I’ve been loosely following raw milk developments in the states and am still intrigued by the idea, so I thought it was worth noting a couple stories…one positive, one negative.
On the positive, Michigan gave the green light for limited raw milk deliveries, according to the Ann Arbor News. The decision comes after food safety officials seized equipment from Farmer Richard Hebron, who was making deliveries from his cow/herd share operation.
On the negative, Illinois recently issued a warning about contaminated raw milk from the Brian and Barbara Hill dairy farm in Maple Park, according to the Aurora Beacon News. The warning came after routine testing of the milk found salmonella.
These scares don’t seem to be deterring those who firmly believe in the health benefits of raw milk, as the Gainsville Sun notes in a story about the pasteurized v. unpasteurized debate.
Virtual Farmgirl 
You should keep in mind that the warnings of the type out of Illinois are fairly routine–reflecting a strong government bias against raw milk. The governmental approval in Michigan came only after a state sting operation against a raw milk farmer last October provoked a huge amount of outrage from consumers. There’s been much discussion about this entire matter–pro and con– at my blog, http://www.thecompletepatient.com.
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I get it. I also get that if there wasn’t some regulation…lots of unscrupulous folks would be selling contaminated dairy, meat, produce. There’s gotta be some sort of balanced approach.
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David, I think you over subscribe to the “government = bad” approach and maybe, just maybe, there are real issues wrt contaminated raw milk. As we have discussed (but you seem to have not responded to my question on your blog…)
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I milk goats and drink raw milk. I have read only a very little bit on milking. one of the blog articles mentions that raw milk is neither pasteurized nor homogenized. Do you know what these words mean, and what they do to milk?Pasteurization. Heat it up to kill everything in it. In most milk, that is milked with a machine, I can tell you there is plenty of bad stuff that you will not want to drink, and its not just salmonella. But milk is high very high in Vitamin C. and other things that are all killed throw the baby out with the bath water.Homogenization. This is were it gets quite gross. This is a process that breaks all of the particles into homogeneously sized particles, and small at that. Milk has many things in it. Milk, cream, fats, antibiotics that the cow has eaten or been given, clots -blood clots most often from being mechanically milked for either too long or too short of a time, but since it is a closed system, no one ever sees the milk. All of the stuff in the milk is of different sizes. So they spin the milk very fast to break up all of the parts to make it all the same smooth texture. The excuse is so there is no fat/cream at the top. so that it is all one consistency, but it hides so much more.The closed system of milking… every day, twice a day, puts a machine on the cows to suction the milk out. The dairy man is incharge of how long each cow stays on the tube. the milk is then pumped into a vat that stores all of the milk and circulates it to get it cold in a few minutes. (Grade A milk goes from Cow body tempurature to cold fast (15 min?), Grade B not so fast, Grade C slowly, Grade D is just milking and putting it in the fridge (takes hours to cool the milk to 45 degrees) All of this has exact times and numbers, I just cann’t remember it all. I milk, strain and jar the milk (in glass) they put it in a sink full of cold water and usually I get a grade C milk (as my memory serves me). But the closed system never lets you see each cows milk. You don’t know if the cow has mastitis, or if there are blood clots, lumps of antibiotic material, etc.. in the milk or not. Each Day, a truck is supposed to pick up the milk from the vat and add it to the milk in the vat on his truck. Each day, is an awful lot of driving to do in a Wisconsin winter… My point, the trucks don’t come every day. Milk is added to milk is added to milk.then they heat it and spin it and call it good for you.The real answer to all of the food, veggies, meat, milk water, air,… is that we must know about our food and air quality. We, each of us is responsible for knowing and understanding what we are doing when it comes to feeding ourselves. The industrial revolution took us from our farms and into town. We had to work for money, not for food. It was hard to work for food. not everyone is good at it. People starved alot when they had to grow their own food. Modern technology makes the food supply so easy. Farming is easier, we pump the water. We drive the tractors. We have machines pick and shuck for us. We destroy our planet over food. Why do we work? -to buy food/stuff. Why do we drive? -to shop. Why don’t we all just stay at home and plant food? It is hard work and we prefer to sit in a car and let others do the work for us.Raw milk just is another show of how we don’t know our food. If you know the cow, then you know if you will get sick or not. A sick animal looks sick, acts sick. Yes you must milk everyday, to sustain the milk supply, but if you know the cow and see the milk you feed it to the pig/dog.
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The pasteurization movement came about to both solve the bad milk problem of unscrupulous and cruel and downright ignorant/evil farmers AND to capitalize on the business opportunity of having a massive pasteurization and bottling business opportunity. When pointing fingers at the contaminated raw milk, those doing the pointing conveniently forgot the outrageous statistics on bacterial contamination in PASTEURIZED milk, which is huge. Societies got on fine of many thousands of years without pastuerization and homogenization, and suffered far fewer “diseases of civilization.” I think that it is completely appropriate and healthy to purchase milk, raw, from a farm. I think it is ideal if we know the face of the farmer and choose that farmer because we agree with his agricultural practices. Personally, I’d like to see thousands of family farms that can provide us with dairy, meat and produce – and have them sprinkled in and among our communities – preferably using organic, sustainable and humane practices. I don’t agree with the way factory farms, factory dairies and most ranches and slaughterhouses produce food…and finally research is showing how and why their practices are unhealthy for us. Until I found local farmers, I felt like a prisoner of the corporate food world. I never want to be without food choice, not ever.
