Although I feel raw milk is quite safe to drink with careful handling, I wholly agree that the bogus claims for it are reprehensible. On more than one occasion someone asked me for raw milk because they or a family member suffered from some auto-immune disorder and they thought it would help them, based on these garbage ideas. NOOOOO.
I’m fine with drinking raw milk from my own animals. And that’s about where my boundary is.
very informative. I wouldn’t eat any of it. but to each their own.
and any magical elixir qualities to raw milk, i consider “woo”
Yes, many states, including mine, allow small, highly regulated dairies to sell raw milk directly to the consumer, but don’t allow it to be sold via third parties, like grocery stores. (And i have to sign a waiver, and give the dairy contact information in case they have a recall.) This seems like a reasonable compromise. It allows informed consumers to buy raw milk that is very fresh and comes from a small dairy. It limits the number of people who will be sickened from a single sick cow, reducing the public health impact.
But their children don’t get to make that decision so I think it best that good information prevail for their sake, at least.
I remember a few years ago, my state had a law that prohibited the sale of raw milk but allowed you to drink raw milk from a cow you owned. Of course, then some smart people devised a system whereby they sold “partial ownership” of cows such that on paper hundreds of people “owned” one cow and paid others for their “share” of the milk they drank.
My state got rid of this fiction and finally legalized it, although I don’t know the restrictions.
That has the same impact, though – the “owner” needs to deal directly with the dairy, and there’s a limit to how many cows milk will be mixed. And the “owners” probably get the milk fresh.
The problem, I think, is that there isn’t really an option to get “pasteurized but otherwise like the raw milk” milk. So “raw milk” tastes better/different because of where it comes from and the production processes. If I could get “straight from the cow except only pasturized” milk I’d drink it all day long.
Except I’m probably too cheap to pay the higher cost over commercial milk anyway.
Something I didn’t notice initially: claims about raw milk supposedly benefiting lung and immune function are accessed on the industry website by clicking on the link “FAQ About Raw Milk And Covid19”. These people are skating on a thin edge, seeing that the FDA has warned sellers of other products advertised as preventing/treating Covid-19.
I do not drink cow milk, but reading this thread has been interesting. There is an allowable number of white blood cells in milk that is sold for consumption. This number is called the somatic cell count.
The generally accepted threshold for a healthy cow is up to 100,000 somatic cells /mL of milk . The generally accepted indicator of mastitis is 200,000 cells /mL of milk , with higher cell counts used as an indicator of the severity of infection.
I have no problem consuming raw eggs laid by our hens. I eat oysters every chance I get. I was made very sick once from vibriosis in oysters, but I still eat them.
Milk, on the other hand. No. Can’t get past the idea that there is pus in the liquid.
Those allowed cells aren’t “pus”.
As a bodily fluid expelled through ducts it’s going to have some cells in it shed from the interior of the udder just as your pee has shed kidney/urethra/bladder cells, the spit in your mouth has cells shed from the interior of your cheeks and your tongue, your nose snot has shed sinus cells, your earwax has skin cells…
It’s not “white blood cells” that they count, it’s cells. All that stuff shed normally by perfectly health animals. If your mama breastfed you there were shed mama-cells in her milk, too.
Infections do increase the numbers of cells shed, but also the type of cells. A count of absolute number is an indicator of infection and a trigger for more investigation. If actual blood or pus is found in milk it is supposed to be thrown out, not consumed and it doesn’t matter how much per unit is found, it’s not supposed to be in there at all.
In actual fact, your steak or chicken leg or what have you has a LOT more white blood cells in it than milk, because animal flesh has blood in it and white cells are a normal part of blood. But you don’t say steak has “pus” in it.
So no, from a healthy cow does NOT have pus in it.
The majority of somatic cells are leukocytes (white blood cells ) - which become present in increasing numbers in milk usually as an immune response to a mastitis-causing pathogen - and a small number of epithelial cells , which are milk -producing cells shed from inside of the udder when an infection occurs.
/hijack
But…if raw milk boosts immune function and protects against infection, why do cows still get sick???
Clearly, the cows aren’t drinking enough milk!
Uh, yeah @kayaker - we just said the same thing, but with a different emphasis. Your source indicates that it’s not just white blood cells.
And you seem to have missed my point that white blood cells in and of themselves are not called “pus” nor indicative of infection. You have thousands of while blood cells surging through your own veins at this time, do you say you have “pus” in your blood?
If you don’t like milk and don’t want to drink it then don’t, but don’t spread fabrications that it’s full of pus when it’s not.
Not to question @tofor but is this the case? If I took milk straight from a cow, sprinted to my kitchen and boiled it for X seconds (or however you home pasteurize milk) and then immediately chilled it and then drank it, would it taste just the same as the raw kind?
@UltraVires Pasteurizing milk does not involve boiling it. The process of pasteurization involves heating milk to 160.5 °F for at least 15 seconds (and no more than 25 seconds) then cooling it rapidly to 37 °F.
This. I have a hard time telling the difference between pasteurized and raw home milk, myself, but some people might.
If you did boil it, it would definitely taste different.
That’s one option. Supposedly pasteurization at a lower temperature for a longer period of time results in better tasting milk. This site says thirty minutes at 145°F will also work.
Overall, great post.
Raw milk can transmit diseases. But it so rarely does in practice, that it is generally safe to drink. If raw milk consumption became widespread enough, it would tip the balance and cause, by sheer volume, a public health issue.
Camel milk has potential. Camels are immune to bovine diseases that can spread to humans through milk. But camels are less efficient milk producers for a number of reasons.