Risking business - Raising the raw milk debate, again

mekasmom · #61 06/22/10, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haypoint

The pro-raw milk folks want people to know the risks and then expect them to shut up when the worst happens. What other food would you want to give the producer protection from responsibility? Heck, if some gal can win a law suit because the coffee she was served turned out to be hot, do you think a jury will find in your favor if you kill a family? That disclaimer won’t mean fiddly squat.

Selling raw milk is a huge liability risk. Not because it is contaminated, but because anyone can sue anyone for anything in this nation. And if the person drinking the raw milk gets sick from anything, even an unrelated illness, they will sue the producer.

But if the producer is willing to take that risk, why would it hurt to sell clearly labeled raw milk? If people choose to buy it, then it is a risk they are willing to take.

That said, I drink raw milk. I don't see it as that dangerous, but I wouldn't buy it from a store. There are too many variables in milk from a store.

Patt · #62 06/22/10, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haypoint

Yup, it sure does. Is that cow an extreme example or is it typical of the modern dairy cow? That web site is a real hoot.

I didn't read the site I just Googled images. There was an implication that it never happens and that is simply not true.

willow_girl · #63 06/22/10, 12:23 PM

I never said it NEVER happens (very few things in this world qualify as "always" or "never"), just that among thousands of dairy cows I've seen, I've never witnessed ONE whose bag actually dragged the ground.

Occasionally an older cow WILL freshen with a huge bag, but if there wasn't enough clearance underneath to attach the milker (roughly 1') she'd undoubtedly be culled. It simply wouldn't be possible to milk her using modern equipment. Many farmers (including the one I work for) will cull cows if their udders are so big they're merely inconvenient to milk. (And that's quite a-ways from dragging on the ground!)

I've heard farmers joke about cows who were trained to step up on a box, etc., for milking, but have never actually witnessed it, so it's quite possible these stories are apocryphal.

An abnormally large bag can be the result of a few factors, including recent calving (high production combined with edema in the udder) or poor genetics. Udder attachment actually is an important trait selected for in the A.I. program. I can think of one herd I tested that had a striking number of cows with poor attachment and "low" bags -- it was an old-fashioned farm still relying mostly on herd bulls for breeding.

It's hard to guess the age of that photo Patt linked to, but I'd say the fact it's in black-and-white is a pretty good clue. It's hardly representative of the typical MODERN dairy cow!

Patt · #64 06/22/10, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willow_girl

I never said it NEVER happens (very few things in this world qualify as "always" or "never"), just that among thousands of dairy cows I've seen, I've never witnessed ONE whose bag actually dragged the ground.

You called into question her education, her powers of observation and pretty much her intelligence for thinking it was possible there are dairy cows whose udders drag the ground. I was pointing out it does happen and she really is not insane or ignorant for thinking that.

sammyd · #65 06/22/10, 02:36 PM

One must remember pasteurization was developed and implemented before the advent of large feedlot dairies.
The small family dairy was responsible for sickening folks and a way to stop that was finally invented.

I'll have to second the big bag won't be seen at a modern dairy. No time to mess around with one of those. They make it impossible to milk and don't work well with automation. They would be culled quickly. Or as mentioned not even made with the advent of AI and the ability to look through the traits of hundreds or thousands of daughters.

CaliannG · #66 06/22/10, 03:04 PM

1. The most common dairy cow in the U.S. is the Holstein. The Holstein is generally black and white, although the red and white pattern is becoming increasingly more popular. The second most common dairy cow in the U.S. is the Jersey, due to the high butterfat content of Jersey milk. There are four Holstein Dairies within 5 miles of Brighton, Colorado...as residents can tell you when they complain of the smell. However, it might have been a discussion of the picture being black and white.

2. Studies have shown that the use of bST in dairy cattle can (and sometimes does) increase production to the point of udder damage. I.e., the weight of increased production causes udder detachment. bST is used in MANY commercial herds, a lot of which, as shown above, are black and white Holstein.

