In April 1946, Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild rose in the House of Lords on a matter of great import. There may have been many other priorities after the Second World War, but for Victor Rothschild, prevention of disease by pasteurisation of milk was paramount (his only other address in the chamber was on enabling Jewish settlers in the British mandate of Palestine).

A member of the banking dynasty, Victor Rothschild had little interest in international finance. He was a valued asset of the British intelligence services in the war, but his passion was zoology. To urge prohibition of raw milk, Rothschild explained the difference between cleanliness and safety: –

Though milk is one of nature’s best foodstuffs, it is by no means a perfect one, and no one can live exclusively on milk without additional minerals and vitamins. Consequently the fact that a certain amount of these substances is removed by heat treatment is of much less significance than the opponents of heat treatment would have us believe. The opponents of pasteurization—and many people who have fallen victims to their propaganda—sometimes say that pasteurization will remove the incentive to clean milk. Such criticisms display a lack of understanding of the difference between clean and safe milk, and also impute a somewhat alarming degree of ignorance to the Government in imagining that if compulsory pasteurization were introduced, the Government would remove the existing regulations about the cleanliness of milk. The regulations about the cleanliness of milk are directed towards preventing milk being contaminated with dust, blood, water, cow dung, and milk-souring bacteria, all of which at one time were an almost natural constituent of milk in this country. Heat treatment, on the other hand, is intended to destroy disease-producing germs. Though it may render milk safe for human consumption, heat treatment cannot render dirty milk clean. Both clean milk and heat treated milk are desirable for different reasons.

To impress peers, Rothschild told them that a number of persons double to the occupancy of the red benches died every year from tuberculosis from dairy milk. The enforced pasteurisation was to apply gradually across the country, beginning with urban areas (there would be more resistance in the shires).

Immediately following Rothschild was Lord De la Warr, from Bexhill in Sussex, who offered his full support. Unlike his predecessors, the ninth earl was a socialist. However, the proposed law was not passed by the government, and several of my friends take deliveries of raw milk, from Hook’s Farm near Hailsham.

Prohibition of raw milk had begun in the USA earlier in the twentieth century, Chicago enforcing pasteurisation in 1908. John D Rockefeller was a keen exponent. The only part of the UK to ban raw milk is Scotland, since 1983.

Read more: Rothschild and the campaign against raw milk