Benefits of Raw Milk

I was having this problem last year. A friend suggested that I get a refrigerator thermometer........I did buy one.......the temp in my fridge was not low enough. I changed the setting, and the shelf life of the milk improved dramatically!!

[QUOTE=texican;5416009]"Dang" those evil milk producing cartels... the moo mafia... Publish some pablum dissing our 'product', and you'll sleep in the sewage lagoon...

Anyone have any idea what the shelf life of raw milk is? About three days here, kept cold, and it starts getting into 'alternative lifestyles'... sorry, I'm genetically and culturally disposed to not drinking soured milk. Seriously, does anyone not milking daily, have problems with the stuff going bad before you can use it up? Not even mentioning the separation of cream and non cream. I'd drink just the cream if I could {back in HS, when I worked at a dairy, I'd sometimes 'cheat' and get a whole gallon of cream, instead of turning on the paddles to stir it up first}

QUOTE]

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"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

I have a couple of Jerseys that I milk, and I store the milk in the frig in 1/2 gallon jars with the date on it. Well, I had a jar that got pushed to the back of the frig.The date on it was 23 days old. I drank the milk and it was fine. I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the date on the lid. lol

Sixteen people have died from contaminated cantaloupes. Can you imagine the hullabaloo if one person died from raw milk?!?!?

Milk from our Jersey cows stays fresh about 21 days if left unopened in the back of the fridge. One of my herdshare members found a jar in the back of her fridge that was a month old and said it was fine, drank it all up.

The length of time your milk stays fresh has a lot to do with the cleanliness of your milking equipment, a clean, disinfected udder before you milk, how fast you chill it and how cold you keep it. Assuming healthy animals, the milk should stay fresh for at least a week but probably longer.

Keeping the milk fresh has a lot to do with how it's handled after you get it.

To the OP, like Marc says, low temp pasteurization and not homoginized is your best bet if you can't get it raw.

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~Carla~

My raw goat's milk is still good & fresh tasting at two weeks old if stored in the back of the fridge.... I have a VERY strong aversion to "goaty" milk.....It's probably tops on my "do not tolerate" list....Also can't stand buttermilk......I've drank two week old milk, not a problem, but milk rarely last that long here (that jar had been pushed to the back on accident) so we are almost always drinking fresh milk.

Good sanitation goes a long way in extending shelf life.

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There are 2 things to sort out as far as the so called shelf life of raw milk. The first is that it makes a great deal of difference how quickly raw milk is chilled after milking. Milk not rapidly chilled to 40 deg. or less will start to loose its sweet taste a lot faster than if it has been rapidly chilled. The other thing is that raw milk doesn't go 'bad', it sours. That's called lacto-fermentation and is actually a lot richer in nutrients and more digestible than the sweet tasting stuff. You can throw it away if you wish or you can feed it to some critter that will love you for it, but its still food...really nutritious food. Food nuts encourage it. Sour milk is food. Sour cream is food. Yogurt is food. Curds and whey (clabbered milk) is food--just ask Miss Muffet. Souring/lacto-fermentation has been a method of preserving all kinds foods for ages before refrigeration and is still ubiquitous. Cabbage-->kraut. Cukes--pickles. Grains are fermented in myriad ways for everything from sour dough bread to hog mash. Store "milk" on the other hand, if it ever reaches the point where the pasteurization and irradiation and such no longer protect it from deterioration doesn't sour, it putrefies...rots. Yum.

Raw milk though, it must be admitted, doesn't provide you with free doses of antibiotics and steroids. You'll have to ask your doctor to write you a prescription for your milk and pay for it separately. As for the steroids, I don't know where you get that kind of stuff. Probably have to hook up with an athletic trainer or something on that order.

Interesting reply, but you aren't going to get any steroids or antibiotics with the pasturized milk either. I feel bad for the promoters of raw milk when they feel the need to resort to "boogy-man" scare tactics. Raw milk is just milk that hasn't been heat treated.

