Maybe that Pasteur fellow was onto something
June 3, 2017 4:52 AM   Subscribe

What are the odds? 840 times more likely for raw milk drinkers Based on statistics from the five-year period 2009-2014, people who drink unpasteurized, raw milk are 840 times more likely to contract a foodborne illness than those who drink pasteurized milk.

“Unpasteurized milk, consumed by only 3.2 percent of the (U.S.) population, and cheese, consumed by only 1.6 percent of the population, caused 96 percent of illnesses caused by contaminated dairy products,” according to the report scheduled for June publication by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
posted by Kirth Gerson (70 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's almost as if there's some sort of invisible microorga... nah, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
posted by dmd at 4:56 AM on June 3, 2017 [19 favorites]


turns. out.
posted by entropicamericana at 5:02 AM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


nah, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Or drinking from a barrel full of old fish, maybe.

The reality is that raw milk tastes more than 840 times better than the regular stuff, despite the health risks. I've bought it legally and illegally, and fortunately never got sick from it. I haven't bought it in a few years, partly because of the health concerns, but I miss the flavor and if I had a source that I trusted I'd be willing to take the risk. The regular grocery store milk is so pallid in comparison.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:05 AM on June 3, 2017 [8 favorites]


Quick, let's run the odds of drinking alcohol vs water, and smoking cigarettes vs marijuana!
posted by Slinga at 5:16 AM on June 3, 2017 [8 favorites]


If you read this article posted to the blue some years ago, you'll see that the ways in which milk becomes contaminated are essentially impossible to avoid. There's nothing to be done to prevent a rain drop from getting in the milk bucket. No matter how clean you keep.your facilities and how thoroughly you wash the udders contamination can happen. So I don't think it makes sense to have a supplier you can trust since being trustworthy and responsible won't keep the milk safe.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:38 AM on June 3, 2017 [31 favorites]


Gah, statistics and *sensational!!* headlines.

3.2 % of the US population is, what, around 10 million?

From the article, "unpasteurized dairy products are responsible for almost all of the 761 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations in the United States that occur annually because of dairy-related outbreaks."

So, 783 of 10 million people got sick from drinking raw milk, that makes the odds of getting sick...... .008%?
posted by slipthought at 5:40 AM on June 3, 2017 [15 favorites]


There's nothing to be done to prevent a rain drop from getting in the milk bucket.

Perhaps, but roof technology is advancing quickly.
posted by fairmettle at 5:55 AM on June 3, 2017 [35 favorites]


So, 783 of 10 million people got sick from drinking raw milk, that makes the odds of getting sick...... .008%?

This is the difference between "relative risk" and "absolute risk."

I'm not much of a milk drinker, but last time we were in India, the kids had nothing but warm milk fresh from one of the family's cows, along with yogurt and butter made from the same and can confirm that the taste was unbelievably better.

Then again, the most horrific thing I've experienced in medicine was delivering a 39 week still born child of a mother who contracted listeria from eating unpasteurized cheese.

So, 2 anecdotal data points.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 5:57 AM on June 3, 2017 [68 favorites]


I was under the impression that the taste difference was largely due to homogenization and not pasteurization, but I've never had milk that didn't undergo both processes.
posted by mattamatic at 6:06 AM on June 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


So, 783 of 10 million people got sick from drinking raw milk, that makes the odds of getting sick...... .008%?
The article doesn't make this clear, but it's actually 783 illnesses per billion servings in the paper. It looks like this actually helps your case, though - they estimate 761 cases per year in the US at current consumption rates.

Their extrapolation from confirmed illnesses to unconfirmed illnesses seems a bit surprising: one case of listeria monocytogenes has 1 confirmed, 1 hospitalized, and 15 unconfirmed; another has 34 confirmed, 32 hospitalized, and 34 unconfirmed. Clearly their model is pretty complicated.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but it's certainly interesting data. That unpasteurized diary makes up a few percent of consumption but the vast majority of hospitalizations due to dairy-related food borne illness is pretty hard to get around. Seems like a pretty good argument for clear labeling if nothing else.

