it is produced in sanitary conditions. That includes raw milk, raw veggies, raw fruit, etc.
I think some critical thinking skills should be employed here…When the tomatoes/peppers outbreak occured last year, did we pass a law banning raw veggies? When summer rolls along with its annual e coli outbreak in beef, do we pass a law banning raw beef? So why do we have a law banning raw milk? With all these other raw foods, including eggs, we are required by law to have a sticker on every container stating the risks of raw food / how to handle them / how to cook them / to prevent illness. So why is raw milk handled differently? Correct — the law has nothing to do with science — it is 100% political.
There are currently thousands (tens of thousands?) of U.S. citizens who were raised safely on raw milk. Many of us continue to drink raw milk every day. If raw milk is as unsafe as the law says then we should all be dead. But — we’re not. Why? Because we produce milk in clean conditions & keep it cool. Same way we produce our produce & meat. E coli is a function of sanitation — not rawness.
And please try to remember that raw milk does not come JUST from cows — it also comes from goats & sheep. So the whole argument of udders in cow pies does not apply here; goats & sheep poop small little ‘pellets.’
Furthermore, the function of the sphincter muscle on the end of the teat is precisely to keep organisms from entering the teat canal & to keep milk from leaking until pressure (lamb sucking / hand milking / vacuum pump) draws the milk out. So even when cows’ udders are dirty, when you ‘dry’ clean them, you’re ensuring the dirt from the outside of the teat doesn’t enter the inflation; the sphincter muscle does the rest.
What worries me the most is that instead of getting cattle off manure packs and maintaining sanitary conditions when harvesting & packing, we’ll just take the easy and by far more unsafe way out & irradiate everything. Keep in mind the lobbyists who will recommend this are the same lobbyists who recommended feeding dead sheep to cattle, bringing Mad Cow Disease to all of us.
I think we largely agree, Grass Farmer. A safe, raw milk industry would require farmers maintaining sanitary conditions on behalf of public health and for the farmers’ own financial and legal protection.
The question is who decides what’s “sanitary” for raw milk production? Right now, the answer is “no one” in the State of Minnesota, because government has said it wants no part of regulating raw milk, let alone creating sanitation standards for dairies. Indeed, I’ve heard the rumor that the MN Department of Ag wants to abolish all raw milk sales in the state (though I’m looking for citation on that rumor).
But say we determine “best practices” for raw milk. Then the next question becomes, which insurance companies are willing to cover a raw milk dairy in case of litigation? Even the most conscientious farmer can make an honest mistake, after all. If insurance is not in place, I have to agree with organic dairy man Dean Sparks of New York who has said elsewhere on Fair Food Fight that it’s not in a farmer’s interests to risk losing his/her farm by selling raw milk, even if it were legal.
I don’t like the direction we’re headed, with state governments cracking down on small farmers, whether there’s been an outbreak tied to their milk or not. I’d much rather find a way to meet the desire for raw milk while protecting both public health and the farmer’s financial well-being.
I think this is just yet another area in which the government and law makers are completely out of touch with the needs and ideals of its own citizens. From public transit (or lack there of) to food laws, the divid can be seen everywhere and the eco-concious citizen feels it most!
But won’t cooking raw vegetables greatly reduce the occurance of a contamination? Whereas milk, for the most part is not cooked, unless it is pasteurized, and served cold.
Right. The whole point of raw milk is to keep it raw, never cook it, and in that raw state — with sugars and proteins galore — milk is potentially a microbe hoedown.
But so is apple cider. So are sprouts. So is cut melon. I don’t think those items need to be regulated out of existence either.