3. Udder detachment due to high production is not a rare occurrence among dairies, especially the "feedlot" style that appears to be common in the states where I have lived. Mastitis is also not uncommon, as these animals ARE generally spending much of their time standing in their own excrement. Whether these animals get culled or not depends entirely upon the practices (and greed) of the dairy involved. In some they do cull. In others, they have discontinued the use of bST. In yet others, the inconvenience of milking such animals is outweighed by the amount the animals produce. Like many types of businesses, management practices at dairies can vary from the compassionate to the cruel.

4. willow_girl, stop being attacking and rude simply because someone else's observations and experiences differ from yours. Again, your mother taught you better than that.

Patt · #67 06/22/10, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyd

One must remember pasteurization was developed and implemented before the advent of large feedlot dairies.
The small family dairy was responsible for sickening folks and a way to stop that was finally invented.

It most assuredly was not! You need to do some study on the history of milk pasteurization. Pasteurization was needed solely because of large feedlot dairies that were run in the middle of big cities. Cows were fed slop from breweries, keep in filthy conditions and the dairies became a breeding ground for Tuberculosis, Diphtheria and Typhoid. Children in those large cities were dying at horrific rates and so something had to be done.

Instead of solving the problem by moving the cows back out to small family dairies in the country where they should have been and feeding them what they should have been fed they did what America usually does and created a way for big business to continue in spite of their filthy practices and applied Pasteur's process for keeping wine from spoiling to milk.

this book was written in 1842 about milk and the conditions of dairies at the time, read the pages I pulled up for a description of those city dairies: http://www.archive.org/stream/histor...arch/tartarian

Lizza · #68 06/22/10, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyd

One must remember pasteurization was developed and implemented before the advent of large feedlot dairies.
The small family dairy was responsible for sickening folks and a way to stop that was finally invented.

Wow, just Wow, No this is completely the exact opposite of what happened.

Everyone should try and read this book that wants to educate them about the history of milk cows, pasteurization, and raw milk. There is also an older addition that most libraries should have available.

http://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-M...7248102&sr=8-1

Callieslamb · #69 06/22/10, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beaglady

Nowhere inthe OP does it say that these people were selling raw milk. It says that the man who became ill drank raw milk. This farm is not listed as having a raw milk permit in place, here in PA where raw milk is indeed legal.

If they are a commerical dairy whose milk is sent off to be pasteurized, then perhaps the sons aren't as careful milking as the father used to be, or an employee made a mistake, or, or.... Without more information, we just don't know.

I also found this an interesting point in the story. When my dad had his dairy, every tank was tested for bacteria and medicines. If a bacterial count above a certain amount was detected, he was warned. 2 warnings and he was off the milk route. If medicine was found in his tank the whole truck had to be dumped and he would have had to pay for that truck-load. Do they not do this any more? Was this family's tank load tested? Is that how they found the salmonella? We JUST DON'T KNOW. Just too much not included in the story to make any judgements.

lmrose · #70 06/22/10, 09:59 PM

The question of consuming raw milk keeps changing here. My husband grew up on a dairy farm. Grandparents, parents and five kids grew up drinking raw cows milk. No one ever got sick. They also had home made butter and cream and ice cream. They sold milk to a dairy and to neighbors. Then the powers that be decided the farmer could only sell 10 qts a day from the farm. This was because dairies didn't want competition.

By the time we had goats we were still allowed to sell 10 qts of milk from the farm unpasteurized and the people had to pick it up. We were not allowed to deliver it. After we grew our herd to 16 goats we were told the law changed and we couldn't sell raw milk of any kind. We cut the herd down and a year later we were told we could sell milk. We knew better than to believe it and sure enough a few months later there was a ban on selling, trading or giving raw milk away! The ban remains today.