Tangentially, what's the deal with "Mexican style cheese," which seems to make up a surprising fraction of the non-pasturized outbreaks? (5 of 83, perhaps 7 if you include "latin style soft cheese" and "Mexican style cheese" of unknown pasteurization.)
posted by eotvos at 6:09 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


So I don't think it makes sense to have a supplier you can trust since being trustworthy and responsible won't keep the milk safe.

I'm fine with the risk of raw milk, as long as they otherwise follow best practices and handling. The last time I was buying it, though, it was from what was basically a hobby farm; once I took a look at their full operation I noped right out of it. Now I'm living in a different place, and there are reputable dairies here producing raw milk, which I will probably start buying again at some point.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:10 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


Goddamn it's so delicious, though.

I've had milk that is pasteurized but not homogenized (that's my usual jam actually--it comes in returnable glass bottles and it's pretty dang good) and it's good, but raw milk is just next level. Though I think another part of that is that raw milk dairies also tend to use breeds other than holsteins. You have not lived until you've had raw milk from a Guernsey cow. I don't do it often because I'm aware of the risks but hot damn.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:10 AM on June 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


I was under the impression that the taste difference was largely due to homogenization and not pasteurization, but I've never had milk that didn't undergo both processes.

I've had both, and there is definitely a different flavor to the raw milk. I can't speak to how much of that is from the breed versus the processing, though.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


As to labeling: in Pennsylvania raw milk dairies are inspected and certified, stores can apply for a license to sell it, and the containers are labeled with quite a lengthy risk warning. There is one dairy locally that had outbreaks not once, but twice. The store I buy my milk from (they sell all manner of woo milk, pasteurized and non) stopped carrying them.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:27 AM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


eotvos: Seems like a pretty good argument for clear labeling if nothing else.

Yes, this. As Slarty Bartfast pointed out, the few cases that do get sick can be awful, but is the risk big enough to justify the level of government control and regulation?
posted by slipthought at 6:28 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is raw milk particularly worse than, say, sushi, or steak tartare, or eating spoonfuls of cake batter, or other delicious things that carry a risk of food borne illness?
posted by vogon_poet at 6:38 AM on June 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


Is raw milk particularly worse than, say, sushi, or steak tartare, or eating spoonfuls of cake batter, or other delicious things that carry a risk of food borne illness?
My guess would be that it's worse only because of consumption habits. That is, most people don't eat those things daily or feed those things daily to young children. So even if any one instance of raw meat or eggs is as likely to be dangerous, most people have fewer opportunities to encounter contaminated steak tartare.

I guess that I think that people should be able to make their own decisions about this stuff, and I think it's completely reasonable for healthy adults to decide the enormous deliciousness is worth the small risk. But I don't know how I feel about giving raw milk to small children, and there are a lot of dumb-ass parents who think that anything "natural" is better than anything "fake." I don't necessarily trust the anti-vax crowd to appropriately assess what's safe for their kids. I'm not sure that's an issue that we can legislate our way out of, though.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:00 AM on June 3, 2017 [34 favorites]


It occurs to me that I'm not sure if I've had raw milk or not! When I was posted in Germany, I used to get milk in glass bottles from the local farm, and the milk fat would be on the top, but I'm not sure if that meant it was also unpasteurized. It was definitely delicious though.
posted by corb at 7:02 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was under the impression that the taste difference was largely due to homogenization and not pasteurization, but I've never had milk that didn't undergo both processes.

