Consuming raw milk

You're quite welcome! Had you not brought FDA and USDA into this thread, I would have settled for being just another reader rather than clearing up any misconceptions, of which one seemed to persist later.

Martin

The Tennessean which is Gannett News, which is USA Today... you know one big happy family.

This is the link to the article that was printed in The Tennessean: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...bated/1889987/

It was this article that prompted me to investigate further and ultimately post.

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"Of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel; another train is approaching there". ~ Slavoj Zizek

Thanks, I do feel better, actually... I'm in remission now. But the damage to my joints is done and unlikely to reverse itself.

Horrible disease. You have my sympathy.

I'm not saying that I definitely caught it from the milk... it could have been from eating medium rare steaks. Or a tick bite. Or any kind of fluid transfer with my husband (he's got it too.)

One of my cows went lame a few years back (before we knew about the Lyme) and we her butchered. The meat tasted fine, but who knows what it held? The cow didn't look sick. Just started limping heavily and started getting skinny and her calf died. So we culled her.

It wasn't until last year that when I started reading a lot about Lyme disease and found it could be in cattle that I started to suspect that maybe that cow's joints were as painful as mine were. And that maybe the cause was the same.

There's no way to prove it after the fact- but if my cow had it, then the cows of the neighbor we bought raw milk from could have been infected too, just not at the painful joint stage yet.

It took me about 5 years to get to the painful joint stage.

A cow could give a lot of infected milk in the same time frame.

OMG, you ate a sick cow? Sounds like Johne's Disease.

http://www.johnes.org/beef/pathology.html

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Hey everyone! That was my mistake. However, I do not understand what the connection is between the FDA and USDA and the state, if the state regulates the sale of milk. That may be true, but possibly the FDA and USDA can regulate what's in the milk or the potential for illness? I don't know, but I would think that would be the case. And if that is true, the FDA actually could shut down raw milk sales, even with their unreliable statistics.

My problem is that I think the FDA and CDC puts out blanket warnings on raw milk, without reliable statistics to back it up. And it is for this reason I posted this thread. And I would never feel comfortable buying commercial raw milk or raw milk products, due to shelf life. My question was more about the risk in drinking raw milk from a neighbor farmer or milking your own.

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"Of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel; another train is approaching there". ~ Slavoj Zizek

So where's this clarity you've provided ?

Wow, very sad. My co-worker's husband almost died from Lyme's Disease. He's on disability now. It was from a tick bite on his back, but was not discovered until he ended up in the hospital. I get bit so much because I live in such a wooded area.

You can't diagnose the past, so you just move on!

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"Of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel; another train is approaching there". ~ Slavoj Zizek

I feel secure enough in our dexter cows to drink their milk raw. They were from closed herds and tested clean (though I should have them re-tested...) I keep them healthy, and I know what they eat.

I have a teat dip in a squirt bottle I spray on the udder, and wipe off with a baby wipe. I keep the hair on their udder trimmed so it doesn't pick up debris.

We sterilize our jars, lids and milk buckets in the dishwasher, and I keep my clean steel milk buckets in the chest freezer.
As the weather heats up, milking time will begin with an ice pack in the bucket.

Milk goes directly in the house, is strained with cheesecloth (or a stainless steel strainer) into a clean glass jar, and goes straight into the freezer to chill quickly, then moved to the fridge before it freezes.

DD forgot the milk and left it sitting in the bucket, open in the kitchen for 4 hours last week and I fed it out to the critters.

We pasteurized at first, but boiling made the milk taste funny-- raw tastes "real", and the kids and husband wouldn't drink it dependably before I started doing raw.

My pediatrician is anti-raw milk-- she believes it's a ticking time bomb for listeria.

My grandmother contracted brucellosis from raw milk on her family farm as a child-- even though I know my cows don't have it.. I admit I think about it every time I fill up a glass.

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You might worry more about getting hit by a meteor than brucellosis. It is essentially eradicated, except herds exposed to bison.

Few people understand relative risk. You can't just state that something should be avoided without considering the alternative.


For example, a plane crash makes more dramatic news than a car crash, so many people are afraid of planes, so they drive instead, which is actually more risky per mile traveled. So if you discourage flying, you could cause more deaths.

Likewise, we have been scared about raw milk, so many will drink sodas instead, which is one reason for increased obesity and diabetes, but it has our government's blessing.

Sure, people could drink the fried milk from the store, but it doesn't taste as good as raw, so sodas it is.

Now sure, raw milk can be dangerous, especially if the cows are fed and housed and intermingled as on many big commercial dairies.

Surprise, surprise, if a cow is fed a high grain diet, which alters the rumen allowing more dangerous E. coli to survive, and then hundreds of cows are comingling and spreading stuff around, and are laying with huge udders in a muckhole, there will be increased disease risk. In that situation, you had better cook the milk. And because the milk is cooked, sanitation and better feeding and disease prevention are less necessary. So we'd better hope there are no failures in the pasteurization.

Contrast that with a cow or a few cows that are fed more hay/pasture, and have clean places to lie down.

