At some point in our agricultural history things became more mechanized. Farms when from smaller units serving local people (or people within a days walk or days horse/wagon/buggy ride) to units that serve thousands of people from all over the world. Food that would spoil in transit became a liability. In the newly industrialized world, science came to the rescue and discovered that with pasteurization, many foods (not just milk) could be preserved, transported and sit for months or years on a shelf somewhere before consumption. Pressure canning became the standard for preserving food, leaving dried foods and fermented foods in the dust.
Populations grew bigger and more and more people moved into the cities. Dairies, still needing to stay close to their customers because refrigerated transport of milk had not yet been perfected, moved their animals into smaller lots until finally, almost all dairy cows lived in dry lots and were fed whatever the farmer brought to them.
Now, some folks are beginning to realize there is something missing from the foods we eat and the beverages we drink - nutrition. We are MISSING vital symbiotic living organisms that help us digest our foods properly and we are losing our health as a result.
I recognize it sounds crazy in our scientific worldview, but I do believe raw milk is one of the keys to good health. BUT, it must be healthy milk to begin with coming from healthy cows who eat grass -- not soy, not corn and not some other conglomeration of foodstuffs with vitamins thrown in.
The argument against pasteurization makes sense only if the animals are allowed to eat from healthy fields and other efforts to keep the milk clean and cold are adhered to. Milk from dry lot cows should be pasteurized. Milk from field fed cows does not.
Give me pastured cows and you won't have to pasteurize for me (and you can skip the homogenization step in either case).
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