Frequently Asked Questions

Below you'll find a general statement about raw milk, followed by the questions we receive most often. If you have other questions, feel free to contact us.

Raw Milk and the Human Immune System
Every human is different when it comes to raw milk consumption. Most people who are lactose intolerant drink raw milk with no problem at all, but there seems to be a very small number of people who either need more time to re-colonize their gut with lactase-producing bacteria, or have some other challenge and continue to struggle with lactose intolerance. This subcategory of people appears to be very small. Research is underway to discover why some people have such a hard time consuming even raw milk. Every race and people from every continent and background can drink raw milk with that very rare exception as noted. In one study conducted in Michigan it was found that about 90% of people suffering from lactose intolerance with pasteurized milk or dairy products could drink raw milk with no problem at all. Studies at OPDC farmers markets confirm that research data.

Preparing for raw milk - If you are one of the many people seeking raw milk because you have a weak immune system and want to make it stronger, you are at the right place. However, do not expect your immune system to be strong overnight. It may be a struggle for you and it could take time. If you have a leaky gut and perhaps many food allergies, you will need to repair and heal the walls of your digestive tract prior to being able to consume raw milk or other foods as a normal gut would. So be patient and perhaps as a first step try drinking raw milk kefir (OPDC Qephor™ is pre-digested and easier to digest and consume…try making delicious smoothies.). As you take baby steps to repair your gut walls, you will rebuild immunity to bacteria, increase your gut biodiversity and enhance your enzyme production.

For some very good gut rebuilding advice please read “GAPS” by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride MD. She will guide you through the nutritional steps you will need to get your gut working again so you can digest properly.

Immunity is earned - For normal digestive tracts, raw milk is wonderful and very effective at rebuilding your immune system and overall digestive ability. But remember, this is something that takes time. Modern Americans are subjected to harsh antibiotics, sterilized foods, preservatives, GMOs, chemicals in our air, water, food, kitchens, work environments, cars, soils and everywhere else. Our natural immunity has been compromised, and it may take patience to rebuild it. A strong immune system means that your body has “earned" its own ability to do battle and protect itself. Earning means it is not for free and it is harder for some people than others, so take it easy as you take positive steps to heal your gut and reestablish the balance of your inner ecosystem.

Ideas for slower going - A baby step could be drinking very small amounts of raw milk (six ounces for an adult) every few hours to see how things go prior to going hog wild and drinking delicious full cups of raw milk. Remember that raw milk is a bio-diverse food containing many different wonderful bacteria, enzymes, and other living components. Your gut may take some time to get used to this living food. Common signs of your body saying "slow down" on your initial consumption of raw milk might be: gas cramps, a mild feeling of malaise, a low grade temp, diarrhea or other immune adjustment signs or symptoms. This is considered normal for some new raw milk consumers; it is a message to slow down and let the process proceed slower.

Baby steps for a big reward - OPDC tests its products for pathogens and they have been pathogen-free for many years. This does not mean that good bugs found in raw milk – which may be very strange and new to your body – may not challenge your system and make your immune system do some push-ups. So take your time if you are new to raw milk and take baby steps. Your body will do much better if given time to adjust. Welcome to immune system responsibility and strength. It is earned and highly rewarding.

Mother Nature's Archives of RAW MILK FAQs:

1. Does freezing damage raw dairy products?
Freezing puts raw milk products to sleep and has little effect on the important health benefits that raw dairy products provide. Enzymes and bacteria are fully active when they awake after thawing. Some vitamins are reduced by trace amounts after being frozen. The flavor is sometimes slightly affected by this and is not always apparent. All OPDC products may be frozen. Thawing should be done by placing the frozen product in a regular refrigerator for a day. Milk should be shaken to mix up the butterfat after thawing. Warming the product to room temperature just prior to drinking will also make the fat blend in better with the milk (if it has clumped or separated during freezing). Some consumers report that rapid thawing of frozen raw milk makes for better taste. To do this place frozen milk container into warm water for an hour and then place back into refrigerator when thawed and drink it in the next two days for best flavor.



