Deborah Blum: The Raw-Milk Deal
[Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.]
...Pasteurization, named for the great 19th-century French scientist Louis Pasteur, is essentially the process of heating a liquid to a temperature that will kill most microorganisms living within it. Hoping to aid winemakers who were concerned about the rapid spoiling of their product, Pasteur discovered that as the wine aged, populations of bacteria increased, metabolizing sugars and producing acid as byproduct. But if it was gently heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit before aging, the bacteria were killed, and the wine would keep for much longer.
It was actually a German chemist, Franz von Soxhlet (who never seems to get any public credit or, of course, blame), who, in 1886, first proposed using the technique to reduce bacteria in bottled milk.* In the United States, public health advocates began urging dairy farmers to begin using pasteurization as a means of breaking down a near tidal wave of child mortality. Raw-milk followers, including our friend the irate physician, fought the move.
It wasn't until 1914—compelled by a typhoid epidemic linked to unpasteurized milk—that New York City finally enforced a pasteurization rule. Seven years later, the city's infant death rate, which had hovered at an appalling 240 of every 1,000 live births, had dropped to 71 deaths per 1,000, a victory many credited to pasteurization....
Read entire article at Slate
...Pasteurization, named for the great 19th-century French scientist Louis Pasteur, is essentially the process of heating a liquid to a temperature that will kill most microorganisms living within it. Hoping to aid winemakers who were concerned about the rapid spoiling of their product, Pasteur discovered that as the wine aged, populations of bacteria increased, metabolizing sugars and producing acid as byproduct. But if it was gently heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit before aging, the bacteria were killed, and the wine would keep for much longer.
It was actually a German chemist, Franz von Soxhlet (who never seems to get any public credit or, of course, blame), who, in 1886, first proposed using the technique to reduce bacteria in bottled milk.* In the United States, public health advocates began urging dairy farmers to begin using pasteurization as a means of breaking down a near tidal wave of child mortality. Raw-milk followers, including our friend the irate physician, fought the move.
It wasn't until 1914—compelled by a typhoid epidemic linked to unpasteurized milk—that New York City finally enforced a pasteurization rule. Seven years later, the city's infant death rate, which had hovered at an appalling 240 of every 1,000 live births, had dropped to 71 deaths per 1,000, a victory many credited to pasteurization....