Anyone drinking the raw milk?

The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, American Public Health Association, and National Environmental Health Association, among other prominent health organizations, all take the position that milk pasteurization is an effective way to stop the spread of disease and that pasteurization results in minimal loss of milk nutrients. There are losses of 0-10% of some nutrients, such as thiamine and folate; and raw milk is not an important source of vitamin D, which is added after pasteurization. Lactase is not present in raw or pasteurized milk.

It never hurt me any - I just got sick of straining the flies out of it

I actually wrote an article on raw milk and why it's good and healthy...

http://www.dirttime.org/2008/07/10/some-like-it-raw/

I have been a shareholder in two nearby raw milk dairies. The farmers had come up with a system, which we all thought was legal, that anyone interested in purchasing raw milk directly from a farm would follow. In effect, I needed to purchase a share of part of the dairy farm. As a shareholder, I was legally allowed to drink raw milk from "my" cows. I paid the farmer a small fee for the labor and equipment. Some of them made butter, yogurt, kefir and buttermik for me (shareholders), too. I had to go to the farms in order to get the product, so I was able to see what the cows looked like, how clean the stalls were, and where the butter was churned.

These farms were growing in numbers as people relearn the benefits of local, organic and raw dairy. Unfortunately, fear and misinformation have led some State officials to shut these small, family owned dairies down. Thankfully they dairies I visit still have markets for their high quality milk (at much lower prices, through dairy co-ops, to be made into legal raw milk cheese or pasteurized for mass consumption), but their customers - shareholders - are left struggling for a legal way to access food we want & need!

I'm not too put out because I'm not a "milk drinker", more of a butter lover, and nothing beats raw cream butter from some beautifully healthy cows munching on luscious spring greens. Hopefully we can get things worked out before spring.

I love raw milk and drink it whenever possible. Sure, there is a chance people will get sick from it. But remember the spinach e.coli outbreak? And the last time I checked, its still on the shelf. In the freezer. In cans (does spinach come in cans?) etc...

Whatever anyone's beverage preference, I think we have a right to drink raw milk if we so choose to.

Mike, if you're lactose intolerant like me, you can drink raw milk with no ill effects because it contains the lactase emzyme we're missing. (The pasteurization process kills the lactase along with many of the nutrients in the raw milk.) It's fun to make ice cream with but I'm not a milk drinker either.

Sammi Smiles -- I've heard people take that stance that humans aren't cows and shouldn't drink cows milk. But what are we then to eat? Isn't it then equally unnatural to grind wheat to make flour and bake it? Why pluck plants from the fertile earth to devour them?

Milk from an animal is just another food from another source. It can't be weirder to drink milk from a cow than to eat the cow itself.

While at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison last year we saw a very unusual experimental documentary called "Milk in the Land." Really great.

From the website: "The film surveys the role of milk throughout American history, politics and popular culture-from government price support programs, links with eugenics and political scandals, to infant feeder collector conventions and cow beauty contests."

Here's info on the film:

Here's a film trailer on YouTube.

I remember hearing a fascinating (fascinating!) interview on WPR about a book chronicling the history of milk's marketing. If I remember correctly, the current MILK, IT DOES A BODY GOOD mentality stems way back to a marketing campaign by milk producers to combat the public perception the milk was unhealthy and amoral especially for kids – becuase at the time, the milk you got in urban areas came from cows that mostly fed on the byproducts of beer production, so you got alcoholic milk.

Look at this a different way... Motorcyclists are allowed to ride without a helmet, thus taking a risk... Smokers are allowed to smoke thus taking a risk and passing it on to others via second hand smoke... I could go on... Tattoos, Botox, sushi, raw meat, raw eggs... etc... etc...

Why is Raw Milk treated differently... If I wish to consume raw milk and assume that risk, why should I be treated differently than a smoker, a sushi eater or a biker???