My husband was a dairy farmer before we were married and has been in many barns.I also have witnessed milking operations locally. Truth is we NEVER would drink RAW milk from any of those operations simply because the cows, barns and people doing the milking were not careful or clean enough to suit us!
Although farms are inspected some people are careless because they know the milk will be pasteurized at the dairy.

Bill has taught me the importance of being very careful and clean when handling raw milk. We wash our hands and wash the goats udders before milking. We milk in a glass or stainless steel container. The milk IS NEVER left sitting in the barn to pick up odors or contamination. It is immediately brought to the house, strained and put in the fridge. Bottles and milking containers are first rinsed in cold water to remove fat particles. Then they are washed in hot soapy water and rinsed in hot water and air dried.

We wouldn't sell raw milk even if was legal because of the way many people are today looking for any reason to sue someone. Bill grew up drinking raw milk and we raised five kids on it without anyone ever being sick. But if we weren't able to take care of goats we would simply not drink raw milk from anywhere else.

For the person who has a cow or a few goats you can heat the raw milk in a stainless steel pan to pasteurize it or buy a home pasteurizer if you would feel safer than drinking it right from the cow or goat.

Years ago my 3 month old grand daughter got sick and the doctor was so sure it was from drinking raw milk .They had our goat's milk tested in the hospital lab for bad bacteria! Guess what? They couldn't find anything wrong with the milk! Turned out the baby had a collasped lung which wasn't discovered until she was sent to the children's hospital in Halifax!

I heard today a farm somewhere in Nova Scotia is on the verge of being certified to sell organic raw milk in stores.That might be alright but we won't be buying it. I once bought pasteurized goat's milk from a grocery store and when I opened the carton it had a barny smell and tasted just as bad! So different from our own goat's sweet milk.

The key to healthy raw milk is to have healthy cows or goats and be extremely clean handling both animals and the milk and to cool the milk quickly.

texican · #71 06/22/10, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willow_girl

Just curious -- have you ever been on a dairy farm? For more than, say, an hour, while visiting friends at milking time, or chaperoning a group of schoolkids? Do you really know anything about commercial dairies? Judging from the above, I would guess not.

You are, of course, entitled to an opinion (however uneducated).

(For the record, I have seen literally thousands of commercial dairy cows, and have yet to encounter one whose udder dragged the ground.)

I really like the scrupulously clean part too! I think the original "S Hit The Fan" originated at a dairy. It is simply impossible to not get splattered with it on a regular basis.

I worked at a commercial (200 head) dairy for two years. The milk room area was scrubbed on a daily basis, because the room got incredibly nasty on a daily basis.

Callieslamb · #72 06/22/10, 10:50 PM

I would like to know the names of bacteria that are in milk that can casue an infection in a person's blood. ecoli is gastro-intestinal, right? Salmonella seems to be also....what kind can get in a person's blood stream can come from milk?

willow_girl · #73 06/22/10, 10:51 PM

Quote:

I also found this an interesting point in the story. When my dad had his dairy, every tank was tested for bacteria and medicines. If a bacterial count above a certain amount was detected, he was warned. 2 warnings and he was off the milk route. If medicine was found in his tank the whole truck had to be dumped and he would have had to pay for that truck-load. Do they not do this any more?

Yes, that's still standard practice today (although I suppose the ways individual processors handle high bacteria counts may vary. It's not something I've run up against, thankfully!). Milk also may be rejected for a high somatic cell count (above 750,000). I believe this is rather rare (never saw it happen in any of the herds I tested).

Quote:

1. The most common dairy cow in the U.S. is the Holstein. The Holstein is generally black and white, although the red and white pattern is becoming increasingly more popular. The second most common dairy cow in the U.S. is the Jersey, due to the high butterfat content of Jersey milk. There are four Holstein Dairies within 5 miles of Brighton, Colorado...as residents can tell you when they complain of the smell. However, it might have been a discussion of the picture being black and white.

Sounds like someone's been doing their homework!

