What do you prefer fresh milk directly from cow or from supermarket

What do you mean by raw milk? I don't think anyone drinks milk that is not pasturized (scalded, then poured over an ice cold metal plate (or the like) which would kill germs picked up in the milking process and whatever else. Homogenization permanently mixes he milk with the cream.

I grew up drinking milk that was directly from the cow, then pasturized, every morning. Sure, it was wonderful. So were fresh vegetables gathered the same day, fruit picked off trees, berries from vines. But, why would I have known any different? Vegetables and fruit, milk, tasted just as good later (after about age 14). Things started changing in about 1980s when the fruit, veggies, etc., was listed as shipped from places like Brazil and Mexico.

Raw milk is not pasteurized. There is a movement promoting it and raw milk production and sale is heavily regulated. Raw milk and raw milk cheeses are popular. They are not universally accepted but, they have a decided following.

When i was a boy, we got raw milk every day, from the milk train. My grandfather had a deal with one of the farmers, and the milk train dropped a can off for us every day (he was the station master). In the spring, the milk had a sharp, almost bitter taste from the cows grazing the new grass.

Can't say that i've had raw milk since then. I believe in most jurisdictions now, you have to go buy it from the farmer. They had a big flap in Ontario a while back because a group of people had clubbed together to buy raw milk from a farmer, and the local Queens Attorney wanted to prosecute him for selling raw milk. I don't know how the case came out, but the defense was that he was solicited, and was selling raw milk on the open market.

The milk we got from the milk train was neither pasteurized nor homogenized. When my grandmother opened the milk can, she's quickly tip it over a large bowl, and the cream would plop out into the bowl, still holding the shape of the milk can. That was in the 1950s.

My cousin owns a milk farm on Vancouver Island. Her family drinks unpasteurized milk all the time. It's lovely. The milk they sell is pasteurized though, has to be, by law.

I probably do 20 or 30 things each day that I could die from. Crosssing a street, for example. Didn't some famous movie star die from being hit by a car?

Anyone who has never tasted raw milk, fresh from the udder, has no way of knowing what real milk should taste like. The homogenized/pasteurizes stuff you buy in a bottle (more likely a carboard carton nowadays) has a very slight resemblance to real milk, something like what O'Doul's is to real beer.

It still see like very stupid thing to do to take that level of risk for the taste of "real milk". You could not pay me enough to drink raw cow milk even if it tasted as great as human milk right from it source.

To each his own however...........................................

I don´t like mild direct from the cow.
On the other hand if you know the farmer and that his cows are checked regularly it should not be dangerous to drink the milk.
There are several kinds of cheese which are made of raw milk, which means you should avoid these products just as raw milk, for children under two, pregnant women and others who could be endangered.
For normal people it is ok to drink and eat raw mild and products which content raw milk.

Saab once more Henry Ford son died from drinking raw milk and the family own the farm where the milk was produced and two Henry for one was a complete nut in keeping things as clean as possible.

For myself there is no way in the universe you could get me to drink raw milk.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are reminding consumers of the dangers of drinking milk that has not been pasteurized, known as raw milk. Raw milk potentially contains a wide variety of harmful bacteria – including Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria, Campylobacter and Brucella – that may cause illness and possibly death.

Consuming raw milk may be harmful to health. From 1998 to May 2005 CDC identified 45 outbreaks of foodborne illness that implicated unpasteurized milk, or cheese made from unpasteurized milk. These outbreaks accounted for 1,007 illnesses, 104 hospitalizations, and two deaths. This is based on information in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for the week of March 2, 2007. The actual number of illnesses was almost certainly higher because not all cases of illness are recognized and reported.

Two notes:

1.) @ setanta-- Some people who were buying for each other, that is, sending one car to the farm to pick up several orders of milk, may be in trouble here in MA. SO, the state wants several cars using that much gas to buy milk?

2.) Consider how many products of our modern agri-business have been laced with e coli recently, from beef to tomatoes to lettuce to peppers. Consider all the franken foods that corporate monsters like Monsanto are producing.

And Bill is worrying because someone in 1943 MAY HAVE died from drinking raw milk, which was probably consumed all across the country at that time.

Are you aware that back then, farmers left their milk in cans by the side of the road and dairy trucks picked up, after it spent hours in the sun or froze in the winter? When, at some point during the early 1950s, MA demanded that farmers store their milk in refrigerated canisters inside a building, many farmers chose to sell their herds and quit dairying.

A little perspective!

Besides, I've met people whose doctors over-dosed them on antibiotics who were later prescribed raw milk by other doctors to reestablish intestinal bacteria and allow them to eat normally again.

Farmers also has "milk sheds" at the side of the road, or by the railroad, in which to store the milk cans. That's how the railroad collected them, from milk sheds. When the dairy farmers began to delivery their milk more commonly through collection trucks from the commercial dairies, the railroad sold off a lot of the milk sheds. My grandfather bought one, and used it on some land he had at a private lake (where previously the family had camped out in tents) to start a "cabin." It was only about five feet wide, but it was about 14' to 16' feet long, so my grandfather, in the year after he hauled the milk shed to the property, simply added a square room on one long side of the milk shed, cut a door in the wall of the milk shed, and that became the kitchen. He put three "hide-a-beds" in the large square room for adults, and kids could sleep on the floor. Voila--instant large cabin.

This is a miniature version for an electric train lay-out, but it shows the most basic vesion of a railroad milk shed:



This is more like what one commonly saw in the 1950s, although the one my grandfather bought had a door in the short wall:

We in - Sweden - call a slow train a milktrain. Comes from the time when a train stopped at every milkshed to pick up the milk. Or we use the expression "the train stops at every milkshed". Of course we have no milksheds anymore - just an expression.

Same thing here.

When a bus, train or airplane take several stops along the way, it's referred to as a milk run here.

Somehow I do not think that Ford owning the farm in question and all it output was for him and his family and friends beside being a neat and clean nut all his life that he would allow the cans of milk for his family to set anywhere for hours.

Raw milk is clearly not safe and it have been known to kill more the Henry Ford son his death was just an example.

Edsel Ford died of stomach cancer, and his wife made a public statement to that effect. If you're going to avoid being accused of making **** up (something you do all the time), you'd better come up with a source.

Yes I am aware of his stomach cancer however his doctors was of the very firm opinion that it was the milk that kill him not the cancer.

Between a wife and the opinion of doctors even in the 1930s I will go with the doctors not the wife.

Translation, you don't have a source. You have a rant, and you're not going to let the mere lack of evidence for your rant to disuade you.

So you wish to take the word of a wife over his doctors that is your right as silly as that might be.