By Michelle Griffin
A GROWING black market to meet rising demand for raw milk has led authorities to warn health food traders they face massive fines if caught selling the product for drinking.
Laws banning the sale of unpasteurised milk as a drink — due to concerns about potential health risks — were introduced in Australia in the 1980s. It is also illegal for local cheesemakers to use raw milk.
But an increasing number of Australians want their dairy straight from the cow, eschewing the flash-heating process Louis Pasteur developed in the 19th century to kill microbes in milk.
Raw-milk advocates claim that it is more nutritious than pasteurised dairy. According to Real Milk Australia, a Melbourne-based group lobbying to make raw milk legal, pasteurisation eradicates vitamins, minerals and enzymes that make dairy easier to digest and less likely to trigger allergies.
However, Dairy Food Safety Victoria chief executive Dr Anne Astin believes the ban should remain. "There have been public health outbreaks of listeria in the US and France connected to raw milk production," she says. "There is still good reason for caution."
A growing number of consumers, however, are taking a glass half-full approach, seeking out the raw product believing it is healthier. They are paying at least $3 a litre for the milk, sold in health food outlets as bath milk for "cosmetic" use, then drinking it, despite packaging warnings.
In the past two months, authorities in Queensland, NSW and Victoria have issued warnings to "rogue raw milk" traders. Undercover investigators from Dairy Food Safety Victoria visit health food stores to see if sales staff warn customers not to drink the bath milk. If retailers so much as hint that unpasteurised milk is safe to drink, they could be fined up to $44,800. At least two Melbourne stores no longer stock raw milk after being cautioned.
Last Thursday, Victoria's only commercial producer of raw milk, Aphrodite Dairy in Lakes Entrance, received a warning letter from Victoria's deputy government solicitor James Ruddle, advising it that one of its retailers had told a plain-clothes dairy officer that "it's actually illegal to sell unpasteurised dairy products, they just call themselves cosmetics to get around the law".
Farmer Mike Bowen, father of Aphrodite Dairy's founder, Sallie Jones, sees the letter as "a threat".
"If we suggest or one of our agents suggest (our milk) can be used for human consumption, we're up for a $44,000 fine."
Mr Bowen has called for a debate on the sale of raw milk for consumption, but insists that Aphrodite Dairy has never promoted its organic raw Jersey milk as drinkable — the labels on the bath milk state that "this product is sold for cosmetic skin treatment only". But filling a tub with Aphrodite Bath Milk or its Queensland rival, Cleopatra Bath Milk, would be expensive — a $560 skin-softening indulgence. Still, demand for the product is growing and health stores report waiting lists.
Aphrodite Dairy sells up to 3000 litres a week in Melbourne and another 1000 litres in Sydney. Cleopatra Dairy ships 1000 litres a day across Australia.
And many customers drink it.
Croydon health food trader Peter Lintzeris has been drinking raw milk for the past six months and says it doesn't give him the phlegm problems he gets with pasteurised milk.
"I grew up on a farm, and drank raw goat's milk. We never had allergies to dairy as kids."
His wife and three adult children also drink raw milk.
"I personally drink it but I cannot tell my customers to drink it," says Mr Lintzeris. "I cannot accept responsibility if you drink it contrary to the warnings on the packet."
Joanne Hay, editor of online magazine Nourished, started drinking raw milk six years ago. "I've seen it do miraculous things with the health of my family," she says, adding that it cleared up asthma, eczema and tooth decay problems in her three children.
She says the Primary Industries Department believes that drinking raw milk is dangerous.
"I would agree that it is dangerous to drink raw milk that has been created within an industrial farming complex. We believe drinking raw milk works if the cows eat pasture only."
Ms Hay says it is vital that raw milk has certification "so we know it comes from cows that have been tested (for diseases)".
Leading nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton, who caught the milk-born disease brucellosis, or undulant fever, after drinking raw milk as a child, believes the sale of properly tested raw milk should be made legal.
"I can't see why people can't have the choice, as long as it's safe," she says.
She dismisses claims that pasteurised milk is less nutritious. "You do lose some vitamin B1 and C, but there's hardly any in milk anyway."
Food Standards Australia New Zealand is expected to release a draft report on the use of raw milk in cheese production early next year, but the use of raw milk for drinking isn't on its agenda yet.