I agree. I grew up with a few dairy farmers in my circle of acquaintances and have tried raw milk. IIRC it's not appreciably better than the non-homogenised milk at the local big supermarket. I think it's the fat that makes the difference... you still need to get rid of the really watery 1/3rd, but it's totally worth it.
posted by iffthen at 7:03 AM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


100% of all milk causes explosive diarrhea. That's my anecdotal data point.
posted by adept256 at 7:07 AM on June 3, 2017 [25 favorites]


The absolute risk seems small enough that it should be legal to sell with appropriate labeling, it seems to me. I'd be fine with that.

Wouldn't put in my tea, mind you, but I'd definitely eat cheese made from it.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:11 AM on June 3, 2017


Quick, let's run the odds of drinking alcohol vs water

Uh, where are you getting your water from? 'cause there's a bunch of 19th century folks who are probably doing the math a bit differently.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:19 AM on June 3, 2017 [15 favorites]


These days the eggs aren't your main concern in raw batter, it's the uncooked flour.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:37 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is raw milk particularly worse than, say, sushi, or steak tartare, or eating spoonfuls of cake batter, or other delicious things that carry a risk of food borne illness?

One disease that can be transmitted through milk is tuberculosis; bovine tuberculosis can be contracted by humans. According to Eyebrows McGee in a past thread:
Like half the modern veterinary profession developed around nothing but preventing milk-borne illnesses, particularly TB, from passing to humans. It's seriously the major preoccupation of the profession until after WWII.

...

In most urban areas in the 1880s or so, after industrialization but before pasteurization, unsafe milk was the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5. The whole pasteurization-of-milk scheme didn't just come up because the government had nothing better to do; milk was significantly unsafe and responsible for many childhood deaths and many public health problems that affected even those who didn't drink milk (contagious disease outbreaks).
Milk pasteurisation and safety: a brief history and update (PDF, 1997)
posted by XMLicious at 7:55 AM on June 3, 2017 [31 favorites]


slipthought, the cases of illness are among milk drinkers so probably less than 10 million. Of the %age who drink raw milk, I'll bet that they drink raw milk only some of the time, due to cost and availability, so that narrows it further. And not all illnesses get reported, only those serious enough to require treatment. Do doctors have to report on dairy-related illness? In all states? The personal choice to drink raw milk is still non-crazy. But from a public health standpoint, avoidable illnesses are a big deal.
posted by theora55 at 7:58 AM on June 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


There are a number of raw milk cheese I love very, very much. But generally speaking, I'd say I'm firmly on team Pasteur, particularly when it comes to producing and distributing food in a modern industrialized society - the journey from teat to table is pretty complex, and not everyone is going to have access to a local, trusted source of raw milk.

Tangentially, what's the deal with "Mexican style cheese," which seems to make up a surprising fraction of the non-pasturized outbreaks? (5 of 83, perhaps 7 if you include "latin style soft cheese" and "Mexican style cheese" of unknown pasteurization.)

Theory: might have something to do with the fact that it's a fresh cheese that isn't aged more than a few days (e.g., queso fresco), similar to ricotta or mozarella - and maybe it's just that there are more people consuming raw milk queso fresco than, say, raw milk ricotta in the U.S.?

Thought this was interesting: Is 60-Day Rule Still Valid for Raw-Milk Cheese?

When the FDA first enacted the 60-day rule in 1949, no known disease-causing pathogens could survive the acidifying process of aging for more than a portion of the two-month process, and the 60-day time frame was selected to include an additional margin of safety.

See also:

FY 2014 – 2016 Microbiological Sampling Assignment
Summary Report: Raw Milk Cheese Aged 60 Days
(pdf)

Scenario:

"Hi there, is this the FDA?"

"Yes, this is the FDA."

"Your cheese sampling assignment is relevant to my interests."

"Are you a scientist?"

"Um. Yes?"

"You realize we're just testing it and not eating it, right?"

*hangs up*

Anyway...

From the comments in the FPP link, I thought this was a good point:

Some conflating going on.

"Natural" doesn't really apply to pasteurization, because that's a process, not a food. To me, natural applied to milk would mean possibly organic, no antibiotics, that sort of thing. It could still be pasteurized. It's no different than canning a 'natural' peach, or cooking a 'natural' steak.

