A:
Your daughter and son-in-law (and all parents) should think twice before serving unpasteurized (raw) milk to children. Each year there are many outbreaks of food poisoning around the country caused by it.
Raw milk has certain dangerous bacteria that can lead to serious illness. This is especially true with infants, young children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those who cannot fight infection well.
Which symptoms someone gets after drinking raw milk depends on which bacteria are in it. The more common problems are vomiting, diarrhea, belly pain, fever, headache, and body aches. Most healthy people recover from getting sick after drinking raw milk or eating cheese made with it. Others may need to be hospitalized. Some people have died.
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against drinking raw milk. Experts from various health groups support the pasteurization of milk and are against selling raw milk. Pasteurization is an important part of making milk safe. It heats milk to a high temperature for a period of time in order to kill some types of bacteria.
There are parents who believe raw milk is more nutritious than pasteurized milk. Research has shown this is not true. There is no nutritional advantage to drinking raw rather than pasteurized milk.
Henry H. Bernstein, D.O., is a senior lecturer in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. In addition, he is chief of General Academic Pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Dartmouth and professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School. He is the former associate chief of General Pediatrics and director of Primary Care at Children's Hospital Boston. 
