"Raw milk"

[ChristineR]

The Freisian/Holsteins around here graze outside as routine. And the udder conformation has improved markedly since the breed was first introduced in the 1960s and 70s. I haven't seen one with a badly pendulous udder for quite some time. Udder conformation is one of the criteria selected for in the breeding programme.

Certainly all dairy cows produce much more milk than a single calf can consume. Jersey, Ayrshire, you name it.

If this is all just about sourcing milk that hasn't been processed out of all recognition, I wonder why someone doesn't start marketing milk which has only undergone the legal pasteurisation process and nothing else. Sounds as if there is a market right there.

Rolfe.

Well, there is a market for decent pasteurized milk, but it is probably not as large as the health faddist market. Plus, if you happen to have cows it is easy to sell raw milk under the table, but if you want to pasteurize it and put it into bottles and sell it to local supermarkets, you have to do some work.

Here in the US we produce food just as good as you have in the EU, it's just a lot more expensive and a lot harder to find. In Germany I was amazed to see that the ordinary Mom and Pop just down on the corner groceries sell real bread and real cheese. That's unheard of in the US. The 7/11 chain mentioned above sells only a token selection of plastic cheese and marshmallow bread, along with sodas, candy, beer, and processed snacks.

 

[ysabella]

Americans also make food at home. We tend to have a lot of fancy kitchen equipment - big stand mixers, bread machines, etc.

Pasteurized, un-homogenized whole milk is a specialty item, but it's out there. Usually in glass milk bottles.

Rolfe, did the sparrows peck at your milk bottles? My husband lived in Canterbury for a few years as a child, and would see sparrows pecking at the milk bottles on his walk to school.

 

[ysabella]

I was just reading on the raw milk site about a California company providing a lot of raw milk, Organic Pastures. But to get all the stuff distributed, they usually have to freeze it - http://www.organicpastures.com/faq.html

 

[NoZed Avenger]

It;s not about cleanliness, dammit, or not entirely. It's about diseases you can catch from the cow itself, like tuberculosis and brucellosis. No amount of clean milking will save you from that.

Ding, ding, ding -- WINNER.

People starting the damn process for a reason.




Louis Pasteur and friend, milk commercial:

"Well, raw milk has health benefits, tastes better, and can sure cancer."

"I know -- let's then put it through a completely unnecessary, expensive process that removes all those benefits!"

"Brilliant!!"

 

[jon]

anything to a study which suggests that raw milk may reduce risk of ashtma/allergies?

 

[Greediguts]

NPR had a program dealing with the subject of raw milk today. This was the first I had heard of the controversy surrounding raw milk.


I don't remember the guest's name, but she was a very vocal defender of raw milk. She stated she even hated to bake or cook with milk since she felt heating the milk in any way would ruin it and make it unhealthy. She stated pasteurization is a conspiracy, promoted by big business, to destroy the small mom and pop farms of America. Raw milk is safe and everyone should be drinking it. Pasteurization is, according to her, a bad thing. A very bad thing. In fact, pasteurization is what killed the dinosaurs, Jimmy Hoffa, pet rocks and disco.


What is going on in the world? Evolution is a fraud....pasteurization is a conspiracy of big business....sheesh...I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

 

[ponderingturtle]

NPR had a program dealing with the subject of raw milk today. This was the first I had heard of the controversy surrounding raw milk.


I don't remember the guest's name, but she was a very vocal defender of raw milk. She stated she even hated to bake or cook with milk since she felt heating the milk in any way would ruin it and make it unhealthy. She stated pasteurization is a conspiracy, promoted by big business, to destroy the small mom and pop farms of America. Raw milk is safe and everyone should be drinking it. Pasteurization is, according to her, a bad thing. A very bad thing. In fact, pasteurization is what killed the dinosaurs, Jimmy Hoffa, pet rocks and disco.


What is going on in the world? Evolution is a fraud....pasteurization is a conspiracy of big business....sheesh...I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

Is this the story?

 

[fls]

anything to a study which suggests that raw milk may reduce risk of ashtma/allergies?

One should always take studies of association with a grain of salt, especially if the Odds Ratio (or Relative Risk) is less than 2 (or greater than 0.50 for reduction in risk). It is too easy for weaker associations to simply reflect confounding factors. And it does not tell you in what direction any causation may occur. Many (most?) of these associations disappear when subject to controlled trials.