Yes you could get out of the cow what you put in. But why on Gods green earth would you do like the giant milking farms and give them steroids and antibiotics that is the whole reason for not drinking store bought milk.
And no treated milk is no where near the same when you pasturize the milk you kill good bacteria we need in milk also kills the vitamins we need so then you have to take vits or add them to the milk. So no store bought is not the same as raw plus raw taste soooo goood but store bought eewww does taste like milk. Just saying.

So you're saying that the antibiotics, hormones, et al, that are fed and/or injected into the cows is NOT present in their lactate?

Really?

Hm.

BTB, has anyone seen that the ultra-pasteurized milk is so nutritionally dead that you can't make cheese from it?

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

The dairy companies all test the milk for antibiotics and bacteria before any milk comes off the truck, couldn't say much about the steroid issue.

Yup, that's what Im sayin'. Cows treated with antibiotics are not part of the food chain. Farmers that market their milk raw and farmers that market their milk through a Pasteurization process may use antibiotics, but are required to wait until the medication has cleared their system before marketing milk from that cow. Commercial operations check their milk daily. Small operations not so much, if ever.
I don't expect to change your mind. Rationalization is a powerful human emotion. I wish the facts supported your beliefs. I wish raw milk had less bacteria than store milk. I wish store bought apples had pesticides in them. I wish grass fed beef tasted great and was tender. I want to believe chickens can experience happiness and transend that joy into healthier eggs. I want factory farmed sows to crush their young in farrowing crates and pasture raised sows somehow keep preditors at bay and tip-toe around their average weined litters of a dozen or more. I want Lassie to be waiting at the end of the driveway when I return from threshing barley at the neighbors. Somehow I become your enemy because I don't buy into the myths.
Hormones exist in all milk, raw and processed.

Are you aware of what they consider "acceptable" levels of antibiotic, bacteria, and pus?

I wouldn't want ANY of the first and third items in my milk, but that's what is in there, and it's allowed - just like so many bug parts per "n" are allowed.

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

You are right, raw milk tastes good. Get the butterfat of store bought milk up around 10-12% and it would taste better, IMHO. It isnt the pasturization that makes store bought milk taste bad.

Every study I've seen supports the fact that the enzimes and vitimins are the same after pasturization. Steroids? Are you talking about bovine growth hormone? News Flash: Bovine Growth Hormone is in your raw milk. It is in all cows milk. Always has been. Humans can't digest it, never, ever. Different cows have different levels of it, just as humans have different levels of testosterone.

I personally don't drink cow's milk by choice. A lot of dairy farmers inject hormones into the cow's to get them to produce milk all the time. When you think about it mammals (like humans) only produce milk when they have a newborn so it's unnatural to produce milk all the time. These hormones can be passed down through the cow's milk and then into the person who drinks it which is very unhealthy. So I'd say drink organic soy or rice milk. It has the same amount of vitamins and nutrients and it's healthier.

Of all the mammals, only humans, and then only a minority, principally
Caucasians continue to drink milk beyond babyhood.

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Aside from the fact that both are absolutely icky, soy is known to have estrogenic effects on people. Not particularly great for women and really UNgreat for men.
So far as the second part of this statement, again, I would have to disagree.

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Interesting play on words.

The issue is not 'bovine growth hormones' which do exist in... well... bovines. The issue is RBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone - a product of Monsanto that is sold under different retail names) which does not. RBGH is banned in most European countries, and Canada. While RBGH increases milk production, it also increases problems like Mastitis, which puts puss in the milk. To combat the mastitis, larger and larger doses of antibiotics are needed - which end up in the finished products at the super markets. As previously mentioned, there are acceptable levels of antibiotics above 'non-detect' that are allowed to be in the finished product at the supermarket.

I also believe that any soy product, excepting a properly fermented soy sauce, will have horrible side affects over time, including the estrogenic effects mentioned above.

