The Amish raw milk black market

theLadyfingers

Here’s a link.

benher

Um…. there’s like 150 comments now so…

KLiM!!!

Anonymous

Cow’s milk is for baby cows. What’s the matter with you people?

Skep

“Mark Frauenfelder in reply to thebelgianpanda

And letting your kid skateboard or play football, too.”

No, this is more like you arguing that kids shouldn’t wear helmets in either of those two sports–or seat belts when in cars. Arguing for unpasteurized milk is like arguing for cars not to have seatbelts.

purple-stater

“Arguing for unpasteurized milk is like arguing for cars not to have seatbelts.”

Actually, that is rather accurate, because if everybody drove carefully there would be almost no need for seat belts. Just as if dairies kept themselves properly sanitized and milk was handled properfly from cow-to-table, there would be little need for pasteurization.

Anonymous

http://current.com/entertainment/movies/92790820_food-inc-full-version.htm

Watch this documentary and then comment again about “how safe and good our food system is”.

Paul Coleman

I live in NYS and drink raw milk every day (just had a glass this morning), and I have to say that I have no sympathy for this farmer. He’s working outside of the very strict rules that NY state farmers have to follow in order to sell raw milk and I’d have no confidence that he does frequent testing or outside inspections that are required of my local farmer.

I have mixed feelings about the delivery bit. I’m lucky because the farmer I buy from is only 5 miles from my house (In NY, you are only allowed to buy on farm). This does make things fairly inaccessible for just about everyone in Metro NY.

As for the risks. My toddler gets the pasteurized stuff. There is a risk no matter how clean the farmer’s operation is. I know well from the bout I had with camphylobacter. When it happened, I got several calls from the state checking in on us. One of the other requirements is that they keep a sales log (including phone numbers). As I see it, NY does a pretty good job of advertising the risks, and also dealing with any outbreaks.

So…why do I keep drinking it if it made me sick? I spent two years with chronic digestive problems. I won’t get into the gory details, but it wasn’t fun. I hated milk at the time. Chevy Chase sums it up well: http://www.break.com/tv-shows/saturday-night-live/milk-626351.html
Anyhow, my digestion was way out of balance, so I decided to try it because of the claims of probiotics. To my surprise, I liked it. Even more surprising, my digestive problems started to ease within 2 weeks. Pasteurized milk still sends me running for the toothpaste. Yup, this is all anecdotal, but it works for me. And to be honest, yogurt would probably be just as good on the probiotic front. I don’t love yogurt, so that’s me.

I completely agree with @Calimecita: “Do what you want with your body, but don’t endanger others.”

silkox

I’m sorry to come into this so late, but here’s a true story: when I was a kid we had a milk cow named Ethel. She spent most of her time out in the pasture with the other cattle, and we’d call her by yelling “Come, Boss!”

It was mostly my job to milk her, and sometimes, maybe because I was hurting her or my hands were cold, she’d lift up her back leg and try to move my hands away. Usually I’d just block her with my forearm, but occasionally she plop her (cowpoop covered) foot into the bucket.

When Ethel put her foot in the bucked, we’d usually drink the milk anyway, because we were a big family without much money. We never got sick.

Now, modern, more crowded, non-pastured cows are much different, and arguably more dangerous, microbiologically speaking, but I still can’t get too excited about an absolute need for pasteurization. However, my family does drink store-bought organic milk.

Anonymous

SInce we see alot of stories about raw milk up here in dairy land..

The state tends to go after the producers after a large number of children get near fatal sickness from it, and their families all have dairy products tracing back to one farm.

Just because they make it to the hospital before its too late, doesn’t mean that there aren’t children that are put in un-necessary harm and illness from drinking it.

bolamig

I’ve tried raw milk three times now from Rainbow foods in San Francisco. Twice I’ve gotten a sick feeling for a few days like my immune system was fighting something and been on the verge of staying home to rest. I hate to say it, but I’m going back to pasteurized milk for now. I’ll defend to the death the right of others to drink it, but me, I’m going to play it safe.

Admittedly, probably my fault for pushing the envelope and drinking it up to 5 days after purchase, when most recommend no more than 2-3 days. But who has time to go buy milk every 2-3 days? And if you live alone how can you drink a quart in 2-3 days? Who doesn’t feel a sense of remorse pouring half the $8 quart of raw milk down the drain after a few days?

Raw milk makes sense if you live on the farm and drink it out of the teat, but for us city slickers I dunno.

sshurgot

In France there are raw milk dispensers in parking lots; the French have always enjoyed raw milk and cheeses, and they’re not dropping like flies.

http://frenchletters.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/got-raw-milk/

I don’t drink milk so it really makes no difference to me. (I did have a big glass of raw milk last summer.) But think about this: the reason most milk in the US must be pasteurized is because the animals it comes from are sick from their diet of corn and overcrowded living conditions; they have to take antibiotics and are given hormones (which people then consume but that’s another entire discussion). Once pasteurized, the milk contains dead bacteria and other organisms (they’re harmless, but they’re still in the milk); the cows often have mastitis (a bacterial infection of the udder). Those are just a few reasons milk grosses me out. All sorts of things are done to pasteurized milk at “the factory” but really the hormones cows are given is a big deal; remember that rBGH is a growth hormone.

Timmers

Don’t forget, cheese made from raw milk tastes much better than the pasteurized kind.

I thought America was all about freedom. I guess not.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  The business of America is business.
  
  An immoderate freedom can lead to disaster.
Ugly Canuck

Louis Pasteur is a national hero in France, too.
Jonathan Badger

Pasteurization came into existence 1) in France 2) long before antibiotics, growth hormones and other “modern” things. You know that disease, tuberculosis (“consumption”), that beautiful women were always dying of in 19th century operas? It wasn’t just people in operas. It was a major disease in real life. And milk from infected cows (which might not even look sick) was a major source of TB infection. Pasteurization stopped that. Pasteur is a major hero in France, and their major biological research institute is named after him.

DDT

People are really touchy about what they eat. I was raised in the 50s at a time when science said mother’s milk was bad for you and instant formula was good. Those who invoke science to prove their point are such a bunch of know it alls.

I live in the rural US and have access to a wide range of milk products. I only use milk for cutting the tannin in my tea and try to get goat milk, which has less fat. Priorities for selecting milk go this way here: Organic > goat > locally raised > low price > no ergosterol (dont get me going on that) > pasteurized. If I was in the city it’d be the other way around. That said, I don’t advocate distributing raw milk or drinking it by the full glass. And you really have to know the farmer to trust anything you stick in your oral hole. I feel sorry for all the kids who have no other source of milk besides cows fed hormones and antibiotics.

Cows milk doesn’t really belong in kids, that is why we have mothers. Now it turns out some mother’s milk is has enough concentrated organochlorines to make it qualify as toxic. So why don’t you science types just waltz on over to the nearest breastfeeding mom and tell her that.

Antinous / Moderator

Hence, your body gleans more nutrients from badly boiled, nutritionally-leached vegetables than from raw ones brimming with them.

Although that does appear to be true, I think that it’s probably better described as an accident of fate than as an evolutionary change.

theLadyfingers

It is disputed, certainly, a little reading on my part revealed that not too many people agree that cooking and cutting food has had a selective effect on our species yet.

Regardless, cooking, preserving and preparing food seems to have helped our ancestors survive far longer than they might have. Raw food diets are a luxury that only someone in a society with a food surplus is privy to. Raw food doesn’t last, and food’s not always available when you live in lovely old Mother Nature.

Compare the lifespan of a modern couch potato to that of a caveman or even the average person 50 to 100 years ago, we seem to be doing okay despite all these “deviations from our natural lifestyle” railed against by the dreadlocked white people brigade.

I’d argue we could stand to expose ourself to more dirt and generally avoid the whole chemical-antiseptic-everything in our homes to develop proper immune systems, but yeah, cooking food generally seems to be a good idea.
- tas121790
  
  “dreadlocked white people brigade”
  That’s a term I’m going to start using. Thanks!
  
  P.S. I’ll add something relevant to the main topic.
  
  “In the United States, milk pasteurization became “widespread” in the 1920s and it was considered “one of the major breakthroughs in public health”.[5] Pasteurization is credited with reducing infectious-disease rates in the U.S. “more than 90% over the past century”.[10]“
  - Marktech
    
    “dreadlocked white people brigade”
    That’s a term I’m going to start using. Thanks!
    
    If I remember correctly, natty [or natural] dreads are the Rastafari religious locks, and bathroom dreads are the fashion statement dreads. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

DDT

When I was a kid living in Tokyo I once started an international incident by asking for a glass of milk. They acted like I wanted a glass of blood. I now know they milk it is revolting and don’t have any cows.

DDT

Anon, they do have unhomogenized but still pasteurized milk available, at least here. It comes organic or not, and the organic variety is also free of ergosterol, which is why I buy it. You can make butter by skimming off the top of the jug and washing it gently.

Noodlehead

I’m a huge fan of the butter and cheeses made from raw milk. They are miles above the pasteurized in taste and texture, but I’m not what you’d really call a Raw Milk Devotee.

The thing is, I wonder that if to were allowed to be sold along side pasteurized milk and subsequently mass-produced and spat out in factory volumes, how much less safe would it become? I think that’s where the real problem with raw milk should be. After all, how often do we see stories about food safety and manufacturers fluffing their profit margins by cutting corners in all areas of the process?

These things usually work themselves out. Ages ago, I remember the USDA screaming about the hazards of unregulated Black Angus when it found its way into the market. If it weren’t so late, and if I was more ambitious, I’d probably scour the internets to compare the arguments used then to what they’re using today.

TheWhaleShark

I had a very long post typed up, but I realized it won’t do any good.

I’ll sum it up thusly:

Raw milk advocates: No, raw milk is not better for you. There is no credible evidence to support this position. Yes, it has a much higher association with select pathogens. There is plenty of evidence for this.

But that doesn’t matter. That’s not the important part right now. I could rage and rage and rage, and I do plenty of times, but I won’t do that right now.

Here’s my position:

If you, as a healthy responsible adult, wish to subject yourself to the dangers of raw milk consumption, be my guest. Hell, I think coke should be legal too. Why not? It’s your body.

However, the problem with raw milk consumption is that it is often purchased for FAMILIES.

And this is the problem. If you purchase raw milk and feed it to a young child, you are exposing them to a not-insignificant risk of DEATH. Nearly all foodborne pathogens wreak their worst havoc on the young and the elderly.

If you’re a pregnant woman, raw milk is a doubly dangerous proposition. Should you contract listeriosis from said milk, that listeriosis will jeopardize the life of your fetus AND yours as well. L. monocytogenes can cross into the placenta, which is an immune-privileged site. There, it will multiply to number sufficient to overwhelm both the mother and the fetus, and give its predilection for causing meningitis and encephalitis, this is a cause for concern. Note that listeriosis has a 20% – 30% MORTALITY rate. That’s quite severe overall.

So if you’re a healthy adult, I don’t care. Well, OK, I actually do care – I genuinely do. I’m a food safety microbiologist, working for a regulatory agency. I wouldn’t have this glamorous job if I didn’t care.

However, you are not my primary concern. My concern is with disseminating accurate information to those populations most at risk, and trying to make sure that people do not endanger the lives of their dependents.

lillyd

Am I the only one frustrated by the arrogance of many scientific-minded people. As others have pointed out, the scientific “consensus” of today is often refined or even refuted tomorrow when we discover new information. Many doctors are STILL telling people with high cholestorol to avoid eating cholesterol, for god’s sake, and this was the conventional wisdom of yesterday. And anyone who believes we have a full understanding of the human (or animal) immune system is naive.

Autoimmune diseases are increasing greatly and many diseases that we just accept as “normal” pathologies are being found to possibly be autoimmune, like diabetes, for example. After years of thinking we should kill every germ out there, we now are discovering that many germs are good and even bad ones can have a positive effect on the immune system (hygeine hypothesis).

We keep acting like it is only important what has a NEGATIVE effect on the immune system and greatly underestimate the importance of POSITIVE influences on it (probiotics, antioxidants, vitamin D, etc).

