people die from a large variety of foods every year. We have many, and I'll wager under-reported, prescription drug deaths, or at "best" complications, from legal & supposedly approved by regulatory agencies. I drank raw milk, appro 10 years ago, for several years after finding a local connection, suffered no ill effects, and likely some benefits. I stopped only as the farmer was getting older & downsizing his herd. There's So many ways to die prematurely in our culture. I wish some of these experts would be "absolutely horrified" with the many other preventable deaths due to food & other aspects of our culture. We could all list many....
Yes indeed... many premature deaths from food-borne illness. According to the CDC, every year in the U.S., 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from food-borne diseases. I'm hoping this number is pointed downward... not particularly optimistic, however. Thoughts, prayers, and even crossed fingers are unlikely to bring about the desired result. Stiffer warnings? Somehow I doubt it. I see there was another milk recall in CA yesterday...
I have never been interested in drinking raw milk but didn't oppose legalizing sales for others. Unfortunately, Dr. Megan Srinivas has explained how raw milk doesn't just endanger the drinker--others can also get ill from certain diseases.
A couple of years ago I read a biography of Sylvan Runkel, one of the leading 20th century experts on Iowa plants. His first wife died of undulant fever, probably from drinking raw milk.
I was not really tracking on this issue (other than having been a cow milker -- AND "distributor," as my dear wife points out -- in my youth) but then I kept coming across this surge of raw milk advocates at the same time as bird flu starts popping up in milk. Sounds to me like we're all in a ship aimed at an iceberg.
My attitude toward raw milk is that informed consumers will say no, especially when deciding for others, like kids. But then, the percentage of informed consumers in what? 30%?... 60%... something far less? Would I drink it today? Not on your life. Did I as a kid? Yes, of course, unaware of the dangers, which have only increased.
Pasturizing milk comes in twoforms, the olderone was to heat the milk up to where it was pasterized and then let it slowly return to its original state. Doesn'tsound to different than what you were thinking does it? Well industrialized pasturazation does it instantly, and through a pipe, so the milk is instantly taken tothe degree it is pasturized and almost as quicly back toits original state. In the slower version of batch pasterization that speed is obviously slowed down and for some reason preserves some of the good stuff that is in the milk that is destroyed by the faster process. The German's instituted a method of cleanliness in the production of beer that makes beer healthy and a source of B-complex vitamins, American's who ship it to the US have to pasterize it, which destroys the yeast that are responsible for the b-complex vitamins and makes its only a source of alcohol. So there are differences and the processing does make a difference to some degree. We did home pasterizing when I was growing up on thr farm, but today I probably drink more beer than milk, so taste isn't much of a consideration when the only time we use milk in our household of two is for ingredients in something else, like scalloped potatoes. Just thought I would mention somethings that are over looked in this business of pasturizing anything and certainly not in defense of the knot heads coming on board in government with Trump!
Thank you for this, Steve. I'm familiar with both methods, with fond memories of the distinctive odor that emanated from the gallon-at-a-time pasteurizer we had as young children... a combination of equipment heat smells and warming milk. More distinctive than pleasant, all part of an unusually happy, rural Iowa childhood.
people die from a large variety of foods every year. We have many, and I'll wager under-reported, prescription drug deaths, or at "best" complications, from legal & supposedly approved by regulatory agencies. I drank raw milk, appro 10 years ago, for several years after finding a local connection, suffered no ill effects, and likely some benefits. I stopped only as the farmer was getting older & downsizing his herd. There's So many ways to die prematurely in our culture. I wish some of these experts would be "absolutely horrified" with the many other preventable deaths due to food & other aspects of our culture. We could all list many....
Yes indeed... many premature deaths from food-borne illness. According to the CDC, every year in the U.S., 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from food-borne diseases. I'm hoping this number is pointed downward... not particularly optimistic, however. Thoughts, prayers, and even crossed fingers are unlikely to bring about the desired result. Stiffer warnings? Somehow I doubt it. I see there was another milk recall in CA yesterday...
I have never been interested in drinking raw milk but didn't oppose legalizing sales for others. Unfortunately, Dr. Megan Srinivas has explained how raw milk doesn't just endanger the drinker--others can also get ill from certain diseases.
A couple of years ago I read a biography of Sylvan Runkel, one of the leading 20th century experts on Iowa plants. His first wife died of undulant fever, probably from drinking raw milk.
I was not really tracking on this issue (other than having been a cow milker -- AND "distributor," as my dear wife points out -- in my youth) but then I kept coming across this surge of raw milk advocates at the same time as bird flu starts popping up in milk. Sounds to me like we're all in a ship aimed at an iceberg.
My attitude toward raw milk is that informed consumers will say no, especially when deciding for others, like kids. But then, the percentage of informed consumers in what? 30%?... 60%... something far less? Would I drink it today? Not on your life. Did I as a kid? Yes, of course, unaware of the dangers, which have only increased.
Pasturizing milk comes in twoforms, the olderone was to heat the milk up to where it was pasterized and then let it slowly return to its original state. Doesn'tsound to different than what you were thinking does it? Well industrialized pasturazation does it instantly, and through a pipe, so the milk is instantly taken tothe degree it is pasturized and almost as quicly back toits original state. In the slower version of batch pasterization that speed is obviously slowed down and for some reason preserves some of the good stuff that is in the milk that is destroyed by the faster process. The German's instituted a method of cleanliness in the production of beer that makes beer healthy and a source of B-complex vitamins, American's who ship it to the US have to pasterize it, which destroys the yeast that are responsible for the b-complex vitamins and makes its only a source of alcohol. So there are differences and the processing does make a difference to some degree. We did home pasterizing when I was growing up on thr farm, but today I probably drink more beer than milk, so taste isn't much of a consideration when the only time we use milk in our household of two is for ingredients in something else, like scalloped potatoes. Just thought I would mention somethings that are over looked in this business of pasturizing anything and certainly not in defense of the knot heads coming on board in government with Trump!
Thank you for this, Steve. I'm familiar with both methods, with fond memories of the distinctive odor that emanated from the gallon-at-a-time pasteurizer we had as young children... a combination of equipment heat smells and warming milk. More distinctive than pleasant, all part of an unusually happy, rural Iowa childhood.