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Thu 9 Oct, 2008 09:38 am
I was raisied on raw milk, from our cow to the table by a detour thru the butter churn but, times have changed ; what do you think?
Santa Fe nutritionist Lisa Giannini says her clients are sometimes stunned when she recommends they begin drinking unpasteurized milk. But soon after they begin drinking it, she says, most of her clients experience relief from their ailments.
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"Raw milk is inherently dangerous, and it should not be consumed by anyone at any time for any purpose," U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokesman Michael Herndon says in an e-mail.
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Giannini disagrees. Milk is "really a perfect food when it's raw," she says. She's seen it aid people suffering from asthma, allergies, pneumonia, constipation and stomach pains. "It heals the gut," she says, adding that it also boosts the immune system. "It has the right ratio of protein, fats and carbs. It's good for hair, skin and nails."
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The FDA Web site is unwavering in its warning that raw milk and raw-milk products " such as cream, cheese and yogurt " are not safe to consume, and it aims to debunk claims that pasteurization destroys milk's beneficial components. Pasteurization " a heating process that destroys microorganisms " was developed in the 1880s and was widely used for milk products by the 1930s amid a growing incidence of dairy industry-related illnesses.
The FDA lists a host of pathogens that could be found in milk that isn't pasteurized. Among them are Enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus, Campylobacter jejuni, salmonella, E. coli, listeria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Brucella.
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Some state and federal agencies are cracking down on farmers who flout the laws: Mark McAfee was at the center of an FDA probe in California, accused of cross-border sales; Mark Nolt, a Mennonite in Pennsylvania who refused to renew a permit for raw-milk sales within that state's borders, has been jailed and fined. His products were confiscated twice. Farmers in New York have reported state officials pressuring them to stop selling raw milk or seizing their inventory.
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The New Mexico Department of Agriculture's Dairy Division director, Alfred Reeb, stands somewhere in the middle of the raw-milk debate.
"We're proud we can offer it to the people," he says of raw milk. The state requires a permit, but the rules are "very simple, all in all."
A dairy must have inspectable milking facilities " a building with washable floors and a roof, a separate room to cool and bottle the milk, and potable water.
@dyslexia,
Dyslexia said "I was raisied on raw milk, from our cow to the table by a detour thru the butter churn but, times have changed ; what do you think?"
I think we now know why you grew up to be such a wacko cowboy!
BBB
@dyslexia,
I'm with Ms. Giannini on this. Like you, I remember that wonderful warm white liquid straight from the cow in grandma's barn. This stuff that comes in cartons and is not only pasteurized but, somehow, homogenized (whatever that means) just doesn't taste like real milk. The dairy-related diseases the FDA talks about were mainly due to improper milking hygeane, contaminated milking equipment or unwashed hands of the manual milker. With proper inspection, there's no reason whole milk shouldn't be safe. (I only wish I knew of a local source. Haven't had real milk in years.
I wonder how many people like me, who haven't had the pleasure of drinking raw milk? During visits to my granny's house when I was little, there was probably raw milk, but I was too young to be aware of the difference.
Maybe we can find a farm in Santa Fe that sells raw milk. I'd love to have the experience that Dys mentions with such nostalgia, although he warned me to expect 'chunkies' that haven't been homogenized into the milk, unlike the stuff we get at the grocer's.
@dyslexia,
I remember drinking milk straight from the cow, well not really straight, as
mother used to boil the milk beforehand, but it still had an incredible taste
that milk in a carton never can generate.
My father grew up on a farm, and hated raw milk. Clots of unknown matter sliding down one's throat....
@dyslexia,
Hey, dys, better go buy a Lotto ticket, we agree on something.
For one thing, many of the world's great cheeses are made from raw milk. If the FDA got it's way, we wouldn't be able to have a hunk of roquefort on our salad, or grate parmesan reggiano over our pasta.
I've also read recently that even in NYC, folks are buying raw milk off the "black market" for their babies, because of the immune system boost.
Hubby uses cold pasteurized milk on cereal but won't drink it on purpose due to unpleasant memories of having to drink warm milk straight from the cow as a kid. I have no such unpleasant memories and drank an awful lot of fresh unpasteurized milk when I was little.
These days you can't get it unless you know somebody with a dairy who is willing to take the significant risk of selling you unpasteurized milk. Oddly enough though, you can buy fresh unpasteurized goat milk which is very good and is purported to have even more medicinal value than unpasteurized cow's milk.
