[HN Gopher] Beyond the Raw/Pasteurised Divide
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       Beyond the Raw/Pasteurised Divide
        
       Author : merrier
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2022-10-14 19:56 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (milktrekker.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (milktrekker.substack.com)
        
       | nikolay wrote:
       | My kids have been raised on organic raw grass-fed milk widely
       | available in California. Also, our eggs are never refrigerated -
       | we buy them from farmers' market and they say out even in the
       | hottest summer days - no issues so far and they don't wanna drink
       | any other milk! The best thing abour raw milk is that it's
       | naturally homogenized and they drink true whole milk without any
       | complaints!
        
       | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
       | There is nothing that raw milk could offer that would make me
       | risk drinking it. Cheesemakers should get an exception though.
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | Used to drink raw milk as a kid when spending holidays at my
         | grant aunt village. It was usually still warm.
         | 
         | It's the most delicious and easier to digest milk I ever had. I
         | have wonderful memories of it.
        
         | ace2358 wrote:
         | That's wild! Where I live In Australia, I have access to a huge
         | local farmers market community. Nothing wrong with the raw milk
         | I can buy. Actually I have pretty bad intolerance to dairy from
         | the super market or heavy processed dairy. But I can say the
         | goods at my local dairy farmer.
         | 
         | I buy almost nothing from the shops.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | The microbiology of milk and milk products in certainly complex
       | and 'raw vs. pasteurized' is an oversimplification, but
       | practically, most people look at milk and cheese with "is this
       | safe and healthy to consume" in mind. So when the author says
       | this, it avoids that question.
       | 
       | > "There are many factors influencing this ecology which I will
       | refrain from getting into further in this piece (teat treatment,
       | animal bedding, milking equipment, climate, herd size and health,
       | farming practices)."
       | 
       | If all milk was produced by a herd of cows living off the grass
       | in some bucolic Swiss canton, with a careful farmer ensuring no
       | udder infections etc., well, it wouldn't be a concern.
       | 
       | However, what if the cow was injected with growth hormones to
       | double milk output per cow, and then treated with prophylactic
       | antibiotics to prevent the resulting udder infections, and locked
       | in a stall and fed with alfalfa laced with three different kinds
       | of herbicides and pesticides? What happens to milk with trace
       | antibiotics when you try to make cheese out of it using microbes?
       | 
       | See this:
       | 
       | "Whole-Genome Sequencing of Drug-Resistant Salmonella enterica
       | Isolates from Dairy Cattle and Humans in New York and Washington
       | States Reveals Source and Geographic Associations. (2017)"
       | 
       | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28389536/
       | 
       | If you're going to ingest that product, ultra-pasteurization will
       | at least kill all the salmonella, but even so it doens't sound
       | that great.
        
         | justincormack wrote:
         | The raw milk products that are sold are generally from
         | something approaching your Swiss cows, yes. There are legal
         | controls of various sorts in countries where raaw milk products
         | are available. This is my local raw milk/cheese/butter/etc
         | dairy for example https://fenfarmdairy.co.uk/
        
         | Gordonjcp wrote:
         | > However, what if the cow was injected with growth hormones to
         | double milk output per cow, and then treated with prophylactic
         | antibiotics to prevent the resulting udder infections, and
         | locked in a stall and fed with alfalfa laced with three
         | different kinds of herbicides and pesticides?
         | 
         | Then your meat and milk would be illegal to sell, in every
         | country in the world but one.
        
         | littlestymaar wrote:
         | > So when the author says this, it avoids that question.
         | 
         | Because raw vs pasteurized gives you no idea on that point. You
         | can get Listeria-infected pasteurized cheese and get very sick
         | (it happens every ones in a while, due to mishandling in the
         | factories) and you can eat raw cheese for your entire life at a
         | country-level (France for instance still has a lot of raw
         | cheeses) without significant health effect. The seriousness
         | (that is: regulation and controls) of the entire production
         | line matters much more than pasteurization of the input milk
         | (which merely ease the process for industrial, more than it
         | offers any protection to the consumers)
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | I have a personal, non proven, theory about Salmonella. I think
         | it used to be a in a lot of food, but we didn't care most of
         | the time as we were used to it. With things getting cleaner, we
         | got sensitive to it, and it's now a problem because our immune
         | system can't fight it as well and people get very sick out of
         | it.
         | 
         | I remember we used to get eggs from an old lady in my mothers
         | village when I was a kid. Dirty eggs, full of chicken crap,
         | very cheap (5 francs a dozen).
         | 
         | They had a rich and flavorful taste, texture was full and
         | round, and you felt like eating a ray of sunshine at breakfast.
         | 
         | One day friends from the city that ate only supermarket stuff
         | came by, and ate the eggs. They loved it.
         | 
         | And they also got very sick.
        
           | zasdffaa wrote:
           | The eggs could have been marinaded in salmonella but if you
           | cooked them (which you did?) they'd be sterile and safe
           | afterwards. So maybe a coincidence or something.
        
       | jeffrallen wrote:
       | If you know and trust your farmer, and if you are in good health,
       | raw milk is great. We've fed it to our kids since age 2.
        
       | BiteCode_dev wrote:
       | If you don't want to drink raw milk but would like to enjoy a
       | fresher, more plain milk taste, I strongly recommend whole
       | microfiltred milk.
       | 
       | I don't know if it's available everywhere, but it's a process
       | that is legal in France as an alternative to pasteurization, and
       | it preserves some of the milk original qualities, albeit not all
       | of them.
        
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