So, this is why it is important to have a little humility when it comes to assessing the value of raw milk, dietary fat, red meat, etc. Every day they are discovering new things about the immune system. Take Epigenetics. This is a recent discovery and totally changes how we should think about the effects of nutrients, micronutrients, and chemicals on our health.

For people acting like we know all there is to know about the positive or negative nutritional attributes of raw milk, I say maybe you should take a step back and see the forest for the trees. The immune system is very complex and we know hardly anything about it.

Anonymous

Even if we don’t know much about it, which is a bit of an exaggeration, does that mean it makes sense to ignore our current best guess?
Churba

You seem to be confusing “Arrogance” with “How science works.”

Yep, the consensus changes when something is discovered or shown which shows that the previous consensus was incorrect. Because that’s how Science Works. You are telling us nothing new here, and I can’t see how this is a negative thing – considering that if this wasn’t part of the scientific process, you’d still be pinning your message on paper to a big, cork-and-wood community message board, rather than talking about it on BoingBoing.

Essentially, that Process you call arrogance is largely responsible for the modern world around you.

das memsen

Not sure why so many people are angrily against raw milk and such true believers that pasteurization is an unquestionable act of god, as if there might not be a disadvantage to the process that they never thought of.

i’m a big lover and supporter of science. and, i’m a big lover and supporter of questioning scientific conclusions, because anyone with any kind of a clue about human history should know that things we accepted as indisputable facts yesterday are seen today as naive and / or dangerously ignorant. so just because pasteurizing milk seems to make a lot of sense now does NOT MEAN that raw milk can’t have benefits you morons haven’t thought of, even if all the numbers in your papers claim otherwise. maybe that’s not the case, but what do you care? and maybe it is the case, in which case, you miss out on some great tasting and healthy food.

and- christ- of all things to get excited about, when there are so many bigger social problems we should be tackling. i’ve been trying to find a raw milk supplier in NYC for a while, but thanks to fear-mongers like you, i can’t. it’s all hidden, and the several people i know who have been drinking raw milk for years (and aren’t dead, by the way) won’t tell me where they get it from because they don’t want to endanger their farmer.

land of the free, indeed.

TheWhaleShark

“What annoys me is the assumption that the raw milk producers are paragons of virtue (as opposed to the evil food companies) who are completely honest with their customers. The parallels with alternative medicine purveyors aren’t entirely unjustified.”

THANK YOU.

I believe people do often forget that a farmer is also a businessman. The farmer is in the business of selling you his product. He is no more friend or foe, no more likely to be true or not, than any other small business owner. Do not blindly trust what a farmer tells you, just because he appears folksy.

This is my major issue with the “organic” and “all-natural” food movements. It’s just a different kind of advertising, but people buy right into it because it sounds so honest and good.

das memsen

You need to realize that “organic” is a very wide blanket. For companies like Horizon Organic and the like, they’re basically what you are saying- giant mega-corporations that have discovered there’s money to be made in this new niche, so they aim for that niche. Their stuff qualifies as “organic” but it’s still hundreds of animals in confined places far removed from your dinner plate.

This is a world of difference from having a nearby farmer whom you know personally, who is accountable to you and the people of the community, who can’t afford, literally and figuratively, to lie or screw people over. ESPECIALLY raw milk producers who are already on the edge of the law and dealing with a very sensitive product that can’t be packaged and shipped all over the world. The very nature of raw milk prevents it from ever becoming mass-marketed, hence why it’s kept illegal by giant food lobbying groups. They can’t make any money off of it.

I know who my farmer is. They know me and my family. We have a relationship. There is transparency in their food, and accountability to their business. They raise organic food, but it’s nothing like the organic food at whole foods- they suck, they’re just interested in making $$$, just as you are saying.

Don’t lump them all together!

murray

“(By comparison, between two and twelve children die every year playing high school football. When will high school football be banned?)”

At first glance this seems like sound logic. But you have to ask: how many people were drinking unpasteurized milk over those 10 years, and how many kids play high school football? You need those numbers before drawing any conclusions. Could be that there are 100,000 kids playing football and only 10,000 people drinking raw milk. (I have no idea what the numbers are… just pointing out an oft-overlooked reasoning error.)

Niklas

Agreed, also: Many people die during or soon after surgery, we need to ban surgery!
- johnjupiter
  
  everybody dies after being born.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I’m guessing that you’re not an obstetrician.
Anonymous

Considering all the potential side effects or dangers printed on food labels of “legal” food (ie. “has been shown to cause cancer…”), there doesn’t seem to be much logic in allowing those products to be purchased and yet NOT allowing consumers the option to purchase other products that have “potential dangers”. It’s ok to buy things with pesticides, saccharine and aspartame (which have been clinically PROVEN to harm us), but I must be “protected from myself” from buying raw foods and milk that have the “possibility” of making me sick. There are official warnings on “legal” food as a CYA to those producers (“Buyer Be Ware! We warned you. Don’t blame us if something bad happens”).
Fine. There needs to be an Official Warning?
Allow consumers to sign a waver that they are aware of the potential dangers in consuming raw foods/milk and then leave the farmers and us alone!!

libelle

Yeah, the raw milk threat is being fought vigorously here in Los Angeles too.

Not too long ago, they shut down a raw milk place in Venice. The medical marijuana dispensary on the same block initially thought the Feds were coming for them.

Heaven forfend we get decent yogurt or cheeses!

mikewarren

To me, it seems that that pasteurization was more a response to people moving further from cows: shipping milk further and trying to keep it longer obviously increases the risk of any sort of contamination (especially when almost nobody understood what that really was). If you’re close to the cows and drinking milk from that day or the prior one (and *especially* if you’re the one doing the milking, cleaning, etc) there’s a hell of a lot lower risk of “contamination”. But, I wasn’t there…

Given our insane industrial food “system”, maybe pasteurization is a good idea. Probably we should just irradiate everything and *really* make sure.

That’s beside the point, though: how the FUCK can anyone possibly argue that adults can’t be *allowed* to drink whatever they want? (Unless, of course, you’re all for prohibition, etc. and then I’ll just ignore you). If I want to make a delicious beverage from the pulp-and-paper plant outflow, what’s it to you? Some freaking “health care dollars”?! Try doing something more dangerous than having two beers in a row one in a while…

Anonymous

Most of the comments mix three different processes done to milk:
Separating out fat to lower the fat level to a consistent standard.
Homogenization, breaking up the fat particles into small pieces that does not float up to the top of the milk.
Sterilization, heat treating to kill bacteria, hotter makes for longer shelf life and more “boiled” taste.

All milk is not equal from the cow. The quality allways varies from calving when it sometimes has a little blood in it and is extra rich and yellow and contain antibodies specific to the flock that the calf needs for its immune system. Then you can milk extra rich yellow milk a few times and it is off quality for regular sale but it can be baked to a delicious and very healthy pudding. As the cow goes dry the milk becommes less rich in fat and I assume also proteins.

The udder health vary between different cows. The standard measurement for this is the number of white blood cells per volume. A few hundred thousand per mililiter is still ok. The delivered quality is then an average and some bad milk wont spoil all of it.

Back when we had cows on the farm we kept tabs on each cows history and milked those that had questionable but still not bad quality last to minimize the risk for carrying any infection to the other cows via the milking machines. We also saved milk for our own consumption from the cows that statistically were most likely to be good, more or less since we could do it.

There is a mild natural antibiotic in fresh milk that decays away in about 48 h if I remember right. And it needs to be chilled immediatly to stay fresh and not turn into a good or bad youghurt.

Having your own milk were good but the store bought lightly pasturized and homogenized tastes about the same for me, the largest taste difference is the ammount of fat. And when it is evened out from thousands of cows it gets consistent and allways tastes the same and you no longer feel the taste differences from changes in the cows feed or very rarely health.

These manual procedures with milking machine handling is getting obsolete and replaced with robotic milking and the trend is to electronically measure the quality of the milk from each cow and milking or even individually from each of the four teats to catch health problems a little earlier. A healthy udder has four distinct compartments of milk producing glands and reservoirs and if an infection takes hold it allmost allways start in one of them. The robots can milk the cow more often then two times per day wich is good for ther production volume and health and they can automatically sort out milk to be discarded due to antibiotic treatments. The volume is measured to adjust the ammount of feed and matched with the prognosis for each cow to find any problems early.

Smell and taste is imho enough for quality control of fresh milk on a cow by cow basis and for the can in the refridgerator but who knows what I were immune to? And as you mix you loose control and need to trust measuremnts and routines.

But this is in Sweden where routine treatment with antibiotics in for instance the feed is absolutely forbidden and growth hormones etc is not used.

carriem

Sorry, i skimmed. But just a question to those who believe raw milk is baaad: Is Europe out to lunch then? I mean, it’s perfectly legal elsewhere, so why wouldn’t it work here in north america? obviously it’s not for everyone: honey is bad for infants, sushi not so good for pregnant ladies, etc. But making it illegal “for the good of the population” is like making booze and pot illega— oh wait.

Disclaimer: i tried raw milk and survived. Also – IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Churba

If you hadn’t skimmed, you’d have noticed the position of those who are saying raw milk is bad can be boiled down to thus -

If you want to drink it, sure. Your body, do what you like. Shove a vein full of heroin, or go full raw vegan, if you like. However, to say it’s risk free, better for you, so on, so fourth, is a load of bollocks, and here is why. Doing what you like with your body and mind is perfectly fine, you’re only doing it to yourself, but poorly or falsely educating others on the risks of that course of action is not.
- carriem
  
  Oh, so we’re all just getting persnickety then. Seems obv: regulate; slap on a label; “buyer beware”. Just like cigarettes.
  What’s the angst? There’s money to be made here.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Oh come on now, the modern world is not so bad!
  Here’s a song about it:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZuK9QREmcs
  
  That’s right.

andyhavens

Got hyperbole?

insert

To be fair, what are the denominators for those figures? How many people drank raw milk in the past ten years? And how many played high school football?

I would be surprised if raw milk still didn’t come out safer than football, but I think we ought to know the whole of those statistics…

bosconet

Excellant point. If the number back up the raw milk advocates show the math!

Anonymous

You have to balance the number of deaths, with the number of consumers (or players). As the market grows there will be not only more deaths because of more exposure, but the likelihood of contamination will go up dramatically too.

Emo Pinata

I didn’t see this mentioned, but unpasteurized milk is a requirement for some of the world’s best cheeses – and they can be quite dangerous (fungus, bacteria, etc.). From what I’ve heard unpasteurized heavy cream, butter, and other dairy products are better as well – and I could buy that.

I have had unpasteurized milk, and it tastes worse than pasteurized whole milk. It was an odd texture and lacks the rich, sweet flavor I like in fresh pasteurized dairy milk.

Brainspore

I’m cool with it as long as everybody involved is aware of the relative risks. I also like to imagine people consuming the product at illicit underground milk bars a-la “A Clockwork Orange.”

jonw

Christ, this is from the “not vaccinating is evil” crowd? Milk pasteurization has saved way more lives than the polio (or MMR or pertussis) vaccine. The point is that the government has no business dictating what people can put in their bodies. This doesn’t apply only to your favorite rebel food trend, it is a basic human principle.

Anonymous

The pasteurization of milk was one of the first modern breakthroughs in the battle against disease.
Raw milk advocates are greatly misguided.

I have worked on well-run and VERY clean dairies.
Believe me, you do NOT want to consume unpasteurized milk.

ToddBradley

Anon #7, how are we supposed to believe you when you are too cowardly even to put your name on your post?
joker125

My Dad has ulcerative colitis. He has been on prednisone and has taken many different anti-inflammatory drugs with all their horrible side effects. He has been hospitalized 3 times and has lost up to 50 pounds during a flare. It wasn’t until he started consuming raw milk with it’s naturally occurring probiotics an enzymes that he has had relief. The dairy we get our raw milk from is owned by veterinarians and every batch is tested for pathogens before it is allowed for sale.
Anonymous

Or you could let people make their own choices and let them buy what they want. If they want to take that risk it is none of your business.

Amelia_G

My apologies for not reading the preceding 108 BB comments, but: after having lived in Europe I know that raw milk products are something no one should have to live without, if they are served up in a well-regulated market. The US is no longer a well-regulated food market (according to my reading of Molly Ivins, about people who died after George W. Bush limited meat inspections).