So I think conflating the dangers of raw milk with lack of standardization on 'natural' just confuses the issue. That was a mistake.

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:01 AM on June 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


I was curious about elsietheeel's comment, and uncooked flour can carry cooties. shakes fist at sky. whhhyyyy
posted by theora55 at 8:03 AM on June 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


I haven't done the relative risk analysis on steak tartare vs raw milk, but logic tells me that the steak is lower risk because the interior of a steak is relatively sterile until, and the exterior has a much lower surface area for pathogens than milk which is all surface area. So, as long as the steak tartare is served promptly after preparation, risk would probably be lower. Similar would be true of sushi fish, and in the US fish intended to be served raw is frozen first to kill parasites.

A better comparison for raw milk would be rare or otherwise undercooked hamburger meat. I haven't done an analysis on that either, but I know someone who has worked in the upper levels of the US Food Safety Inspection Service. The food safety expert compares eating undercooked hamburger to playing Russian roulette with many guns and 1 bullet; your chances of getting sick are low, but if you do get sick you might die.

It's still legal to buy and eat raw hamburger, but I think ArbitraryAndCapricious makes a good point about frequency and what we feed to children.
posted by zennie at 8:09 AM on June 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


My grandparents had two cows and I drank raw milk until I was maybe 8 years old. Grandma also made butter and farmer's cheese. I do not remember anyone getting sick from it, nor do I remember it tasting any better than store bought milk when the cows were gone. I would not drink raw milk now, not worth the risk.
posted by mermayd at 8:15 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was a bit confused by the original report's conflation of milk and cheese. Looking at mandolin conspiracy's links, it seems that, while the dangers are similar, cheese is far less likely to cause illness than milk, especially if you avoid extremely fresh cheeses. This makes limping the two things together a little strange since the dangers seem to be scales apart. Also, it seemed that E. coli contamination in cheese had a lot more to do with handling post production then during the creation and ripening of the cheese itself, which would seem to have different solutions them deciding whether or not to drink raw milk.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:35 AM on June 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, no shit.


Or rather, quite a lot of it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:37 AM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


I haven't done the relative risk analysis on steak tartare vs raw milk, but logic tells me that the steak is lower risk because the interior of a steak is relatively sterile

Tapeworms evade your logic but not your colon. Think of it as a take-home pet; like a sea monkey for your butt. Also the raw egg you put in there brings many of the same pathogens together with a lovely raw-beef growth medium.

I suppose those who feel regulations are composed solely by soleless beaurocrats with no actual public interest aside from keeping you from your nomnoms will not believe the CDC either but their page provides their (spun by da gummint) answers for many of the above questions about why nearly everyone agrees pasteurization to a #yesallmilk degree.
As most commonly applied, pasteurization heats milk to a high temperature for a short time, which kills the bacteria that cause illness. It was invented in a time when millions of people became sick and died of diseases like tuberculosis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and other infections that were transmitted through raw milk. Pasteurization has prevented millions of people from becoming ill.
I'm all up in sushi, cookie batter and a number of well-noted health risks so #YOLO #getyornomnoms except for this:
It is important to note that a substantial proportion of the raw milk-associated disease burden falls on children; among the 104 outbreaks from 1998-2011 with information on the patients’ ages available, 82% involved at least one person younger than 20 years old.
Also "but nobody got sick, etc." Its a good read, Bront. Consume your risk vectors with eyes fully open.

Cigaratte?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:46 AM on June 3, 2017 [10 favorites]


I drank raw milk until I was 18. Everyday we replaced the milk in the fridge with fresh milk from the bulk tank. Bad things grow exponentially in the raw milk. The time from when you harvest from the cow to consumption is critical. Farmers only had fresh milk for thousands of years. If you are buying unpasteurized milk and it is over 36 hours old, it's not the same as your ancestors had in the past.

