I post an email to Dr.J. regarding my question from Gluten in Dairy. Here is his response this morning.

Great questions. I do believe that you are right in your thinking about the gluten consumed by dairy cattle being able to pass into their milk, at least the antibody-sized lectins of this troublesome glycoprotein should be able to. The good news for milk drinkers is that the fermentation of grains that takes place in the fore-stomach of cattle lessens the toxicity.

BUT once sensitized, the individual could certainly react to the smaller amounts that survive this process. I frequently tell people to think "peanut allergy" as far as how little of an antigen/allergen it can take to produce a reaction. As you know, avoidance is always best once we realize that we are afflicted.

Unfortunately, it is quite hard to eliminate all traces of gluten when we are consuming the flesh and products of grain fed animals, including poultry, cattle and even fish. We do have celiacs reacting to the lectins of gluten in chickens now. Ugh! But again, chickens (and farm-raised fish) are simple-stomached animals and the lack of fermentation allows more gluten into their flesh than that of cattle.

Does the grain feeding of dairy cattle potentiate casein? I think that's a great question. It certainly reduces the amount of protective omega three fatty acids in the flesh of cattle and the eggs of chickens. I think it could easily make casein different/worse but I have not checked into that.

But the main thing that we know makes casein worse is pasteurization. That's why more and more are recommending raw milk. However, that is potentially quite dangerous as some very harmful organisms can be consumed that way.

Just last week, the FDA recalled raw milk that was contaminated with Listeria, a bacteria that causes mild to severe symptoms including miscarriages. Pasteurized goat milk is the better alternative. The bad news is that the "worst of the worst" casein intolerants could even react to the 1-2%casein in goat milk as well as the other proteins that can cross-react with cow's milk.

The sad thing is that if we had never messed up God's wheat back in the mid 400's AD and not jumped ship from goat's milk to cow's milk, I don't think we would be having this discussion. But we did, didn't we?

Thanks for writing.

John
John B. Symes, D.V.M. ("Dogtor J")