LikeLike
You should keep in mind that the warnings of the type out of Illinois are fairly routine–reflecting a strong government bias against raw milk. The governmental approval in Michigan came only after a state sting operation against a raw milk farmer last October provoked a huge amount of outrage from consumers. There’s been much discussion about this entire matter–pro and con– at my blog, http://www.thecompletepatient.com.
LikeLike
I get it. I also get that if there wasn’t some regulation…lots of unscrupulous folks would be selling contaminated dairy, meat, produce. There’s gotta be some sort of balanced approach.
LikeLike
David, I think you over subscribe to the “government = bad” approach and maybe, just maybe, there are real issues wrt contaminated raw milk. As we have discussed (but you seem to have not responded to my question on your blog…)
LikeLike
I milk goats and drink raw milk. I have read only a very little bit on milking. one of the blog articles mentions that raw milk is neither pasteurized nor homogenized. Do you know what these words mean, and what they do to milk?Pasteurization. Heat it up to kill everything in it. In most milk, that is milked with a machine, I can tell you there is plenty of bad stuff that you will not want to drink, and its not just salmonella. But milk is high very high in Vitamin C. and other things that are all killed throw the baby out with the bath water.Homogenization. This is were it gets quite gross. This is a process that breaks all of the particles into homogeneously sized particles, and small at that. Milk has many things in it. Milk, cream, fats, antibiotics that the cow has eaten or been given, clots -blood clots most often from being mechanically milked for either too long or too short of a time, but since it is a closed system, no one ever sees the milk. All of the stuff in the milk is of different sizes. So they spin the milk very fast to break up all of the parts to make it all the same smooth texture. The excuse is so there is no fat/cream at the top. so that it is all one consistency, but it hides so much more.The closed system of milking… every day, twice a day, puts a machine on the cows to suction the milk out. The dairy man is incharge of how long each cow stays on the tube. the milk is then pumped into a vat that stores all of the milk and circulates it to get it cold in a few minutes. (Grade A milk goes from Cow body tempurature to cold fast (15 min?), Grade B not so fast, Grade C slowly, Grade D is just milking and putting it in the fridge (takes hours to cool the milk to 45 degrees) All of this has exact times and numbers, I just cann’t remember it all. I milk, strain and jar the milk (in glass) they put it in a sink full of cold water and usually I get a grade C milk (as my memory serves me). But the closed system never lets you see each cows milk. You don’t know if the cow has mastitis, or if there are blood clots, lumps of antibiotic material, etc.. in the milk or not. Each Day, a truck is supposed to pick up the milk from the vat and add it to the milk in the vat on his truck. Each day, is an awful lot of driving to do in a Wisconsin winter… My point, the trucks don’t come every day. Milk is added to milk is added to milk.then they heat it and spin it and call it good for you.The real answer to all of the food, veggies, meat, milk water, air,… is that we must know about our food and air quality. We, each of us is responsible for knowing and understanding what we are doing when it comes to feeding ourselves. The industrial revolution took us from our farms and into town. We had to work for money, not for food. It was hard to work for food. not everyone is good at it. People starved alot when they had to grow their own food. Modern technology makes the food supply so easy. Farming is easier, we pump the water. We drive the tractors. We have machines pick and shuck for us. We destroy our planet over food. Why do we work? -to buy food/stuff. Why do we drive? -to shop. Why don’t we all just stay at home and plant food? It is hard work and we prefer to sit in a car and let others do the work for us.Raw milk just is another show of how we don’t know our food. If you know the cow, then you know if you will get sick or not. A sick animal looks sick, acts sick. Yes you must milk everyday, to sustain the milk supply, but if you know the cow and see the milk you feed it to the pig/dog.
LikeLike
The pasteurization movement came about to both solve the bad milk problem of unscrupulous and cruel and downright ignorant/evil farmers AND to capitalize on the business opportunity of having a massive pasteurization and bottling business opportunity. When pointing fingers at the contaminated raw milk, those doing the pointing conveniently forgot the outrageous statistics on bacterial contamination in PASTEURIZED milk, which is huge. Societies got on fine of many thousands of years without pastuerization and homogenization, and suffered far fewer “diseases of civilization.” I think that it is completely appropriate and healthy to purchase milk, raw, from a farm. I think it is ideal if we know the face of the farmer and choose that farmer because we agree with his agricultural practices. Personally, I’d like to see thousands of family farms that can provide us with dairy, meat and produce – and have them sprinkled in and among our communities – preferably using organic, sustainable and humane practices. I don’t agree with the way factory farms, factory dairies and most ranches and slaughterhouses produce food…and finally research is showing how and why their practices are unhealthy for us. Until I found local farmers, I felt like a prisoner of the corporate food world. I never want to be without food choice, not ever.
LikeLike