BTW, where I come from, we call that smell "the smell of money"!

Quote:

2. Studies have shown that the use of bST in dairy cattle can (and sometimes does) increase production to the point of udder damage. I.e., the weight of increased production causes udder detachment. bST is used in MANY commercial herds, a lot of which, as shown above, are black and white Holstein.

The average increase in milk production generated by the use of bST is 10 lbs. per day. That's from the manufacturer's own data (and certainly they have no incentive to MINIMIZE the increase) and jibes with my own personal observation (having milked a herd that was on bST) and conversations with a number of farmers who use it.

Mind you, that 10-lb. increase would be divided between 2 or 3 milkings. I believe it strains credulity to believe an added 3-5 lbs. of milk would cause udder detachment, especially since the NATURAL variation in milk production in a cow NOT treated with bST can be MUCH greater than that! Shortly after freshening, an untreated cow may produce 50-90 lbs. of milk at each (twice per day) milking, an amount that may taper off to 15-30 lbs. per milking toward the end of her lactation. That's a much wider variation that would be experienced by way of bST use.

Approximately half of the 30 or so herds I tested used bST, and in my experience, there was no appreciable difference in the udders of the cows in bST and non-bST herds. In fact, I would not have known bST was being used had I not observed farmers giving shots, or had the subject come up in conversation. You simply can't tell by looking at a cow. (Heck, you can't even tell by testing the milk!)

Quote:

3. Udder detachment due to high production is not a rare occurrence among dairies, especially the "feedlot" style that appears to be common in the states where I have lived.

Yup, some cows have lousy udders -- you won't get an argument from me there. Fortunately, selective breeding and the increased use of genomics is making them increasingly rare.

Quote:

Mastitis is also not uncommon, as these animals ARE generally spending much of their time standing in their own excrement.

Manure happens! But cows on commercial dairy farms actually spend most of their time (when they're not eating) lying in freestalls which generally are groomed each time the cows are brought in for milking. Every farmer I've known scrapes the alleys (walkways) in the barn at each milking. The farm I work on even has this neat rotary brush that the cows can use to groom themselves; when they rub up against it, it starts spinning. They love that thing! It's like a big bovine back-scratcher. Did you know that having dirty cows can cause a farm to fail its state and/or federal inspection? Yeah. A cow is not a naturally clean animal, but the farmers I've known certainly do what they can to keep them that way.

It's true that mastitis isn't "uncommon," but it's also true that many cows go their whole lives without ever developing it.

Quote:

Whether these animals get culled or not depends entirely upon the practices (and greed) of the dairy involved. In some they do cull. In others, they have discontinued the use of bST. In yet others, the inconvenience of milking such animals is outweighed by the amount the animals produce. Like many types of businesses, management practices at dairies can vary from the compassionate to the cruel.

Sounds like this was pulled directly from a PETA pamphlet. Source?

Quote:

4. willow_girl, stop being attacking and rude simply because someone else's observations and experiences differ from yours. Again, your mother taught you better than that.

Let's leave my mother out of this, shall we? I think you have an agenda here, and it isn't to educate the public with fact- or experience-based information. You've got an axe to grind against farmers, and you're paraphrasing some information you've looked up on an anti-farming or animal rights website. Which is certainly your prerogative ... as it's mine to try to set the record straight on behalf of the many fine, upstanding, hard-working and humane dairy farmers I've had the pleasure of working alongside.

springvalley · #74 06/22/10, 11:05 PM

Just been sittin back, drinking a ice tea, readin all this stuff about raw milk. You all know where I stand on this subject, so I will sit back, and watch you guys for a change. Unless I see something I will not tolerate, >Thanks Marc

haypoint · #75 06/23/10, 01:18 AM

Campylobactor bacteria is one that affects your blood. Your body produces antibodies to fight it, so you can get a blood test to see if you've been exposed to Campylobactor. Your healthy cows eating clean fresh hay and grain, in a well sanitized barn can contract Campylobactor from a bull through sexual contact.

