A word about raw milk, if you will

[gaffa]

@featherlou

I kinda wish that North Americans would get out of the habit of shaking hands, too. People are afraid to have their kids vaccinated against horrible, disfiguring, fatal diseases, but they’ll shake any unwashed hand that comes along.

I avoid shaking hands whenever possible. I’m not sure why it continues as a custom. People are weird - I know atheists who still say “God bless you” whenever anyone around sneezes.

From the film “The Wizard of Speed and Time”:

Dora Belair: Look, you work with me, I expect a pro. You don’t even shake hands; you oughta see a shrink!

Mike: Miss Belair, if you feel compelled to grab part of my body and shake it before you can even be friendly, you’ve got far worse problems than you think I have.

[Miller]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

In some ways, I agree with you: it’s pretty bad when people assume that science is a poor tool for discerning what’s going on in the world.

However, it’s not the only tool around for making decisions. When advocates of science treat it as though it is, then folks who haven’t thought carefully about the subject sometimes respond angrily by rejecting science.

If you like the idea of science being a major tool for making decisions–as I do–then it’s wise to give respect to other tools, such as senses of aesthetics.

Daniel

I think this is probably the base of the disagreement over the relative intelligence of people who drink raw milk. Someone who thinks, “I know raw milk isn’t as safe as pasteurized milk, but I like the taste enough to accept the additional risk,” isn’t (necessarily) an idiot. I think most folks in this thread could agree on that, even if they personally have a different risk/reward ratio. However, I think when the OP and others in this thread call people who drink raw milk idiots, they’re refering to the folks who think, “It’s more natural, therefore it MUST be healthier! Pasteurized milk is processed, and processed foods are BAD!” And I think most people in this thread would also agree that people who follow that line of thought are, indeed, idiots.

[MsRobyn]

@treis

This is so damn stupid. 2 deaths in 7 years and you are all freaking out about the risk of drinking unpasteurized milk. I’d bet dollars to donuts that more people died in that timespan driving to buy their raw milk than from drinking it.

Do the people that are so concerned about their food refuse to travel to poor or even semi-poor countries?

I’m not afraid of dying from drinking raw milk. I just think the explosive diarrhea isn’t worth it.

Robin

[Una_Persson]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

No, not “just like.” If you consume candy and sweets in abundance, you are LIKELY to go into insulin shock.

This is not correct. “Insulin shock” is a term used when you have hypoglycemia, not hyperglycemia.

[Cisco]

I gotta agree with the OP here. People arguing against her may not know that there are a lot of new age/organic/raw food/naturopathic types out there promoting raw milk consumption for seemingly no other reason than it’s more “natural”. They claim pasteurization kills all the nutrients or something. As far as I know there are tons of risks and no proven benefits to drinking raw milk.

There may not be a ton of cases of milkborne sickness right now, but if people are allowed to go around singing raw milk’s praises and calling it safe without being challenged, consumption will go up, and so will illness.

[Acid_Lamp]

I’m a raw foods guy. I’ve been eating that way for the last ten years or so. I do it for the additional nutrients that I get from the whole food, but mostly for the taste. You DO lose nutrients over-cooking veggies and meats. I’m not under the illusion that I’m getting any magical benefits from that though. I eat all my meats rare, or raw, and my veggies the same way, regardless if they are usually cooked or not. I’ve had exactly ONE issue with that, and it was my own stupid fault, for failing to cook cranberry beans; which I had never eaten before and didn’t know I needed to cook them to make them non toxic.

So anecdotally of course, if we simply assume a raw item 5 times a week, (and it’s really a lot more than that) than I have gotten sick 1/ 2,800 times from raw food. If we eliminate that because I failed to do my homework, then I have 100% success rate so far.

Pass the steak tartare’, the sashimi, the whole-fat raw milk, and the cheese please. Life’s too short to live in a world of carbonized meat, squashy veggies cooked beyond recognition, and boring ass milk flavored water.

[Miss_Purl_McKnittington]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

You can’t rely on an FDA grade A rating to tell you the dairy is using sanitary procedures in areas other than pasteurization.

Yes, you can. Being a certified Grade A dairy involves quarterly inspections of all parts of the farm where cows are held, fed, or milked. That includes holding sheds, milking barns/parlors, walkways, mangers, and holding areas for milk, along with equipment. If any area of your farm doesn’t comply with the regulations and qualifications, then you have a set amount of time to make that area compliant. If you don’t, then you lose your certification. If the infraction is serious enough, then your certification is revoked on the spot. That’s all done through the state, and most states have based their rubrics on a sample one formulated by the FDA.