Expensive though. And unhandy to drive 30+ miles to the nearest goat farm to buy it.
When I was living on farms I thought it was disgusting. A buddy of mine used to drink it right from the cow's teat for shock value and on a dare I tried it (not direct, but pre-boiled) and it was disgusting.
When our cows would eat trash the milk would taste like fruit (they were eating rotten bananas) and I spent a year or two avoiding milk after living on that farm.
There is always a bit of tradeoff from one to the other. They insist on pasturizing and homogenizing milk to keep it on the shelves longer. The milk is, in my opinion, not totally safe or nearly as nutricious after they have done with it. Raw milk is the good stuff. When I was sixteen or so, a local misnister and his wife began bringing over the leftover milk from their cow. We had it it for about a year. There could be occasional pathogens or whatever in raw milk, but not in general, where clean practices are used.
What do I think?
I think baby cows should drink cow's milk.
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:
These days you can't get it unless you know somebody with a dairy who is willing to take the significant risk of selling you unpasteurized milk.
I'm not sure where the risk is.
You get raw milk here in any supermarket. (And of course at farm shops, organic shops, ...)
Hmm, the law re raw goat's milk must have changed since we last bought some because there used to be a number of places in this area where we could get it. Maybe the goat farm we have most frequented is the one goat farm now licensed?
Anyhow, if the rest of you want to know what the regs are in your state, follow this link:
http://www.realmilk.com/happening.html#nm
Quote:New Mexico
Raw milk sales are legal if they farmer has obtained a permit from the state Department of Agriculture. Even though state law allows the sale of raw milk products, it has been the policy of the department to limit the permit to raw milk sales only.
There is a labeling requirement that all containers of retail raw milk must carry the statement "RAW MILK IS NOT PASTEURIZED AND MAY CONTAIN ORGANISMS THAT CAUSE HUMAN DISEASE."
At the present time, there is one farm that has a permit to sell raw goat milk. There are no other retail raw milk licensees in the state.
Quote:US Summary:
Sales of raw milk are legal in 28 out of 50 US states, which is better than half. If you include the states which permit the sale of raw milk for animal consumption (implying that human consumption is feasible) then the total is 33 out of 50 states, which is two-thirds. In some of the remaining states (such as Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin) raw milk is available through cow share programs. Our goal: Raw milk available to consumers in all 50 states and throughout the world!
Write to your government leaders and let your voice be heard. You can find your state representative's contact information here:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
NATIONAL NEWS: USA Today carried an article on raw milk, August 7, complete with information on Organic Pastures raw milk dairy in California and the Weston A. Price Foundation's Campaign for Real Milk. Of course, the article quotes FDA officials likening the consumption of raw milk with "playing Russian roulette with your health," but there were plenty of quotes from satisfied raw milk consumers. Internal Medicine News, which reaches 100,000 medical doctors is planning to run a "Point/Counterpoint" piece on the question "Should physicians advise patients to avoid drinking raw milk?"
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre, do you go down to Bosque Farms? I know Dys would love to have it again and I would like to try it for the first time. Even if it is goat's milk.
@Diane,
No, the place where we'used to go when we lived in the east mountains was out on South 14 (Hwy 337) - roughly 15 miles or so south of Tijeras. Not sure its even still there as we haven't been out there for a number of years. Hubby and I were trying to think of the name of the farm when this subject first came up--I'm thinking Sierra Farms. They had a place where kids could pet the goats and their specialty was goat cheese but we used to be sometimes able to buy cold quarts of fresh goat milk too.
I am in Bosque Farms usually a couple times a month but don't remember visiting a goat farm there. There probably are some in that area though.
My family bought what we called "real" milk from a local farmer when I was a kid (in the 1970s) .
It was illegal... perhaps this was my gateway into a life of lawlessness.
The best part of real milk is the cream which rises to the top.
Spooning rich fresh cream on top of granola.... there isn't much in life that is better than that.
It is funny how back then... no one seemed to be worried about fat.
@ebrown p,
You used to be able to buy Standard, ie. pasturized but not homogenized. When would that have stopped, early sixties ... ??????
@ebrown p,
I bought raw milk from a localish farmer for years.
After coming back to Oz, I found out he had been arrested.
(seems milk was not as profitable as other things white...)
Raw milk is black market.
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