An avid traveler, never afraid to try street food, I have had bad belly in numerous locations, (Delhi belly, Bali belly, etc, etc.)
But the sickest I ever became while traveling was in Bolivia and it was caused by two tablespoons of raw milk in a cup of boiling tea. (A violent full system flush, two exits, no waiting!)
Be prepared, if you’re unaccustomed to raw milk, your first exposure could be very ‘moving’, as it were. Makes that pre colonoscopy cleanse seem like a walk in the park! (Entirely outside of the very real risk of disease transmission!)
Yeah, an advocacy website doing it’s own math, where one of the vital numbers (number of illnesses due to raw milk) is sourced from the author’s own research and nowhere else is pretty damn suspect.
I eat our chicken’s eggs every day, sometimes raw, with no concern. They are kept at room temperature until used.
Raw milk I wouldn’t drink (if I drank cow milk), especially after discussing somatic cell count with a dairy farmer who also would never drink raw milk.
I once spent six months working in a dairy farm… and not once did I drink raw milk, nor did I want to. If you saw what it came out of, neither would you.
I used to work each summer at the family farm in Sask, and I drank raw milk. It comes from a cows udder. Mind you we only had a few milk cows, who were almost treated as family pets, so that’s different.
Moreover, when they laid down it wasn’t on the ground but on clean comforters which were washed daily, the pasture was kept free of flies and the cows were bathed and shampooed before every milking.
Actually, this article describes automated milking machines and mentions that they do wash the cow’s underbelly before she is milked. The Wikipedia article article on automated milking systems mentions the same thing.
We’re talking 1992-1993 here, so no automated milking machines yet. We’d just hose off the udder and attach the suction cups. I don’t remember how many cows we had - maybe 150 head? - but with two guys or girls working 3 3-hour shifts a day, we didn’t really have enough time for anything more than a cursory cleaning. Certainly not enough to get all the crusted cowshit off.
In California, you can buy raw milk at grocery stores, but it has to carry this warning,
“WARNING: Raw (unpasteurized) milk and raw milk dairy products may contain disease-causing microorganisms. Persons at highest risk of disease from these organisms include newborns and infants; the elderly; pregnant women; those taking corticosteroids, antibiotics or antacids; and those having chronic illnesses or other conditions that weaken their immunity.”
That seems fair to me. We sell lots of products with warnings on them and let the consumer decide whether to buy and use them or not.
You are supposed to clean the udders: https://nmconline.org/milkprd.htm
*Wash Teats with an Udder Wash Solution or Predip Teats in an Effective Disinfectant Product
When applying disinfectant solutions to clean teats it is important to cover only the teats and not the complete udder. Disinfectant and/or water dripping from udders will increase risk of bacteria being transferred to teats and teat ends and will increase drying time. Use of excess water when prepping cows is also associated with elevated bacteria counts in bulk tank milk.
If a sprinkler pen is used to pre-wash cows, it is important to ensure all sprinkler heads are working and properly adjusted. Sprinkler on-time should be adjusted for the quantity of dirt and manure to be removed from the cows’ udders. Sufficient drying time is needed to ensure udders are dry prior to parlor entry. Once cows are in the parlor, single-use or individual towels should be used to finish drying the udder and teats. For the occasional cow that requires additional washing, disinfectant hose or pre-dip may be used to remove excess soil with a second application to kill remaining bacteria.
Producers with parlors or stanchion barns may use pre-dipping instead of washing when preparing cows for milking. Predipping works best when teats are clean. The teat should be completely covered with disinfectant. Predip should remain in contact with the teat for 30 seconds for sufficient kill-time and should then be thoroughly wiped off of the teat sides and teat end before attaching the milking unit. Dippers should be cleaned after each milking.
Dry Teats Completely with an Individual Towel
Regardless of how the teats are prepared they must be dried thoroughly with single-service paper or individual cloth towels. Thorough drying of teats and teat ends is a critical step in the prep procedure. Milking wet teats increases the likelihood of mastitis and reduces milk quality. Single service cloth towels can work as well as paper towels. While paper towels are disposed of following single cow use, cloth towels must be washed, sanitized, and dried in automatic machines before reuse. Attention to fill capacity of washer, water temperature, and thorough drying are important to ensuring towels are free of bacteria. Milking technician’s gloved hands should be washed and disinfected frequently during milking to reduce contamination of clean towels before use. In addition, clean towel containers (paper towel dispenser, apron, or basket) should be cleaned after each milking to reduce bacterial contamination before next use.*
I’m pretty okay with that. I totally believe that raw milk tastes different, and that some people prefer that taste, and I’m okay with people taking that risk.
Those who tout its safety should be civilly liable in lawsuits from those who took their advice. Those whose children get sick from drinking raw milk should face visits from DSS. But those who drink it, knowing its risks, are fine by me, just like I’m fine with rock-climbers or jet-skiers or binge-drinkers.
In barns I’ve been in milking 60 or so head, the udders are cleaned off with a rag in a bucket of soapy water and the teats are dipped in a teat-dip (disinfectant).
But regardless, there are always sub-clinical mastitis cases adding pus to the milk. There are “acceptable levels” of this pus described as the somatic cell count.
See I think this is part of the problem. Dairies are not as careful as they would otherwise be because they figure since the milk will be pasteurized they don’t need to be as careful.
This is an extract from the Fonterra suppliers handbook in NZ. Similar handbooks are used in other countries.
Later in the handbook it goes into the penalties for supplying contaminated milk. It can be up to the value of any tanker load they have to dump. Depending on the milk payout, that could be up to 25,500 litres at around 50 cents/litre. Do you really think farmers want to have to pay that penalty?
This is a matter that many dairy farmers feel strongly about, not lax “because it’s going to be pasteurised anyway.” I grew up on a dairy farm in the early 1960s. Hygiene was somewhat more primitive than now but hygiene practices were followed as best as they could be because everyone knew what diseases could be attributed to contaminated milk.
If people want to consume raw milk, then allow them to, but they should be aware of the risks and it should be regulated as closely as needed to keep those risks to an acceptable level.
*"Milk may become contaminated with bacteria during or after milking. The mammary glands of cows (and humans) can become inflamed due to a bacterial infection called mastitis. During a mastitis infection, very high numbers of bacteria present can be in the udder and in the milk. Some disease causing organisms (pathogens) can be shed through cow feces and may contaminate the outside of the udder and teats, the farm environment (bedding, for example) and the milking equipment…
Human illness from milkborne pathogens is usually associated with consumption of raw milk or products made from raw milk such as fresh cheeses. In the past 20 years, foodborne illnesses from dairy product consumption have been predominantly associated with Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter jejuni, and Escherichia coli O157:H7. These organisms have been isolated from bulk tank samples at rates ranging from 0.87% of samples taken for E. coli O157:H7 analysis in Ontario, Canada to 10% for E. coli O157:H7 in Wisconsin (Jayarao et al., 2001 and 2006; McManus and Lanier, 1987; Padhye and Doyle, 1991; Steele et al., 1997; Van Kessel et al., 2004). Because there is a risk of pathogen contamination in milk produced from healthy cows under sanitary milk conditions, pasteurization of milk prior to consumption will destroy pathogens and provide protection for illness associated with consumption of dangerous microbes. "*
I am typically OK with adults having the right to be stupid, but not when it involves standards for commercially sold food products, especially those that are likely to be consumed by children and often accompanied by phony health claims.