My German exchange student friends in PA and NY tended to drive out to visit local farmers and find a reliable one who would sell them unpasteurized milk. It is wonderful. So is uncooked steak, available before noon 1x per week in Hesse. Apparently only Japanese restaurants have adequately codified rules for rare entrees in the US.

Jack

The US is no longer a well-regulated food market.

Thatâ€™s true, but there is a larger issue of historic milk territorial wars in the U.S. I know the Wisconsin ones are fairly legendary, but they exist in Vermont as well. In general U.S. markets nowadays do not favor the small seller of anything/anywhere.

Amish markets have become a very popular source for great organic food here in the East Coast. So itâ€™s not shocking to me this would be happening. But considering food education in the U.S. is painfully lacking, I donâ€™t see this coming out well at all.
- Amelia_G
  
  Arg. I just skimmed 108 comments. Yes, Jack, you’re right! In US history, milk distribution to NYC was notoriously toxic, should be used as an example in the history classes PA and other states lack.
  
  It’s not just a question of teaching kids what to look for in food products, it’s also about making sure producers can’t skimp too much on those food products, and regulations reflect valid science, and regulators do inspect, and there are enough inspectors, and inspectors’ reports reach relevant people.
  
  Anecdotally, fwiw, drinking pasteurized milk in Germany leaves you feeling, a-satisfied, to quote Inigo Montoya. I drank a gallon a week in a West Coast US city and knew something was amiss.

Quiche de Resistance

“What were we to do? Agree to their falsehood? Or just stand upon the truth? And we chose truth.”

And the truth is there’s big money selling this milk to NYC bourgeois yuppies.

steverb

We had to purchase our as “pet” milk. Our supplier used a subscription model, where you paid in advance for X gallons per week.

Pick up was in a hidden cooler on the backside of house in a less than squeaky clean neighborhood. Best damned milk ever. Non-pasteurized, cream on the top goodness.

Made great butter, yogurt and cheese too.

thebelgianpanda

btw, if you ever want to make cheese, raw milk is orders of magnitude easier to use, better tasting, and more consistent than pasteurized/homogenized milk. i wouldn’t feed raw milk to an infant or someone with an immunity illness, but then again i wouldn’t feed them Hollandaise, mayonnaise, game, windfall fruit, or hotpockets.

farcedude

I’m actually an immunocompromised person (Crohn’s Disease, on medicine that kicks the heck out of my immune system), and I drink raw milk. There were a couple things that converted me:

1) Pasteurization kills *most* bacteria, but in most milk you’ll find on the shelf, Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis is still present. It’s believed (not proven), with some correlation (again, not causation), to be a possible cause of Crohn’s disease. However, you don’t find that in properly handled ‘raw’ milk. First, this is because there are other things in the milk that pasteurization kills that would normally fight the Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis (yes I copied and pasted it, got a problem?). Secondly, cows raised on a real farm setting, instead of a factory farm setting, which aren’t lying in their own manure all the time, don’t pass it around or contract it.

2) If you do tests on raw versus pasteurized milk, you’ll find that on average there are fewer bacteria in raw milk. I don’t have the numbers on hand, but it’s on the order of 100 to 1.

3) (this is my inner hippie) I get to meet the cows every week when I pick up my milk from the dairy. The way it works is that I’ve bought a share of a cow, and I pay a weekly fee to feed that share – basically a way to get around not being able to ‘sell’ raw milk. They’re healthy, not wallowing in their own shit, eating good grass, and they’re happy. And I’ve seen them being milked – It’s a good clean process that I’m much less worried about.

Also, about something else on your list – game. I’d much rather trust game that I or a family member killed and butchered than meat from a factory. I know that it was handled well and properly, and if the animal was sick or not. I don’t know that about meat at the grocery store.

*whew, I don’t post here often, but when I do, it usually ends up like this*
- george57l
  
  @farcedude
  
  “I’m actually an immunocompromised person (Crohn’s Disease, on medicine that kicks the heck out of my immune system)”
  
  Hey – me too. (Azathioprine, but it aint too bad on the old immune system)
  
  I knew about the Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis correlation with Crohn’s but what people “believe” about that is their own business – it’s just correlation at this point. I did not know about the MP being relatively speaking more of a threat in pasteurised and I’m not sure about that (just noted your later post, though, and will have to go check). Also didn’t know about the lactose/lactase balance thingy – more research to do re raw milk. Not that I have access to any and not that I am much bothered. Though I will happily and often eat French cheese made from unpasteurised milk – yummy!
  
  Thanks for the new info (and more research to add to my ‘to do’ list)
- thebelgianpanda
  
  Hey, I have a good friend with Crohn’s and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The only point I was trying to make with that example is that I personally wouldn’t chance a food that does carry a risk with someone at increased chance for that risk to be serious, that’s all.
  - farcedude
    
    Sorry, meant the reply to be based off your points, but then be a general rant. Not aimed directly at you.
    
    Separately, I did forget two things – First, the dairy that our milk comes from tests the milk regularly for a variety of bacteria, and posts those results for us to see. Secondly, raw milk includes lactase, which helps with processing lactose. My girlfriend likes it because she can drink this milk, but not pasteurized milk, because lactase is one of those ‘unimportant’ enzymes deactivated during pasteurization.

oldestgenxer

Raw or pasteurized, it doesn’t matter. Cow’s milk is meant for a suckling calf. Are you a suckling calf?
Chances are good that you are–there are a lot of them trolling the internet.

Anonymous

and a nanny’s milk is meant for a suckling kid

(but it also makes great goat’s cheese)

Most products of animals have some other primary purpose … so your point is… ?

vmaldia

If killing pathogens with heat changes the taste too much, maybe gamma radiation (which is already used to sterilize food ) can give us a win-win situation, all the taste with none of the bacteria/viruses. If you dont like the hulk, you can use electrons instead of gamma.

in wikipedia, look for “food irradiation”

Rob Gehrke

We need a war on milk.

ImprovidentLackWit

We need a Milk Czar!

Cheaplazymom

Relax peoples. Nobody is advocating for the unregulated distribution of raw milk. They are simply advocating for the very limited highly regulated sale of raw milk to local customers. Small dairy farmers welcome inspections, licensing procedures, mandatory safety classes, etc. etc. I live in a small rural community. Its a lot like olden times. If I want I can buy cheese, milk, beef, chicken, pork, eggs, wheat, oats, corn, a full range of vegetables, bread, maple syrup, shrimp, lobster, fish, honey, and a pantry full of preserved foods like jams, salsas, pestos, pickles, etc from local sources. As in the actual person who grew, made or raised it. I don’t need a government agency telling me that the food is clean and fresh because I can see exactly where it is coming from. I know that the people who are selling me this food eat it themselves and feed it to their families. I won’t pretend that this particular model is scalable to mass production. It isn’t. But I do believe that the preservation of small local agricultural markets is crucial to our long term well being as a people and a culture. When I buy my food from my neighbors I am not just indulging in my personal fetish for fresh unadulterated food, I am supporting a local economy. The reason that the raw milk crack down is compared to the civil rights movement is because the existence of small-scale farming is at risk. The question is, do farmers have the right to sell their products directly to their customers? Do people and communities have the right to make their own food? Or should everything be neutralized, homogonized, pastuerized? You pro-science fanatics seem to prefer the levels of control provided by factory farms as if industrial food production will keep you safe from GERMS. Ok, that is your right. Shop at the supermarket and Bon Apetite. But let me and my neighbors keep the culture in agriculture.

rawdiant

I wouldn’t drink raw milk because I just think it’s gross. However, I do believe that raw milk is more nutritious than pasteurized. Mostly, this opinion comes from SCIENCE. Trouble with science is, whatever you want to believe, there’s probably science to back it up. If you think global warming is real (as I do), then you’re probably not giving much credence to, say, all of the *scientists* touted by those who deny it. Who gets to say what constitutes real science and what constitutes junk science? So, this is how I can like a geeky site like BB, yet totally disagree with so many people here from time to time. So, yeah, I’m anti-pasteurization, anti-vaccination, etc.

In the end, it’s probably not the milk that causes these deaths as much as it is the things that *happen* to the milk before people drink it (exposure to manure, dirty hands, dirty machinery, dirty storage containers, aging, etc.). I would concede that, unless one can control all of the above factors, then drinking the cooked stuff is probably less risky. In the end, cow milk is basically suited for just one thing: turning little cows into bigger ones. Dairy is not really that great for people, and is (I believe) the source of numerous health problems.

As for those who are irked by the raw food movement, I’m not going to argue science with you. It’s there (raw foods usually being more nutritious, for example, than cooked), but I really became a believer by just living that life for a few years — 100% raw, uncooked, vegan foods. I lost a ton of weight (70 lbs), came off some scary heart pills, got my blood pressure in check, and felt more energetic than ever. I’ll admit that my experience isn’t necessarily the answer for everyone, but it worked for me when so many other diets & exercise regimens failed.

tas121790

Science isn’t a belief system, its a system of observations and explanations. Scientists individually may have biases but science as a whole does not.

“if you think global warming is real (as I do), then you’re probably not giving much credence to, say, all of the *scientists* touted by those who deny it.”
There aren’t very many scientists who deny it (96% of climatologists accept the evidence for human cause climate change)

“Who gets to say what constitutes real science and what constitutes junk science?”
Um this is so profoundly ignorant, there is something called scientific consensus. I can say without a doubt that vaccines have been immensely beneficial to humankind and there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Science is science and junk science is not science.

“and is (I believe) the source of numerous health problems.”
What you believe is irrelevant, all available data does not support the notion that dairy products are harmful at normal consumption levels.
- rawdiant
  
  “… there is something called scientific consensus. I can say without a doubt that vaccines have been immensely beneficial to humankind and there is no link between vaccines and autism.”
  
  Oh, so consensus = certainty? Why, thank you for enlightening me on the definition of that word. Care to define any other common-knowledge terms for me?
  
  Unfortunately, consensus does NOT equal certainty. In this instance, consensus is a group of scientists who generally agree on something … but such agreement is still shy of certainty. That gap, tiny as it may be on many scientific issues, allows for at least the possibility that there may be a better explanation out there awaiting discovery. This is really the pioneering, fringe forefront of many areas of scientific enquiry. Sure, it’s the realm of some quackery, but also of some innovation. This is something that interests me, both as a layman and as a biologist. Consensus, for example, says that when a person is diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, the best course of treatment involves a lifetime of prescription drugs, injections, and other related protocols and products. However, the more pioneering scientists are showing that it’s nearly 100% curable by diet alone. For a raw foods example, google Dr. Gabriel Cousens documentary “Simply Raw.”
  
  “What you believe is irrelevant, all available data does not support the notion that dairy products are harmful at normal consumption levels.” Thank you for pointing out the status of my relevance. I was under the mistaken belief that my opinion was somehow relevant, but now that you’ve issued your judgment from on high, I guess I’ve been shown my place.
  - Mister44
    
    There isn’t just a consensus that vaccines are not harmful – there is no evidence to the contrary.
    - rawdiant
      
      I wasn’t actually discussing vaccines here, was I? Here’s a decent link to the current state of all things anti-vaccine: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=BAE7F6323813CFAFB8338173FB11D429
      
      Natural News also interviewed the infamous Dr. Andrew Wakefield last week — “who accuses the British Medical Journal of being “hijacked” by false journalism and printing blatantly false allegations about his own work with autistic children.” Link was:
      http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=608256A446123276E4E72A5351322186
      
      That last on is interesting because, amid all of the arguing about whether there was a link between vaccines and autism, here’s an interview with the main doctor around which the whole controversy is centered. So, even if you hate the guy, you can at least listen to what he says himself about it all (for anyone for whom this is an important issue, pro or con).
  - Anonymous
    
    Oh, so consensus = certainty?
    
    Actually more often than not. Scientists like to argue, and when you end up with 19 out of 20 agreeing on something, it’s probably a good guess 19 out of 20 times that it will be correct. People like to focus on the exceptions, but they’re not something you should bet on.
  - tas121790
    
    “Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker, to give a unique holistic approach to nurturing the hungry soul.”
    
