Ignoring the necropost in the OP, I want to take this space to point out that if you want to live like it's Little House on the Prairie, you may discover that people had diarrhea more often than you'd like to think back then. And there's probably a factor of your gut not being used to such diverse flora, as well. I guess whatever makes them feel better while they're sitting on the porcelain throne.
Diarrhea is still pretty common - IBS, SIBO, and a plethora of other proofs for the Hygiene Hypothesis and right in front of our eyes.
My kids have been drinking raw milk for over 15 years from RAWFARM [0] - never had issues. It's the best milk we've ever had. In fact, we've had spoiled pasteurized milk, and there's always been great until the expiry date, of course.
What's worse than useless journalism is 8 year old useless journalism. This story has revealed nothing and is designed to allow either side of a contentious issue to feel superior to the other without actually resolving anything.
What was the point of digging this up and posting it today, ripjaygn?
At this point I'm starting to think that we can kill two birds with one stone, and have the government announce that gravity can kill you if you fall off a bridge, and then just wait for some people to take that bet and lose.
Best benefit of the doubt: @ripjaygn did not notice the date (it is dim grey and small size, so could be easily overlooked) and @ripjaygn may one of today's 10,000: https://xkcd.com/1053/.
Milk that enters the food supply from a diary farm to retailers should absolutely be pasteurized, but farms shouldn't be raided by state police if someone wants to accept the risks and come purchase raw milk for whatever reason.
When it comes to getting sick yourself, sure that's reasonable enough. Right now though we have H1N1 in the milk supply, so no I'm not really willing to accept another pandemic. Your freedoms and my freedoms are balanced in tension against each other, and something like a pandemic virus that you can get from raw milk and then spread tips the scales away from your freedoms.
It's a fad from those wanting to eat like ancient man.
But because it is a regulation, it has also become a call for "FREEEEEeeeeeddoooomm".
Who cares about germs? Really, people are free to not wash their hands either, but it isn't the smartest thing to do.
100 Years ago when the lack of food safety was killing a lot of people, there was an outcry for laws. Now, laws are viewed as bad, just let me kill myself if I want to.
Guess it's intention.
If you 'choose' to die. Fine.
Drinking raw milk is more like walking into traffic without looking, maybe you get hit, maybe not, maybe you are injured, maybe dead, maybe your ok.
Yes, a lot of regulations are about protecting stupid people. But also to save some time, not everyone is going to have testing kits laying around and analyzing everything they eat. That would be horribly inefficient to make everyone do their own food testing before they can eat. Sure, smart people can be extra careful, but do you want to have to be extra careful with everything, just in case you are grabbing a grenade every time you open the fridge.
I'm sure you can find 'pro' studies, there are benefits, and of course there are 'con's, like heaving your guts out.
But to say the risk is 'vanishingly' small is the true 'anti-science' here. Are you anti-vax also? Measles is just a natural process?
""This review describes why pasteurization of milk was introduced more than 100 years ago, how pasteurization helped to reduce the incidence of illnesses associated with raw milk consumption, and the prevalence of pathogens in raw milk. In some studies, up to a third of all raw milk samples contained pathogens, even when sourced from clinically healthy animals or from milk that appeared to be of good quality.""
You've cited whether there's pathogens detected, you could do that with many things and it matters less whether there's pathogens and more whether the food itself is dangerous to eat in practice. It seems to me that you're trying to propagandize and stigmatize rather than seek out relevant numbers: how many deaths have we observed? Illnesses? Severity?
It turns out over 30 years of surveillance, there's been 3 deaths attributed to raw milk and 33 hospitalizations. Compared to any other danger that risk seems minuscule, for proportion, usage is estimated to be 1-2% of the adult population weekly. Has sushi killed more?
> During 1998–2018, health departments reported 21919 foodborne outbreaks and 423 595 outbreak-associated illnesses to FDOSS. Of these, 202 outbreaks (0.9%) and 2645 illnesses (0.6%) were linked to unpasteurised milk (Table 1), including 228 hospitalisations and three deaths. During the same time period, 9 outbreaks (0.04%) and 2133 illnesses (0.5%) linked to pasteurised milk were reported, including 33 hospitalisations and three deaths.
Scale? Those using raw milk are a very small percentage of total milk drinkers, and already there are deaths at all? I'll have to go look for total numbers, I do not believe at all that 1-2% of adult population is drinking raw milk.
Perhaps I'm biased. I work in the food industry, and know that corporations want to cut costs, increase profits by any means necessary, including risky practices. And any reduction in regulations is just another step in moving the line in the wrong direction. Try eating some raw chicken, which sounds crazy, but that is the same group arguing for raw milk.
So today, maybe the raw milk movement is being extra careful, give it a few year s and people 'relaxing' their vigilance. Food regulations are there for a reason, because at some point in the past, people were dying. And they will die again if given a chance.
So. Guess, I'm all for options. But there better be some pretty strict 'new' regulations to protect 'raw' milk, to replace the current old 'pasteurized' milk regulations.
Plenty of things require a lot of care and sometimes more than people expect. Where do you draw the line? Should we ban raw meat? Plenty of people get salmonella after all.
According to the CDC[1]
> CDC estimates Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the United States every year.
Why wouldn’t you? I surely wouldn’t drink it but I don’t mind if it’s legal. It’s America baby.
If someone consensually drinks raw milk and gets sick, that’s on them. If a parent makes their kid drink that and the kid gets sick, that is potentially child abuse.
I think the main concern here is some undereducated or easily buying into conspiracy theories/conservative individuals would feed their kids raw milk.
There are lots of things that are not good you that parents give their children and they are totally legal.
I think debating this or trying to fight against it is a waste of time rather than bigger issues.
I mean, hopefully it's legal to buy raw milk in my country (we payed cash so i don't really know), but i totally understand why you would buy raw milk: home-pasteurized milk taste way better than supermarket milk or even farmer's market milk. And you get to keep the creme.
The drink-by date is best measured in hours. If you're used to keeping milk around for months, raw milk is not for you. It's great, but treat it sloppily and you'll suffer, and you don't have to be very sloppy.
