When Tina Shallis runs out of milk, it’s time for a road trip.
The Edison resident drives 90 miles round trip to Birchwood Farms in Pennsylvania to buy 6 gallons of unpasteurized milk -- enough to last 10 days for drinking and making ice cream or kefir. And here’s the kicker: She pays $8 a gallon, about twice the cost of a gallon of pasteurized milk at the supermarket.
“It is well worth it,” said Shallis, a mother of two.
Like Shallis, New Jersey’s raw milk lovers head to Pennsylvania and New York weekly or biweekly because, they say, pasteurization kills beneficial bacteria along with potentially dangerous bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella. And they cross borders because New Jersey is one of 11 states where the sale of raw milk is illegal.
At Birchwood Farms in Newtown, owner Mike Tierney said 60 to 70 percent of his customers have New Jersey license plates.
“Raw milk is absolutely awesome. It’s really like a perfect food,” said Tierney, a veterinarian and third-generation farmer.
Raw-milk advocates may soon be able to purchase their liquid gold closer to home. This year, the New Jersey Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation to allow farmers to sell unpasteurized milk. A Senate version is pending.
“Our farmers are missing that market,” said Assemblyman John DiMaio, R-Warren, a bill sponsor. “People are going to Pennsylvania to buy the product. Agriculture in New Jersey needs whatever it can get to get propped up.”
Farmers who sell raw milk can set their own prices because they sell directly to the consumer, said Ed Wengryn, research associate with the New Jersey Farm Bureau. But the federal government sets the price of pasteurized milk, which is $1.54 a gallon wholesale, he said.
Farmers losing out
Conventional dairy farmers are going out of business at a rate of 16 per day in the United States because farmers are not getting a fair price for their milk, said Sally Fallon Morell, president of Westin A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education organization. Milk sold in stores is government-subsidized and grain producers and dairy companies are seeing the profit, not farmers.
“This milk [raw milk] is coming from small farms. You don’t have the economies of scale,” she said. “It needs to cost more.”
At least 3 percent of New Jersey’s population consumes raw milk, Morell said.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars are going across the border,” she said.
The enthusiasm is not universal.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control recommend drinking only pasteurized milk because lethal bacteria may lurk in raw milk.
The CDC identified 45 outbreaks of illness tied to raw milk or raw cheese between 1998 and May 2005, according to the National Dairy Council. These outbreaks accounted for 1,007 illnesses, 104 hospitalizations and two deaths.
The FDA banned interstate sales in the 1980s but left it up to states to decide what to do within their borders.
DiMaio said it’s up to the consumer to decide what to consume. “People choose to eat raw oysters,” he said. The issue is divisive among members of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, said Wengryn. Large milk producers worry the reputation of milk itself would be damaged should consumers become sick from raw milk.
“But the smaller farmers who could produce feel they are closer to the customer and willing to make sure the product is wholesome and safe,” he said.