    If it quacks like a duck….
    - rawdiant
      
      In the film “Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes Naturally”, Dr. Cousens does not (as I recall) bring up any spiritual topics. It’s a well documented piece of standard science, and all who stuck with the raw diet protocol were cured. Others have done similar work w/ respect to diabetes and raw foods nutrition.
      
      Obviously, spirituality is separate from science. However, discounting one Medical Doctor just because he happens to also maintain spiritual views must be a tough stance for you because it means that you must also discount the views of ALL scientists who are not atheists (or, I guess, at least agnostics). So, your argument that Dr. Cousens is a quack means that all doctors who belong to any churches must also be quacks. However, atheism, however enlightened you believe it to be, probably isn’t the dominant philosophical/spiritual outlook in the world, even among scientists (known for their dedication to rationality). And since a good deal of scientists in the world probably belong to some sort of church, then by your rationale, a huge portion of what is accepted as mainstream scientific knowledge must be discredited. In fact, you should probably maintain no positions yourself on anything until you can do background checks on the scientists to make sure they meet with your approval.
      
      My point, of course, is that people’s spiritual beliefs do not logically preclude them from practicing science. Nor do people’s lack of spiritual beliefs necessarily preclude them from producing junk science.
    - tas121790
      
      “My point, of course, is that people’s spiritual beliefs do not logically preclude them from practicing science. Nor do people’s lack of spiritual beliefs necessarily preclude them from producing junk science. ”
      Completely agree, Ken Miller is catholic and a huge support of evolution education.
      Bill Maher while I agree with him alot and an atheist is also a supporter of “big pharma keeps us sick to make money” nonsense.
      
      But back to Dr. Cousens. In Simply Raw, they claim that they have a cure for Diabetes and it works in 30 days. Alarms should be going off already. The American Diabetes Association states that there is no cure of Diabetes and really, it only takes 30 days to CURE diabetes. WOULDNT EVERY DOCTOR ON THE FUCKING EARTH BE USING THIS? Or is it some massive global conspiracy with the UN, millions of doctors, Governments, Big Pharma and the Freemasons holding down the cure so they can make money. Occums razor is a useful tool, maybe they are right and Diabetes can be cured by raw food, but the evidence is not there so I’ll err on the side of caution.
    - rawdiant
      
      “The American Diabetes Association states that there is no cure of Diabetes and really, it only takes 30 days to CURE diabetes. WOULDNT EVERY DOCTOR ON THE FUCKING EARTH BE USING THIS? Or is it some massive global conspiracy with the UN, millions of doctors, Governments, Big Pharma and the Freemasons holding down the cure so they can make money.”
      
      It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just that so few doctors learn about nutrition and the body’s own means of healing itself when given “good” stuff and not given “bad” stuff. Instead, they learn about diseases we get and which drugs seem to treat those things well. As for the diabetes cure in particular, the evidence is there in Dr. Cousens’ documentary (or, if people won’t call it evidence, it should at least be majorly eyebrow-raising). I think the reason it’s not more well-known / widespread is that it’s a rather intensive, radical protocol for most people. Eating nearly 100% raw foods ( and only certain ones at that) is not easy if you’re emotionally and/or culturally attached to the kinds of foods that probably gave you diabetes in the first place (esp. Type 2). So, in order to succeed, you have to be determined — and, frankly, that’s not something that most doctors can or want to deal with. It’s easier to just maintain someone’s condition with meds than it is to devote the amount of personal attention it takes to lead them onto a better path (not that most of them know one exists). Not everyone in the documentary was cured, mainly because they just couldn’t stick to the new diet (which is nearly 100% raw and also avoids many of the higher-glycemic fruits & veggies).
      
      I hear you on the water vibration stuff, though… it’s certainly out there. Fortunately, he does keep most of that kind of stuff separate from the diet and nutrition (with the exception of one of his books which purposely considers both diet and spiritually together).
    - tas121790
      
      In all honesty though, I gotta question the judgment of a doctor who thinks water has vibrations and that a solution of water so heavily diluted there’s no molecule of the original substance left can cure cancer. Its just flat earth level of nonsense.

Anonymous

Yeah, why should anyone else care what I put in MY body? It only affects MY health! True, unless you happen to contract Tuberculosis or any other virulent disease from the products you ingest.

To wit (yes it is from wikipedia)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tuberculosis:

“The M. tuberculosis complex includes four other TB-causing mycobacteria: M. bovis, M. africanum, M. canetti and M. microti.[16] M. africanum is not widespread, but in parts of Africa it is a significant cause of tuberculosis.[17][18] M. bovis was once a common cause of tuberculosis, but the introduction of pasteurized milk has largely eliminated this as a public health problem in developed countries.”

…

“When people suffering from active pulmonary TB cough, sneeze, speak, or spit, they expel infectious aerosol droplets 0.5 to 5 Âµm in diameter. A single sneeze can release up to 40,000 droplets.[39] Each one of these droplets may transmit the disease, since the infectious dose of tuberculosis is very low and inhaling fewer than ten bacteria may cause an infection”

Now, you drink your raw milk, but you don’t serve it to your kids. That’s great. That’s responsible. The only person you are risking is you.

Unless that un-pasteurized milk contains M. bovis (and how would you know it doesn’t?). You contract TB, but you don’t realize you have TB (it’s just a cough, whats the big deal? No ones gonna tell me to go to the doctor!) and then you cough around your kids. Your kids contract TB from you, you still don’t recognize it as TB and send your kids to school. And so on, and so on… Well, now ain’t this a pretty picture.

Great now we have a TB outbreak. Costing copious amounts of time and money as well as the health of people you probably never even met nor touched a drop of your “healthy raw milk”.

But hey, no one should ever tell you what to put in your body.

dalziel86

Oh, Boing Boing. One minute you’re militant atheists raging against all things unscientific… and the next minute you’re on the side of the Amish in the fight against pasteurised milk.

Ugly Canuck

The rage of youth.
- dalziel86
  
  … which would be far more understandable if Boing Boing wasn’t run by a collection of 30-something Gen X-ers.
Deviant

“Oh, Boing Boing. One minute you’re militant atheists raging against all things unscientific… and the next minute you’re on the side of the Amish in the fight against pasteurised milk.”

Science, atheism, and libertarianism seem to go together quite naturally to me.
- TheCrawNotTheCraw
  
  Not to me.
  
  Too many libertarians seem like selfish dicks.

Cheaplazymom

Hmmm. I don’t recall anyone going to JAIL for contaminated beef, or for tainted eggs, or ecoli laced spinach. Nobody has talked about BANNING burger patties. I didn’t read about any raids on industrial food processing plants, complete with confiscated equipment. The raids on raw milk farmers have very little to do with public safety and everything to do with the further consolidation of food production in this country. It just really fries corporate food processors that small scale farming still exists in America and that the quality is superior to their mass produced product. I should be able to buy raw milk from a local dairy. I know where they live if I get sick. I take my chances with food purity every day in the supermarket, I think I can handle the risks of drinking unpastuerized milk.

bcsizemo

*rant ON*

Don’t even get me started on the idea of “tainted” beef. Here in NC you can’t get a burger that isn’t burnt into a hockey puck. That’s not a damn burger, that’s bullshit. I can vote/drink/and die for my country I should be able to eat a juicy burger (medium rare please). Hell Burger King and Cook Out are better than any gourmet restaurant because of these laws.

Fire Birds (sort of a chain type place, upscale steak house) USED to serve cook to order burgers. And OMG they were to die for. That was until the state found out, and now it’s medium WELL or BURNT. I haven’t been back, period.

The same goes for things like this. You can argue all you want about the health care implications of such things, but frankly that doesn’t stop people from ending up in the ER for all kinds of stupid shit. Anyone watch youtube lately? I bet there are a million videos of someone being stupid and getting seriously hurt….. If I am of the age of consent then I should be able to ingest cook to order beef (assuming some basic safety precautions) and raw milk (again, assuming basic safety factors are in place.)

AND

(This really goes both ways. Just like the whole pot thing. States can waste money enforcing stupid laws like this…or they can make some basic guidelines and hold these places accountable and make a profit from it…)

mgfarrelly

I may be stepping into a briar patch here, but can we contrast allowing people to consume raw milk (which prior to the adoption of pasteurization, was one of the leading causes of foodborne illness) and allowing people to opt out of vaccination? Both have serious health repercussions, both could (and in the case of anti-vaxxers do) put a burden on health care services. The big difference I can see is herd immunity, but could a resurgence in food-born illness be just as threatening?

To be clear, I am wholly in support of vaccinations, no question. But if we’re talking about opting out and freedom of choice, I’m curious how people square this.

bklynchris

ooooo…..Doctorow’s Law within in 12 comments! A new record!
Fex

As you say, there’s no herd immunity issue, and as such, one’s choice to drink unpasteurised milk has no direct impact on the rest of society. Sure it could potentially add something of a burden to the health system, but if you’re going to try and stop people from doing something because of the burden it might put on the health system, then I think that we should probably start with something like smoking which puts hundreds of thousands of people into hospitals every year.

I would say that those voluntarily buying unpasteurised milk are a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things, and that the effort going into regulating the tiny industry could probably have a more positive impact if focused on other areas. (Fast food’s relationship with heart disease and diabetes springs to mind.)

Anonymous

First they came for the Amish… We are all Amish! Support your local Amish people…http://www.cafepress.com/theAmish

Anonymous

So, how many died from contaminated food put out into grocery stores we all go to daily? Start the list: eggs, peanut butter, ground beef, spinach, etc etc etc. Raw milk – that’s just a, wait for it, drop in the bucket.

HeadlessClown

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/07/24-ill-in-colorado-raw-milk-outbreak/

The above details all you really need to know about raw milk “safety.” That E. coli strain can cause acute kidney failure in children. It’s been found in a number of inspections of raw milk outbreaks. Letting your children drink raw milk is like exposing them to chickenpox from other kids even though a vaccine is available. Sure, it might not hurt them aside from the typical symptoms. Then again, they could develop a secondary infection and die in a hospital bed with fluid slowly filling their lungs.

Ultimately, the law says that’s your call as a parent, just like it does with raw milk. Fine. I eat raw roquefort and raw oysters, I know that game; you deserve to be able to eat risky foods, and many of them are delicious. But raw milk is a different kettle of fish. It’s not sufficiently different from pasteurized milk in flavor to merit the risk (pasteurized milk has a little bit of Maillard browning, but not much at all), and the risks are enormous. Listeria has a higher fatality rate than botulism or salmonella, and raw milk is one of its main vectors. Would you really subject yourself to that risk for a bit of extra creaminess? Would you feed your toddler, with his naturally weak immune system, raw milk–while knowing that you could claim his kidney while doing so?

Furthermore, a lot of these claims are ridiculous. Above, someone claimed that “flavor molecules evaporate” during pasteurization. Hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not how that works, and I’d like to see some hard research to back up that claim. Also, just looking at one randomly picked claim from a raw milk advocacy website, I can see that they claim that pasteurization destroys Vitamin B12 in milk. Pasteurization never reaches temperatures high enough to decompose the B12 complex, only UHT does. These sites are deliberately misrepresenting one process’s effects as another’s just to support their point. Also, I personally think UHT tastes better than pasteurized milk, but that’s neither here nor there.

Feel free to believe woo and drink the equivalent of an active pathogen culture. That is your right, just like the right to a belief in a god, or aliens, or gravity, and the fact that we have that right is wonderful. But I am imploring you, do not deceive yourselves into believing that you are helping your children by feeding them this stuff and evangelizing its “healthy qualities” to the masses. You only stand to hurt them more than you can possibly imagine.

/Molecular and Cellular Biologist
/Training to become a physician

Jack

Letting your children drink raw milk is like exposing them to chickenpox from other kids even though a vaccine is available.

Okay, you have made a point and showed some evidence. But here is the problem: You are presenting a perfect system where this kind of contamination can simple be controlled by laws and regulations. And itâ€™s clear thatâ€™s not the case when E. Coli outbreaks occur in many highly regulated food processing facilities that should be safe but arenâ€™t.

