Hi all. Very interesting article. My husband and I have recently started drinking raw milk. It took a few days to get used to because it certainly does taste different than pasteurized and homogenized milk, but I do like it now that I've gotten used to it. It tastes creamier and has more flavor.

By the way, not only is pasteurization a concern but homogenization is pretty scary too! Why are we changing the molecular structure of natural foods? This just doesn't seem like it can be a good thing.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. I only wanted to take a moment to thank Carla for the link to localforage.com for more raw milk sellers. But also to give an FYI that you can also buy raw milk at Whole Foods in SF and in the Bay Area in general. I usually buying my raw milk at the Whole Foods in San Mateo.

The thing about raw eggs, milk, etc., is that you're more likely to be getting them fresh and pay more attention to the sell by date. Honestly, when's the last time that anyone checked the expiration date on eggs? Not only have I eaten raw eggs and survived, but I don't refrigerate them either. They're organic, fresh, and I've never gotten sick from them and I happen to have an extremely sensitive digestive tract due to multiple allergies. My parents grew up drinking raw warm milk, 10 minutes fresh from the cow. When I lived in London, all the milk was stamped with a warning - consume within 3 days - and they meant it; the milk went bad without fail on the fourth day. Infected udders? Not in healthy cows. As far as drinking cow's milk (or goat, sheep, mare, camel, for that matter) being unnatural in the animal world, may I remind you that for thousands of years humans have domesticated these animals and we've developed a symbiotic relationship as animals. I'd also like to add that ants milk aphids, so it does occur in nature.

As a biologist, I recognize that the anecdotes in this article suggesting miracle cures should be viewed with extreme caution. The data from that study in Britain (I read the source) are more compelling to me, but still not a complete answer.

I think there is a compelling perspective to be had on this, however. When we industrialized food production in this nation, the original concerns included the increase of yields to serve a population that until 1900 was on something approximating a subsistence diet. Secondarily, the goal was to stamp out what at that time and throughout previous history was the overwhelming killer of humanity - bacterial disease. After initial industrialization, another major goal has taken over - maximization of profit. In this scheme, it was easy to wean people down progressive steps of decreasing quality in their food (with proportional increases in profit for the large companies) as long as quantity and disease profiles remained favorable, until we arrived at a place where so called "bread" like wonder bread resembles nothing you would see in a real bakery and has a shelf life of months, and where people's avowed favorite "foods" include things that before industrialization would not have been considered food (e.g., hot dogs, essentially animal slurry, leftover parts).

It seems well worth asking whether it isn't time for us to rethink concepts like pasteurization, which, as this article points out, have actually been used (like most advances of this type) to allow large profit-making bodies to simply become even lazier and therefore increase their margins further. It doesn’t make them evil, but this series of developments was probably inevitable without the kind of periodic correction this article suggests.

Bottom line is this: large-scale industrialized food production like we have now in the US never maximized quality or health for the consumer, and it’s positively whacky now that we have become the world's first over-fed empire. Let's revisit our food assumptions with good science.

Dear Intrigued,

Localforage.com has a list of SF stores that carry raw milk. Just do a search within the site (see right side bar) on "sourceror raw milk" and the post will come up. You have to get to the story on the same day when the dairy delivers because it flies off the shelf. Delivery days are listed.

~carla

I gotta agree with Booklyn Guy -- let's have some substantial studies on this, so we can determine the advantages of raw milk (and milk products) from clean, grass-fed cows vs. the various other dairy options open to consumers these days. Unfortunately, in a post-industrial society like ours we still need to trust good science and good regulation (neither of which seem to be encouraged by the current Administration in Washington), as well as our suppliers and distributers. And then . . . how do we get wholesome food to the hungry?

Provocative article!

In San Francisco (and other parts of california), you can buy Organic Pastrues raw milk, cream, and colostrum at Whole Foods and other health food stores.

You're right, we humans do lots of stuff that other animals don't do, but despite that, it still might be a mistake for us to consume a product that is meant for infants, and in particular, infants of another species.

Could it be that cow milk is, on balance, unhealthy for people? I think it is. However, I don't care if people do things which harm only themselves. That's entirely up to them. My complaint about milk is that cows are abused in factory farms, and their male offspring become veal calves, one of the worst victims of factory farming. For that reason alone, I do not drink milk.

Until you go back to eating raw meat naked in the forest, stop telling people that humans are the only species who drink milk from other species. It's shockingly flawed, easy logic. There's a ton of stuff that humans do that no one else does.

Sorry, I'm biased, I too don't drink milk.

We have been drinking raw milk now for over 2 years. My husband has Crohn's disease and he almost died on our vegetarian diet. We switched to a vegan diet thinking he would get better but not only did he get worse, my breast milk began drying up and my 6 month old daughter stopped defecating. We found Dr. Cowan and the Weston Price Foundation and within 7 days my husband was again walking upright and was able to go back to work after being bedridden for 3 months and having lost over 25 pounds (and he didn't have much to spare to start with only weighing 145). My daughter began having normal bowel movements after I incorporated meat and dairy into my diet and feeding it to her as well. I was not going to feed my child some gross chemical concoction of formula that has no actual resemblance to food. We drink raw milk and eat raw cheese, in fact we make our own ice cream with raw milk and raw eggs and have yet to ever get sick from it. My kids are rarely ill, have never had an ear infection and we never have to go to the doctor. Now a days, how many people can say that?

To the poster who said that people didn't used to drink milk long ago I say that that is totally ludicris.

To the article writer, Hannah Wallace, I say that you did not really do your research and were not objective. The answer to the question is not "No" but "Decide for yourself based on the information provided and research that you do yourself". When did reporting stop being objective and unbiased? Why?

Although the CDC describes links to raw milk and E Coli there were NO proven links to the raw milk if you carefully read the articles. From an article dated Nov 2006, "Multidrug-resistant Salmonella Typhimurium Infection from Milk Contaminated after Pasteurization" is listed on the CDC's website under the search of Raw Milk. In an article dated Oct 6, 2006 "Healthy Pets, Healthy People" there are no actual links to real outbreaks of illness, just scare tactics with no proof behind them. Most of the illnesses reported were done so during the 1980's and are not current. The few that are current do not actually prove that illness came from raw milk but merely speculates that raw ilk could be a cause as in the case of the article dated Oct 6, 2006 they say "IN THEORY, it is possible for rabies virus to be transmitted via milk, but THERE ARE NO PUBLISHED STUDIES that have demonstrated the presence of rabies virus in cows milk". This is merely speculation to scare people away from raw foods. DO the research yourself folks and really pay attention to what you are reading.

The children who almost died in California almost died after being given antibiotics which caused their kidney failire; the children who were not rushed to the hospital all recovered with no problems. There was no E Coli or other bacteria found at Organic Pastures dairy before, during or after the outbreak so how can the outbreak be traced to his farm?

We know where the contaminated spinach came from, it was traced. So how can raw milk be getting the blame if no trace can be found? It is the first step in a shut down that is starting to happen. Raw milk is a big threat to the dairy industry (and the chemical makers that support it not to mention big oil that gets it shipped all across the nation).

What does anyone else care if we drink raw milk? If you don't want to then don't but don't put your fear onto my food choices. I think pasturization is bad but I'm not trying to get the industry shut down, I just don't support it or buy those products.