We pasteurize all milk we feed to baby calves now. They have higher weight gain and generally do better ( also backed up by numerous studies).

What you want to buy is pasteriuzed straight from the cow milk. Safe and not modified (besides some heat). I'm not sure if one can actually buy this?
posted by sety at 8:58 AM on June 3, 2017 [11 favorites]


I did have raw milk once, on a farm visit, and it was much tastier than anything I'd had from a store. If I lived on or near a dairy farm, it would definitely be tempting. Absent that, nope.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:30 AM on June 3, 2017


Last time I bought some raw goat's milk from a health food store, I lost 15 lbs in 5 days. It was pretty awful and my partner was away so little support at home. I will never touch a raw dairy product again.
posted by diode at 9:39 AM on June 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


Just to be clear, most of my annoyance was at the "840 times more likely." It's technically accurate but a sensationalist way to spin the numbers.

I personally don't drink milk, but I do live on a farm, and I do know people who prefer to consume raw milk. It is illegal to sell raw milk where I live, but there are some work arounds. In a neighboring state, you can sell raw milk for animal consumption. Or, if you own a cow, obviously, you can milk and consume it yourself, so there are some "cow-share" type set-ups (like, 3 families co-own a cow that lives and is cared for on a farm owned by someone else; you don't feed, tend, or milk the cow, but because you own it, the milk is yours).
posted by slipthought at 10:10 AM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh gawd, another argument about raw milk. Sometimes I think God gets bored sometimes, and just wants to watch us argue.
posted by Melismata at 10:22 AM on June 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


Last time I bought some raw goat's milk from a health food store, I lost 15 lbs in 5 days. It was pretty awful and my partner was away so little support at home. I will never touch a raw dairy product again

That sucks but when I was growing up we had a small herd of goats, so I used to milk them and drink fresh goats milk pretty much every day. My losing 15 lbs in 5 days experience came from eating a curry in a restaurant but you'll never take my curry away.
posted by walrus at 10:25 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you live anywhere near Yellow Springs, Ohio, Young's Jersey Dairy has a wide variety of wonderful dairy products. I don't eat dairy because it upsets my digestion and increases joint pain, but I make an exception for Young's when I'm in Ohio visiting family. They used to carry raw milk and might have pasteurized un-homogenized. The ice cream is seriously worth it.
posted by theora55 at 10:32 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Melismata: "Sometimes I think God gets bored sometimes, and just wants to watch us argue."

Maybe God also likes to watch us stuck in the bathroom, blarting diarrhea all over everything. That would explain a lot, from raw milk to tequila.
posted by chavenet at 10:49 AM on June 3, 2017 [9 favorites]


I think sety nails it. When people say that farmers have done it for thousands of years, that they did it on the farm as a kid... those people were drinking milk that came out of the cow the same day. Milk that has spent days in the holding tank, in the transport tank, in the bottling plant, in the store cooler, that's far far different and I would not do it. Even though I'd try fresh milk if doing a farm tour.
posted by tavella at 11:13 AM on June 3, 2017 [11 favorites]


It seems that raw milk is like fugu, only worth it if you enjoy that thrill of "maybe I'll die/suffer horribly!" There are few miseries worth the pain and grossness (and possibly lethality) of food poisoning, I can't imagine that any milk, no matter how tasty, would be worth risking that again.
posted by emjaybee at 11:22 AM on June 3, 2017


I got Shigella from eating some (pretty tasty) asadero in Mexico one time. Do not recommend.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:25 AM on June 3, 2017


I think sety nails it. When people say that farmers have done it for thousands of years, that they did it on the farm as a kid... those people were drinking milk that came out of the cow the same day. 

Also, if you look at the article I linked to above, it claims that the strain of e-coli that is so dangerous and causes so man6 problems just evolved within the.past few decades (I want to say 35 years, but checking that on my phone is too much trouble). So for tgousands of years farmers didn't have to worry about at least one of the current dangers of raw milk.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:28 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


The very first paragraph of the article is clearly a misstatement.