This debate reminds me of the food prep safety debates I used to get into with friends who thought it was â€œgrossâ€ that I ate food from food carts in NYC in the 1980s and even now. Folks are fairly convinced that â€œmaking food on the streetâ€ somehow equals unsafe. But being in my 40s I can honestly tell you the only times I have ever had food poisoning and gotten sick was from supposedly more â€œlegitâ€œ sit-down restaurants and take out places.

We live in a very superficial age. People donâ€™t cook for themselves so they donâ€™t understand what â€œdirtyâ€ means when it comes to food (hint: all food is dirty and messy) and folks believe the cleaner the front room or plating presentation is, the â€œbetterâ€ the food is. Ha! Anyone believing that is being played for the fool they are.

franko

this was one of the stories i actually stopped and read in today’s The Daily. interesting stuff, and right in line with my life, as i’ve been delving into my local unpasturized milk underground lately in a search for milk to make cheese. i have to admit, it does seem kinda like a lot of hand-wringing over a very small danger.

spiderking

We’re having a big kerfuffle over this subject in BC right now. Raw milk/natural foods people who think their nutrition mythology trumps sound scientifically-based health risk reduction through sterilization.
Louis Pasteur is considered a hero for good reason, you know.

zyodei

But that misses the point. It doesn’t matter if the raw foodists are right, or wrong.

What matters is that YOU, nor anyone else, has any natural right to prevent them from the food they want.

If they want to eat cow manure, YOU, nor ANYONE ELSE, has the right to prevent them from doing so.

Self-ownership is the most fundamental of human rights.

Let’s be clear what you are calling for when you are calling for raw milk to be made illegal: you are calling for men with guns to go and intimidate the buyers and sellers. If they resist this intimidation, they will be killed or put in a cage.

That’s why it doesn’t matter if his football analogy is off or anything. It doesn’t matter if it has a 90% FATALITY RATE. NOBODY has the right to prevent other people from doing something that they believe is in their best interest.

If you are against raw milk, then find studies showing it’s danger, and peacefully spread them and spread awareness.

The whole issue is – SHOULD SOCIETY BE RUN WITH PEACE OR VIOLENCE. Should decisions be made peacefully by individuals or enforced at the point of a gun? Do we trust people to watch over themselves, or do we give a gun to a completely fallible and human authority to make decisions for them? That is the issue here.

A a side note, I wonder if anyone has recreated this study recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_feeding#Pottenger.27s_cats
- RyanH
  
  And if we were talking about anything other than a disease issue you might have a better argument. The problem with this (and why a few comments have compared this to the vaccination issue) is that by engaging in risky health behavior you stand a good chance of passing the consequences of that behavior on to those around you.
  
  Unfortunately, a lot of ‘rights’ arguments end up sounding like a bad physicist joke. “First, you assume a spherical cow in a zero friction environment…” Yes, in a world where every action involved you, one other party and no chance of spilling over on anyone else what you are saying would be a obvious truism.
  
  However, society is not like simple astronomy; a bunch of two body problems that don’t interact. Rather everyone’s actions tend to have consequences for everyone else. And as a society we identify choices that have the highest chance of harming others and dictate against them. Sometimes by force.
  
  If you want to live a life accountable to no one but yourself there are more than a few places in the world that do not enjoy the rule of law. They are universally hellholes. Have fun, I’m happy with a few pragmatic trade offs to civilization.
  - zyodei
    
    So, I take it you support the full prohibition of alcohol?
    
    Anyhow, drinking raw milk endangers only us.
    
    The problem is, there is nothing unique about health issues. Every action we take effects those around us. So is every action to be controlled by the state?
    
    Here’s one: speech. Let’s say I, in good faith, although misguided, put up a website saying that AIDS is a farce and that you can cure it with chamomile tea. I am, one could argue, harming the public good. Should ‘society’ stop me from doing so?
    
    The problem is that ‘society’ is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists are individual people. In the long run, when you give some people the power to make decisions for others, it creates big problems.
  - zyodei
    
    P.S. Where, exactly, can we find a place where there is no state dominating society?
    
    I can think of one example: Somalia.
    
    Somalia is a country that was utterly pillaged by 20 years of corrupt, dictatorial, quasi-socialist rule.
    
    Since the ruler left, and anarchy has been the status quo, the society has been better in every way. Somalia is no heaven – but compared to its statist neighbors Somalia is in many ways on par or better off.
- Wormman
  
  “What matters is that YOU, nor anyone else, has any natural right to prevent them from the food they want.”
  
  Yes, fair enough, but it gets a bit sticky when folks choose to feed a risky foodstuff to their kids. Or when someone who doesn’t do their homework believes some of the wilder claims made by raw milk promoters. If you’re eating manure, you pretty much know what you’re getting into. If you’re drinking something that the seller tells you is “healthier” (but which contains a higher risk of causing illness), I think it’s time for the regulator to step in.
  
  Those of you who consume raw milk, tell me honestly. When was the last time the person you got it from told you the risks involved, or warned you that kids or pregnant women should stay away from it ?
  
  Personally, I’m in favour of regulation, but only if the promoters of the product can be compelled to tell their customers of the true risks involved. I also think this should apply to processed foods. Food companies regularly cut corners and put profit before the health of their customers and regulation and monitoring keeps them more honest than they would be if none existed, as well as catching a good proportion of those that transgress. I just don’t believe that profit driven raw milk producers are more or less honest than profit driven food companies.
  
  The current situation is dangerous simply because it drives the producers underground and makes them more likely to take risks which put their customers in danger (qv. prohibition of certain drugs). By all means legalise raw milk, but place the same standards of food hygiene on them that pasteurised milk has, or at least change the standards to reflect the difference in processing while still encompassing a range which minimises the risk. I once worked in a game meat processing plant where our export market insisted on animals killed and butchered in the field. They had a wider range of allowable limits for contaminants and advised their customers to treat the meat accordingly (ie. make sure you cook it properly).
  
  What annoys me is the assumption that the raw milk producers are paragons of virtue (as opposed to the evil food companies) who are completely honest with their customers. The parallels with alternative medicine purveyors aren’t entirely unjustified.
  - zyodei
    
    But in essence you are saying that people should be protected from their own poor judgement. And if they don’t want to be ‘protected’, well, protect them anyway.
    
    If raw milk isn’t properly labeled..isn’t it up to the purchaser to just walk away? Who else can make that decision for them.
    
    The same applies to all regulations, of course. Why do we need regulations forced on the market? In the lack of government regulations, private regulatory bodies would energy, based on the producers desire to convince buyers their product was clean. The worth of their certifications would be based on widespread acceptance, not the fact that they have all the guns. If a private regulatory was corrupt and lost trust, their seal wouldn’t count for anything anymore. That just seems like such a saner way of doing things.
    
    If government suffers “regulatory capture,” well, the consumer just keeps buying the quasi-safe products, it is difficult for the broken regulatory apparatus to be replaced, and public health suffers.
    
    I wanted to comment on one other point you make:
    
    “I just don’t believe that profit driven raw milk producers are more or less honest than profit driven food companies.”
    
    It is this general attitude, this distrust of all types of business, this abstract suspicion of profit, that makes me make this statement:
    
    Left Liberals are hugely responsible for the corporate controlled world we see around us.
    
    There IS a different standard between small businesses that exist solely on the goodwill of a relatively limited and interconnected customer base, and multinational corporations that can manipulate policy, flood the public consciousness with millions in advertisements, and shrug off regulations by cutting a check or two.
    
    If you apply rigorous rules to both, here’s what happens: The corporations hire a couple consultants, lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, etc. and sleep easy. Or they just break the rules and either pay some fine or lean on their paid off congressman to get them out of it.
    
    The small business, operating on the edge, doesn’t have any of these resources. Either they spend money that might be spent on expansion or marketing, or they raise prices making them uncompetitive, or they simply go out of business.
    
    End result: Big corporation has less competition. Big corporation has more marketshare. Big corporation wins.
    
    It’s not just hypothetical, it’s something we see all across the country, in many industries, and have for the last 50 years.
    
    It is right to be suspicious of corporations, composed of indiviuals who are protected from individual responsibility for their actions. But small businesses are the backbone of a non-fascist economy.
    
    ***Economic freedom is every bit as important as political freedom or freedom of speech.*** More so, arguably, because without private income streams, no political movement can go anywhere.

funchy

Your comparison is flawed. If football was banned in 10 states, not easily accessible in dozens more, and cost twice what other sport cost — then you can compare it to raw milk.

The hype got the better of me, and I went in search of some. I traveled into Pennsylvania and “smuggled” back some. What a waste of time & money. I found no discernible improved taste. It looked a little different — with visible butterfat on top – and that’s about it. If it offers nothing over pasteurized milk, who cares? It’s been used to slow the souring of milk & to make it safer since the late 1800s.

There is so much hype centered around raw milk. If you google it, you will find 10 bazillion hits, claiming raw milk will cure acne, make you live longer, grow shinier hair, and make your farts smell like rainbows. None of it is grounded in real science. And the only reason why the Amish are “smuggling” it anywhere is because health-fad English [us] will pay double for a common farm product.

What is grounded in science is microbiology: the study of how pathogens grow, spread, and infect. Those selling raw milk, at least in PA, must be extremely careful. They can’t be sloppy and let udders with a little mastitis (infection) be overlooked. The farmers can’t shortcut and not clean that udder, which lays in manure any time the cow lays down. The result is a costlier product, and even then it’s still not 100% free of germs & cow white blood cells (the large # of WBC a sign of chronic exposure to pathogens).

You should not be asking if less processed cow milk is better than pasteurized. You should be asking if there isn’t a better, cheaper, cleaner, safer source of calcium & protein without the need to ingest a food designed to nourish the newborn bovine.

Shouldn’t we all have a choice in what we buy? Good in theory but the primary consumer of cow milk are children. Do kids understand microbiology? Can they give informed consent? Are they aware their age & immunity makes them more likely to sick & die from some of these infections?

If uncooked is better, what’s next: feeding steak tartare, sushi, and raw chicken mcnuggets to kids?

thebelgianpanda

i am truly boggled right now. i’ve done many, many taste tests along with cheese production tests (at least fifty in my journal) and the difference in raw vs. pasteurize/homogenized is not subjective, but completely measurable. at least with the farms here in Oregon.

cheese yields are 30%+ greater, milkfat in the cows I get milk from are 6-8%, the color is much brighter yellow, and the flavor is like the difference between fresh apple juice and Welches. If you got ‘raw milk’ that tasted anything like say store bought whole milk, it isn’t anything remotely resembling raw milk around here.
- Anonymous
  
  The milk fat content is higher in unpasteurized milk you say? Pasteurization doesn’t do diddly squat to fat content. Sounds like your milks came from different cows. Different cows can produce different milk. Try a high quality local dairy for your pasteurized milk, or even a semi-scientific test using milk from the same cow. I’m not saying that there isn’t some flavor effect, just not fat content.
  - thebelgianpanda
    
    I guess what annoys me the most is that people believe food is supposed to be safe.
    
    It isn’t.
    
    As a species we are getting better, but if you want to eat things that taste good, there will be risk. Otherwise, simply autoclave your food.

steverb

How much of the health risk reduction is due to pasteurization and how much is due to better refrigeration and food handling?

We quit buying because we found we just couldn’t afford to keep doing it at the price we had to pay ($10/gal). Local organic tastes good enough for $4/gal difference.

Stay_Sane_Inside_Insanity

If we’re debating the legalization of raw milk, then my question is, which is cheaper to produce and distribute, raw milk or pasteurized milk? Working class moms, exhausted from a hard day’s work, will pick up whichever bottle of milk is cheapest at the supermarket. So, if raw milk is legalized, and it’s cheapest, then that will be the bottle that she picks up, without regard for the consequence. And you’d better believe that it won’t be Amish Milk, but Soulless Corporate Milk, flush with disease.

Advocacy in this country must keep in mind the effects of that advocacy in light of the utter dominance of the corporate sector.

Mark Frauenfelder

Raw Milk Safety in California

Since 1999:

40 million servings of Organic Pastures raw milk, not one reported illness; in 1,300 tests, no human pathogens ever found in the milk, or even in the manure on the farm.

19 recalls of pasteurized milk products during the same period.

