4 ms·

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

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.

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.