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I put raw cream in my coffee daily, but don’t have the balls to drink raw milk. That said, it makes fantastic yogurt. I don’t really understand the concept of

by elhudy 5y ago

I put raw cream in my coffee daily, but don’t have the balls to drink raw milk. That said, it makes fantastic yogurt. I don’t really understand the concept of illegal raw milk though. Why can’t people consume raw milk if they want? If anything, make it illegal to feed to children (except of course, raw breast milk!!)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aunty_helen 5y ago
I’m just catching up on this, can someone explain to me what happens if you drink raw milk? Edit: thanks for the answers everyone. My mum’s a dairy farmer and so was I during my high school weekends. My family’s been drinking raw milk for the past 20 or so years. So it’s interesting to know what scary stuff is out there lurking and that a debate has formed around something I had grown to normalize. Tb is obviously a big one and my family being near a native forest increased that risk. Honestly though, the only thing about drinking raw milk for me was you needed to shake it to mix the 2 inches of cream on top. So now I live somewhere I can’t even buy fresh milk, every time I get the milk out of the fridge it gets a habitual shake :s
- fmakunbound 5y ago
  “tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, Campylobacter, Listeria, Brucella, E. coli, Salmonella, and streptococcal infections” apparently.
  - aunty_helen 5y ago
    Sounds like a bad run through the Oregon Trail
    - reducesuffering 5y ago
      Not without dysentery it isn’t
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Your question isn’t very clear. Raw milk itself isn’t bad, it’s just very very easy to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria. Proponents of raw milk claim it has health benefits due to the lack of cooking, both on a chemical level and a bacterial level.
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    This is such a HN answer. "It's not bad for you, it just makes it incredibly likely to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria"
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      I mean I’m not advocating raw milk consumption. I was just trying to give a sober and even handed answer to the question. Raw milk itself is fine, it’s in fact incredibly nutritious- which is why it’s so difficult to keep it from being contaminated. It’s a great breeding ground for pathogens. In my mind, anti pasteurization types are like anti vaxx light, they didn’t have to live through times where food borne illnesses ran rampant, and therefore don’t appreciate what our scientific ancestors have blessed us with.
  - Kerrick 5y ago
    Raw milk and pasteurized milk should be equally easy to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria if you do the same things with them. But the pasteurization process does a “reset” after some of the riskiest behavior that happens pre-sale, after which repeating said risky behavior is specifically avoided.
- greggsy 5y ago
  FTA: >“Raw milk is not pasteurized, or heated up to a temperature of 140 degrees F for 20 minutes, a process that kills off bacteria that can cause foodborne illness, including Salmonella, listeria, and E. coli. TL;DR: food poisoning
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  The wiki on Pasteurization is a real page turner! > Prior to industrialization, dairy cows were kept in urban areas to limit the time between milk production and consumption, hence the risk of disease transmission via raw milk was reduced. As urban densities increased and supply chains lengthened to the distance from country to city, raw milk (often days old) became recognized as a source of disease. For example, between 1912 and 1937, some 65,000 people died of tuberculosis contracted from consuming milk in England and Wales alone. Because tuberculosis has a long incubation period in humans, it was difficult to link unpasteurized milk consumption with the disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization#Milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization#Milk
  - Kerrick 5y ago
    Interestingly, that seems to predate reliable cold chains.
greggsy 5y ago
People getting food poisoning puts a strain on health systems, and people dying of it impacts communities and the economy. There are also liability implications if it is served in a commercial setting, which many jurisdictions just don’t want to have to deal with.
Reggie_Walls 5y ago
I used to get illegal raw milk delivered in the US. I don't think it should be legal for reasons mentioned in the article (poison risk). There are enough alternatives now that prohibition works. Counterarguments? Is there a big need for dairy milk if, say, oat milk or something else can provide the calcium and other vital nutrients Americans usually get from milk?
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Oat milk isn’t milk. People don’t want to drink liquidised, filtered and treated oats with added water. They want milk. If you just want something that has some vague similarity to milk that’s cool. If other people want milk then suggesting that something that doesn’t taste like milk, barely looks like milk and has completely different mouthfeel, behavior when cooked and macronutrient profile isn’t very helpful.
- bawolff 5y ago
  ? The obvious alternative is not oat milk but pasturized milk.
- tobylane 5y ago
  Oat milk is great as milk, especially if you’re having porridge. The enriched oat milk I get has vitamins but not calcium. My dad can tell the difference between oat and lactose free dairy milks in tea, so he has both in a day.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
folli 5y ago
Why is it illegal to not wear a seat belt in most societies? Why are there limits on lead content in food stuff? Why are there any regulations at all? Some of the comments in this thread really left my head scratching. Food borne pathogens were a major burden on humankind for millennia, advances in microbiology and hygiene have massively improved the life span. All of that gets belittled in the comments as some minor stomache ache.
- skummetmaelk 5y ago
  It must be some weird blindness to the privilege of living in a mostly well organized and safe society. The rules were established a long time ago and do their job like a well oiled IT support department. Invisible to the common person when it works well. Unfortunately they then start questioning why it is necessary.
  - elhudy 5y ago
    This is such an odd conclusion I’m struggling to wrap my head around the mental gymnastics necessary to make it there. Please see my other response addressing the false equivalencies presented in the previous post. Btw the rules were not made “a long time ago”, the law restricting the sale of raw milk was passed in 1987 in the US.
    - skummetmaelk 5y ago
      That's the federal ban. Individual states restricted sales of raw milk prior to that. I just find it weird that we start applying germ theory to combating tubercolosis outbreaks, find out raw milk is a problem, FDA makes recommendations to limit the sale of raw milk and sell only pasteurized milk back in the 1920's. Now there's this whole rejection of past experience and known dangers because of a belief in the naturalistic fallacy. Not everything "natural" is good for you. Drinking milk as an adult isn't even natural. It's nice sure, but it's not natural.
      - elhudy 5y ago
perlpimp 5y ago
I will try, generally if you have good diaries keeping their cow healthy happy and clean it is non issue, but interests of corporate mega producers they can't guarantee such thing at scale. So to protect them and people from them these laws are made kind of impossible triangle. You can't do raw milk at scale - so no one will be allowed to. Raw milk yogurt and cottage cheese is out of this world my mom(Russian) and friends in Lithuania with a farm make this as well at the farm and the difference is night and day. you really should try full fat raw milk cottage cheese with honey and walnuts.
- bremac 5y ago
  > but interests of corporate mega producers they can't guarantee such thing at scale. So to protect them and people from them these laws are made kind of impossible triangle. In North America, many of these laws were passed in the early part of the 1900s [1]. I don't think that were very many mega producers at the time, though I'd love to be proven wrong. Also in my experience it's really hard to avoid contamination. My family farm works hard to keep their cows healthy, happy, and clean, and still has occasional issues with high somatic cell counts in their milk. It doesn't help that cows will (rarely) decide to release their bowels while you're milking them... [1] https://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/a-legal-history-of-raw-milk-in-the-united-states/ https://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/a-legal-history-of-ra...

