Amazingly, the controversy about the pros and cons of pasteurization continues to this day. Milk contains some , naturally occurring compounds, and some of these certainly undergo chemical changes with heat.
But that does not mean that these changes have any health consequence. There is a lot of bluster from raw milk advocates about pasteurization impairing the nutritional merits of milk, but the arguments are not backed by evidence.
There is plenty of evidence on the other hand about unpasteurized milk causing disease. While raw milk from an individual farm, where cleanliness is scrupulously maintained, is likely to be safe, milk pooled from many farms, as is the usual case today, can well harbour a range of bacteria. Until someone finds a way of preventing cows from defecating, pasteurization is the way to go.
By: Carol White. There's a fine line between wine and vinegar. That's what Louis Pasteur discovered in when an alcohol manufacturer commissioned him to determine what was causing beet root alcohol to sour. At that time, scientists thought that fermentation was a purely chemical process. Pasteur's research into fermentation led him to the discovery that it was yeast, a living organism, that turned the beet juice into alcohol.
Under the microscope, yeast was round and plump. But when the alcohol spoiled, it contained a different microbe that was rod-shaped. Pasteur speculated that this rod-shaped microbe called Mycoderma aceti, which is commonly used to make vinegar, caused the wine to spoil [source: Feinstein ]. These discoveries formed the "germ" of Pasteur's germ theory of fermentation. Years later, Pasteur would apply the same concepts to the origins of disease, leading to some of his greatest contributions to science and medicine.
In previous experiments, Pasteur had discovered that heating the fermented wine would kill the microbes that caused it to spoil. On May 31 all the animals were inoculated with virulent anthrax bacilli, and two days later, on June 2, the crowd reassembled.
Pasteur and his collaborators arrived to great applause. The effects of the vaccine were undeniable: the vaccinated animals were all alive. Of the control animals all the sheep were dead except three wobbly individuals who died by the end of the day, and the four unprotected cows were swollen and feverish.
The single goat had expired too. Pasteur then wanted to move into the more difficult area of human disease, in which ethical concerns weighed more heavily. He looked for a disease that afflicts both animals and humans so that most of his experiments could be done on animals, although here too he had strong reservations. Rabies, the disease he chose, had long terrified the populace, even though it was in fact quite rare in humans. Rabies presented new obstacles to the development of a successful vaccine, primarily because the microorganism causing the disease could not be specifically identified; nor could it be cultured in vitro in the laboratory and not in an animal.
As with other infectious diseases, rabies could be injected into other species and attenuated. Attenuation of rabies was first achieved in monkeys and later in rabbits. Meeting with success in protecting dogs, even those already bitten by a rabid animal, on July 6, , Pasteur agreed with some reluctance to treat his first human patient, Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old who was otherwise doomed to a near-certain death. Success in this case and thousands of others convinced a grateful public throughout the world to make contributions to the Institut Pasteur.
As population density increased and supply chains became longer and more complicated, raw milk often reached consumers days or weeks old. By the turn of the 20th century, childhood deaths attributed to contaminated milk skyrocketed, causing a major public health crisis. After incidents of illness and death markedly decreased, individual cities and states began enacting mandatory pasteurization laws.
By , with more than 50 years of evidence that the process was saving lives, the federal government required pasteurization of milk used in any interstate commerce. Today, the CDC maintains that improperly handled raw milk is responsible for nearly three times more hospitalizations than any other source of foodborne disease.
The FDA has also published its own webpage that debunks common myths about raw milk and pasteurization:. For his proof of germ theory, discovery of fermentation, and invention of pasteurization, Louis Pasteur was a French national hero by age 55, and even today, his name is a household word across the world. Subscribe to our blog to get regular email updates on food safety, pharmacy safety, and supply chain insights. Stay up-to-date with the latest news in food and pharmacy safety, facilities monitoring, and supply chain visibility.
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