I’ve got no problem with people taking educated risks.
The issue here is that education has a herd effect. If there are enough people taking the educated choice to drink raw milk, then there are going to be more who drink raw milk just because a bunch of other folk do. And then they feed it to their kids, or as a curative to grandma.
As a society, do we have a duty to save people from themselves if that is the main way to save others from them?
Thank you so much for that well-thought out post, casdave. Those who drink raw milk without fear or brushing off very real and present dangers that come with that, are foolish. Not only that, they’re ignorant of centuries and centuries of people dying from contaminated milk, which was common into the twentieth century. That’s not all that long ago, when it comes to history.
The thing that’s so tempting about milk is that it is so white and clean-looking, so pure. You wouldn’t think that something the same color as bleached cotton would harbor anything that could kill you. But looks are deceiving when it comes to food safety – just because you dropped that hunk of fruit on the floor and it looks clean doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat. Westerners as a whole have also been lulled into a false sense of security about the safety of drinking milk after about 80 years of pasteurization being the standard rather than the exception. Because so many people who drink milk don’t get sick from it, we assume that it’s always safe. But it’s not. And it’s foolish not to take steps that help increase the safety of it.
Thanks too to everybody who is not willing to toss over lessons learned from the past for the sake of an aesthetic experience.
Other people in the thread have said things similar to this, and this is really what’s spurring me to say that people who choose to drink raw milk are idiots. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t try to defend the decision to drink raw milk with anything more than 1) it tastes good, or 2) it’s so much better for you. The first one is entirely subjective, and is a pretty thin justification for doing something that has so many potential consequences to more than just the person drinking it (see irishgirl’s post earlier in the thread.)
The second one is untrue. About the only advantage that raw milk has over pasteurized milk is that it’s higher in Vitamin C, but the levels are so low that you’d have drink something like three quarts of it in a day to equal one glass of orange juice.
At some point, raw milk stops being a personal safety issue and becomes one of public safety.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that.
The fact is, a whole lot of people in this very thread have demonstrated a perfectly good understanding of the science and math involved and still come to a different conclusion about raw milk than you suggest is mandatory for non-stupid folk. The fact is, the coincidence of people sickening and dying from raw milk consumption pretty neatly mirrors the pre-sanitation, pre-modern medicine, pre-electrification age in general. I wouldn’t pick up a pitcher of milk sitting on a parlor table at three in the afternoon, wave away the flies, and drink, in 1907, on a bet. I’d also avoid pump water and a lot of medical care. But between modern veterinary medicine and agricultural practice, a modern hospital just down the road, sterilized galvinized pails and refrigeration, I was able to make it through visits to Grandmother’s farm just fine, and I would bet moderate amounts on others’ ability to do the same.
I don’t mind pasturized milk, but there’s nothing here, in your many many words about raw milk, to convince me that unpasturized milk and cheese are a unique and dangerous threat.
For what it’s worth, I drink raw milk—have been for about two years. The reason is that I can’t drink any other milk. I even tried all the permutations of Lactaid. As it was explained to me by a chiropractor who also practices Chinese medicine, that raw milk might work for me because it has the things (enzymes) that my body needs to digest the milk. In pasteurized milk they are killed in the pasteurization process. I love milk and missed not having it so I gave it a try. Low and behold, zero problem. Any other type of milk and my stomach went into serious conniptions. There are only two places in San Francisco that carry it, and I’m very careful with both going right home and putting it in the fridge and watching the date.
I suffer under no illusions that living in the country means I live in a cleaner or better place than the city or suburbs. (Well, other than that I enjoy the hell out of it and dislike living in cities. But that has nothing to do about safety, and is a personal preference.) My family has never regularly drank raw milk – I remember the rest of the family doing it once during a snowstorm when we ran out of pasteurized milk, but Mom wouldn’t let me because of the whole diabetes thing.
To demonstrate how my family doesn’t fuck around when it comes to things like cryptosporidium and e. coli, this summer there was an outbreak of both of them among the unweaned calves. (It turned out not to be BVD for anyone who reads the linked thread. It was just really hot and there were a lot of flies – prime conditions for an outbreak.) In the end five or six calves died, despite all precautions and the best treatment we could give them. And it’s not a pretty death; it’s a pretty terrible one. They get weaker and weaker, until they’re too weak to eat, and sometimes their fevers go so high they have convulsions, and it’s just not something I want to picture a person dying from. The outbreak didn’t happen because of anything we did, and happened despite all the things we did do to prevent things like that happening.
And until all that ended, nothing I wore in the barn got past in the laundry room without being washed in hot water and bleach, and I didn’t go through the house until I’d scrubbed up first in the barn with hot water and soap, and then again in the shower. My boots never even left the barn. Why? Because it’s stupid to introduce something like that in the space you live in. And that includes foodstuffs that are contaminated.
Guys, things like cryptosporidium are out there. It’s not just some little bitty thing that pops its head up and says, “Surprise! Diarrhea!” It’s common among dairy cattle, and sometimes it gets into the milk supply because cattle are kept in herds, and cow shit isn’t hypoallergenic. Pasteurization reduces the risk inherent in drinking something that comes from an animal that will drink water it’s shit in.