by elhudy 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aunty_helen 5y ago

I’m just catching up on this, can someone explain to me what happens if you drink raw milk? Edit: thanks for the answers everyone. My mum’s a dairy farmer and so was I during my high school weekends. My family’s been drinking raw milk for the past 20 or so years. So it’s interesting to know what scary stuff is out there lurking and that a debate has formed around something I had grown to normalize. Tb is obviously a big one and my family being near a native forest increased that risk. Honestly though, the only thing about drinking raw milk for me was you needed to shake it to mix the 2 inches of cream on top. So now I live somewhere I can’t even buy fresh milk, every time I get the milk out of the fridge it gets a habitual shake :s

fmakunbound 5y ago
“tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, Campylobacter, Listeria, Brucella, E. coli, Salmonella, and streptococcal infections” apparently.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Sounds like a bad run through the Oregon Trail
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    Not without dysentery it isn’t
wbsss4412 5y ago
Your question isn’t very clear. Raw milk itself isn’t bad, it’s just very very easy to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria. Proponents of raw milk claim it has health benefits due to the lack of cooking, both on a chemical level and a bacterial level.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  This is such a HN answer. "It's not bad for you, it just makes it incredibly likely to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria"
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    I mean I’m not advocating raw milk consumption. I was just trying to give a sober and even handed answer to the question. Raw milk itself is fine, it’s in fact incredibly nutritious- which is why it’s so difficult to keep it from being contaminated. It’s a great breeding ground for pathogens. In my mind, anti pasteurization types are like anti vaxx light, they didn’t have to live through times where food borne illnesses ran rampant, and therefore don’t appreciate what our scientific ancestors have blessed us with.
- Kerrick 5y ago
  Raw milk and pasteurized milk should be equally easy to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria if you do the same things with them. But the pasteurization process does a “reset” after some of the riskiest behavior that happens pre-sale, after which repeating said risky behavior is specifically avoided.
greggsy 5y ago
FTA: >“Raw milk is not pasteurized, or heated up to a temperature of 140 degrees F for 20 minutes, a process that kills off bacteria that can cause foodborne illness, including Salmonella, listeria, and E. coli. TL;DR: food poisoning
jazzyjackson 5y ago
The wiki on Pasteurization is a real page turner! > Prior to industrialization, dairy cows were kept in urban areas to limit the time between milk production and consumption, hence the risk of disease transmission via raw milk was reduced. As urban densities increased and supply chains lengthened to the distance from country to city, raw milk (often days old) became recognized as a source of disease. For example, between 1912 and 1937, some 65,000 people died of tuberculosis contracted from consuming milk in England and Wales alone. Because tuberculosis has a long incubation period in humans, it was difficult to link unpasteurized milk consumption with the disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization#Milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization#Milk
- Kerrick 5y ago
  Interestingly, that seems to predate reliable cold chains.