RyanH

I’m not sure that 40 million servings (how big is a serving?) in a decade is a large enough sample size. I did a quick search and found a dairy market site that lists more than 700 million gallons a year of pasteurized milk sold in California alone. so over a decade you are talking about almost ten billion gallons. Only 19 recalls over 10 billion gallons? That a damn fine safety standard as far as I’m concerned.

Comparing the safety of something shipping several orders of magnitude less in what is assumed to be a much more limited distribution chain isn’t very strong.
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  OK, the comparison might not be strong, but there has never been a single reported case of anyone getting sick from from Organic Pastures raw milk, which has produced 40 million servings. Why should a company with a long and perfect safety record get shut down?
  
  Ugly Canuck: “Public health trumps consumer choice every time.” I agree. But raw milk is a personal choice. Are you in favor of making alcohol illegal, too?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Are you in favor of making alcohol illegal, too?
    
    Well, maybe Zima, but not for health reasons.
- Wormman
  
  Not to mention the “not one reported case of people getting sick” from one line of unpasteurised milk. There are two things I’ve learned from running a parasitology website. Firstly, people who tend to choose alternative medicines or foods tend not to report when those things go wrong. This leads to a false positive reporting bias. Secondly, these folks are more likely blame everything but the alternative medicine / diet (“Pernicious anaemia ? No, it can’t be the vitamin B deficiency I got from eschewing animal products. It must be those worms in my gut that doctors can’t find any evidence of”).
  
  19 cases of pasteurised food recalls shows what happens when you regulate an industry – you pick up when things go wrong.
Churba

Hey, Mark, You do realise how hard it is to link an outbreak of Listeriosis to raw milk, right?

RyanH

This is one of those cases where the things the regulators are worried about have absolutely nothing to do with the things the loudest supporters are advocating. Honestly, no one at any level is really worried about those gallons of milk that you bought off your friend who has a few cows. They are deathly afraid of a truck of unpasteurized milk being contaminated and a hundred people rushing to the hospital all at once.

The truth is that pasteurization is a huge deal. There is a reason it was adopted so fast and universally a century ago. Many, many people used to die from unpasteurized milk. It was one of the major carriers of tuberculosis among other diseases.

In a lot of ways the argument for letting individual people decide not to pasteurize their milk parallels the argument for letting individual parents decide not to vaccinate their kids. The only reason anyone even considers it is because we are so far removed from the major problems that it solved. Every one of our grandparents and great-grandparents would smack us around the ears for even seriously considering it. Risk tuberculous outbreaks because it tastes better? What the hell is wrong with us?

Mark Frauenfelder

“Every one of our grandparents and great-grandparents would smack us around the ears for even seriously considering it.”

Not my grandmother. She had a farm in Colorado, loved raw milk and lived to 107. She was mowing her own lawn with a push mower at 100.

thebelgianpanda

hold on a sec–to those contrasting raw milk consumption with not getting vaccinated, are you insane?!? diseases you vax against spread without consent. drinking raw milk takes a a definite effort and isn’t communicable (that i’m aware of).

drinking alcohol, eating too many calories, smoking pot, and not exercising might be similar things to compare raw milk with. vaccinations aren’t even in the same game.

Mark Frauenfelder

And letting your kid skateboard or play football, too.
- thebelgianpanda
  
  i think you and i are on the same page–it isn’t without risk, but let’s seriously get some perspective :)
  
  now, i’m gonna go drink a G&T and play with some ungrounded outlets near a water source >:D
Anonymous

“drinking alcohol, eating too many calories, smoking pot, and not exercising might be similar things to compare raw milk with.”

Death from pot? Try again. One of those things is different than the others. Also, after looking at the CA statistic regarding raw milk, drinking alcohol, eating too many calories or not exercising kill far more people.

jaycatt7

This farmer is not the “Rosa Parks” of anything. He may be the small time operator fighting the man, but his profits come from animal exploitation.

steverb

Hard to say that the animals are exploited without seeing the operation. At the small dairy operations I’ve visited the cows are treated like well loved pets.
- jaycatt7
  
  We might have different definitions of exploitation. The cows you saw may have been well cared for, but their bodies have been bred for milk production above all else, and there’s no way a profitable concern could afford to keep as pets all the offspring sired to keep the milk flowing. That’s an exploitive relationship.
oasisob1

I almost choked on my steak when I read this.

Thebes

Don’t worry, our government is there to protect everyone.
Just ask a native American… or an Egyptian.

I am far more afraid of my government than of a product that has been used for most of mankind’s history.

Ugly Canuck

Udder non-sense…comparing one’s fear of incommensurate objects, as a means of reaching decisions as to what to consume?

Ensuring the accuracy of weights and measures used in the public markets has ALWAYS been part of even the most primitive Government.

It would be an inexcusable lapse and failure of Governance, if, long after the birth of the science of chemistry and the advent of modern medicine, a Government did not seek to extend that regulation to the purity of the foods sold to the public.

People did not widely drink milk prior to the introduction of pasteurization (which was also prior to the advent of modern refrigeration, by and large).

People drank wine and beer instead, as the alcohol killed any bacteria: it was the “golden age” of mass alcoholism.

Modern people tend to forget that there were good social reasons behind so many Americans’ willingness to pass a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit alcohol.
It was not, like marijuana prohibition, a fait accompli by Congress, during a single session, after a single vote.

Alcohol prohibition was a mass movement in American, and was put to many votes.

Mr Badger above is correct: unpasteurized milk is pretty well belongs right next to poison on the shelf.

Public health comes before private profit, in every case.

IMHO much of what is wrong with governance today is traceable to a failure to follow that maxim, or to misapply it for a purpose not stated…they say it’s for “public health”(and “preserving order” is also about preserving indirectly a plea the public health), but actually it’s for other unstated reasons (in most such cases, it is because somebody makes $$ from the [wrong] way the Government wants to do, or does, things) .

Alcohol ought indeed not to be prohibited, but we have learned from bitter and long social experience that indeed its use must be regulated.

Just as we have learned that raw milk sales of any kind need to be.
- Thebes
  
  Not nonsense at all. If there really are 2 deaths in 10 years of raw milk drinking, that comes up to 20 in a century. In the past century overbearing government security forces have killed roughly 120 million people under their rule. Presuming that the USA had during this time span 5% of the world’s population then you are 300,000 times more likely to be killed by a tyrannical government than by raw milk.
  
  You are also far far more likely to be killed by smoking, second hand smoking, lightning, falling out of bed, or taking FDA approved over-the-counter medications. I guess we should ban all of that stuff too, just so Big Brother can give everyone and their ickle-little-brat absolute security?
- zyodei
  
  “Public health comes before private profit, in every case.
  
  IMHO much of what is wrong with governance today is traceable to a failure to follow that maxim, or to misapply it for a purpose not stated…”
  
  First, let me say one thing: “Private Profit” is one of the most important things in society. What is your paycheck, but “private profit?” What are the fruits of the hard labors of any independent producer, to bring quality goods to market, other than “private profit?”
  
  Beliefs like that lead to one thing: a society where only those powerful enough to lobby to protect their “private profits” can thrive, and everyone else who cannot effect the “public health” decision making process is relegated to working for those who can. Sort of like our current economy.
  
  No system in human history has not eventually succumbed to corruption, and become injurious to the public good it was originally designed to protect.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Deregulation is a nightmare that keeps getting worse: so you think that banks should be unregulated?
    - zyodei
      
      Yes, banks should not be regulated by the state. They should also not receive any assistance or guarantees from the Federal government or the Federal Reserve.
      
      Don’t imagine for a second that the banks didn’t know they would be bailed out if they screwed up, and acted recklessly with implicit knowledge of that fact. They knew that they were “too big to fail,” so they bet the house on slim odds. Did you read that article on Ireland?
      
      And don’t forget who invented and legitimized CDOs in the first place – the private/federal Fannie Mae.
      
      Yes, I agree, while this system of favors is in place, deregulation can certainly be a bad thing. But the answer is not more government involvement.
      
      Sorry, don’t want to to threadjack this lively discussion. Back to the udders :P
    - invictus
      
      Oh yes, by all means let’s return to the unregulated utopia of the 19th century US banking sector!
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      Yes indeed, we could celebrate its health and our prosperity by washing down copious quantities of unpasteurized milk bought from some guy peddling it out of a hand-cart.
    - invictus
      
      Well, if you’re going to jump straight to reductio ad absurdum, then I believe Antinous has already provided a handy reply.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Hey, I’m not the one who launched the SS Histrionics; I just boarded her en route.
    - zyodei
      
      The basic M.O. of government is to cause a problem, through the increase of state power, and then offer a solution that doesn’t really solve the problem, but again increases the power and funding of the state.
      
      You can see this in just about every broken area of society – the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war on poverty, the financial sector, the health care industry, etc. etc. etc.
      
      It’s madness. We, as a species, are smarter than this.
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      And you think that wide unregulated availability of un-pasteurized milk would be a step in the right direction?
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      If you have big business, you need big government: otherwise little people HAVE NO CHANCE.
      
      If big business and big government are in cahoots, well, see Egypt for an example of what will happen.
      
      People will take over the Government.
      
      The solution to the prolem of bad government is not no government at all: on the contrary, it is better government.
      
      To achieve that, little people need to get involved.
      In government.
      
      To turn their backs on it, and abandon the field without a fight – your “solution” – simply gives the powerful a complete victory, before there is even a fight.
    - zyodei
      
      “If big business and big government are in cahoots, well, see Egypt for an example of what will happen.”
      
      See America for an example of what won’t happen…
    - zyodei
      
      I know that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work, that’s what they teach us in schools..but the reality of the world for the last several decades is that the big government makes the big corporations much more powerful, and benefits them much, much more than it restrains them.
    - Wally Ballou
      
      There are two valid roles of government in respect to big business.
      
      1. Punish fraud. Current example: the ratings agencies who AAA-rated all the stinking packages of mortgage backed securities ought to be wearing a fetching shade of orange.
      
      2. Break up monopolies. Current example: the investment banks which are too big to fail and therefore too big to continue to exist.
      
      There is one totally invalid role:
      
      3. Use the taxing, subsidy, and bailout power of government to favor one industry as opposed to another, or one firm as opposed to its competitors. Inevitably leads to rent-seeking and massive corruption. Current examples: the ethanol fiasco, the bailouts of GM and Chrysler.
      
      Lately here in the US, we seem to be getting dick-all of (1) and (2), but unlimited warehouses full of (3).

Ugly Canuck

Public health trumps consumer choice every time.

So it should.

Sometimes it may even trump other, perhaps more important, and certainly more fundamental, rights.

zyodei

But the problem is, who defines public health?

When I look at the world around, I see a class of health authorities that are, in many ways, crazy.

They give strong psychoactive drugs, including amphetamines and drugs linked to suicde, to millions and millions of youths.

They promote a “pill for every ailment,” and generally downplay the crucial role of nutrition.

So, when you say “public health” what you are actually saying is giving these authorities more coercive power over the health decisions of each individual.

The thing is: Every person is already interested in their own health. People have an intrinsic interest in maintaining their own health. In this case, raw milk buyers don’t go to all these lengths out of flight of fancy or culinary desire..they do it FOR HEALTH REASONS. They do it because they want to be healthy! But you propose to stop them, in the name of “public health?!?”

The public should, through the democratic process, decide what subset of the population to give guns to…so that that subset can make decisions for them? What the hell kind of sense does that make?

Here’s a crazy and revolutionary idea: LET THE PUBLIC ITSELF DECIDE WHAT THE PUBLIC HEALTH IS.
- Anonymous
  
  > They promote a “pill for every ailment,” and generally downplay the crucial role of nutrition.
  
  And exercise.

Anonymous

From what I can tell, it’s the pasteurization that matters for safety, but the homogenization that has the greatest effect on the flavor. So why doesn’t anyone sell milk that has been pasteurized but NOT homogenized?

LiudvikasT

Yes I know that raw milk is more dangerous than the processed stuff, but it tastes better. I earned my right to do something unsafe by not smoking, which is legal, though being way more dangerous.