I recommend reading the research out by the folks at Cornucopia.org on Soy, eggs, and milk. There is also frequent, lively discussion on the benefits of raw dairy products at thecompletepatient.com

Buying into myths is silly, but so is buying into the Corporate Ag Kool-aid. All they want is to take as much of your money as they can convince you they deserve. Pastured hens do lay healthier eggs, grass fed - grass finished beef is healthier than feed lot finished beef. Buying fresh foods from your local food shed will be far better for you than buying anything trucked into your local superstore.

Fresh, locally grown food is not made better for you because it is sprinkled with pixy dust - it is better because it wasn't picked early, trucked thousands of miles, ripened with Ethelyn gas, and stacked neatly in a bin at your neighborhood superstore.

I'd rather pay my farmer than pay my doctor, no..wait... I'd rather be my farmer than pay my doctor.

Cows naturally produce hormones, each cow at different levels. It is in all milk, always has been. Cows continue to produce milk because they are milked. Most mammals will. It has nothing to do with the addition of more of the naturally occuring hormone.

In most third world countries, safe water isn't available, so babies are breast fed longer. In developed countries, where most of the white people live, most women chose to eliminate or at least limit breast feeding.

Adult humans don't NEED milk or milk products. Go ahead and drink your bean tea, I'll have a big scoop of butter pecan frozen lactation.

You are right and you are wrong. High producing cows tend to have more mastitis. RBGH increases output, moving some cows into that higher risk for mastitis group. It isn't the RBGH that is directly to blame.
How would you check for BGH? The injected stuff is the same as the stuff God designed cows with.
Anitbiotics are not in your milk, at any level.
Grass finished beef is healthier, but so is birch bark. I like the brighter yellow of my home produced egg yokes, but I doubt they are healthier.

Buy local.

Oh my. I get up this morning and this thread sure isn't about the taste and shelf life of raw milk any more. Which is fine with me. Let's just have some fun where the fun is. For one thing, I don't read any of this as being a promotion of raw milk. I for one don't give a rip who drinks raw milk or camel's milk or rotten milk or no milk at all. If someone here is promoting something my vote would be that Haypoint is pushing pretty hard the notion that, let's just continue to call it store milk for the moment, such milk is simply "milk that's been heat treated". No big woop I suppose.

Well, I'd say this to my friend Haypoint. If pasteurization is is such an innocent process, then heat your cell phone to pasteurizing temp and see what you have. Or heat yourself to pasteurizing temp and see how that turns out. Might look the same but I submit that there'd be a rather profound difference. Raw milk didn't use to be raw milk. It was just milk. But now, in order to call this other stuff "milk", actual milk has become "raw milk". One is alive and one is not. Just like the soil on the roundup ready farms is dead and the soil on most small farms isn't. That, in fact, is the whole point of pasteurization--to kill the milk. You can consume, or even promote if you like, either one to your heart's content. You can conjure up boogeymen to bolster your point of view. It's just disingenuous, to say the least, to assert that they're the same thing.

As far as what's in it, well, don't bother to tell me that there's an allowable level of e. coli in food but zero tolerance for antibiotics and growth hormones. Don't tell me that USDA inspections are adequate. I'm talking here about the USDA that thinks Diet Pepsi and Cocoa Puffs are food. Inspection, in any case, doesn't mean that something is clean. It just means that the tester knows what's there, if the test procedure is valid and accurately performed. They are, after all, testing food in Japan for radiation contamination, but that's a whole nuther story. And be a bit careful about what studies you rely on and cite. If I've got a big enough wad to fund an army of lobbyists and to endow university research on a broad scale I can come up with some amazing stuff. I can have the dean of Harvard medical school say out loud and in public that nutrition has nothing to do with human health (true story). If you want to delve into some interesting studies, look at some of the studies of the US population's longevity (declining), mortality and morbidity and how they compare with other wealthy countries and even with a lot of 3rd world countries. OK, I've got to go finish chores, but hopefully that's enough boogeymen to last for a while.

I have to laugh everytime someone repeats this myth. Mammals who enjoy milk in adulthood include cats, dogs and pigs--and probably others I don't have experience with. I have known an adult cow who would drink her own milk if she could get to it and have heard of goats who would do the same.