Signs of hard times

[Richardk]

That sounds about right but in today's world why even take the chance?

You could probably be OK 99% of the time but that one time that you get sick will be enough to change your mind.

[The Gorn]

Note: I am not a back to nature tree hugging Luddite... I am just anti unreasonable regulation. This is just what I know.

Raw milk is illegal for dairies to sell in many states. Ohio cracked down a few years ago. A dairy here that we visit (the McCain campaign visited the place in 2008) sold raw milk a few years ago and was forced to stop when Ohio made more stringent laws.

The way the dairy operators explain it is that their milking and handling procedures are so sanitary that there is little risk of illness.

Raw milk "fans" now buy raw milk labeled for agricultural use, IE, for feed, which is still permitted. So the buyer assumes all risks for "off label consumption". You still hear nothing about illnesses resulting from raw milk.

It's nanny statism at work, IMO.

[Aussie]

The TV chefs and such who incite people not to 'overcook' pork.  I don't care what the officials says, feral pigs eat all sort of carrion, and are hence full of disease, and there's enough razorbacks out in the vast Macquarie Marshes over the mountains west of Sydney that get shot by folks pigging that I believe find their way into the human food chain, that there's no way I'm going to trust some bloody chef.  I was brought up to believe that there's nothing worse than underdone pork to make you crook, and I don't see any reason to change my opinions on that score now.  Don't you guys have a lot of feral porkers over that way too?

[The Gorn]

Don't you guys have a lot of feral porkers over that way too?

We have wild boar here. Some are seen in Eastern Ohio and Western PA. Most prevalent in the mid-south in states like TX, Arkansas, and Missouri. The damned things can weigh several thousand pounds and are deadly.

But pork meat here in the states is a factory farm thing. You're going to know if the pig you're eating is wild or not, believe me, just by the sourcing. From a retail store == relatively safe, no trichinosis, etc.

[Aussie]

Perhaps the US regulatory authorities are more watertight.  I don't have a lot of confidence in our State government and the regulatory authorities.  What you have to understand is, a lot of this State's first public servants were either ticket-of-leavers (a bit like parole) or emancipated convicts....warn't no-one else available at the time 200 years ago.  No 'Age of Enlightenment' in these parts.  It goes downhill from there.  Imagine Ohio started with a population of 85% convicts, 10% soldiers, 5% officers mostly on the take.... get the idea ?

A recently defunct balance-of-power 'third' party used to have the official slogan of 'Keep the Bastards Honest'.  Until the currency was changed to the apparently 'unforgeable' plastic bank-notes, the guy on the ten dollar note was Francis Greenway, an emancipated convict who was transported for the crime of forgery.  A forger on a bank-note....only in Australia.

[John Masterson]

The way the dairy operators explain it is that their milking and handling procedures are so sanitary that there is little risk of illness.

I dunno. I worked on my uncle's Minnesota dairy farm on several summer visits, and no matter how you do it, cows make a ton of poop and it builds up in the barnyard where they stand; and they lie in it right on their udder, too.

e. coli O:157 is in cow poop all over the country, and I can't imagine they can clean a cow's wrinkly teats well enough to sterilize them before they put the vacuum sucker on it.

I won't be drinking any raw milk in this current antibiotic-resistant organism-infested agriculture industry.

[The Gorn]

Points taken, but when modern dairy procedures are shown on TV, all you see is obsessive sterilization techniques being used.

So the issue is that the most used of extracting milk from a cow exposes the milk indirectly to whatever crap the cow has been laying in. Makes sense now.

[Aussie]

I heard that someone did an analysis of the yoghurt microorganism, and apparently the DNA is strongly reminiscent of a certain bug found in the human digestive tract.  Which suggests that it was first discovered because some milkmaid in Central Asia wasn't too fussy about washing her hands after taking a crap.

[David Randolph]

According to the CDC, people are getting sick from raw milk on a regular basis.

 

http://cdc.gov/healthypets/cheesespotlight/cheese_spotlight.htm

 

http://www.ncahf.org/articles/o-r/rawmilk.html

 

I quote from the latter: "Between April, 1971 and March, 1974, S dublin was isolated from 79 persons in California, 37 of whom had medical conditions. Their ages ranged from 1 mo. to 88 yrs; 59 were hospitalized, 16 died, and 32 infections were traced to Alta Dena [Certified Raw Milk]."

 

The latter also states that when people get their milk from a small number of cows, they build immunity to the specific bacteria of those cows. It is when raw milk is sold on an industrial scale that we see people who are not familiar with that cow's strain of bacteria getting sick.

[The Gorn]

I didn't know that raw milk in modern times was a health issue.

I honestly thought that if yuppies and Bobos liked something, it must be riskless.

Thanks to all for the updates/corrections.

[unix]

According to the CDC, people are getting sick fro

These are still pretty low numbers though... but point taken. Seems like the problem is the actual farm, where they keep cattle stacked up like sardines in a can. Chickens are the same way. they need to be outside. Keeping a zillion of them in a relatively small space leads to the same problems. So I think raw milk *can* be safe, but maybe currently isn't.