Anonymous

I buy raw milk because its a lot cheaper for me to do that. Then I bring it home and pasteurize it. So at least they made it harder for me to live a cheaper more natural life style. Thanks big bro and big corp for all the support. Its your choice to do what you want with your body, as long as you know the consequences.I personally will keep pasteurizing my milk that i buy illegally.

turn_self_off

I got a suspicion that when is tripping people up is that “processed” milk have two things done to it, and i can not see how one of them should affect the experience much (pasteurization). The other (homogenization) however…

invictus

About time someone pointed out the difference.

Beyond effects on taste, there’s also been some argument as to the health impacts of homogenization — specifically, what the reduced fat globule size does in terms of absorption of casein, whey protein, and various fat-borne hormones. That said, the only publication on the subject I can find right now is Michalski [Br J Nutr. 2007], the full text of which is not publicly available, but which does include the following in the abstract:

“The impact of homogenization, as well as heating and other treatments such as cheesemaking processes, on the health properties of milk and dairy products remains to be fully elucidated.”

But really, none of the above addresses concerns about large-scale processing and the potentially devastating impact of post-pasteurization contamination (spinach, anyone?). The advantage of raw milk may well be its limited shelf-stability. Any failings in quality and sanitation control are likely to affect a much smaller number of people and be much easier to localize.

I say this having worked at a raw-milk cheese plant, which was regularly inspected by the state authorities. I should also add that we considered these official inspections to be woefully inadequate, badly mismanaged, and largely ineffective in assuring public safety. We had a much more rigorous self-imposed testing regimen, paying pretty significant amounts out of pocket for our own peace of mind and the increased confidence in our products’ quality.

shadowKFC

Just a little American ex-pat living in Europe insight here.
From my viewpoint this discussion is completely and utterly ridiculous.
Good cheese as understood here is raw-milk cheese. The pasteurized stuff is what you buy to put on pizza. Any supermarket here will sell a decent variety of raw-milk cheeses.
Raw milk is rarer but legal to sell (both in stores and directly from the farmer) and comes with a warning label that advises to not give it to babies or to precook it first. It comes with some further restrictions (like a shelf-life of max. 96h hours) which makes it inconvenient for big supermarket chains.

Unanimous Cowherd

Safety is an issue, but for what it’s worth, this cowherd grew up drinking a quart of unpasteurized milk every day. But we also knew how to keep our milk safe in the 300 gallon cooling tank next to the milking parlor.
From what I can read, those farmers who have caused safety issues deserve to be prosecuted fully — they are incompetent idiots who care little for their customers. But there are plenty of farmers who can do this right. Let them.

Pablito

I recently had some raw milk because my Grandmother goes on and on about “real milk”.

It was nice, seemed to have the same richness of flavour as some organic milk (which I buy because it tastes nice).

Here in Australia, people get around the laws by either buying it as “bathing milk”, or as my friends did, buy shares in a cow.

If US food production was not controlled by large corporations that use Federal authorities to bully small time farmers and food distributors, I would take the appeals to public safety more seriously.

I’d say that many industrial farming and food processing practices are a larger danger to public health.

As long as the dangers and handling practices of raw milk distributors are transparent and communicated to consumers, I have no problem whatsoever with people producing, selling and consuming raw milk.

If only the dangers and handling practices of industrial food production could be transparent and communicated to consumers, instead of being hidden by legislation, regulation and litigious food corporations.

noen

“By comparison, between two and twelve children die every year playing high school football. When will high school football be banned?”

False analogy. People don’t die as a direct consequence of playing football. If it could be shown that playing football necessarily caused death in even a fraction of those who participate then I think there’d be calls to ban it.

EMJ

A Brief History

http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/milk_history.html

thebelgianpanda

just as an fyi, in the US organic milk is frequently pasteurized more aggressively and ultra-homogenized. this is done so organic milk can be sent farther distances and stored longer. this makes sense economically–longer shelf life, greater product reach–but absolutely degrades flavor. if you can get local organic that isn’t ultra pasteurized/homogenized then you are in for something good.

Locally here, Lochmead in the 1/2 gallon hard plastic containers are about as good as it gets, but the deposit on the containers is almost $2 i seem to recall.

Thad E Ginataom

Food safety laws: should we be able to bypass them, using religion as an excuse? Should that be extended to the manufacturers too?

theLadyfingers

How does pasteurisation, which is just a series of temperature changes too rapid for bacteria to survive affect the quality of milk? Honest question.

I will say that these raw food people irk me because they are anti-science. And I’m saying this as one of these soap-free types. Human beings have evolved both dentition and alimentary canals to eat cooked food. We can’t break down cellulose in our gut, which is why even carelessly boiled vegetables deliver more nutrition to our bodies than raw ones.

Churba

Very little, in fact. There is – despite what Raw milk Proponents may tell you – no nutritional change that occurs in milk when pasteurized. There are some slight deactivation of certain enzymes, however, they’re not important to human nutrition.
- theLadyfingers
  
  I’m always amazed at how many people seem to define themselves by shucking scientific advances in public that have quite verifiably saved millions of lives (vaccination, sterile surgery, water fluoridation and chlorination, etc.). They’re the social equivalent of teenagers “rebelling” on their folks’ financial graces.
  - Churba
    
    As am I, ma’am, though I would add “and Saddened” after “Amazed”.
    
    And it’s not like it’s hard to look up the actual facts of the matter, either – apparently, Google is also one of those modern advances they’ve rejected.
    
    As for Being lactose Intolerant – I am, in fact, working on a recipe for lactose-free Ice-cream which actually tastes like ice-cream. Until then, sorbets are wicked awesome.
    
    In fact, I’m going to have a Mango sorbet right now.
thebelgianpanda

it causes the evaporation of flavor molecules (is evaporation the right word?). seriously, try it yourself even with something simple like apple juice. in fact, heat is used extensively in brewing beer to drive off bad flavors like DMS.

Churba

Ah, Mark, I ran your numbers through, and found a few problems with them.

Yes, only 2 people died from Raw Milk related foodborne illness. However, You neglect to mention a few things in relation to that, For example, That of ALL reported dairy related foodborne disease outbreaks between 1973 and 2008, raw milk and cheese were responsible for 82% of those outbreaks.

In just the decade of the two deaths you noted – 1998 to 2008 – you also fail to mention the 86 outbreaks that were related to the consumption of Raw milk or Raw milk products, which resulted in 1,676 illnesses, 191 hospitalizations, and the aforementioned 2 deaths. As a last note, among the 86 raw dairy product outbreaks from 1998 to 2008, 79% involved at least one person less than 20 years old.

Also, this is noting one thing – REPORTED outbreaks. What’s to bet that the actual illness are a larger number?

Also, you linked a blog further up the comment thread that is, well, to put it in the language of the internet, the stupid, it burns. What do you honestly think that linking a very Pro-Raw milk article that’s trying to show that pasturised milk causing foodborne illness is far more prevalent than Raw milk causing foodborne illness among the population is going to prove?
The only thing they’ve proven is their inability to understand statistics – less than one percent of the population drinks raw milk. Of course there is going to be more outbreaks in regular milk in the US, because there is in the order of two or three hundred million more people drinking it.
It’s like saying that more English speaking people in the USA have car accidents than Esperanto speakers in the US do.

johnjupiter

Churba, a lot of people that understand statistics don’t understand probabilities. They think that a well placed statistic, compared to another selectively chosen statistic will overcome the proof needed to evaluate the conclusion. It’s very poor logical reasoning because, while it’s statistically correct, the conclusion is not supported by the significance of the probability. It makes it easy to ignore a theory that has little significant probability of occurring.

Ah, Mark, I ran your numbers through, and found a few problems with them.

Yes, only 2 people died from Raw Milk related foodborne illness. However, You neglect to mention a few things in relation to that, For example, That of ALL reported dairy related foodborne disease outbreaks between 1973 and 2008, raw milk and cheese were responsible for 82% of those outbreaks.

In just the decade of the two deaths you noted – 1998 to 2008 – you also fail to mention the 86 outbreaks that were related to the consumption of Raw milk or Raw milk products, which resulted in 1,676 illnesses, 191 hospitalizations, and the aforementioned 2 deaths. As a last note, among the 86 raw dairy product outbreaks from 1998 to 2008, 79% involved at least one person less than 20 years old.

Also, this is noting one thing – REPORTED outbreaks. What’s to bet that the actual illness are a larger number?

Also, you linked a blog further up the comment thread that is, well, to put it in the language of the internet, the stupid, it burns. What do you honestly think that linking a very Pro-Raw milk article that’s trying to show that pasturised milk causing foodborne illness is far more prevalent than Raw milk causing foodborne illness among the population is going to prove?
The only thing they’ve proven is their inability to understand statistics – less than one percent of the population drinks raw milk. Of course there is going to be more outbreaks in regular milk in the US, because there is in the order of two or three hundred million more people drinking it.
It’s like saying that more English speaking people in the USA have car accidents than Esperanto speakers in the US do.
Jonathan Badger

Precisely. Kaj mi diras tion kiel Esperanto parolanto. But besides speaking Esperanto, I have a doctorate in microbiology, and I’d never drink raw milk even on a dare; I know way more than hippies and Amish do about the possible illnesses involved.
- Churba
  
  Wait, You speak Esperanto? Want a job as a driver?
  
  I’m not an microbiologist, but I’m in the same camp – I’ve had the dangers explained in quite close detail(well, not by your standard, I assume, but at least by mine as an average shlub) by an excellent Food safety microbiologist, and I just can’t do it. Not for love or horses.

Apreche

I would be very curious to see of the other BoingBoing contributors support this raw milk drinking insanity. In my years of reading BoingBoing only Mark has posted this sort of anti-science nonsense. One I remember clearly is when he promoted Zicam, a zinc gel which destroys peoples sense of smell, and falsely claims to cure colds. Here he come again supporting drinking of raw milk, which is even worse as it typically contains deadly disease!

Listen to the CDC.

http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-index.html

As for the argument that people who want to take the risk should be allowed to drink raw milk, I say yes. If you want to risk your life for milk, be my guest. You aren’t hurting anyone else.

The problem is that people are taking this risk without being fully educated as to the extent of this risk. Also, the people selling the milk are not fully informing their customers as to the extent of this risk.

Alcohol and tobacco have warning labels. But one alcoholic beverage or one cigarette never killed anybody. One glass of raw milk can give you listeriosis, which is very likely a death sentence. 20-30% mortality for hospitalized patients, and over 94% of cases see hospitalization.

And listeriosis is just one of the many diseases you can get from drinking unpasteurized milk. Tuberculosis, diphtheria, severe streptococcal infections, typhoid fever, take your pick. According to all of our science, raw milk is vastly more deadly than tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana. Really, you couldn’t drink something more dangerous without hitting the liquid plumber or the anti-freeze.

If you personally want to take that risk, be my guest. But if the person selling the milk is not fully informing you of the enormity of that risk, and you, like Mr. Frauenfelder, are not fully educated as to the enormity of that risk, then you shouldn’t be drinking it.

It’s like if I told you its safe to jump off a bridge because there are mattresses at the bottom, and you didn’t see the jagged rocks before it was too late.

Raw milk is effectively poison.

Calimecita

As for the argument that people who want to take the risk should be allowed to drink raw milk, I say yes. If you want to risk your life for milk, be my guest. You aren’t hurting anyone else.

The problem is that people are taking this risk without being fully educated as to the extent of this risk. Also, the people selling the milk are not fully informing their customers as to the extent of this risk.

I agree 100%. And let’s remember that many of these people are probably feeding the raw milk to their children, immunodepressed people, and/or senior citizens, all of them at greater risk in case of foodborne illnesses.
My mother is a bacteriologist, and works in the local Bromatology (=food microbiology) department. For infants and small children, a foodborne illness is not just diarrhea or discomfort – babies DIE. So once again, education is the key, so that people get the message: Do what you want with your body, but don’t endanger others.

Unanimous Cowherd

I skipped most of the comments before posting. After thinking about this, I’ll add this: unless you are raising the cows yourself, you don’t really know if that raw milk is safe to drink.

I’ve got my own chickens, so I have a fair inkling about how safe my eggs are, but I’d be reluctant to ever drink raw milk I bought from a store. In my opinion, the US food safety infrastructure is just not up to snuff, sad to say. That is why milk needs to be pasteurized.