This is an interesting discussion seemingly regarding personal freedoms versus governmental health control moreso than raw milk. I agree that industrial farming has "homogenized" our entire food industry. When the farmer is more than once removed from the consumer, trust is impossible between the two parties. These safeguards grant the consumer some element of security with the potential for diminished quality.

It seems the simple solution here is to delist from federal guidelines the transactions between individual farmers and individual consumers. I think a contract between the two recognizing the risks involved in consuming these raw products would be sufficient.

Also, The Omnivores' Dilemma is a great read for anyone unfamiliar with corporate agriculture in America.

idk about raw milk i guess it doesnt really matter. no matter how revulting it seems my step-dad has a good point when it comes down to people shouldn't be drinking cows milk anyways, cuz well its for cows and he says we as humans should drink human milk haha it does sound gross but its a good point you have to admit.

AgentPendrell,

I never said it was "safe", I merely stated I didn't know what the big deal was. I'm a walking repository of Mycobacterium bovis and Brucella, both of which I contracted from drinking raw milk. Instead, I'm stating that people should be able to drink whatever they want, especially if it tastes as delicious as raw milk and cheese, harvested and produced by the loving and tender hands or farmers and artisanal cheese-makers without the benefit of scalding heat and burning radiation.

You too, can see the glorious benefit of symbiotic existence with our benevolent and wholesome friends, Mycobacterium bovis and Brucella. With them, the way is light. The way is unity. The way is just.

Join us, AgentPendrell, join us and live!

Pendrell, I don't know your personal eating habits, the amount of research or reading you've done in to our industrialized food system, or if you know much about our "food safety laws".

As someone who tends to read about this stuff more often than the average joe, my suggestion to you would be to check out some articles or books that talk about the food industry as a whole. Maybe you've read Omnivore's Dilemma (I sure hope you have if you're commenting on this post to begin with), but take it up a notch and read "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran-Foer or one of Pollan's most recent book that discusses the benefits of raw, unprocessed food.

Pasteurization is good in a lot of ways, but it's also used to cover up the fact that industrialized food is gross. In other words, you think we need pasteurization because of germs in food, but we really need it because of the way companies handle the production of our food.

Raw milk is technically illegal because that requires whoever produces it to be smart enough to keep their production line clean, and we've learned from experience that you can't trust people to do that. In lieu of mandating that food production lines have legitimate and enforced sanitary guidelines, the government has decided to just super-heat the shit out of nearly everything we drink.

This is ignorant public health policy - rather than pass laws requiring farms and production lines to be clean, we destroy the nutritional benefits of many of the foods we eat in the name of public safety.

Okay, hold on... I am NOT against raw milk. Drink whatever the hell you want, for all I care. And I understand there may be health benefits, although I'm pretty skeptical of all the superfoods and raw diets and trendy healthy eating stuff that is trying to overcompensate for our over-processed, industrialized food system. But whatever...

But the logic in this thread is painfully absent. "I did it, and I was fine" DOES NOT EQUAL "it is therefore an okay/desirable thing to do." That logic is wreaking havoc with food safety, vaccines, and lots of other health and lifestyle practices these days.

So, go you - there's nothing like a big glass of milk sucked right from the cow's teat, I'm sure - but evil things like pasteurization have protected millions upon millions from disease, so please do not assume your localized experience is a good way to make public health decisions.

I also grew up on a farm drinking raw milk. I wouldn't say I turned out normal but it didn't kill me.

My family stayed with relatives on a farm for a while and we drank raw milk, straight from the bulk tank as well. I fail to see the big deal.

To this day I still occasionally get raw goats milk from Mother, it makes a fine drink and delicious cheese.

I grew up on a farm and drank raw milk, straight from the bulk tank, from year 1 until I headed off to college. I turned out just fine! I was healthy and didn't get sick very often. I still can't bring myself to drink skim because it's so watered down. So much milk seems watered down, so I opt for the cream line milk in returnable bottles from local farms.