Raw Milk in Modern Times

[Godhumor]

By Mark Crislip
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/raw-milk-in-modern-times/#more-12736

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Taste, of course, is a personal matter, and I cannot gainsay those who say raw milk tastes better. In my family everyone is picky about their milk; it cannot come in plastic and has to be a specific brand, Dairygold. My wife insists Oregon milk is inferior in flavor to Minnesota milk. French milk tasted weird, and I though everything else tasted better in France. Pasteurization has mild effects on the nutritional components of milk, and perhaps the taste.

But what raw milk is, above all, a source for infection. There have been outbreaks with Campylobacter, Salmonella, E. coli associated with raw milk and other organisms can be found in raw milk, some not common in the US, including Brucella, Listeria, Mycobacterium bovis (a cause of tuberculosis), Salmonella, Shigella, Yersinia, Giardia, and norovirus. Some are found in cows milk, and some, such as Brucella, more common from goat’s milk. These outbreaks have lead to hospitalizations and a few deaths.

Warm liquid filled with protein, fat and sugars. A good growth media for a bacteria, if they can gain access to the milk. Impossible. Proponents of raw milk point to the clean cows and clean environments that produce raw milk, but you cannot deny both microbiology and gravity. The colons of cows are frequently colonized with the aforementioned potential pathogens and the udder sits below, waiting to be splashed with cow pie. MMMMmmmmmm. Milk and pie. Seriously. Would you lick any cow udder, no matter how clean?

Still, people want their raw milk for the taste and health benefits. Some obtain raw milk illegally at milk speakeasies where I bet the password is Swordfish. You can time share a cow and get the milk straight from the source, although you have to see a presentation on time sharing cows to get the free weekend on the farm. This is good news for me. Since we have instituted aggressive infection control at my hospitals nosocomial infections have plummeted. Once upon a time milk was associated with 25% of infection outbreaks; in part due to pasteurization those rates fell to 1%. Thanks to the raw milk advocates, infections are looking up. The sad thing is parents will feed their children milk supplemented with cow poo. Adults have the right to be stupid; it is what makes America great. But it is a shame that children should suffer as a result of their parents goofy idée fixe.

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The full article is a bit disjointed, but it is within this excerpt he really gets to his point--raw milk has lead to more infections that could have been avoided by not consuming raw milk. Go figure.

[cdsilv]

1. When I was a teen we had a milk cow....

four athletes in the family, one income - we had a garden, beef cows, pigs and a milk cow. My mom would 'pasteurize' the milk by boiling it and then refrigerate it. We got two gallons a day and all us kids had to drink milk instead of cokes (from the atlanta area). We never got sick from it and it 'did a body good'.

[LiberalLoner]

2. Boiling it most likely killed any e coli that might have been in the milk. I think

in that case it would be very safe.

[Godhumor]

3. Yeah, it wouldn't meet the strict definition of raw milk anymore after boiling. n/t

[Javaman]

4. I've been drinking "raw" milk for 5 years. Ask me anything.

I am very well informed on the subject.

Point to me an article showing that raw milk has been the cause of some sort of "infection" or "outbreak" and I will show you dozens of articles regarding the same thing with factory farmed milk.

The bottom line is: do your research. Don't buy just any raw milk. That's like russian roulette.

The milk I get is from a farm that produces milk for Blue Bell Ice Cream here in Texas. They are inspected bi-weekly by the USDA.

And the whole "cow shit" in the milk, is so incredibly stupid.

If you read up on the history as to why milk was first pasteurized then homogenized, you will also understand that it had to do with milk production in cities and in location to pig sty's and other animal and non-animal production that cause the various milk born diseases.

also the reason for homogenization has more to do with making money than anything else. I will go into further explanation if you wish.

Also the last time a review of the milk production practices in regards to milk born diseases in the US was back in 1974. No research has been done since.

Scotland has done the most recent research; 1997. They found that the needs and requirement to pasteurization has been superseded by regulations to keep milk production apart from other animal production. (which is the main cause of the various diseases).

Pasteurization had it's place, but via regulation and modern bovine inspection via the USDA, the need for it's use in developed nations has long since past.

However, personally speaking, factory farms are nothing but breeding grounds for disease and need pasteurization primarily because they often skirt the regs and have huge influence in congress via the cattle industry lobbyist.

Bottom line: making blanket statements about something, the author clearly has not idea about, is just plain ignorant.

[Brickbat]

5. Minnesota milk is awesome, but I have to say the tastiest milk I ever had was Finnish milk, which I

bought when I was living in Russia. It was so, SO good. Even the skim milk was creamy, and it was very slightly sweeter than American milk.

I also used to get non-homogenized milk in glass bottles when we lived in dairy country. That stuff was good too, but not as good as the Finnish milk.

The only time I would drink raw milk is if I were doing the work myself.