Linda

 

[krazyKemist]

anything to a study which suggests that raw milk may reduce risk of ashtma/allergies?

mmm... But as was mentionned earlier, so does living on a farm, and if I remember right, having pets... There are indications that being exposed to a certain amount of germs during childhood reduces the incidence of autoimmune diseases.

However, one has to remember that a child's immune function is not fully developped until adrenarch (about 7-8 years old). In fact, you might be exchanging a lower incidence of autoimmune diseases with a higher children-under-five death toll... As I remember seeing in my history of quebec lessons. That was before the pasteurisation laws. Two groups: english-speaking and french-speaking... The english-speaking generally bought pasteurized milk, the french, raw milk, as they were mostly farmers. The french-speaking had a significantly higher death rate for children under five... That's why the law was introduced in the first place.

the Kemist

 

[bruto]

Jumping in anecdotally here, I grew up in a town which had a dairy farm licensed to sell raw milk (the last in Connecticut, I think), and that's all we got for years. They bottled it and delivered it for a long time, and later when that service became too expensive, they still sold it from the dairy. The milk was bangs and tuberculin tested regularly and it was rich, delicious, wholesome and clean. I've never been able to stomach ordinary milk since then. It's a different beverage.

However, it's also worth noting that in addition to being raw, this milk was almost 100 percent Gurensey milk, and that undoubtedly made a difference too.

I'm reminded of a line from Crocodile Dundee, in which after roasting some desert critter on a spit, he says, "You can live on it, but it tastes like s***." The stuff you buy at the supermarket is clean and reasonably wholesome and it won't go sour overnight if ever, but it's to real old fashioned raw milk as a frozen hamburger patty is to the fresh, aged steak the local butcher used to run through his grinder and sell as "hamburger" (and yes, we ate that raw too, and nobody ever got sick).

I don't think anyone who has enjoyed a nice cold glass of raw guernsey milk with the layer of cream on the top would ever be able to deny that it's better than the stuff in the carton. But in the mass market it's a boutique item and always will be. No doubt the tradeoff with pasteurization is a good one overall, and it would be silly to suggest that it's a conspiracy against nutrition or anytyhing else, but there still really is a difference in flavor!

 

[Pup]

No doubt the tradeoff with pasteurization is a good one overall, and it would be silly to suggest that it's a conspiracy against nutrition or anytyhing else, but there still really is a difference in flavor!

We used to own a Milking Shorthorn cow, which would produce milk closer to a Holstein than a Guernsey, and I've drank her milk raw, her milk home pasteurized on the stovetop, and storebought milk, and honestly, I couldn't tell a difference. Same with her butter, as long as it was made from fresh milk. Sour cream butter, used in baking, was a dramatic improvement in some recipes, though.

I don't know if I'm just not a gourmet when it comes to milk, or whether the extra richness of Guernsey milk makes the difference.

 

[luchog]

It is illegal to make cheese from raw milk in the United States. It's also illegal to import cheese made from unpasteurized milk into the US. I have heard tell that European cheese tastes better than American cheese. Maybe one day I will travel to Europe and find out.

That can't be right, since there are any number of upscale supermarkets, co-ops, and delis that I visit regularly that advertise and sell "raw" cow's, sheep's, and goat's milk cheeses. Some of which I'm very fond of. ETA: yeah, someone else already brought it up. Aged cheeses are legal. Fine with me, since I prefer my cheeses ancient, and don't eat much of the farmer's cheese/queso fresco types.

And pretty much anything tastes better than "American Cheese".

I once had goat milk, straight from the goat. As I recall, I didn't like it.

Rather a fan of it, myself. Just wish it wasn't so expensive and difficult to find.

 

[Jorghnassen]

The english-speaking generally bought pasteurized milk, the french, raw milk, as they were mostly farmers. The french-speaking had a significantly higher death rate for children under five... That's why the law was introduced in the first place.

the Kemist

How's your French? Montreal used to have the highest infant mortality rate int the western world, but it was far from just a pasteurization issue. Refrigeration and delivery practices also affected the quality, not to mention the sheer lack of hygiene of poor urban households in the early 20th century (and a number of other factors). I don't think infant mortality was quite as high in rural Quebec at the time. Just thought I'd mention that pasteurization is just one of the many changes that has improved the food safety overall...

One semi-related anecdote: my girlfriend back in cégep, did a bio experiment comparing bacteria in fresh milk (which she got from a farmer classmate) vs milk from the school cafeteria. Turns out the cafeteria milk had more bugs. To me, that's not too surprising. The milk and chocolate milk that are sold in my university building's cafeteria will skewer one's inside, and I'm not lactose intolerant.