When I was a child we occasionally spent a week or two at a resort in update New York that had its own cows and served raw milk in the dining hall. The cows were reportedly checked very frequently by state inspectors.
As kids, my sister and I didn’t like the stuff because it was usually served warm. When they chilled it for us, it was pretty good. But it’s been so long (more than 40 years; OMG!), I don’t have a clear recollection of exactly what it was like.
Here is a Washington Post article with all you would want to know about the pros and cons of raw milk, and the controversy surrounding it. What I took from the article is that while public health officials rail against raw milk because it would be very hard to make it widely available safely, interested individuals can obtain it with very low risk. Making it illegal, as a few places apparently do, strikes me as a serious over-reaction.
After reading the article, I toyed with the idea of getting a gallon, just to relive a tiny part of my early childhood.
A former girlfriend grew up on a dairy farm. The family drank raw milk, after they chilled it. Her father explained to me that he personally wouldn’t drink just anyone’s milk, but he knew his cows were disease and infection-free, that the equipment had all been sterilized, etc.
I didn’t much care for the taste, but it was okay in a “here, try some of this” way.
Ah. Maybe I was generalizing from my particular experience in modern Iowa. Most farms are large, at least 500-600 acres and up, and raise grain with no animals at all to speak of. Milk comes from dairies, beef and pork comes from feed lots.
Yes, apparently it’s a regional thing. The kind of large grain farm you’re talking about isn’t remotely workable where I live, although I have heard tell that they exist. This is dairy country, and if you say you’re a farmer, people would assume that you’ll be heading home at 4:00 for the afternoon milking.
Yes, apparently it’s a regional thing. The kind of large grain farm you’re talking about isn’t remotely workable where I live, although I have heard tell that they exist. This is dairy country, and if you say you’re a farmer, people would assume that you’ll be heading home at 4:00 for the afternoon milking.
Speaking from America’s Dairyland I grew up drinking raw milk. I think we lived on one of the last can-routes in the country, no bulk tanks for us. There was just a tank of cold well-water to keep the milk cold until the truck arrived. My dad said it almost certianly was the last can route (he grew up in Chicago - so what does he know?). Dad is pretty smart about the ways of the world, though. Somewhere in Pennsylvania someone is still running a can-route - has to be.
It took me a long time to get accustomed to bottled mike once the farm went away. It wasn’t the same.
I never thought of the possibilites that I was introduced to all sorts of bacteria as a child drinking that stuff. Cool. Thanks for the thought, CalMeacham.
Well, drinking something with that much fat in it isn’t going to be particularly good to your arteries if you make a regular habit of it. I imagine it would taste rather like sucking down some body-temperature half-and-half. Ew.
Question: Does the processing that the milk you buy in the store goes through at all help remove the antibiotics/hormones/other crap they put into cows? I’d imagine that could be a factor, as well.
That’s exactly how I feel about it… there’s nothing wrong with fresh milk (I won’t say “raw” because that implies something’s wrong with it if it isn’t naturally processed… many calves would beg to differ). The risks are small, something for Readers Digest-reading housewives to obsess over. If you know the farmer by personal reputation then it’s nothing to worry about.
In fresh milk you can actually detect the flavor notes of green grass, and now that I know what it tastes like, I can detect it faintly even in processed milk. However I do differ from calves in that I prefer mine chilled.
It does taste a bit like how I imagine 4% would if it existed. Blood temperature is about right, but the descriptions matter just like with everything else. It’s not blood temperature half-n-half unless you try it and feel that way (regular Half’n’Half in my area is 10%, if you had a cow that consistently averaged 10% not only could it probably not rear young you’d be sitting on a money cow!)
To me raw milk is to store-bought homogenized pasteurized 2% is what a medium-rare prime rib you got from your favorite butcher to a well done New York strip you got on sale at your grocer.
Hoo boy…I don’t even know where to start so if I didn’t address your topic, and you really want to know, remind me.
Does processing get antibiotics/hormones out of milk?
No, synthetic hormones never pass into the milk and antibiotic residues are tested for as a matter or federal regulation and any milk testing positive is not ever entered into the food stream. The only milk that is not routinely tested for antibiotic residue is direct-from-farm sales where legal and illegal milk markets where farmers are selling milk off the farm under the table. raw milk is like half and half, and my half and half is 10%
No, raw milk is 3.4-3.8% fat depending on herd species, health, season, feed, and other factors. Half and half is regulated at 10.50-18.00% fat. Milk from one cow is safe
Milk from one cow is safe only if that cow has never been around other cows, has never been fed any grain or silage, doesn’t graze on land where wildlife lives, and didn’t pick up anything from her mother during birth. Not likely. While many individual cows are not throwing large numbers of pathogens in their milk, the risk is still there. The farmer down the road has healthy cows
Cows can be perfectly healthy and still be teeming with human pathogens. The key is to remember that human pathogens and bovine pathogens are not the same bugs. The state/feds/whoever strictly screen the cows in my raw milk herd for pathogens
No, they don’t. They screen for total bacterial load and antibiotic residue. I know for a fact that you can be looking at state lab results and miss a sanitation problem for months before things get bad enough to red-flag a farm. Besides, there is no number of tests you can perform to guarantee that a cow or a herd or the milk they give is free from pathogens. The government has neither the time nor the resources to try. We were on the last milk can route
They’re still alive and well in Amish parts of Wisconsin, I know. But they are becoming less and less popular as Amish sects become more tolerant of technology entering their business ventures.
Did I get every one? Any more questions?
Knowing what I know about milk and the contamination thereof, I would never take the chance of drinking raw milk. In fact, I am failry convinced that I have made myself sick with raw milk residue on my not-very-thoroughly washed hands getting on my pen while I was recording results and then eating while handling the contaminated pen. It doesn’t take much raw milk to make someone sick, and my farms are some of the cleanest farms you’ll find anywhere.