Based on statistics from the five-year period 2009-2014, people who drink unpasteurized, raw milk are 840 times more likely to contract a foodborne illness than those who drink pasteurized milk.

According to the rest of the article, the people who drink raw milk are 840 times more likely to contract a dairy-borne illness, not a food-borne illness. I mean, people contract food-borne illnesses all the time, and this would have individuals getting sick an awful lot of times in that 5 year period.
posted by serena15221 at 11:40 AM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


It is an interesting question. How do you balance the human desire for novelty (eg. different tasting milk) against the hard numbers and costs of illness? We always argue about it because it is a constant tension across our lives.
Personally, I am team Pasteur. I wouldn't touch that artsy fartsy foodie raw milk with someone else's cow's udders.
posted by pdoege at 11:50 AM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


XMLicious mentioned it but it bears repeating because it is so important; pasteurization is important for more reasons than just what we think of as food-borne illnesses. It had a great effect in the fight against tuberculosis, for example, and with antibiotic resistant strains showing up this is more important than ever.

Being anti-pasteurization is essentially the same as being anti-vaccination.
posted by Justinian at 1:19 PM on June 3, 2017 [8 favorites]


When I was a kid, we bought milk straight from the farm. The farmer would pasteurize the milk on their stove and we would get it in one gallon pickle jars. So, we had to use a dipper (ladle) to get a glass of milk or put it on our cereal. It was a perpetual battle keeping stray Cheerios out of the pickle jar and 5yo me was probably the chief culprit.

Eventually, they got out of the milk business and the early 80s recession hit, so we went from fresh milk from the farm to powdered government soy milk at home. I don't care what you say about raw milk's taste -- pasteurized, homogenized milk from the store is a thousand times better than powdered government soy milk.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:28 PM on June 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


IIRC, Alan Turing's early crush died of bovine TB.
posted by praemunire at 1:29 PM on June 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


There's a critical flaw in the way the article's written once it psychologically attributes the problem to "95% Salmonella and Campylobacter". It begs questions such as, well, are those diseases intrinsic to cows or otherwise? For example:

Salmonella spp. infection occurs when a susceptible animal ingests the bacteria. Dairy cattle ingest feed or water that has been contaminated with feces from animals shedding the organism....
On some dairies, particularly those with large numbers of cattle, the
disease may become endemic.

--Salmonellosis in Cattle - University of Wisconsin School of Veterinrary Medicine

As a comparison, there are specialty restaurants in Japan that serve raw chicken sushi. Those restaurants claim the chicken is raised under special/isolated conditions and/or specially checked for foodborne diseases. Restaurants are licensed, the chicken has to be from a specific genetic (Canadian) breed resistant to Salmonella, and there's a certification process.

Meanwhile, in other studies in Japan show that rural consumption of raw chicken, pork, frog (yes, etc.) continues to be a cause for food illnesses.

Is it not that unbelievable because people eat raw food not for health but because it tastes better? It's the difference between a raw egg, and a pasteurized egg. So when the researchers in the article assert:

"The popularity of so-called natural foods, which are not defined by government nutrition laws and regulations, is part of the problem, according to the researchers."

"Therefore, outbreak-related illnesses will increase steadily as unpasteurized dairy consumption grows, likely driven largely by salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis."

