I think my biggest fear is being served food (like cheese) made with raw milk by a well-meaning friend who just buys whatever at Whole Foods, or being served something dangerous at a hipster Happy Hour place trying to be a bit fancier with the pricey milk (indeed, I just got warned off a dish at one- thank goodness I’m visibly pregnant) Because it sound innocuous and isn’t really dangerous to most people, people aren’t really aware of how dangerous it can be for some of us, and milk and cheese is just such a common ingredient.
Listeria is rare, but in places where raw milk is used (like the underground Latino cheese makers in CA), it’s hideously common. And it really is a nightmare. Something I unwittingly ate over Christmas could still kill my 7-month old baby-to-be today.
When raw milk makes you sick, it’s because there’s something wrong with the milk. When peanuts make you sick, it’s because there’s something wrong with you.
True story: Idiot that I am, on several occasions in a restaurant I ate steak tartare (raw beef and raw egg!) in Mozambique, while pregnant and later while breastfeeding. Knowing what I do now about how meat can be contaminated through improper butchering, not to mention anthrax and all that, I fully admit that I was supremely stupid. If my dumbassery had been prevented because serving what I ate was illegal…well, I’d be fulling supporting that now.
I am just lucky that my baby and I suffered no negative consequences. Jeezus. RAW BEEF in AFRICA? What the hell was I thinking? Well…I wasn’t thinking.
Depends on the state. Some places it really is illegal to make your own cheese for your own consumption, without code compliance. Others, the making is legal, but not sale.
It’s useful to know when a poster has no evidence-based contributions to make and wishes to dismiss useful data through sneers directed at the source. It’s like when you refer to a detailed article on Science-Based Medicine which references and analyzes multiple peer-reviewed studies, and the response is “that’s just a blog”.
While it’s easy to laugh at dumb WV legislators who sickened themselves drinking raw milk to celebrate a dumb law, there are a lot of people who could be a risk of considerably worse outcomes, including children fed unpasteurized milk by their parents. Keeping this product out of commercial sales for well-documented public health reasons is a classic responsibility of good government.
And I highly doubt the people who swear raw milk tastes better could so distinguish consistently in blinded tests.
Does Canada or France have a problem with raw milk cheese? I’m pretty sure you can get raw milk cheese (soft) in Canada and France that you can’t get in the USA. Is there a higher incidence of death related to these raw milk cheeses?
Before I hysterically at this claim, I wonder if you might share whether you’ve ever tried raw milk before? If you have not, then a further question: on what do you base this doubt?
If you have, then I wonder if you believe you have a palate for tasting differences in similar food or drink. For example, can you reliably identify an Islay single-malt scotch from a Highland? A Semillion from a Reisling? Gorgonzola from Roquefort?
If you say that you are well attuned to such distinctions, and you have tried raw milk, and cannot discern a consistent difference between it and pasteurized milk, I will be … surprised.
Perhaps they should just say, you can drink raw milk, but any resulting healthcare costs will not be covered by your insurance and you will be on the hook for the full tab for any Dr visits, meds, hospitalization.
Then if people want to roll the dice with their health and their wallet they can have at it, why would anyone else care?
I love raw milk cheeses. I can really taste the difference. When I’m in France or Italy, I take the opportunity to enjoy. In America, health regulations require that cheese be made of pasteurized milk or be aged X amount of time. I deal. I don’t think my personal preference for raw milk cheeses should trump—or even be taken into account—for the decision made by public health experts based on solid data on whether raw milk cheeses should be available commercially.
In our recent past, problems with unpasteurized milk caused tremendous health problems. A ban on raw milk helped ameliorate those problems, in the same way that mandatory vaccination helped ameliorate problems caused by virulent diseases. Personal preferences have to give way when faced with public health problems like these.
The problem is that making raw milk commercially available is not just a danger to the people who choose to drink raw milk. Just as failure to vaccinate is not just a danger to the people who choose not to vaccinate. The issue of choice does not solve the problem.
And if people give it to their children, same lack of coverage? :rolleyes: Or when you’re a guest in someone’s home; failure to ask your host every time if that milk he’s giving you – or is an ingredient in something he’s giving you – is raw should be hazardous to your health & wealth? :dubious:
What does the data say about the safety of those French and Italian cheeses? If different practices are recognized to produce different results, why not allow the established raw-dairy practices of those countries to be used here?
Allow it if it’s relevant. I have no problem with that. Make an argument that public policy in the United States should take data from their experiences. Apply that data to the economic, political, and social vectors here. Let the experts figure out what the best course of action is and then act based on their expertise.
My point is that personal preferences or the the idea of “freedom” to consume what you want should not trump an actual public health decision.
Oh dear me - I have inadvertently struck at a Brickerian foundational belief - that a Man of Distinction’s palate can distinguish (as in the case of Brian Eno’s “Fat Lady of Limbourg”) the subtleties a spectrograph would miss.
Passing over for now the hilarious picture of aficionados raving over raw barn squeezings from Bossie as they would an “elite” Scotch, it has been well-documented that wine and spirits lovers are notoriously incapable of reliably distinguishing between haute labels and much cheaper stuff.
Regretfully, it appears Bricker didn’t bother to read his linked dairy “blind taste test” article very closely, or he would have noticed that among that small group of women, some actually seemed to prefer the taste/texture of the pasteurized/homogenized product. The “test” also illustrates classic reasons why non-blinded tests are worthless. You cannot expect meaningful outcomes when, for instance, a “raw” product has a particular yellowish color that might signal to participants that “hey, this is supposed to be the good stuff”.
Set up a well-designed test where both administrators and testers do not know where the samples are from, and there are no visual cues. Then we can start talking about real taste preferences.
I can’t tell from the following linked articles/abstract how well the “blind” milk taste tests were run. But it seems people can’t reliably distinguish between whole and low-fat milk, organic vs. nonorganic milk, and in the last case, the reporter preferred the taste/texture of commercial pasteurized milk to raw milk.
For a lot of raw milk enthusiasts who swear about taste or health benefits, they appear to have fallen for another bovine product extruded from a different orifice.
Strangely, in Minnesota I can buy raw milk unaged cheese - but “not for human consumption” Its sold at the farmers market as “bait cheese” - and most people who buy it don’t fish according to the woman who sells it. But the regulation covers her ass, makes the state happy, and creates a point of education for people who buy it.
Most people’s default assumption is that in America, the FDA does what they can to keep you from getting sick from your food. We know they aren’t perfect (and some of us know they are underfunded).
Let’s say that California legalizes the sale of raw milk in stores. Is the seller, which I guess would be the producer, not the grocer, still required to make sure there is no bacteria that will cause illness, such as e coli? If there is e coli in the raw milk and people ingest it and become ill, would the producer be liable for damages, regardless of any ‘warning’ label they may have put on the bottle?