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

modernfarmer.com

261–270 of 271 posts

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

#262
I've been drinking raw milk for a little more than a year now. Before then, I had never had a lick of it. In fact, I hadn't drank any milk before that point for years. I haven't experienced any issues. I feel very fortunate that I'm close enough to the Pennsylvania (USA) state line to buy it. I use a lot of it to make fermented milk kefir, which I then add to store-bought heavy cream to make crème fraîche.

Prior to introducing raw milk (and the downstream products) into my diet, I was eating a lot of avocados. But, I wanted to move toward eating more seasonal, local, and ancestral foods. My ancestry is Polish/German. I think this may partly explain why it works well for my system.

When I told a buddy of mine about this change, he asked me why all milk isn't raw. I said "Well, according to the CDC, drinking it will kill you."

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rare burgers are really risky. How risky? Compare it to other risks we are commonly undertake, like driving. If you can't quantify risk, you're not providing a useful comment.

The CDC recommends ground beef cooked to 160F, which is well above “rare” temperature (around 130F). So, you’re going against the food safety guidelines. I’d say that introduces risk (though hard to quantify exactly). https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/bbq-iq.html

That same page says steaks should go to 145F which is pretty far into medium and will get you looked at funny in most reputable steakhouses.

So let's go back to: If you don't quantify risk, you're not providing a useful comment. That applies to the CDC too.

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

#264
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 cow and goat milk a lot during my childhood in rural Russia. The most tasteful milk was the freshly milked one which was still warm.

We also never boiled the milk, it was fine to just store it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. TBH the boiled milk tasted unpleasant comparing to the raw one.

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

#265
post #209
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 think that what you do here is fallacy. And very typical one for HN, where you ignore details and extrapolate original statement to mean something else. OP did not said pasteurizarion is folly. You do it to preserve milk for longer term. Which something entirely different then drinking milk right after it was taken out of cow.

Uh, I think you're the uninformed one here. People catch TB from milk that comes from a cow that also has TB, regardless of how 'fresh' the milk is.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....

EDIT: This is exactly the problem that I am trying to point out. You (likely an otherwise very educated person) assume that pasteurization is intended to preserve milk because that is the (unscientific) tone of these comments, when in fact that is very far from the reason (you can preserve unpasteurized milk as yogurt/cheese, we've known how to do that for centuries, but it will still potentially give you TB).

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

#266
post #233
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.

Almost none of the comments show awareness of the difference between fresh raw milk and week old rotten raw milk, a distinction that by design does not exist in pasteurized milk. Also, some commenters ignore the relevant distinction between pasteurization and homogenization and fat separation.

Just to make a very important distinction here:

Bacteria like TB do not need a significant time out of the udder to infect a human with TB.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....

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

#267
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…

You're discounting the stories of all the people in those communities who dies of TB. It's indicative of the similar problem of vaccine hesitance - everyone remembers their grandparents living, and not the 2-3 great uncles/aunts who died before they bore children.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC recommends ground beef cooked to 160F, which is well above “rare” temperature (around 130F). So, you’re going against the food safety guidelines. I’d say that introduces risk (though hard to quantify exactly). https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/bbq-iq.html

That same page says steaks should go to 145F which is pretty far into medium and will get you looked at funny in most reputable steakhouses. So let's go back to: If you don't quantify risk, you're not providing a useful comment. That applies to the CDC too.

Good luck quantifying real world risks. What’s the risk of getting sick from a rare burger? Well, it’s the probability of a bad bacteria being present, then it not being killed by the cooking, and then actually taking root in your body.. good luck getting a number

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

#269

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.

I can't edit it anymore and I'm tired of seeing this stupid comment in my history so I'm replying to myself say that obviously the milk would be in a cooler or icebox. I'm not sure why I thought a refrigerator was the only way to keep food cold.

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

#270
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pasteurize it yourself with very little extra effort when making espresso drinks, since you need to heat the milk with a steam wand anyway. The flavor and especially foam of a cappuccino are slightly better when made with self-pasteurized-while steaming raw milk vs equivalent non raw Jersey milk in my at home blind taste tests.

Note: it's not a blind test of you've tasted one of them before but not the other.

That's a good point.
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