This is why we need to practice some common sense and take a look at the cows. I've seen organic raw milk dairies I wouldn't touch because they were run like the industrial farms - high grain diets and mud and muck everywhere. Cows in a lake of liquid manure a foot deep at the feeders.

And then if there's a problem, the only thing blamed is lack of cooking the milk.

PrettyPaisley, did you get your milk from Caroline? Their milk is sooo good. We've gotten raw cow's milk from different sources and hers has always been superior in taste. We have goats, too, and mostly drink their milk now.

I think the high grain diet effects on e coli was proven false a while ago. If you think "providing clean places to lie down" makes for clean cows, I question you've ever owned a cow.

The closed herd family farm in Saginaw County may have thought their chances of having nearly 100 cows contract TB was slim to none until last week. I think they drank directly from their bulk tank.

Flying in an airplane is 99.999% safe, unless you are on the plane that the wings fall off, then it becomes 100% unsafe. Same for raw milk.

Healthy looking cows, fed clean natural feed and provided a clean place to lay down can have, and spread, e coli, listeria, campylobacter, TB in the milk. Scientists do not yet know the connection between Johnes and Crones.

Raw milk is sold from Grade A dairies that meet modern standards. Raw milk is also sold from dairies that hand milk into a pail set on the fecal covered floor.

Yes, this is why you need to know your local dairy folks.

Abstract on studies done on high grain diets and e coli. Yes, there is a connection, but not totally figured out yet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19351974

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Maybe raw milk is different these days. Milk has been used raw for millenia and in some areas was one of the main sources of protein. What is the chance of getting killed in a car wreck as compared to getting sick from raw milk?

Interesting question. But sort of apples and hubcaps comparison. Nearly everyone has at least one car, while less than one percent drink raw milk.

The only way raw milk could be different today would be if cows, people, machinery and feed supplies moved around more than they did a hundred or a thousand years ago.

I would say that when my folks grew up, much more than 1% drank raw milk and I doubt many died from it. Nor does it matter how many people drink raw milk today vs how many drive cars. You just figure the % of raw milk drinkers that die from drinking raw milk compared to the % of car drivers that die from driving cars, that's not hard.

According to the CDC, there were a total of 122 outbreaks of disease attributed to ANY milk reported from 1993 to 2006. I'd say that, even though about 60% of those outbreaks were from raw milk, only 2 deaths were reported. So, the incidence of illness and death attributed to ANY milk is extremely low. Consider that thousands of people die of the flu in that time and also many thousands from driving cars, I think that milk drinking in general is a pretty safe thing to do.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/pdfs/11-1370.pdf

For me the slight chance of contracting a disease from raw milk is way less than the benefits of flavor and the living food value of it. I don't agree with the CDC that is is particularly dangerous, sure there are diseases possible, but just so unlikely in either raw or pasteurized that I'm not that concerned. I hate the Big Brother attitude of government (either State or National) that says they have to protect us from making informed decisions about our health and our diet. Don't they have more important things to do?

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~ Carol

I believe that every person killed or injured in a car crash we can be fairly sure of the cause. Not so with illnesses associated with raw milk. Illnesses from raw milk tend to be smaller groups than say 50 semi loads of spinach. So they are sort of off the radar so to speak. Since raw milk is also produced in smaller batches, the several days from leaving the farm and consumption and reaction and reporting and interviews to locating the source, often results in inconclusive source. The exceptions are ongoing or repeated health issues.
When the CDC reports 122 separate incidents, those are proven, lab tested cases, no other possible cause, reported and verified. The number of people affected from each incident, of course, varies.

McCarthy was able to shut up a bunch of people by calling them communists. People were afraid to display a different opinion. But that is in the past and totally off topic.

Sure there are a small amount of reported. The number of people drinking raw milk is so low compared to 300+ million in the US.
Now if the majority of said population would be drinking raw milk the stats would show a remarkable higher amount. Especially those that are not raised on a farm. And how many got sick but were never reported? Or were sick and reported but not getting from raw milk but got it from something else when raw milk was the culprit to start with?
That is why rules and regulations MUST be in place to sell to the general public and for certain out of state.

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http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516.htm
“According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1993 and 2006 more than 1500 people in the United States became sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk. In addition, CDC reported that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products.”

I used to belong to a fairly disreputable motorcycle club and we were real rebels and risk takers...as we started aging out we turned to drinking raw milk and proudly wearing the milk mustache instead of our previous nefarious activities and mutton chops. Living life on the edge baby!!!

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How very odd that the FDA quotes the CDC as saying their study has a drastically different rate of illness than the CDC's study put up on their own website. That's very confusing.

I guess I am a terrible risk taker, I sometimes have raw milk, when I have a source for it. I make my own cheeses too and yogurt. I've been known to cross the street when I take a walk and I often drive fairly long distances. I was raised on raw milk from our family cow, it's a wonder I am still alive. My father was raised on raw milk too, I don't know why he's going strong at 85, or my MIL, who is 88 and raised on a homestead in MT. I'm sure it was terribly unsanitary. Oh gosh, I eat sushi too and go out in public, where I could contact the flu, which (according to CDC) kills a rough average of 36,000 people a year. Yep, I shoulda died out years ago!

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~ Carol