2. Can I get OPDC products fresh and not frozen?
OPDC will ship products fresh and unfrozen as a consumer choice. Remember that if the delivery is delayed and the product is left un-refrigerated, it will be protected for an extended period of perhaps an additional 24 hours if it is frozen. If fresh, the product may become warm if refrigeration is delayed upon delivery. Warm raw dairy products lose none of their nutritional value, but they begin the process of natural souring, which starts to change flavors (rapid increase beneficial bacteria). This is not a concern for food safety, but it does make the product into a naturally cultured dairy product much like Kefir. OPDC recommends that warmed raw milk be cultured and stored at 90 degrees for 24 hours. The resulting product is a delicious Clabbered Raw Milk. 90 percent of the people on planet earth drink their milk as a clabbered milk, not fresh. Cultures can be purchased at the health food store.



3. Why do you say that "Raw Milk is Alive"?
Natural organic raw milk has in it vitally important living things. These include the following: beneficial bacteria, enzymes (including lipase, protease. and other), lactase forming bacteria, and many enzyme based pathogen killing systems. The common practice of pasteurization inactivates or dramatically reduces the effects of these important active (living) elements. As a result, you may be lactose intolerant when drinking pasteurized milk, but not lactose intolerant when you drink raw milk. This is because lactase enzymes are being formed when you digest raw milk. That is why we say, "only living milk brings life."



4. How much colostrum should I drink each day?
Remember that colostrum is a health food and not a drug. You can not overdose on fresh colostrum! Drink several pints per week to initially build up your immune system, then just maintain consumption of a pint or two per week and drink plenty of raw milk. Raw milk has many (not all) of the same elements contained in Colostrum, just at much lower concentrations. You can not (chemically) overdose on any OPDC products; they are food.



5. Are organic and raw the same thing?
No. "Organic" is a set of environmentally sustainable growing and production practices that are now certified and regulated by the USDA. Raw is the naturally occurring, unprocessed and uncooked state of any food. All organic milk starts out with the organic cow and all organic cows make raw milk. Nearly all dairies take their milk to a creamery that processes that milk using pasteurization methods. The resulting organic products are not raw and living, but rather they are "killed and dead." In addition, not all organic dairies follow the USDA organic requirements, which requires access to pasture for their cows. OPDC provides pasture 100% of the time. OPDC is the only organic pasture land farm in North America that does not pasteurize (heat treat to extend shelf life and kill bacteria) its products. Organic means diversity of life and soil. What a shame it is that "living, life-bringing raw milk" from all over the country ends up being processed into very dead Ultra High Temperature (UHT is 282 degrees - not the common HTST 161 degree common pasteurization: for extra long shelf life); so-called organic milk products. It truly exploits the word organic. Again, and it really must be restated for emphasis, organic means soil and the diversity of living life. How can something so dead be considered natural or organic? Only living milk brings life.



6. What happens to bacteria in pasteurized milk after pasteurization?
After pasteurization, bacteria found naturally in milk are killed. During the high temperature heating process, cell bodies of these bacteria are ruptured and their contents are spilled, releasing intracellular proteins. This causes many milk drinkers to suffer histamine or allergic reactions. Almost all of these same consumers can drink raw milk and not have allergies. The high levels of bacteria permitted in milk intended for pasteurization are still found in pasteurized milk; they are just dead and not removed by the process.



7. What is homogenization?
Homogenization is the process of destroying the natural butter fat cells found in raw natural milk. This process uses extreme pressure to break apart the soft buoyant fat cells, which cause the remaining small fat pieces to blend into milk and no longer float to the top making the cream line. Some European countries have studies that show that this process is dangerous and may strongly contribute to heart disease and arterial plaguing. Our FDA disputes these findings under pressure from the strong dairy lobby. Homogenization is not a required step, but rather a step of convenience to deny the consumer the ability to see how much cream is actually in the milk they buy.