I don’t have time to reply to anything else because I have to go out and do chores soon, but I couldn’t let that stand.

Oh, wait. One more thing. You can’t go into insulin shock from eating too much candy, you moron. I’ll assume you know just as much about dairying as you do diabetes.

[Waverly]

Milk enemas are still safe though, right?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Miss Purl McKnittington

Yes, you can. Being a certified Grade A dairy involves quarterly inspections of all parts of the farm where cows are held, fed, or milked.

Misread alert! Misread alert! Look at what I said in context:

@me

part of the problem with raw milk is a lack of certification. You can’t rely on an FDA grade A rating to tell you the dairy is using sanitary procedures in areas other than pasteurization.

It’s pretty clear from the use of the definite article that I’m talking about the dairy producing the raw milk. This isn’t based off my previous knowledge of dairies: it’s based off the OP.

@you

In order for fluid milk to be sold as drinkable milk, it has to be labeled Grade A, meaning that the farm it came from has passed inspections and complies with state and federal regulations, along with the hauling company and the processing plant. There’s no program to do that for raw milk, so the standards for it vary widely across the country, and in many states, it’s illegal to sell it.

If you’d ratchet down the rabid hostility (look out–it’s possible to catch rabies from a keyboard!), you might notice that I was AGREEING with you here.

Oh, wait. One more thing. You can’t go into insulin shock from eating too much candy, you moron. I’ll assume you know just as much about dairying as you do diabetes.

:rolleyes: Yes, I made a mistake, and no, I’m not knowledgeable about diabetes. I admit the mistake, and in the future, when you use shitty analogies, I will not do you the favor of accepting the premise, since it’s clear you’ll turn it against me if I do.

So: the diabetes thing was, as I pointed out, a shitty analogy, and therefore irrelevant. Better?

Daniel

[intention]

@Long Time First Time

…

Forget rabies - cattle are herbivores, which means that even when they are almost dead of rabies they have such a low amount of virus in their system that they couldn’t give you rabies if they bit you. Forget the scenario of a farmer going into a stall with a bellowing, extremely neurologic cow flopping around and milking her then selling the milk.

This is a completely different story from some carnivores, particularly critters like skunks - they can be highly infectious without showing signs for many weeks.

…

Well … in a word, no.

Whether an animal is an herbivore, a carnivore, or an omnitarian, they can and often do transmit rabies through a bite. For example:

Two forms of rabies are possible with totally different clinical signs. In the furious form of rabies in cattle, normally docile animals may attack humans and other animals. Milk production ceases abruptly in dairy cattle. The cow may appear hypersensitive and will follow sounds and movements intensely. The affected cattle may exhibit abnormal bellowing which may continue intermittently, or voiceless attempts to bellow described as yawning.

In the paralytic form, the first sign of trouble may be paralysis of the throat. Drooling of saliva, grinding of the teeth, extension of the head, and bloat may occur. The cow may appear to be choked. An owner or an attending veterinarian may become exposed to rabies themselves by searching for an offending foreign body in a choked animal bare handed. Animals affected in this way rarely attempt to bite. Weakness in the hindquarters may occur and is always accompanied by decreased sensation to the affected area. Paralysis of the anus and penis in the bull may be seen. Eventually the animal will go down and be unable to get up as paralysis becomes complete.

SOURCE

Also, getting milk from a rabid cow is not, as you seem to think, highly unlikely because the cow will be “flopping around” … see here for an example where raw milk from a rabid cow was passed on to consumers.

Nor is it uncommon for a cow to have rabies. In Ontario, twenty percent of all reported animal rabies cases occurred in cows, second only to Red Foxes.

Just sayin’ …

w.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@intention

Also, getting milk from a rabid cow is not, as you seem to think, highly unlikely because the cow will be “flopping around” … see here for an example where raw milk from a rabid cow was passed on to consumers.

You’re right that it’s not unlikely because the cow will be flopping around: it’s unlikely because it’s never happened, according to your link:

There are no published studies that have demonstrated the presence of rabies virus in cows’ milk. Although transmission of rabies virus from consuming unpasteurized milk from an infected animal is theoretically possible, no human has ever been reported to develop rabies via this route.

Daniel

[DrDeth]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Well, “knowing the name of the cow” does suggest a familiarity with the particular dairy from which the milk comes–and as the OP itself suggests, part of the problem with raw milk is a lack of certification. You can’t rely on an FDA grade A rating to tell you the dairy is using sanitary procedures in areas other than pasteurization. That means you have to make your own judgment. If you know the name of the cow, you may also know that the farmer isn’t washing his hands in the milk, for example.