When they say that, they should be critiqued as examples of a) authoritarian expert reasoning, and b) false reduction from social-ecological process relations to reified biology. Given the Japanese example above, it should be clear that part of the problem is the researchers' own mental model of what they term "conventional food" vs. "natural food". The Japanese example purports to demonstrate that is possible to use regulation and technological choices to protect the people; the researchers in the article in contrast impose an unnuanced, absolutist notion: "If all milk and cheese consumed were pasteurized..." then obviously the problem is trivially solved.
posted by polymodus at 1:31 PM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think that raw milk should be okay if the product to be consumed at the end is intended to take advantage of naturally occurring bacteria (i.e., cheese). If you're just drinking it, pasteurize it.
posted by empath at 1:53 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's a restaurant here that uses raw milk in its espresso drinks. My only reaction is 🤔
posted by asterix at 2:22 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's sort of how Apple handle MacOS tweaks. They're not going to make it easy to stumble into. It's totally doable if you go to the trouble of figuring out how, and then the burden falls on you if you screw up your system.
posted by bongo_x at 2:26 PM on June 3, 2017


This site strikes me as a bit of a front for something funded from behind by large food corporations... Something about the style of it. Maybe I'm just generally paranoid of all sorts of regulations that tend to put small scale operators out of business.

I drink almost exclusively raw milk(last ~5 years). Although I don't drink that much. Here in Maine you can get it direct from farms and also in some health food stores. I've never heard of anyone having a problem with it. And mostly I just hear stories about people who are normally lactose intolerant can handle raw milk because the probiotics in it help the digestion process.

I agree that for large scale distribution channels, pasteurized is the way to go. I certainly don't think raw milk should ever be in a big grocery store or supermarket.

I would second the fact that high FAT content is the best part of right-from-the-farm milk. You can see the cream floating on top, especially in early summer when the grass is tall and green and the cows are so happy to be eating fresh grass instead of hay... Regardless of pasteurized or not, I would love to see more full fat dairy products, that is the real problem! And more jersey cows, whose milk is higher fat than the holsteins more common in big US dairy operations.
posted by danjo at 3:22 PM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


100% of all milk causes explosive diarrhea. That's my anecdotal data point.

That'd be more of a scatter plot than a data point.
posted by srboisvert at 4:10 PM on June 3, 2017 [24 favorites]


As per your comments, danjo, I think that your ongoing experience with raw milk has enabled you to have some enhanced immune response to common vectors. I think a large amount of the people that are having the issues are those people that read about raw milk on Facebook and decide to go get some without any research or prior raw milk use.
posted by Samizdata at 4:10 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Being anti-pasteurization is essentially the same as being anti-vaccination."

The thing that's very alarming is that all the parents I know who feed their children raw milk are ALSO anti-vaxxers, and frequently treat illnesses with essential oils. These kids are going to get TB or salmonella poisoning and not get seen by a doctor until it's an emergency room situation and maybe too late, after the lavender oil fails to fix the deadly illness for long enough to terrify the parents into seeing an actual medical professional.

Also with the listeria and soft unpasteurized Mexican cheeses -- those outbreaks that get reported are almost always because a pregnant woman contracts listeriosis and loses the fetus. Most of the time adults don't know they have listeriosis (as opposed to general food poisoning or a stomach bug). Even for pregnant women, it's a pretty mild illness. But it can cause serious illness, congenital injury, or death to a fetus (or newborn who contracted it in utero). Pregnant women know to avoid Brie cheese and bleu cheeses, that's easy, but soft unpasteurized Mexican cheeses are often just labeled "queso" which is also what they call the pasteurized shredded cheese they put on your taco ("queso") on the menu or the melty processed stuff for your nachos. People aren't as aware of it as a risk and the labeling isn't NEARLY as clear in a restaurant serving queso as in restaurant trying to sell you Brie. Also there's a billion fast Mexican places everywhere, whereas I can only think of a few casual restaurants near me that might have unpasteurized Brie (like on a sandwich or something).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:12 PM on June 3, 2017 [11 favorites]


I dunno I find this debate fascinating, and I don't mean to deride people's experience of unpasteurised milk but I can't help feeling there's an element of 'naturalism' at play.

I, like another poster above, grew up in the country and didn't regularly drink milk out of a carton until I was about thirteen - and honestly, I had no real preference between milk from our house cow and milk from a carton at a friend's house.