8. Why is milk pasteurized?
In the 1800s, many US dairies began commercially producing low quality raw milk in the inner cities of Boston and New York and others. These Brewery dairies would feed their cows very poor quality "brewer's mash." The resulting milk was very weak and nearly blue from lack of protein, mineral, and fat content. This occurred during the Jamaican rum embargo. During this same time period, the dairy industry did not use or have access to refrigeration, stainless steel, milking machines, rubber hoses, hot water, or chlorine as a sanitizer. TB and Brucellosis were rampant (not to mention horse manure on the streets, flies, and lack of public sanitation and sewage) and the cows were milked by hand without mechanical machines. The cows stood in manure and there was no access to pasture (sounds like some factory dairy farms of 2005). The resulting unhealthy milk from these sources literally killed millions. The heating of milk to high temperatures reduced this horrible blight. During this same time period, milk from the countryside taken from pasture grazed healthy and clean cows was the best medicine of the day. In fact, the Mayo Clinic used this high quality country raw milk as a basis for many disease curing therapies. This was the untold story of raw milk. Because of pasteurization successes, commercial interests prevailed and all dairies (the good, bad, and the ugly) then began to pool their milk so that "nobody would die," even if milk quality was very poor. This was great news for milk mass marketing, and creameries created high profits. These pasteurization practices continue today with the chief benefit being extended shelf life. These modern dead milk products now cause allergies and lactose intolerance to huge sectors of the population. Current (PMO) Federal standards for pasteurized milk permit 100,000 bacteria per ml for milk going to be pasteurized with as many as 20,000 injured or living bacteria to be alive after pasteurization, and this may include pathogens (this is arguably the reason why milk is pasteurized). California standards for human consumption raw milk require that milk sold for raw consumption have fewer than 10 coliforms and fewer than 15,000 live bacteria per ml and no pathogens. OPDC averages about 1500 beneficial living bacteria per ml and no test has ever detected a human pathogen in our “raw milk samples.”



9. What are pathogens? Have they ever been detected at OPDC?
Pathogens are disease causing bacteria and organisms. The four human pathogens that are tested (state mandated) at OPDC include Listeria Monocytogenes, Salmonella, Campylobacter and Ecoli 0157H7. To date, not one of these pathogens have ever been detected by any agency in our “raw milk”. Tests privately performed at OPDC (BSK labs) showed that even when these pathogens were added to OPDC raw milk at extremely high levels (7 logs) they would not grow and die off (test results available upon request).

Campylobacter was detected in one OPDC raw cream sample in late 2007 after 7-8 days of very specialized lab culturing and testing performed by CDFA. There was no campylobacter detected in the “raw milk” that the cream was taken from. This incident did not cause any reported illnesses. Retest of the raw cream revealed no pathogens. Campylobacter was not listed as a human pathogen prior to 1972 by the CDC. It was considered the bacteria that causes common travelers diarrhea. If you consume campylobacter at low levels you become immune to it and it is seldom illness producing for the average person. Campylobacter is the most common cause of food borne illness in the USA and is commonly associated with uncooked poultry and deli meats.

Listeria was detected from a test performed on raw cream that was purchased from an outside organic source. This organic raw cream was purchased to make OPDC raw butter. Raw butter is a manufacturing product under state law and this is legally permitted. Since this incident in 2007, OPDC has not purchased raw cream from outside sources to make raw butter. No illnesses were associated or reported with this incident. It takes 100 pounds of raw milk to make 4 pounds of raw butter. That is why we bought raw cream. We had run out of milk and consumers were begging for more raw butter. Currently, OPDC raw butter is in very short supply and will continue to be in short supply.

No pathogen has ever been detected in any creamery environmental test as of January 2009.

OPDC milk products are highly pathogen resistant. In more than 120 million servings, and more than eight years of intensive testing, not one single pathogen has been found or detected in our raw milk samples.

As part of the Food Safety Program at OPDC, OPDC tested all of its cows manure in the summer of 2008 and found no Ecoli 1057H7 present. The manure pathogen tests were performed at the UC Davis and CDFA milk products lab in San Bernardino CA.

In summary, it has been theorized that the combination of grass feeding, no antibiotics used, no hormones, and low levels of grain used in diet cause a change in the cows immune system and rumen. This change in physiology directly inhibits pathogen development in the milk (actually a transfer from environmental contamination that does not seem to occur; there are no bad bugs in the manure that transfer into the milk and the clean raw milk is highly pathogen resistant).



10. What are enzymes?
Enzymes are specialized proteins that assist in the breaking down (hydrolyzing) and digestion of foods into useful elements that can be utilized, absorbed, or stored by the body. Enzymes are identified by the use of the ending "ase" associated with their name. For instance Lipase helps digest lipids (fats). Lactase helps digest lactose sugar (milk sugar). If your body does not produce and have available specific enzymes, then you may not be able to utilize certain food sources, or absorb certain minerals, etc. Phosphatase, which is key to the absorption of calcium, is inactivated by pasteurization. In fact, the test for effective pasteurization is called the "negative phosphatase test." Is it no wonder that Americans are suffering from osteoporosis at a rate higher than ever. It is now considered a US health crisis. A little trick that is not commonly known is that if you drink plenty of raw milk, lactose intolerant people can then tolerate limited amounts of pasteurized milk products, including ice cream. There is a sharing of required missing enzymes (lactase) and bacteria that are required in the gut, making a person not intolerant of lactose containing products.



