Raw Milk Setback [General]

2011 Sep 28
Michael Schmidt's case overturned :-(

news.nationalpost.com

2011 Sep 29
very sad. I have enjoyed raw milk and wish it were more readily available.

2011 Sep 29
I don't really have anything against this farmer's action, however the ramifications are serious. Raw milk is usually safe to drink, and because it isn't mass produced not a lot of people get sick. If you legalize it, it will be mass produced. If milk is contaminated within a mass production system, a lot of people get sick. I'm not sure what the middle ground is.

2011 Sep 29
I think your logic is flawed, tourist.

If it became legal it would simply mean that more people like Mr Schmidt would have small operations that are easy to keep control of. I am sure Mr Schmidt would probably be the first to tell you that it is not possible to mass-produce raw milk in the way you are referring to.

2011 Sep 29
I'm curious to find out how it is different. I'm just saying, if there is a demand for raw milk, there is money to be made. Where there is money to be made, corporations will appear.

2011 Sep 29
I do not understand your comment "how it is different".

How what is different?

2011 Sep 29
How milk production destined to be pasteurized is different than milk production destined to be sold as raw milk.

2011 Sep 29
For starters, most commercial milk is also homogenized and not just pasteurized, and this adds a pretty significant difference between the two processes.

I am just guessing but I would say that raw milk is processed in a far more hands-on fashion with a considerable amount of human involvement and care, whereas regular commercial milk has far less human involvement and far more automation.

2011 Sep 29
At the start all milk is raw until it is processed. All those shiny milk trucks driving into our towns and cities are full of raw milk on it's way to processing facilities where it is pasteurized and bottled, made into milk products, or processed for other purposes. If it were not to be pasteurized but simply bottled and sold as raw milk we would likely have health scares and sick or dying people, as we do now with meats, cantaloupes, grape tomatoes, spinach, sprouts, etc, etc,etc... However, our modern on-farm cooling technologies and animal milking procedures might mean fewer problems than people in the 19th century experienced.
I wonder if there are other, more modern means of purifying milk other than using 19th century pasteurization which would leave the milk closer to it's raw form. I'm thinking micro or ultra filtration, and wonder if there is any such process that can safely remove the bacteria present in all milk, from the smallest eco-friendliest organic farm to the biggest, ugliest, dirtiest factory farm in the US of A.
I also wonder whether public health policy makers and scientists should review the necessity of pasteurization and look for alternative strategies that would be it the public interest.
In the end I still don't want to die from eating salmonella-contaminated grape tomatoes or listeria-contaminated raw milk. I want to go naturally, in an easy chair with a glass of all-natural Beau's in my hand. Just don't blame the Beau's!

2011 Sep 29
As I already mentioned, homogenization bastardizes milk far, far, far more than pasteurization. I got raw milk recently and tasted it before and after I pasteurized it - tasted identical to me. But of course all the enzymes would be denatured as long as all potential bacteria killed. But those enzymes are what the raw milkers are largely after.

Personally I would think that all the machines used in a modern dairy increase the risk, not decrease it. And this would be one of the reasons why it needs to be pasteurized. I would personally far more trust a farmer hand milking into a well cleaned bucket.

Though you do make a good point Andy that quick cooling is important. The quicker the better. There is a certain temperature range where spoilers grow best, so the quicker you can traverse this range the better. Same holds for beer wort.

2011 Sep 29
Well I wouldn't thank you for milk from a bucket, not with the flies, the piss and the manure and all the bacteria that might be in it! As for the equipment I know that it can be a problem but with proper cleaning and maintenance it wouldn't be a concern to me. Any equipment that is in contact with the milk is disinfected with chlorinated water before each milking and washed after each milking.

2011 Sep 29
Yes, I suppose you have a point about the bucket. But I would still prefer the least amount of machinery and distance between the udder and the container the milk is going into. I know enough about cleaning a brewery to know that cleaning a dairy probably is not so trivial. But beer at least has a lower pH and alcohol.

2011 Sep 30
Not one person milks into a bucket anymore (that I know of). And I grew up drinking raw milk, but I wouldn't drink milk from a farm that I didn't know of.

2011 Sep 30
Perhaps there are different recipes for pasteurization too:

thebovine.wordpress.com

Quote:

From page 70: “… Corran McLaughlan puts forward a suggestion in his Medical Hypotheses paper that both the historical increase and subsequent decrease in levels of heart disease worldwide might be linked to the method of pasteurization. He drew together evidence from a range of sources to show that, as pasteurization was introduced in various countries and regions within countries, within a few years there was a marked increase in the level of heart disease. Prior to 1950 the major method of pasteurization was the Holder method (the milk was heated to 63 degrees C for about 30 minutes). Subsequently the method fell out of favour, largely because of the distinctive ‘cooked’ flavour it gave to the milk. In the 1960s there was a move to short-time, high-temperature methods, (about 90 degrees C for 15 seconds) and by 1980 these had become predominant. This change was soon followed by a decline in heart disease levels cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of the classic risk factors for heart disease.

Corran McLaughlan was not the first person to put forward the possibility of a link between pasteurization methods and changing levels of heart disease, but he did take the argument further than previously. He hypothesized that the heat treatment used in the Holder method was leading to protein breakdown and providing an increased level of BCM7 [Bovine editor's note: that's the opiate-like component] from A1 beta-casein. It’s an interesting proposition. The evidence looks quite strong, and it seems to make a lot of sense in terms of what we know about what happens to proteins when they are heated. But more work is required. It would be a marvellous research project for someone so inclined to investigate in vitro (i.e. in the test tube) the effect of heating on the subsequent release of BCM7 from A1 beta-casein. And also to test what happens to this milk subsequently when stomach enzymes are added.

2011 Oct 3
So much talk about pasteurizing and homogenizing, but not much discussion about proper pasture rotation, feed, housing, etc. In my thoughts, those are very important factors when talking about the safety of fresh milk.

And if we can send people to the moon, surely there is a way to set up guidelines for fresh 'raw' milk producers?