That’s what I took drdeth’s comment to suggest, anyway: knowing the name of the cow was just shorthand for knowing how the dairy operates, not some sort of Wizard-of-Earthsea name magic.
Daniel

Yes, one of three family cows on the family farm. Not anything mystical.

[phouka]

I’m torn.

I think there is something to the hypothesis that are ultra-clean, pasteurized lifestyle has led to an increase in asthma, allergies, and auto-immune disorders. I think that informed adults should be able to choose activities that carry risks, so long as they don’t expect the rest of us to bail them out. I suspect that raw whole milk and the cheeses made from raw whole milk probably do taste different, more complex, perhaps even better than the pasteurized sort.

However, I really, really, really don’t want to see this turn into some fad where everyone and their Paris Hilton run off to buy raw milk and give it a try. That kind of instant popularity leads to people cutting corners, and the precautions short of pasteurization that should be taken to make raw milk as safe as possible (not safe, mind you, but safer) would get lost in the rush to market. As the FDA doesn’t inspect and regulate raw milk (it sounds like), then there’s nothing to prevent abuses and carelessness. Also, there are more than a few stubbornly uninformed adults who would probably provide raw milk to those who really shouldn’t have any - small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and immunocompromised.

In an ideal world, dairies that wanted to offer raw milk would be inspected and regulated by the FDA to ensure that the product was as safe as it could be without pasteurization. The raw milk would be packaged with warnings appropriate to the risks inherent - just like with rare steaks at a restaurant and chocolate bars made in factories that also process nuts and tobacco products. Anyone who gave raw milk to a small child would be held culpable.

But, it is far from an ideal world, isn’t it?

[intention]

Left Hand, thanks for the reply. I fear you didn’t understand me. First Time said you couldn’t get milk from a rabid cow because it would be flopping around. I gave a citations showing a case where milk from a rabid cow was not only gotten, it was mixed in with other milk and sold to consumers.

Note that in none of this did I say you can get rabies from cow milk, just that you can get milk from a rabid cow. However, that must be what you thought I said, because your reply was that

@Left Hand of Dorkness

You’re right that it’s not unlikely because the cow will be flopping around: it’s unlikely because it’s never happened, according to your link:

There are no published studies that have demonstrated the presence of rabies virus in cows’ milk. Although transmission of rabies virus from consuming unpasteurized milk from an infected animal is theoretically possible, no human has ever been reported to develop rabies via this route.

While this is true, it has nothing to do with what I said.

w.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@intention

Left Hand, thanks for the reply. I fear you didn’t understand me.

I understood your point (thuse the first clause in my reply); I misunderstood your implication. I mistakenly thought you were implying that, since milk from a rabid cow could enter the raw-milk supply, it presented a danger to raw-milk consumers. My apologies.

Daniel

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Jesus Christ.

1. I will never, ever drink unpasteurized milk.

2. Never drank it before, either, so not really an issue.

I did find it very interesting that Ms P McK lives/grew up on a farm. In my experience farmers are always the first people to tell you that whatever it is they grow/extract/sell is the Safest Thing Ever.

Like the guy who swore up and down that the only sure way to avoid exposure to BSE and/or CJD was to eat only British beef. In about 1995. Of course, since I never really bothered checking where my beef was coming from, but have yet to get up and walk sideways into a wall, maybe he was right…

My understanding is that some folks believe there are health benefits from drinking raw milk and that it’s less allergenic. I’m not sure of their exact reasons, although raw milk would possibly contain live bovine cells such as their white blood cells and perhaps that’s the reason.

Those people are stupid. Pasteurization can’t make something more allergenic because nothing is added to the milk.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Miller

I think this is probably the base of the disagreement over the relative intelligence of people who drink raw milk. Someone who thinks, “I know raw milk isn’t as safe as pasteurized milk, but I like the taste enough to accept the additional risk,” isn’t (necessarily) an idiot. I think most folks in this thread could agree on that, even if they personally have a different risk/reward ratio. However, I think when the OP and others in this thread call people who drink raw milk idiots, they’re refering to the folks who think, “It’s more natural, therefore it MUST be healthier! Pasteurized milk is processed, and processed foods are BAD!” And I think most people in this thread would also agree that people who follow that line of thought are, indeed, idiots.

As usual, I agree with Miller.

