Raw Milk Question

I remember my grandma telling stories about kids that died from drinking raw milk. It was fairly common in her day.

I've heard of some people dying too, but I certainly wouldn't say it was "fairly common". It seems funny that nowadays with all the "healthier" food we have, we have people dying younger and younger 50's, 60's. Some people still live into their 90's or 100's, but you also have to remember that back years ago, people used to live into their 90's and 100's too (even with all their bacon & eggs breakfasts and drinking all that raw "unhealthy" milk).

__________________
Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania

"Everything happens for a reason."

Now here's a question I can really sink my teeth into. I've had a milk cow for years.....as soon as I have a fence up at my new place here I'll probably get another one. I would NOT drink raw milk that I didn't personally milk from my own cow. I've worked on several commercial dairies....there is a reason they have to pasteurized the stuff! Won't turn ya'lls stomachs, but just trust me there is. The main danger is that the cow has TB or a few other things that a vet could tell you about that are transferrable to humans through the milk. If you have your own cow you know she is healthy(because you took her and had her checked by the vet....you did didn't you?). Another consideration. Just how clean was the kitchen/milking room where this milk was strained/bottled? What methods did they use to strain the milk? I know my kitchen is clean and I know the proper ways of cleaning my milking equipment.......but I've been in the kitchens of other folks....one that was quite memorable that sold milk, butter etc. I wouldn't eat ANYTHING that came out of that womans kitchen! <shudder> As to the cream clogging the top of the bottle. Remove it with a turkey baster...this is the best and easiest way I've found to skim cream. If you aren't used to 'whole' milk then you will want to remove most of the cream. If you don't, I hope you have stocked up on toilet paper! You can increase the amount of cream gradually. By the way, if the cream is fairly dense with a bit of a skin formed over the top then it isn't very fresh. You want to look for smooth, very white(it yellows with age) cream that is still very liquidy even though thicker than milk. Someone suggested culturing skim milk to make buttermilk. Wellllll yes you get the stuff like what is in the store that way. To make the real genuine article you have to use the liquid that is left over from making butter.

__________________
My goal in life is to someday be half as great as my dog thinks I am!!

Oh, COME ON BeesNBunnies, don't leave us in suspense!!!!!!!!! You can't start saying something only not to finish. Please do tell, as I have seen cows milked at several farms and didn't see anything odd about it. Come on, you can tell us, and I think the public needs to know how some places are!

__________________
Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania

"Everything happens for a reason."

Well for one thing there is a lot of 'extra fiber' that gets pumped into the tank......yes it's what you are thinking(not while I was working but I've been in lots of dairies and watched). I worked for a dairy farmer that was 3 days from the milk company refusing to pick up his milk because his mastitis numbers were so bad(he was desperate or he never would have hired a woman). I got his mastitis count down by doing the job right...ie....throroughly emptying the udders, proper sanitation(using separate paper towels per cow and not one nasty rag for all of them), massaging and hand milking the really really bad ones out(sanitized my hands between cows, greatly improving the overall sanitary conditions in the milking parlor. Two months later a cousin of his shows up and I'm out the door. There's gratitude for ya! I know of some specific things that I won't post....they make me a bit nautious(sp?) to think about. Now having said all this horrible stuff. This is not true at a lot of dairies. Some of them are excellent! Unfortunately milk is pooled together from good and bad dairies alike.

__________________
My goal in life is to someday be half as great as my dog thinks I am!!

I've read about it but I don't know if it's tall-tale or truth :
snakes that will milk a cow dry right in the field.....

Lots of fiber in the tank? Weren't you using a strainer sock or pad?

Using separate paper wash towels and separate towels for drying the udder before milking is definitely good practice -- wash rag is a no-no.

If his CMT and SCC were high, I'd guess that there might have been some chronic mastitis and probably very poor sanitation of the milking equipment.

As for all the sitting under the cow a long time, hand-stripping, in my experience that can cause cows to be slow milkers and lead to mastitis.

Yes, milk is pooled, but the hauler takes a sample from each farmer's tank at each pickup, and it is easy to establish milk quality for each farm. If it gets bad enough, the creamery can kick you off the route.

__________________
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Yes they use a strainer....after all you don't see it floating in your milk when you buy it from the store. It's the fact that it went in in the first place that is the point. Yes using a wash rag is a no-no....doesn't mean it doesn't happen. As for hand stripping making the cows I was working on slow to milk.....you'd have just had to seen the cows. I had never seen mastitis this bad before....not to mention just general infection of the udder(outer weeping sores). Yep you're right they do check the milk from each farm....that's why he was about to loose his ability to sell milk.