11. Can I cook with OPDC products and will the heat affect the raw nature of the products?
Yes, you can cook with OPDC products, but any heat over about 115-120 degrees starts to denature enzymes and kill bacteria. This is okay, but just remember the benefits of raw and make sure you eat plenty of raw (not heated above 110 degrees) in your diet for a strong immune system, good digestion, and absorption of minerals.



12. What are Immunoglobulins?
Immunoglobulins (antibodies) are immune system boosting elements found in the blood stream. They include IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG, and IgM, which among other things neutralize toxins and counter microbial attack. They are collected during pregnancy (in the breasts and udders of mammals) and are transferred to the newborn via colostrum (first milk) after being born. These essential protective proteins form a big part of the immune system and respond to disease and infection. Bovine colostrum contains high levels of these antibodies.



13. Why does colostrum appear pink or yellow sometimes?
All bovine colostrum contains some blood cells (RBC and WBC). Sometimes this is visible and sometimes it is not depending upon the cow and whether she had some red blood in her first milk. This is normal. OPDC attempts to limit the amount of visible blood that is in colostrum, but on occasion the colostrum may appear slightly pink. The yellow color in the colostrum is caused by Lactoferrin: Rich vitamin levels and the natural fat color of milk fat. All of this colostrum is "Nectar of the gods," is normal, and completely safe.



14. I do not live in California. May I get your milk shipped to me?
Federal law mandates that raw milk in final package form intended for human consumption cannot be transported across state lines. To do so would constitute a violation of federal law CFR 1240.61. Please see legal note on ordering raw dairy products for your pets. An Affidavit is required under an agreement with the FDA.



15. What can I do with warm or soured raw milk?
Soured raw milk is still a vitally nutritious product and should be cultured for optimal flavor and taste. If you find yourself with a container of souring milk, just put in some live culture (some yogurt or store bought kefir starter available through www.bodyecologydiet.com), then set the product out for 24 hours at 80-85 degrees. The resulting food is wonderful, delicious, digestible, and highly nutritious. In most countries this is how people drink their milk. Our great grandparents called it Clabbered milk. Other raw milk and raw dairy recipes are available by calling OPDC at 1-877-RAW MILK.



16. Why do OPDC products carry a "government warning" that states that the consumer may be sickened by this raw dairy product?
Government regulations now require many living foods to carry a warning label, including meat, poultry, fish, and fresh juices. This came about because of the ever weakening immune system of the average American citizen. More and more US consumers have severely weakened immune systems and can become ill by eating small amounts of foreign bacteria that their bodies are not familiar with. It has been estimated that about 70% of the strength of a healthy immune system is made up of the diversity of living bacteria found in the intestines. Raw milk provides a perfect source for the "seeding and feeding" of these diverse populations of living bacteria. The average American diet is practically devoid of living bacteria (all killed foods and few bacterial sources). Our immune systems have suffered as a direct result. Consuming raw milk and dairy products is an important step towards regaining immune strength and overall health. On occasion a new raw milk consumer may have some diarrhea from over drinking raw milk for the first time. This is rare and should be considered very normal. After all, the intestine has never seen such an incredible introduction of new and diverse beneficial bacteria and does not have any idea what to do. It is possible, but highly unlikely, that pathogens may be transmitted in raw milk just as they may be transmitted in all other foods. OPDC has demonstrated that even when high levels of pathogens were introduced into raw milk, they die off and do not grow (BSK tests). In fact, pathogen killing safety systems are hard at work, keeping raw milk safe even if it has been contaminated. OPDC products are highly pathogen resistant. Because OPDC can not predict the future and know what is yet to come, it is possible that someday a pathogen may be detected in OPDC raw milk. If you are a healthy OPDC consumer this should have no noticeable effect. Your immune system will deal with it and you will probably not even know that a pathogen was in your raw dairy product. This is evident when reading CDC reports of raw milk illness. The farm and dairy consumers never get ill; it is the first time raw consumers (with weak immune systems) that become ill. This is exactly why all people should drink lots of raw milk. A strong immune system is a gift of freedom and of health. It is your choice, and with raw milk (exercise, good hydration, a whole-food diet, and plenty of love) you need not become ill, ever. Choose life!



17. What diseases are aided by consuming raw milk and raw dairy products?
OPDC may not make a medical claim or post cures for any disease process relative to any OPDC product. That is a crime under current FDA law.

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