I know, right? That goes along with the people saying pasteurized milk (which is much freer of bacteria and viruses than raw milk) is responsible for Type I diabetes, when most researchers say that Type I is caused by the immune system identifying the Islets of Langerhans as foreign bodies and killing them dead. There is nothing to back up any commonly touted health benefits of raw milk. Just nothing at all. And people who say otherwise are fools.
Sorry, magellan01, but I can’t believe that, because the only enzymes in milk that are destroyed in pasteurization are cow enzymes, which humans can’t use, because they’re for cows. It might be that there’s something used in the process from cow to milk plant that doesn’t agree with you that isn’t present in raw milk, but people can’t use cow enzymes because they’re not cows.
If you have some studies from a reputable source that say otherwise and have been confirmed by other studies, I’d be interested in seeing them.
That doesn’t even make sense, because you can rely on a Grade A rating to certify that sanitary procedures are being used in other places than pasteurization. To say otherwise in any context is to show a fundamental misunderstanding of what goes into obtaining a Grade A certification. It also doesn’t make sense to bring in FDA grades for raw milk because THERE ARE NONE. What the hell does it even mean to bring in a grade that doesn’t even exist? Are we supposed to imagine what the standards for such a grade would be? Your point in reference to FDA grades for raw milk is just . . . weird.
And I am done arguing with you because I have better things to do than argue with a marmot-faced tool who is willing to place aesthetics over a process that has been proven for the past century or so to reduce the number of deaths from contaminated milk. I’m going to go on thinking that people who drink raw milk are missing some fundamental step in judgment when confronted with the very real benefits of pasteurization.
(Sorry, magellan. Damn, but you’re taking a risk there. I hope everything continues to go well for you.)
I might be mistaken about what it is that is killed in the process, or that anything is killed, I was simply relaying information that was given to me. and I may be misquoting him—it was some time ago. The bottom line is that I cannot drink any pasteurized milk without immediate complications 100% of the time. And I’ve been drinking raw milk for a year and a half with zero problems 100% of the time. Tonight included. Make of that what you will.
A whole lot of people die in car wrecks that would live if they just walked. Got a problem with people who put speed above safety? There are a million things out there that can kill us. A lot of those things also have their good sides. It’s up to each of us to make a decision about the level of risk we are willing to take in our lives. But nobody can cut out risk entirely, so why worry about what other people are choosing? I’m sure there is something you do that the raw milk drinkers don’t do which increases your risk. Do you want them to write a diatribe against you?
I’m saying this as someone who lives in Cameroon, a pretty risky thing to do. Trust me, if I were afraid of explosive diarrhea I would have left here a long time ago. I’ve been sick with more things than you could probably name. But for me, it’s way worth it.
Anyway, I hope I get a pass. The only pasterized milk available here is dried milk. I use this for most purposes, but I live four hours away of semi-unpaved road away from the nearest source of cheese (which is crappy cheese since it is flown in from France and spends days in transit to get up here) so I make my own. And dried milk makes crappy cheese. So, I do like everyone else and buy my milk from the nomads who wander into town with huge gourds on their heads. I do my best to sterilize it before making cheese and I almost never eat the cheese uncooked, but it’s not a foolproof process and I’m sure I’m at some risk. Yeah, I do put this risk ahead of going without cheese for two years. If you have a problem with that, I don’t care.
Good fucking Lord, woman, that’s exactly why you can’t rely on them! Gah! You really are set on misunderstanding everything, aren’t you?
Daniel
[uber-nitpicky-hijack] Psst… Klan robes were traditionally made of silk until the New Klan period, when dry cleaning started to become an immigrant-dominated industry. Nowadays they use cotton, but probably not around the time of that picture [/uber-nitpicky hijack]
This is untrue. From a food safety website:
“…there are those who claim that, for a variety of pseudo-scientific reasons, the (pasteurization) process impairs the quality of milk. According to them, raw (unpasteurized) milk is in all ways superior to the pasteurized variety.
One claim is that heating “kills” valuable enzymes in the milk, enzymes that we need for optimal health. The truth is that while heating does inactivate enzymes (enzymes aren’t “alive,” so it’s impossible to “kill” them), they wouldn’t do us much good anyway. For example, some raw milk proponents say that since lactase (the enzyme that breaks down the milk sugar called lactose) is inactivated by heating, pasteurization contributes to lactose intolerance because heating would inactivate the enzyme. This statement is not true for a couple of reasons.
First, lactase is produced (in humans and other animals) by cells lining the small intestine — it is not present in milk! The only dairy product in which one could reasonably expect to find lactase is yogurt. And even in that case, the bacteria that actually produce the lactase are added to milk after pasteurization, so they’re not heated to high temperatures.
Second, even if there were lactase in milk, it wouldn’t do us much good. That’s because this enzyme works best in the small intestine, where it is formed. The highly acidic environment of the stomach would inactivate it. So even if we drank milk with active lactase in it, it’s unlikely that much if any of it would survive the stomach acid and arrive in the small intestine in an active state.”