Callieslamb · #76 06/23/10, 08:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haypoint

Campylobactor bacteria is one that affects your blood. Your body produces antibodies to fight it, so you can get a blood test to see if you've been exposed to Campylobactor. Your healthy cows eating clean fresh hay and grain, in a well sanitized barn can contract Campylobactor from a bull through sexual contact.

Thanks, I was trying to figure it all out last night, but it is hard to find a website that addresses this issue directly without going over my head in the first 2 sentences. I can see the body producing antigens that are delivered by the blood stream, but that doesn't make the bacteria found in the blood stream, does it? Or am I splitting hairs? My dad had an infection in his heart valve for almost a year, but it never progressed to his blood stream to spread through out his body. He did have some break off and travel through his body and enter his brain, causing a severe stroke. But, again, it didn't become a whole-body infection - and his didn't come from raw milk, I am just using him as an example of infections. In fact, when they went in to replace the valve, his whole heart had been affected by the infection and it fell apart on the operation table. A great sugeon saved him anyway. so what's the difference say salmonella and a bacterial infection of the blood?

I think if the average non-farming person saw a dairy they would be disgusted - no matter how clean that dairy is. Today's closed milking systems go a long ways towards cleanliness.

However, I feel the issue is the one stated before - does the govt have the right to tell us if we can drink raw milk or not? why do we have tobacco products with a small warning label, alcohol - also known to cause a lot of harm, etc...but not raw milk? What's the difference? In the last few years, we have seen plenty of examples of recalls over contaminated food. What's the difference with raw milk? I believe it is tradition. We have a system going and a known rut is better than trying to figure out the process of a new one.

From what I understand milk first had cause to be pasteurized due to the belief that raw milk infected with especially TB and caused people to contract TB. They now know that isn't true - it's a different bacteria. You can get TB from cows, but not usually through the milk. Once the campaign for pasturizing milk was on....why change course? Similar to our method of raising millions of acres of grain so we can transport grains back and forth across the country to feed-lot our beef when the same acreage if put in pasture would support more cattle. Tradition or modern science?

Patt · #77 06/23/10, 09:24 AM

Your body produces antibodies to every illness it encounters.....that does not mean you have a bacterial infection in your blood which is very, very serious.

The four illnesses that the CDC claims are most common in raw milk are Listeria, Campylobacter, E coli and salmonella. All are gastrointestinal.

A few facts here: according to the CDC there are 76 million food borne illnesses a year. On average out of those: 600 illnesses are from pasteurized dairy and 54 are from raw dairy products. In all my research I have yet to find a single death attributed to raw milk. I have found several attributed to pasteurized milk and there are 5,000 deaths every year due to food borne illnesses from things other than raw milk. *

You are 10 times more likely to contract Listeria from a slice of deli meat than you are from drinking raw milk and yet no one has called for the immediate shut down of all deli's and deli meat sales. And I don't see huge warnings plastered all over the deli case either at the grocery. **

At some point in this debate we need to deal with facts and not emotions or guesses. According to the facts we should all be able to buy raw milk if we so choose because it is far less dangerous than quite a few foods we commonly consume like ground beef, chicken and processed meats.

* http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm

** http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Slides_092806_JSofos.pdf

haypoint · #78 06/23/10, 12:48 PM

If the ratio of sales of raw milk to pasteurized milk was 54 to 600, or to put it more simply, 1200 to 1, one could argue that raw milk has proven itself against pasteurized milk. But that ratio isn't even close.
So lets send the milk and meat and pet store and nursery inspectors home? I don't like regulation, but I know that our society is healthier with a safe food supply and that without regulation our food quality goes way down.
I'm no doctor, but I don't understand how an infection can go from your heart, a muscle, to the brain, without traveling through the circulatory system?
An acre of corn can produce from 125 to over 200 bushels of shelled grain. An acre of average pasture cannot come close to producing that much protein. In my area, cattle are trucked here for summer pasture, allowing the home farm to grow the crops, trucking the cattle instead trucking the grain. This is done out of simple economics, not tradition. Please don't digress into one of the 5 or 6 "hot topics", grain fed vs grass fed. This raw milk debate is enough of a bone to chew, all by itself.

