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Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

modernfarmer.com

191–200 of 271 posts

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited a friends parents out in the country once and they served us raw milk. “Isn’t that illegal?” I asked. They said that it’s illegal to sell it but that they pick it up at an unmanned stand where there is free milk and a jar where people can leave “donations”.

>unmanned And unrefrigerated? I assume raw milk does not instantly spoil at room temperature, otherwise human history would look very different, but it can't last long in direct sunlight.

People didn't drink raw milk too much - cheese, butter, cream and other milk products that happen to kill commonly dangerous bacteria in the milk exist since antiquity if not earlier. Also, even contaminated milk isn't a guaranteed kill - just like civilization survived cities drinking their own sewage water, it can survive drinking spoiled milk. Many will die, but nowhere near enough to stop humanity in our tracks.

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#192
post #187

I have been drinking raw milk from one of these machines[1] and various grey market sources for years, routinely order steak tartare or make it at home, almost always with a raw egg yolk, not to mention raw fish, and never had an issue. There is a risk to everything but I've noticed online that Americans tend to focus on food safety a lot, keep their eggs in the coolers, freeze, pasteurize, and homogenize everything…

> keep their eggs in the coolers

This is down to a very specific thing that happens in the USA and doesn't tend to happen here. If you wash an egg (because it has feathers or looks a little "dirty") you remove a sort of protective membrane[0] on the shell's surface which leaves it open to infection. To prevent this you need to refridgerate the eggs.

That said, we do refridgerate eggs in the EU. Every supermarket I've seen in UK and Czech Republic does this, and everyone I know puts their eggs in the fridge when they take them home. It may not be necessary, but we do it nonetheless.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...

edit: I am now remembering some shops that do have them outside of the refridgerator :D

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#194
post #83

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morning or evening, we would walk over to the farmer's house, pick up our milk and bring it home. My family in India (and the whole village) still does that. And this is where the similarity ends. The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk…

> willing to take the risk

Lot of them tout it's heals, rather than causes heaps of issues (including type 1 diabetes)

But at least in NZ they are tested daily or weekly, so the risk at least somewhat being minimised.

I'm still perplexed that seemingly neutral national media prints articles glorifying it without listing risks.

p.s. googling "homogenised milk" in NZ first result lands you to seemingly authoritative but completely fake website filled with claims of it being hazardous and causing cancer https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-h...

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#195
post #83

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morning or evening, we would walk over to the farmer's house, pick up our milk and bring it home. My family in India (and the whole village) still does that. And this is where the similarity ends. The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk…

Isn't it normal for babies to drink raw milk in many cultures globally?

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which seems logical on the face of it. Calves drink fresh milk all the time, and they are mostly fine.

Yes, but that's udder to mouth. When humans milk cows, they use at the very least possibly dirty hands & pails, and if it's a modern dairy there's much more equipment along the way.

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#197

In the UK, we have vending machine at a local farm that sells raw, unpasteurised milk. They need to meet various common sense hygiene standards and conduct regular testing of their herd to continue doing so, along with an explicit health warning on each bottle. It’s delicious. A good rule of thumb is, if you’re going to drink raw milk at all regularly, ‘know the cow’ it’s coming from. Mad cow disease more or less wip…

Mad cow disease, if it can be transmitted from milk (not sure, though I assume it probably can), will be transmitted at the exact same rate through raw, pasteurized, boiled, and even burnt milk. Destroying prions requires much higher temperatures than can be achieved through boiling.

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#198
post #83

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morning or evening, we would walk over to the farmer's house, pick up our milk and bring it home. My family in India (and the whole village) still does that. And this is where the similarity ends. The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk…

I drank raw milk for ages. Our neighbours were farmers and we'd get milk still warm from the cow. We'd drink what we wanted immediately, boil the rest for preservation and then put it in the fridge. It tasted amazing fresh compared to being boiled.

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#199
post #192
post #187

I have been drinking raw milk from one of these machines[1] and various grey market sources for years, routinely order steak tartare or make it at home, almost always with a raw egg yolk, not to mention raw fish, and never had an issue. There is a risk to everything but I've noticed online that Americans tend to focus on food safety a lot, keep their eggs in the coolers, freeze, pasteurize, and homogenize everything…

> keep their eggs in the coolers This is down to a very specific thing that happens in the USA and doesn't tend to happen here. If you wash an egg (because it has feathers or looks a little "dirty") you remove a sort of protective membrane[0] on the shell's surface which leaves it open to infection. To prevent this you need to refridgerate the eggs. That said, we do refridgerate eggs in the EU. Every supermarket I've…

The eggs are not refrigerated in every country's supermarkets. Here is The Netherlands they sit on the shelf.

Re: Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)

#200
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing that in a supposedly science-driven forum, an entire set of comments can imply that pasteurization, one of humanity’s great accomplishments, is a folly. People die from drinking raw milk. It is genuinely a risky thing to do. Not everyone will die but enough that society should work hard to limit it as much as possible.

I'm not going to advocate in favor of drinking raw milk. But on the other hand, there are a lot of smug responses here totally discounting the experiences of the rural-dwelling commenters who have apparently been drinking milk raw safely for years. "It's risky." Absolutely. On the other hand, the entire reason many adult humans are lactose tolerant to begin with is that humans have been drinking cows milk for thousan…

Was drinking milk a significant part of human diets or did they consume milk processed in a variety of ways? ie cheese, yoghurt, rancid butter (in North African cuisine), etc.
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