traced right back to us—to our lack of responsibility for our own nutritional education coupled with the powerful promotions made by the junk-food and junk-drink industries. There's a major question here—what does the government, the corporations, and the medical profession, have against our health? Nothing, as long as we blindly and unquestioningly accept their pronouncements as the final authorities; but let us take a few steps into our own hands, exhibit a little personal responsibility, try a few simple and harmless things such as drinking raw milk or taking vitamins, and 'they' recoil in horror! (Do you remember a few years ago when 'they' tried to have all vitamin and mineral supplements put on prescription? That was one time that we as a nation didn't sit still either; reports I uncovered state that our representatives in government received more protesting mail on this subject than they had ever received in the history of the Federal government!)

Where does this leave those of us who are dairy goat owners and breeders? Right now, there is a small market for goat cheeses, which are currently 'chic' and 'in.' This is all to the good, and may it continue; but this market may not last indefinitely, if the past experience with fads is any indication. If you can't sell the milk from your goats unless you pasteurize it, and by doing so you can't compete economically with the genetic supercows of today anyway, then what can you do with your beloved dairy goats? You and your family can drink the milk a couple of does can produce. What then? Show them? That's about it—and that's where we are going, isn't it? This is ok as far as it goes—but it won't do much for the national health, will it?

CAE can be a devastating disease, no one denies; however, so are Mycoplasma, Johnes', and a host of other goat diseases, any of which can cause suffering and losses. We don't object to trying to rid animals of CAE, or to trying to prevent introducing it to other countries if they do not already have it, just as we wouldn't want hoof-and-mouth, or scrapie, rinderpest or other indigenous foreign diseases introduced here; diseases that our native animals have had no exposure to and therefore no protection against. We do believe, however, that the best long-term benefit is to be gained by breeding resistant animals rather than trying to sterilize the environment. After 15 years, our own goats either never had CAE (which I doubt) or else they didn't read the books saying they were supposed to get it on an 80% of the herd basis (since they all nursed their dams) and I believe, looking back, that some of the losses we had in years past may well have been undiagnosed CAE, as well as Mycoplasma, etc. and today our herd may well have considerable resistance in the surviving animals. They continue to milk well, live long lives, and while some do develop arthritis-like symptoms in old age (10 and up) which may or may not be CAE, (many things can cause swollen knees) not all or even most do. Heroic therapies that are successful in saving gravely sick animals may be of benefit to our store of knowledge; interesting academically, but they may also be of long-term harm to the goats; for the animals that were rescued may go on to produce kids with the same lack of disease resistance. Breeding resistant animals is no picnic, for there will be losses along the way; but the best, the healthiest animals are those that have come through the fires and survived, to hand their genes to their offspring. Nature does it this way; are we smarter than nature? I don't think so, as yet. That the breeding of disease-resistant animals will ultimately make goatkeeping the joy it is supposed to be, with few worries and anxieties, few vet and medical bills, is repeatedly confirmed.

Personal anecdotes are not worth much scientifically, but here's one anyway. The writer turned the half-century mark in age, and I feel better at 56 than I felt at 35, 21 years ago, when we first began keeping dairy goats. For the past fifteen years, only on travels have I missed drinking raw goat milk and taking vitamin supplements daily. How many times have you heard or read other similar testimonials? Multiply my experiences by several millions, the people that have experienced something similar—all together, are our experiences still worth nothing? If they are not, where's the other side of the evidence—where are the reports of those thousands of people that have died or become gravely ill drinking raw goat milk? When and if I finally do get to read studies that show that raw goat milk is a killer compared only to the highway death toll, or the Black Death that swept Europe eons ago, then I will certainly revise my opinion; but until then, all the evidence points in the other direction—that raw milk, especially well-produced, clean raw goat milk from healthy animals—is one of the most healthful foods we can consume, as well as being one of the few untinkered-with foods left to us today. If anyone has any doubts on this point, Dr. Douglass' book will help set their minds at ease.