greggsy 5y ago

People getting food poisoning puts a strain on health systems, and people dying of it impacts communities and the economy. There are also liability implications if it is served in a commercial setting, which many jurisdictions just don’t want to have to deal with.

Reggie_Walls 5y ago

I used to get illegal raw milk delivered in the US. I don't think it should be legal for reasons mentioned in the article (poison risk). There are enough alternatives now that prohibition works. Counterarguments? Is there a big need for dairy milk if, say, oat milk or something else can provide the calcium and other vital nutrients Americans usually get from milk?

barry-cotter 5y ago
Oat milk isn’t milk. People don’t want to drink liquidised, filtered and treated oats with added water. They want milk. If you just want something that has some vague similarity to milk that’s cool. If other people want milk then suggesting that something that doesn’t taste like milk, barely looks like milk and has completely different mouthfeel, behavior when cooked and macronutrient profile isn’t very helpful.
bawolff 5y ago
? The obvious alternative is not oat milk but pasturized milk.
tobylane 5y ago
Oat milk is great as milk, especially if you’re having porridge. The enriched oat milk I get has vitamins but not calcium. My dad can tell the difference between oat and lactose free dairy milks in tea, so he has both in a day.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

folli 5y ago

Why is it illegal to not wear a seat belt in most societies? Why are there limits on lead content in food stuff? Why are there any regulations at all? Some of the comments in this thread really left my head scratching. Food borne pathogens were a major burden on humankind for millennia, advances in microbiology and hygiene have massively improved the life span. All of that gets belittled in the comments as some minor stomache ache.

skummetmaelk 5y ago
It must be some weird blindness to the privilege of living in a mostly well organized and safe society. The rules were established a long time ago and do their job like a well oiled IT support department. Invisible to the common person when it works well. Unfortunately they then start questioning why it is necessary.
- elhudy 5y ago
  This is such an odd conclusion I’m struggling to wrap my head around the mental gymnastics necessary to make it there. Please see my other response addressing the false equivalencies presented in the previous post. Btw the rules were not made “a long time ago”, the law restricting the sale of raw milk was passed in 1987 in the US.
  - skummetmaelk 5y ago
    That's the federal ban. Individual states restricted sales of raw milk prior to that. I just find it weird that we start applying germ theory to combating tubercolosis outbreaks, find out raw milk is a problem, FDA makes recommendations to limit the sale of raw milk and sell only pasteurized milk back in the 1920's. Now there's this whole rejection of past experience and known dangers because of a belief in the naturalistic fallacy. Not everything "natural" is good for you. Drinking milk as an adult isn't even natural. It's nice sure, but it's not natural.
    - elhudy 5y ago

perlpimp 5y ago

I will try, generally if you have good diaries keeping their cow healthy happy and clean it is non issue, but interests of corporate mega producers they can't guarantee such thing at scale. So to protect them and people from them these laws are made kind of impossible triangle. You can't do raw milk at scale - so no one will be allowed to. Raw milk yogurt and cottage cheese is out of this world my mom(Russian) and friends in Lithuania with a farm make this as well at the farm and the difference is night and day. you really should try full fat raw milk cottage cheese with honey and walnuts.

bremac 5y ago
> but interests of corporate mega producers they can't guarantee such thing at scale. So to protect them and people from them these laws are made kind of impossible triangle. In North America, many of these laws were passed in the early part of the 1900s [1]. I don't think that were very many mega producers at the time, though I'd love to be proven wrong. Also in my experience it's really hard to avoid contamination. My family farm works hard to keep their cows healthy, happy, and clean, and still has occasional issues with high somatic cell counts in their milk. It doesn't help that cows will (rarely) decide to release their bowels while you're milking them... [1] https://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/a-legal-history-of-raw-milk-in-the-united-states/ https://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/a-legal-history-of-ra...