I just also think that unsubstantiated fearmongering about raw milk is as silly as unsubstantiated crowing about raw milk. Stick to the legitimate issues with raw milk, let folks make up their own minds, and everyone’s happy.

Daniel

[casdave]

The risk of illness from raw milk far outweights the benefits, but you can also add the following.

If you have raw milk and it has contamination from pathogens, then there is a very good chance that those pathogens will provided with a route from the milk to other foodstuffs, and the end result is that its actually some other food item that will make you ill as a result of the cross contamination. For example, you might not wash your hands after handling an item containing raw milk and then move on to contaminate some other foodstuff.

To all those who seem to think that eating raw delivers more ‘goodness’ or vitamins or is somehow more beneficial - well that is extremely misleading, the process of cooking will tend to make more of the content available to the human digestive system, this is also true for many other animals. Cooking denatures cell structures, and breaks them down into simpler molecular chains which are easier to digest. Yes, there can be mineral and vitamin loss, but this needn’t be all that great, and in a well resourced economy, the chances of vitamin and mineral deficiency in a properly balanced diet are zero.

If you must eat raw vegetables, the sensible way to do it is to peel and blanch it first, you still will not have as much of the food content available as if you cooked it, but you will get more of the flavour and the crunchiness. Unfortunately blanching of salad vegetables is not a practical option.

The issue with raw milk is that the presence of pathogens is not obvious, it takes time to verify and this is not a practical solution - who is going to wait to see if cultures grow ?
Our animal husbandry is very much better than the past, and as a result there is much less chance of getting contaminated raw milk, we have many preventative measures plus a far greater awareness of the condition and health of cows.
We can reasonably say that raw milk is much safer than in the past - the pre anti biotic past.

Despite this, raw milk is an uncontrolled risk, Listeria monocytogenes can and does kill up to one third of those infected, its instructive to note that the UK has an almost vanishingly small number of cases of illness from raw milk, and France - which consumes much more along with products made from raw milk, has a far greater incidence.

Anyone who takes raw milk is taking a risk, and its not even a logically quantifiable one either, because its not a simple case odd or percentages, food poisoning does not work quite that way, you can’t say the risk is one per thousand, any more sensibly than saying its one per hundred, because we are not dealing with uniform quantities. All we can say is that the more raw milk you take, the more likely you will be to become ill, some will be more unlucky than others and be ill lots of times, others will only be ill once and possibly die, yet others will show no symptoms and will themselves become a source of illness for others.

The severity of illness associated with raw milk, compared to the illusory benefits are so great that anyone knowing and understanding such risks would be a complete idiot do take raw milk.
Its almost as if there is a perverse reaction against generations of microbial research, these things we know, we can control the risks by pasteurisation and yet other idiots mislead the ignorant idiots into making dcisions they do not understand and which may be hazardous.

Basicly, if you like danger, I suggest that you are much more likely to get an adrenalin rush from jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane with a parachute on, but to drink raw milk - well that’s just stupid.

[Bill_Door]

@Acid Lamp

(snip)Pass the steak tartare’, the sashimi, the whole-fat raw milk, and the cheese please. Life’s too short to live in a world of carbonized meat, squashy veggies cooked beyond recognition, and boring ass milk flavored water.

Some day, when I’m elderly and in a nursing home, I hope Miss Purl McKnittington is planning my menu. Until then, given a choice of dinner invitations, I’m eating with Acid Lamp. I like to let my immune system know who it’s working for. I spent 5 months in a rural community in China and never got sick, but my more fastidious colleagues could blow into town for a weekend and end up in the emergency room. Of course the old, the sick, the pregnant should avoid raw milk, but for most people it’s less dangerous than crossing the street. Who wants to live in Nerfworld?

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Bill Door

Some day, when I’m elderly and in a nursing home,

Never! Over my dead body. You will stay right here with us, and we will call a nurse in…and…and…well, we will just have to make do…but never a nursing home.

As for me, I don’t drink milk ever since I was stricken with some sort of milk disorder that forces me to obey a series of painstaking rituals before partaking (I wish I was joking)…but if I did drink milk, I think I would have no problem with raw milk. I take mad risks, every day, in order to live my life the way I want to live.

If the OP is saying “people who think raw milk is as safe as pasturized milk are idiots” then yes…that goes without saying.

If the OP is saying that those that drink raw milk are idiots, then I think the OP is not only incorrect, but also most likely hypocritical. And I did read the OP to mean that people that drink raw milk are idiots, based on

Which is why it’s a good thing, and why people who drink raw milk are idiots.