__________________
My goal in life is to someday be half as great as my dog thinks I am!!

Hi!

I wanted to comment on the lable on the milk at the market. Different states have different laws for their raw milk programs. Here in WA, raw milk for sale has to come from a Grade A dairy with a seperate Raw Milk Processors License. All the containers that hold the product have to have a lable on them (similar to the lable on bottles of alcohol), stating that the product has been know to cause illness and even death in small children and old people. It is part of the whole regulation system. I do know that the standards for a dairy that sells raw milk are much higher than those that sell to the big prossesors that pasturize all the milk. They are also tested at more frequent intervals. That being said, there are not many dairies in the state that have the raw milk processing license. There are also laws here if you want to sell "pet milk" and I think they are almost more elaborate than the raw milk for human consumption laws. The milk has to have the proper color dye put in it to distinguish it from other milk. I know if I want to buy raw butter from CA, it comes with a "for pet use only" lable on it! All that being said, I have my own cows and drink their raw milk!

Darlene

Just wanted to comment on the statement someone made about calcium in milk being bound and not available to us. That's true of pasturized milk, not raw milk.

I second everything John in LA offered above. I have on many occasions drunk raw milk from my own cows, but we pasteurize the milk from our cows for the family table. There are risks from drinking raw milk, but I would agree they are low -- that does not mean non-existent. You need to research this yourself rather than relying on our recommendations.

HomeBirtha, Certainly you are entitled to your opinions, and there are many, many different types of dairy operations and milking equipment used. I've hand milked, milked with surge buckets in a small stanchion parlor, and milked with a pipeline system.

Your comment: "If the dairy doesn't care that poop was in there in the first place, as long as it was strained out, then you know most milk had some feces floating in it somewhere down the line. Blech!" is completely misinformed, period. The second statement does not follow from the first. I cannot defend or comment on every dairy farm that sells milk, but in my setup, I would quite literally have to lead a cow into the milk room and raise the bulk tank lid and get her to poop in the tank to have feces in the milk. Beyond that, I would need to shovel up a pail of manure from the gutter and jam the teat cups down in the pail to get manure into the pipeline. If you would like direct proof as to how completely off-base your statement is, I'd be happy to send you the used strainer socks from several milkings.

Your likelihood of feces in the milk is much higher from a hand-milked family cow that poops or urinates while being milked (Remember this is an open pail).

__________________
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Cows milk can be and is fatal to human babies under one year?????
Where in the world is that found? I study the subject extensively because I supply many families with raw milk. Sites pro and con tend to show studies that support their particular bias.But I have never heard it taken that far!Both of my parents grew up on farms drinking raw milk, and our families.That I can say has given us all a healthy immune system from the natural antibiotics. Which in lab tests was able to prevent many disease organisms from growing in the milk.
Pasturized being dead couldn't prevent anything from growing and just made a great growth medium!
As you might be able to tell my bias is toward healthy sanitary natural raw milk
Chas

We hand milked into a bucket when I was a boy, and later when Herself and I had goats, then again when we bought our Jerseys over a year ago. I second what milkstoolcowboy says about open bucket milking. I never realized how much cleaner the milk would be with a machine until we bought ours. I've always been as clean as I could be but with a half ton of barn lounging cow standing directly over the bucket "that which is not good to eat" does find it's way into the pail, and strain as we might "it" was in the milk for a while at least.

With the milkng machine's cups squeaky clean teats equals squeaky clean milk.

As for drinking raw milk, we do and always did, but a person ought to do what makes them feel comfortable, and not try to dissuade others from their choice. It's a personal choice practice: some pasteurize, some don't, others don't care, still others had rather drink kerosene than milk in any presentation.

__________________
“It is tedious to live, it is tedious to die, it is tedious to c**p in deep snow”
Old Norwegian observation

What I'm talking about is the somewhat cavalier attitude that as long as the feces is strained out, it's all ok. (Something to the effect of: "Well you're using a strainer, right?") You're the one that said that, not me.

If a foot or poop get in the milk bucket, I throw the whole thing out. I'm guessing commercial dairies wouldn't want to throw out a whole batch of milk.

I dunno. When I asked the local cow guy who sells cheese if I could buy raw milk from him he said the only way that he could do it legally is either as pet food or as a commercial additive for some other product (i.e. "milk bath") and he had to make sure it was labled "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION". That's where I got my info from. Maybe his is a graded dairy.

The other people that I have spoken with locally say they sell their milk to big companies and their contract prohibits them selling anything to anyone for any reason.

I guess I just need to make friends with a family who has a couple of milk cows that don't sell to some big commercial milk producer.

donsgal