The government isn't telling you you can't drink raw milk. That's not the topic. Does the government have the right to set standards and enforce them for the sale of food? The answer is clearly yes. They have the support of the general public, too.

CaliannG · #79 06/23/10, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willow_girl

Sounds like this was pulled directly from a PETA pamphlet. Source?

Let's leave my mother out of this, shall we? I think you have an agenda here, and it isn't to educate the public with fact- or experience-based information. You've got an axe to grind against farmers, and you're paraphrasing some information you've looked up on an anti-farming or animal rights website. Which is certainly your prerogative ... as it's mine to try to set the record straight on behalf of the many fine, upstanding, hard-working and humane dairy farmers I've had the pleasure of working alongside.

Source: Oxford University, United Kingdom. Check out their FAI project at http://www.faifarms.co.uk/ , also check out some of the findings from the research done there. Then, go to the Oxford site itself and check out some of the studies done on intensive animal farming.

When you get finished there, since it is likely you will say, anyway, "That's practices done in Europe and is NOTHING like how we do things here!", go to the Texas A&M site and read the studies done on intensive animal farming there, then go over to LSU, check out their Agricultural Center and some of the fantastic work they have done on the subject there.

The fact that there are humane dairies and inhumane dairies is pulled from a PETA pamphlet? ~laughs~ Oh please. That is like saying that the fact that there are humane and responsible dog breeders as well as puppy mills and backyard breeders is information pulled from ASPCA anti-pet pamphlet...there are good and bad apples in every business. In other words, your comment nothing more than a cheap jibe in an attempt to discredit a person's character rather than address the information.

As is your "you've got an axe to grind with farmers" quip. If you cannot debate the information, attack the person and attempt to raise suspicion about their motives, right?

If anyone has ulterior motives on this subject, I would think it would be someone who is closely related with the agribusiness of large dairies, not someone who is a self-proclaimed carnivore...or, as I like to think of myself, the anti-Vegan.

At any rate, there are some sources to study on the modern practices of intensive animal farming. Others here have cited some excellent resources on the history of the dairy industry in this country. Anyone here can read to their hearts content and come to their own conclusions.

Callieslamb · #80 06/23/10, 02:34 PM

[QUOTE=Patt;4493846]Your body produces antibodies to every illness it encounters.....that does not mean you have a bacterial infection in your blood which is very, very serious.

The four illnesses that the CDC claims are most common in raw milk are Listeria, Campylobacter, E coli and salmonella. All are gastrointestinal. ................QUOTE]

Thanks, Patt, this is what I was finding too. I have yet to find a bacterial infection of the blood that is caused by raw milk. The OP said the man had salmonella AND a bacterial infection in his blood. You made some great points.

Haypoint- To me the debate is the same - raw/pasturized; grazing/grain-fed; vegan/meat eater. Each is a method/idealogy we choose to participate in. Sometimes we also have to look at what we are doing and ask why we are doing it. There will probably never be a right or wrong answer. I would no more make fun a friend for prefering pasturized milk than would like them to make fun of me for drinking it raw. I am not asking for the end of feed lots nor pasturized milk. What I would like to have end are the stories titled "Man Almost Dies From Drinking Raw Milk" when the bacteria that caused all his trouble wasn't one carried by raw milk.

What I tried to say in my post was that the infection from my dad's heart DID travel through his blood stream, but it didn't become a body-wide infection. Which was why I was asking about bacterias that can spread through out the the entire body verses those that are limited to certain areas like gastro-intestinal. I didn't understand the differences. I wasn't intending to open up a debate on that topic.