I’m not surprised that a chiropractor would be giving bonehead advice on nutrition. 
What the raw milk advocates are also forgetting is how common milk-borne illness was before the advent of pasteurization:
“Today, all milk traded in interstate commerce must be pasteurized, thus providing assurance that it, and products made from it, will be wholesome when they reach consumers. The effectiveness of such procedures is shown by the drop in milk-borne illnesses during the twentieth century. In 1938, fluid milk and products made from it were associated with 25% of all disease outbreaks due to food or water contamination — today, that figure is less than 1%!”
I’m all for revisiting those thrilling days of yesteryear, except for the explosive diarrhea and death.
But then, I’m the sort of safety nerd who cooks pork thoroughly even though there’s next to no chance of contracting trichinosis from it.
I can live without the thrill of raw mammalian product goodness, along with wondering what might be crawling through it.
Chiropractors are quacks, and practicers of Chinese medicine are dangerous quacks.
The thing about this particular discussion is that the folks who drink raw milk aren’t only increasing their (and the members of their household’s) risk factors by consuming raw milk - they’re increasing other people’s too.
Food-borne contaminatants and pathogens (as has been pointed out earlier in this thread) are commincable. The herd effect so often cited in the debate about immunizations does not only apply to immunizations - it applies in the case of food-borne pathogens, as well. As was mentioned (with appropriate cites and everything) earlier in this thread, milk was once one of the major vectors for food-borne illness. Requiring pasteurization cut way, way back on that particular disease vector - and I’d rather not have it introduced again, thanks. And - before I hear the resounding cry of “don’t make my decisions for me, man!” - I’ll point out that someone else’s choice to consume raw milk effectively makes my decision for me. I drink pasteurized milk because I’d rather decrease my exposure to the pathogens contained in raw milk - but interacting with someone who feels the risk is worth the reward exposes me anyway. The argument that LHoD and a few others are making that it should be their decision about whether or not the risk is worth the reward is only really a good one for matters where the decision affects only them.
I’m all for any informed adult taking any risk they feel is worth the potential reward - I just don’t want them making that decision for me, too. I don’t want to wind up with the pyrotechnic poops courtesy of the raw-milk afficiando sitting next to me on the subway. I also don’t think it’s appropriate for raw-milk consumers to make that call for infants, pregnant women or immunocompromised people - which is why I, personally, don’t think raw milk should be available for sale to the public.
I have a Chinese client who practices “traditional Chinese medicine”, who gets after me every now and then about how if I would only just take lots of cinnamon, my Type 1 diabetes would be cured. This is even after I had one of my assistants, who speaks Chinese, explain to him that I was Type 1, not Type 2. Aside from the fact that despite some minor impacts on blood sugar control, it is not going to cure diabetes whether it’s Type 1, 2, or 1e+28.
He’s also insistent that acupuncture cures cancer, and the only people who die from cancer while receiving acupuncture are people who “don’t pray enough.”
No offense, but if a chiropractor who studies “traditional Chinese medicine” told me the sky was blue, I’d wear a raincoat.
That may be true. Yet, he was correct about me being able to drink raw milk, while I am unable to drink any other milk.
That’s the reason I no longer eat undercooked “ground beef” (which others in the thread find delicious.) Heat destroys surface contaminants–so the occasional rare or medium-rare rib eye is a safe treat for me. (That’s “occasional”–my cholesterol is OK, but I do budget my fats.)
But, after the meat has been ground, any little beasties feed & multiply. Some restaurants grind their own beef in small quantities & offer non-cardboard burgers. Or they manually chop steak for* tartare*. But prepackaged ground beef needs to be cooked thoroughly!
Oh, and you left out the projectile vomiting!
(No raw milk for me, either.)
No, it doesn’t NEED to be cooked thoroughly.
It SHOULD be cooked well to decrease the risk of several diseases.
I eat raw, yes RAW, ground beef all the time. Everytime I make hamburgers, I take a little chunk, and salt & pepper it, and eat it.
People just don’t seem to get that raw beef, raw eggs, un-pasteurized milk are things that some of want the option of eating.
For people who are so concerned about unpast. milk – are you also concerned that they sell ground beef that isn’t cooked? I know the risk of beef. I’m willing to accept the risk of milk. Is the only argument outside of Miss Purl’s motherbirding that the notion of drinking raw milk will spread to people who don’t know better?
What kind of fucked up inconsistent argument is that?
Nothing I fucking hate more than people telling me what I should do for my own good.
I’m with the OP. Milk is pretty frikin’ tasty - I can’t imagine it being much tastier with chunks.
Further, the idea of milk “warm, fresh out of the cow” actually makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
I suppose if someone is well versed in the risks, and elects to drink raw milk, that’s their choice. Sadly, as in all of these types of debates, eventually people who are NOT well versed in the risks will do something very foolish - like give it to their baby. ANd yes, I realized that phrase just turned this post into a “Wont someone think of the children” type deal, but if a vegan couple can starve their baby by accident, it doesn’t seem a huge stretch that someone could poison their baby the same way.
