As long as some regular mandatory health and safety inspections that the farm must pass in order to legally sell raw milk are included, this seems a workable compromise. Folks who really want raw milk could get it, and the rest of us wouldn’t have to worry about whether the milk for sale at the Piggly Wiggly is safe to drink.
I’d favor allowing sale of raw milk cheeses as well, provided they are very clearly labeled with warning labels, so people who shouldn’t consume them could avoid them.
Raw-milk cheeses are legal for sale in the US as long as they have been aged more than 60 days. That time period allows the acids and salts in the cheese to kill off the listeria and other pathogens that are flavoring the cheese. Parmigiano Reggiano is a raw-milk cheese, as is some camembert, brie, gruyere, fontina, blue, and manchego. I think many, if not all, of the cheddars from the UK are raw-milk as well.
I occasionally make cheese at home, and the artisanal cheese community often recommends starting with raw milk for all cheeses and pasteurizing it oneself, because you can pasteurize it at a lower temperature than commercial dairies typically use, and preserve more of the cheese-friendly enzymes. I don’t have access to raw milk, and I wouldn’t trust my own pasteurizing skills even if I did. It just seems like an easy way to sicken half the people at a company picnic.
I don’t think it should be illegal for adults to drink raw milk. After all, it’s legal for them to smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, have unprotected sex, etc. I am a little more uncertain about allowing children because of the danger of disease (on the other hand, if it reduces the number of children being raised by bad parents, perhaps I shouldn’t care). I do think raw milk should be labeled and restaurants that use it in the menu should be required to make full disclosure of this.
You’re right that the direct government propaganda is minimal, and mostly associated with “drugs are bad, mkay?” political mindset. But they indirectly support and allow companies to essentially lie to their customers for fun and profit.
In my hypothetical “libertopia”, that wouldn’t happen. If you sell things to people, you should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which pretty much rules out all forms of advertising, so it will never happen. But it would be ideal.
This is drifting off topic, but what you’re describing would be a massive government organization tasked with separating the finer points of the truth from “the truth.” A true libertopia would have none of that; instead, companies would be free to make whatever claims they wanted. The free market would sort out which companies are trustworthy, since companies that lie too much would lose customers and go out of business. For-profit testing agencies like Consumer Reports would serve as the arbiters of truth, which would make government intervention unnecessary.
Or at least that’s what John Stossel tells me.
A reasonable, well-thought-out compromise that balances public health & safety with individual freedom and liberty.
It’ll never happen.
I make cheese at home too, and really wish I could find pasteurized, but non-homogenized milk. But I just use the raw-milk I can buy at my local grocery and age it for a couple months.
… a couple of MONTHS?!? :eek:
Also, I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that if it’s been pasteurized, then it’s been homogenized as well. Can you really buy - anywhere on this planet, not necessarily the U.S. - milk that’s been fully pasteurized but still has a layer of cream at the top?
I have a ‘cheese cave’ and lots of patience. I’ve aged some of my cheeses for 2 years. It was amazing.
If anyone does ever find non-homogenized pasteurized milk, I’d buy only that.
Nothing about pasteurization requires homogenization. Pasteurization’s just a heating process, and it can easily be done on non-homogenized milk. I haven’t seen any pasteurized, non-homogenized milk for sale at any of the stores I shop at, but I suspect that’s just due to lack of customer demand. Most folks these days aren’t used to and don’t want milk that separates and has to be shaken before it’s poured.
Yup, at least if you live in Ohio (not sure where else this is sold.) For a few years all we drank was Snowville milk, and I can attest that there was a layer of cream and that it was delicious. But it’s expensive and, unlike what everyone else says, it would go bad extremely quickly. Most of the time it would last until we drank it all, but every once in a while we’d have to dump it after as little as 3 days. We got sick of dumping lumpy, stinky, expensive milk. Their quality control and lower pasteurization temperature just isn’t up to the standards of the big milk producers.
My problem with raw milk advocates is that they refuse to acknowledge that drinking raw milk is a potentially fatal act. They obfuscate statistics, call government entities and health experts liars, and feed this stuff to their children.
It’s basically the vaccine debate. Vaccines prevent people, especially children, from dying of horrible diseases. Yet there are people who refuse to get vaccinated, and guess what, those people are more likely to die from preventable diseases!
If an adult in full grasp of his facilities is willing to play Russian Roulette, go for it. But raw milk is not a snake oil cure all, it’s more like a bomb.
Is it a matter of freedoms for Americans? Then allow it to be legal for adults 18 and older.
Is it a matter of public health? Ban it.
But at least be honest.
Both of my grandmother’s sisters died as teenagers from bovine tuberculosis, which is passed to humans through raw milk. Granted, that was a long time ago, but the disease has not disappeared and is still a danger from raw milk. I’d make sure that your source is a farm where they are routinely inspected by the FDA. We’ve used raw milk to make cheese before, but it makes me nervous.
Oh. :smack: You age the CHEESE for a couple of months. My apologies, I genuinely thought you were aging the milk before even starting to make the cheese.
Now I have to wonder if “I have a cheese cave” will eventually replace the “I have a colander” SDMB meme. I mean, you have your own CAVE – how cool is that?
I’m all for it, but limited to purchasing directly from farms. I eat a fair amount of raw and undercooked meats and eggs, and raw cheeses (not so much here in the US)so I’m not worried about the risk personally, but I would not serve it to children, elderly, pregnant women, or those with compromised immune systems and I would require very clear labeling (although if you’re buying directly from the producer, you should already be pretty clear about what you’re buying.)
If that “at lower temperatures and with a shorter sell-by” is vs. UHT, take into account that UHT is rare in the US: most of the pasteurized milk there has a sell-by date of a few days, rather than “3 months and it’s actually stable for quite a while longer”.
ETA: Manchego, mentioned by another poster, is from sheep’s milk, so the health risks (which I’m sure there are some) are different from those for cow’s milk.
It varies somewhat with the mean outside temperature, but I’ll bet it’s pretty consistently cool.
I am not uncertain about that at all. Children rely on their parents/caregivers to make the right choices for them. If they are sickened or killed by pathogens in raw milk, that should be grounds for criminal charges for the adults.
Amish puppy mills in Ohio are among the worst for causing animals to live in terrible conditions.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. Their farms are usually as clean or cleaner than non-Amish farms. I used to do ag surveys while I was in grad school and I have seen plenty of farms.
Just about every dairy farmer (and their families) I have ever known or interviewed for ag surveys drinks raw milk. I have been drinking it for 50 years and have never had a problem. With that being said, I would never tell other people what kind of milk they should drink. However I do not ascribe any sort of magical properties to it - I simply love the taste. However, I will be getting goats this spring, so I will be switching to raw goat milk soon and no, I will not be selling it! BTW, we do have a delivery service in the area that delivers raw milk!
Oh and I am surprised no one caught my misspelling of dairy in my original post! LOL