Avram / Moderator

In my part of Brooklyn I can get milk that’s been pasteurized, but not homogenized. It’s pretty delish. I don’t buy it often, though, ’cause of the price.

Jonathan Badger

reminds me of the old Sidney Harris cartoon showing a forlorn Victorian scientist: “Unlike his colleague Pasteur, Homogen never got the recognition he deserved.”

Burzmali

Say raw milk was 100% legal and no more regulated than other food products, what would happen?

Well, competition for all these ma and pa farmers would crop up instantly, sponsored by the very own megacorps that lovers of raw milk hate so much.

Said competition would force down prices driving the ma and pa shops under while compromising the quality of the product.

So … legalizing raw milk will screw over the ma and pa farms and make the product less safe, then why are all of these raw milk folks complaining?

social_maladroit

What the hell do farmer’s rights and Rosa Parks have to do with it? I can see it as a personal choice issue – you have the right to ingest whatever you want to – but that’s the consumer, not the farmer.

It would take only one baby getting sick and dying from consumption of contaminated raw milk to make the public go nuts. And it’s a safe assumption someone’s going to feed that milk to a baby. That’s probably why the law’s enforced so tightly. (Could common sense have something to do with it? Nah.)

(And if some libertarian type ever became sick off of raw milk, chances are they wouldn’t have health care, and would end up sticking the public with the medical bill.)

I’m of two minds about this, but at least for now I don’t feel sorry for oppressed raw milk lovers forced by draconian laws to drink pasteurized milk. If you feel that strongly about it, move to Massachssetts, Arizona, California, or Washington, or petition your state legislature to allow the sale of raw milk in stores.

simonbarsinister

Raw milk drinker here. It tastes great and I’m sure it has plenty of bacteria, just not the bad kind.
I had ‘bowel’ problems until I started drinking raw milk, Keifer, and fermented foods.
I know anecdotes are not data and I am a sample size of one, but it works for me.

thebelgianpanda

Calling raw milk ‘effectively poison’ when even your source says:

‘Listeria monocytogenes is found in soil and water. Vegetables can become contaminated from the soil or from manure used as fertilizer’

is as disingenuous as calling my neighbors carrots ‘effectively poison’. this isn’t pseudo science. there isn’t zero risk. hyperbole on either side though isn’t helpful.

theLadyfingers

Oh, I’m lactose intolerant. You unweaned udderfeeders can have your milk. Once you’re off it, you don’t miss it much. Except ice-cream. I really miss real ice-cream. And milkshakes. :(

thebelgianpanda

honestly, a good raspberry sorbet is better :)

Churba

“Since 1999:
40 million servings of Organic Pastures raw milk, not one reported illness; in 1,300 tests, no human pathogens ever found in the milk, or even in the manure on the farm.”

The California Department of Food and Agriculture Disagrees, Mark.

Mark Frauenfelder

Did they eventually detect e. coli in the milk or did you stop looking for more information at that point?
- Churba
  
  Actually, I did keep looking, and found a Later Press Release where the CDFA lifted the quarantine on products manufactured from Organic Pastures raw milk, but not on the fluid milk, in which they also noted -
  
  “Experts at the California Department of Health Services (DHS) studied all information available to determine linkages in the cases of four children stricken with E. coli O157:H7 bacterial illness. That information revealed that the only common exposure reported by all four cases was consumption of raw milk or raw colostrum from Organic Pastures in the week prior to symptom onset.”
  
  As for finding E-coli in the milk, get serious, Mark. Do you think that milk is going to be around to take a sample from by the time the linkage is found? Especially considering the short shelf-life of raw milk, It’s been drunk, used, or thrown out by that time, and you can’t take a sample from something that no longer exists. However, the fact that the only common exposure that was reported by these cases was Organic Pastures Raw Milk is reasonably compelling evidence – the CDFA certainly thought it compelling enough evidence to pull it from the shelves.

Rayonic

Raw milk could be irradiated instead of pasteurized. That’d kill the germs without cooking the milk.

I have a funny feeling that raw milk fans would take a dim view of food irradiation, though.

TheWhaleShark

Irradiated milk tastes terrible, apparently.

There are alternatives to conventional pasteurization that are being explored; high pressure pasteurization is one that is of particular interest. It supposedly preserves the flavor profile while achieving the 5-log bacterial load reduction that is necessary for pasteurization.

saintlaurent

So there is a lot of discussion regarding raw milk, but almost none regarding cheese made from raw milk. In France, where I grew up, almost all milk consumed even in the country side was long shelf life tetrapak ultra pasteurized. On the other hand there is a wide range of cheeses that were available unpasteurized.

So my question:

Does the cheese making process make raw milk safer?
Would allowing raw milk cheese be a good compromise?

Avram / Moderator

Does the cheese making process make raw milk safer?

According to the FDA, yes it does, for hard cheeses aged at least 6 months.
- invictus
  
  [citation needed]

dougrogers

I wouldn’t go out of my way to drink raw milk, but I don’t bother to eat cheese made from pasteurized milk any more. Raw milk cheese tastes real.

dalziel86

I’m confused now. We’re against Glenn Beck selling worthless gold coins to suckers, but not against people selling unhealthy unpasteurised milk to suckers?

thebelgianpanda

This is an excellent example of one of two issues–either cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance. Raw milk, raw veggies, tuna tartare, mayonnaise, wild game, and deli meat are all things that carry risk. However, I personally take that risk. And if you condemn raw milk but don’t condemn farmer’s markets–which can and do contain the same pathogens–then you are a hypocrite.
robulus

“I’m confused now. We’re against Glenn Beck selling worthless gold coins to suckers, but not against people selling unhealthy unpasteurised milk to suckers?”

The value proposition for raw milk is right up front, it sounds like one of the most informed markets out there. It tastes better, and people are prepared to accept an increased risk to enjoy that. Unless they start selling it at my corner shop I just couldn’t be bothered, but that’s not to say I don’t understand their choice.

Glenn Beck is consciously using his high profile and status within his target demo to spread fear and uncertainty, offering a solution that he profits from personally. To compare him with the Amish is kind of like punching out a puppy.

Ernunnos

Speaking as the son of a Mennonite dairy farmer, raw milk should not be fed to anyone, not because it’s dangerous, but because it’ll spoil you for anything else. I hate milk, or at least what passes for milk.

pumuckl

theLadyfingers: There are plenty of milk products out there for lactose intolerant people (I’m one of them), and lactase supplements are also available.

I’m also really curious to know what the basis is for your statement that boiled vegetables deliver more nutrition than raw veggies, mostly because studies have shown that plenty of vitamins are lost through boiling, and cellulose (insoluble “dietary” fibre) is beneficial to intestinal health.

As for raw milk: interesting observation – when I volunteered in South America last summer, all the milk was boiled, yet my uncle, a (German) anaesthesiologist, drinks raw milk from the farm next door.

theLadyfingers

There are less nutrients in boiled vegetables than in raw ones, but your body simply cannot extract them from the unbroken cell walls of the plant matter. Hence, your body gleans more nutrients from badly boiled, nutritionally-leached vegetables than from raw ones brimming with them. You’re not destroying the cellulose, you’re simply rupturing it by cooking it.

It’s like being offered $5 in your hand or a million in a vault you can’t open.

Moot point anyway, since who still boils vegetables? Steamed, roasted, glazed or stir-fried tastes far, far better.

Andrew Pendleton

Apreche: The problem is that people are taking this risk without being fully educated as to the extent of this risk. Also, the people selling the milk are not fully informing their customers as to the extent of this risk.

If your argument is that people should be able to make their own choices as long as their aware of the risks, how is the current situation better than legalizing raw milk sales and regulating them such that warning labels accompany their packaging, as tobacco is, now?

Burzmali: Say raw milk was 100% legal and no more regulated than other food products, what would happen?

Well, competition for all these ma and pa farmers would crop up instantly, sponsored by the very own megacorps that lovers of raw milk hate so much.

I don’t actually think this is true. Raw milk has a much poorer shelf life than pasteurized milk does. Getting it to market before it spoiled, on a national level, would be hard, and losses due to spoilage would be much higher, so raw milk would be expensive, and probably relegated to niche, locally-bought status. I don’t think there would be a national craze around it. I mean, for many dairy products (like, say, cream), even finding plain-pasteurized (instead of nasty ultra-pasteurized) products at a regular grocery store is really hard, even though the regular pasteurized kind is perfectly legal, because most grocery stores opt for the UP stuff since it keeps better. To get non-UP cream, at least in my area, you have to go to a high-end grocery or a dairy.

Wormman

“If your argument is that people should be able to make their own choices as long as their aware of the risks, how is the current situation better than legalizing raw milk sales and regulating them such that warning labels accompany their packaging, as tobacco is, now?”

Because given the actions of organic food producers to date I can’t see them putting any sort of warning label which accurately states the risk on their products.
Burzmali

Considering that raw milk claims a higher price and lower upfront cost, if it were less regulated big business would be on it so fast it would make your had spin. Celebrities would be all over TV claiming how wonderful it is and, yes, a national craze would result. Money makes things work, you offer Hood enough money and they will start opening stores that can have raw milk to your door faster than pizza.

Mister44

What exactly is the reason people want ‘raw’ milk? There is a reason why milk is pasteurized and why it was a godsend when people finally figured it out.

It seems people want to romanticize the past as being more ‘natural’, when it too was filled with dangerous chemicals and even more biological dangers.

Anonymous

What exactly is the reason people want ‘raw’ milk?

Mostly because it tastes better, of course. But they rationalize it pretty well based on the health benefits of eating nonsterile foodstuff.

There is a reason why milk is pasteurized and why it was a godsend when people finally figured it out.

Two reasons, actually. One is that it reduces (not eliminates) the chance of getting bad milk. This is a non-starter these days since the bad stuff in milk is overwhelmingly stuff that is not removed by pasteurization (the subgroup of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals that are not broken down by heat).

But the other, still perfectly valid reason, is that it keeps the milk from going bad as quickly. Radiation-treated milk is even better, keeps on the shelf for years. I keep a gallon or two in the cellar for when I run out of the better-tasting raw milk I prefer.

It seems people want to romanticize the past as being more ‘natural’, when it too was filled with dangerous chemicals and even more biological dangers.

Dead right you are! The dangers have changed, but we still all live in danger, and the people who lived “more natural” (puleez!) lives just traded being run over by a mastodon for being run over by a city bus. Being human involves living in a world of risk, and eliminating all risk just makes you less human.

The government restricting the sale of raw milk is just an inane waste of tax dollars. The government tracking down and penalizing persons who sell milk (raw or not) that harms people, well, that’s the sort of thing that people pay taxes for – not pre-emptive restriction of choices, but rather elimination of things that HAVE CAUSED HARM (not might cause, could cause in some opinions, or have the same name as things that cause harm) to society. Raw milk is not causing harm to society, it’s causing harm to mega-dairies that are themselves harmful.

farcedude

Hmmm. Can’t seem to find most of my sources. How troubling. I have found the ones about Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis in pasteurized milk, although it appears I overstated the problem.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mycobacterium+paratuberculosis+pasteurized+milk&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

To all on ‘exploitation’ – They’re probably treated better than on a factory farm. Yes they have to calve every so often to keep producing milk. That’s a fact of life. Do you like eating anything produced by a living animal? It can all be logically argued to be exploitation. I’m semi-comfortable with that, being that when I can I get my stuff from a less-exploitative source (wild meat, free range duck eggs, raw milk, etc.).

Antinous / Moderator

Raw milk is effectively poison.

I, for one, am inspired by your life story.

Churba

Apreche is often a little given to hyperbole, but his base information isn’t inaccurate.

bat21

The Peltzman Effect

purple-stater

If the cows are in a healthy environment and the milk is gathered in a sanitary method and properly stored, then there is no risk from raw milk. Period.

The pasteurized milk laws were put into place over a century ago because of highly unsanitary urban dairies.

Churba

Ah, No.

There is Lower risk, that I will give you, but No risk? Absolutely not.
- purple-stater
  
  Fair enough. Low risk, just as there is low risk involved in tap water or pasteurized milk.

The Amish raw milk black market

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