I kinda feel there's a pursuit of authenticity at play here. It wasn't an element when I was a kid; milk was milk, pretty much. I suppose it doesn't help that the raw milk devotees in my home town are, sadly, mostly anti-vaxxers or believers in a lot of correlated nonsense - and utterly ignorant of the risks - that has rendered me quite skeptical regarding their milk choice. A kid has died here from drinking raw milk. The risk may be low, but as a parent, it's a risk I would never, ever, ever take.
posted by smoke at 4:49 PM on June 3, 2017 [10 favorites]


What is the hypothetical Venn diagram overlap between anti-vaxxers, raw milk advocates, and pet chicken owners? Because the percentage right in the middle would be like a perfect storm of hipster naturalist fallacy deadliness.

Getting too friendly with fowl blamed in salmonella outbreaks
Close contact with even the cleanest and healthiest-looking chicken can make you sick, and there's proof this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the CDC announced that it is working with states to investigate eight multistate outbreaks of salmonella connected to these kinds of backyard birds.
posted by nicebookrack at 6:30 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's nothing to be done to prevent a rain drop from getting in the milk bucket.

That doesn't make any sense to me. When we bought raw milk - all through my childhood - the milk went straight from the udder, through the milking machine hoses, to the giant stainless-steel tank. There was no risk of raindrops involved.
posted by clawsoon at 6:44 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


sety: We pasteurize all milk we feed to baby calves now. They have higher weight gain and generally do better ( also backed up by numerous studies).

Huh. That's fascinating.

Would the same be true of human breast milk, I wonder?
posted by clawsoon at 6:50 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Almost certainly not, Clawsoon
posted by smoke at 6:59 PM on June 3, 2017


smoke: Almost certainly not, Clawsoon

That study specifically did not examine baby health. It also appeared to be one of the many, many low-quality cheerleading studies for breastfeeding which purport to find benefits that aren't found when large, higher-quality paired-sibling studies are done. I'm not saying you're wrong, but there's probably better evidence out there to support (or contradict?) your point.
posted by clawsoon at 7:17 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't want to speak for IOIHAP but "rain drop" may be a bit of a euphemism. FauxScot in a previous thread:
I just designed and installed a few pasteurizers. AMA.

Raw milk is dicey.

Ever watched a milking operation? Cow needs to shit, it shits. Now.

Drink that. (Just a reminder... microbes are not visible to the naked eye. )
(And of course if the pathogen in question derives from a zoonotic disease like tuberculosis, it may be in the milk itself, straight from the teat.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:37 PM on June 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


I was curious about elsietheeel's comment, and uncooked flour can carry cooties. shakes fist at sky. whhhyyyy

What, like I'm going to make up flour cooties out of thin air?
posted by elsietheeel at 9:36 PM on June 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


You'd be in good, if now disproven (by Pasteur!), company.
posted by chavenet at 3:47 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe I'm just generally paranoid of all sorts of regulations that tend to put small scale operators out of business.

I have a lot of relatives in VT who used to be in the dairy business, but aren't any more. Laws against selling raw milk had nothing to do with them getting out of the business; they were all producing milk for decades after those laws were enacted. I won't say government regulations had nothing to do with taking all the profit out of the small-dairy industry, because later ones did, but pasteurization had nothing to do with it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:27 AM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


It seems important to note that there have also been federal subsidies going back to 1930 (PDF) and sometimes additional state subsidies for dairies, as well as regulation.
posted by XMLicious at 6:16 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm estimating from the numbers here that if I live a hundred years, and have a glass of unpasteurized milk every day, I have a lifetime ~3% of getting sick because of it and a one-in-a-thousand chance of being hospitalized. Not bad, but I probably have thousands of potential behavior in this risk category, so also not great.

Nothing to scare me away from trying really good raw milk cheese though.
posted by mark k at 9:31 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]




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