Monday, June 5, 2017 -  There is growing scientific evidence of the health benefits of raw milk— the downside is unpasteurized milk can harbor dangerous bacteria like E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella.

A California-based company, Tamarack Biotics, claims to have developed a unique way of processing milk that retains the proteins and other compounds destroyed by pasteurization.

According to Bob Comstock, the company’s founder and CEO, the new method involves a patent-pending two-step process using ultraviolet light followed by slow drying to produce a powdered milk product. The milk is mechanically spun around an ultraviolet light that is able to kill pathogens at only about 39 degrees. The slow drying also helps guarantee the proteins aren’t damaged.  This compares to pasteurization—heating milk to 161 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds to kill bacteria—which hasn’t changed much since it was developed by French microbiologist Louis Pasteur in 1862.

This new process, while making the milk safe to consume, manages to retain 71 percent of the proteins found in raw milk shown to be beneficial to the immune system. Pasteurized milk products contain around eight percent of these types of proteins.

Clinical studies are underway at the University of California Davis and the University Hospital Munich in Germany.

The company recently received generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status, an FDA designation that allows them to begin selling the product, called TruActive, in the U.S.

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