Letters to the Editor
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maybe I should start smoking
It's interesting that I live in a country where I can buy cigarettes, booze, guns, lottery tickets, motorcycles, and trans-fatty foods, yet it's against the law to buy raw milk or cheese.
When I was in France last month, I bought some of the stinkiest cheese imaginable (I also stocked up on Mexoryl 60 spf sunblock, also curiously forbidden by our lovely FDA)...it was absolutely delicious!
So yeah, I can take up smoking for 20 years and most certainly develop lung cancer, yet I am denied a pleasurable experience because someone has already decided I'm not "responsible" enough to take my own risk? I've had a couple of bad cases of food poisoning from restaurants, and I sure as hell never received a "choice" in the matter.
We let 18 year olds go to war, but they are not allowed to eat what they want beforehand (I wonder if a death row prisoner would be denied raw milk as a last meal request!).
How about regulating and testing batches of raw milk? Or like the other reader suggested, reintroducing the cultures after the fact?
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Very interesting
My young daughter loves to drink milk and we do buy the organic milk - intereseting how it was treated at the higher temperatures. I admire people who go to the lengths they have to get unpasteurized milk. Everything we eat/drink these days - we hope it's safe. Thanks for a very interesting story.
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thank you-- some nuance!
As someone who picks up their raw milk on the day it is delivered (to our local Coop, no less!), thank you for a reasonable article. Our local raw dairies work SO hard to comply with incredibly stringent regulations, and they do it in good faith.If my government wants to do something about food safety, it is MUCH more logical to go after confined animal feeding operations and meat packing plants. I am drinking am impeccably clean product, and I'll take the chance that a pathogen might live on my food (gasp! like nobody ever had food poisoning!). I know it's much riskier to eat a fast food hamburger.
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Inquiry
Anybody know where one could pick up some raw milk in San Francisco?
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immune system
I grew up on a dairy farm and drank raw milk as a child. When it was time to get vaccinated for samllpox, the vaccine didn't take! Now in the business of public health, I took the smallpox vaccine after 9-11. Still no take! I've always wondered if drinking raw milk as a child had an effect on my immune system and its reaction to the vaccine!
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Unable to get raw milk in Alberta, Canada
Certainly the diseases some people have contracted from drinking raw milk, cheese and yoghurt give one pause--but so do the more slowly developing and widespread ailments that many of us struggle with daily (from asthma to arthritis to severe digestive problems) and which may be linked to changes in our diet during the past 100 years. I'm interested that the letter writer who so casually dismisses the work of Weston Price wants to remain anonymous--this Canadian dentist's research has had a profound impact on the work of many doctors and dentists, nutritionists and naturopaths (his research on root canals certainly changed my life, but that's a whole other story). His book is worth reading (follow the link in Wallace's article).
In fact, I was impressed by the range of alternative viewpoints that the various live links took me to, allowing me to make up my own mind--which unfortunately, in Canada (and most especially in Alberta) I won't be allowed to do. Weston Price's homeland or no, Health Canada forbids the sale of any milk that is not pasteurized. Indeed, you can't even give raw milk away. Under the Health Promotion and Protection Act in Ontario, for instance, one faces a fine of up to $5000 for selling, offering to sell, delivering or distributing raw milk. Sale of any milk outside the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) iron-clad marketing system seems to be illegal. This past November, a farmer in Ontario who was operating a cow-share program had his farm raided. His response was, first, to continue to deliver raw milk regularly to the owners of his cows and, second, to go on a hunger fast on which he drank only water and one glass of raw milk daily.
Unfortunately, his milk fast won't have the impact he might hope--although his good health may continue, it could (according to the Food Safety Network) simply be a result of his own strong immune system (that is, having been drinking raw milk from his own cows for years, he won't get sick from levels of pathogens that might quickly make newcomers to the milk quite ill). Reading the article and aware of the risks, I nevertheless investigated the possibilities of finding raw milk somehow in Edmonton--I suppose it's a measure of the balanced nature of the article and the complexity of the debate that I'm not devastated by my discovery that I won't be able to.
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udder shudder
A while back I demanded more titty stories but this is not exactly what I had in mind. In fact, this story is udderly ridiculous and completely unsafe to drink. But then again, maybe if the Salon folks would secretly drink some raw milk they might possibly reverse their chronic disease of publishing stories that most folks would shudder to udder or drink...
:~)face
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While I appreciate that some people may feel they have been helped...
...by the consumption of raw milk, these are anecdotes. I don't remember where the quote came from, but it is nonetheless true: "Anecdotes are not a science. Ten anecdotes aren't a science. A hundred anecdotes are no better than ten."
Yes indeed, some people may have been helped by raw milk. Some others may have attributed their newfound health to it, mistakenly. Many, many others have fallen ill because of it. There is a very good reason why pasteurization is mandated - and it's not just to feed some fat government bureaucracy. Just because someone has dodged microbes for several years doesn't mean that they won't have a chance at getting them tomorrow; they've simply been lucky. Overall, I'd like to see what percentage of people suffering various illnesses see a spontaneous remission in their disease and compare that to the percentage of people suffering the same illness who are 'cured' by raw milk. If the numbers are different, then we have something worth investigating.
And that's the key here - investigation. Until the benefits of raw milk are investigated, all we have is anecdote and leaps of faith. I should think it would be worth such an investigation - because if we do determine there to be a benefit, and that benefit can be attributed to a cause, we can then research, duplicate, and produce it so that *everyone* can gain that benefit.
T