Letters to the Editor
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I drank raw milk for years. Now, i haven't for years, and i wonder...
I grew up on a 'hobby' farm (technically commercial, but not our primary source of income), and in my '20s in college went to the trouble to seek out a farmer who'd sell raw milk. Now, years later, post Army and Navy, with tooth problems, etc, reading this article makes me want to find a new source.
It is true that were raw milk to find a mass market, there would be problems with quality assurance. The same thing was said about such things as 'organic' food (as in 'naturally grown', not as in 'composed of hydrocarbons'). There continue to be quality assurance problems due to unscrupulous producers and distributors, but most of your readers would not consider ceasing their consumption of organically grown produce because of this.
As far as the criticism of raw milk being the purview of 'well-off' people goes: i am not well off; i am a midwesterner. One of the benefits, i suppose, of living not in close proximity to big cities, but, rather, to farmers' fields would be a comparatively ready supply of raw milk. {Everyone knows someone who knows someone...}
Which brings me to the only other possible problem with mass consumption: distribution. To wit: were raw milk to find a mass market, as with organically grown food, it would not remain an 'elite commodity' for long. I'm a long standing member of our local 'store-front' food co-op (not an underground 'buying club'). When we were the only game in town for locally produced 'organics', we were smaller than a dress-shop (which is, in fact, what our old store-front has become). 'Organics' have become mainstream. Every grocer in town stocks them, and we've had to expand our co-op in leaps and bounds. I see no reason why the same thing couldn't happen for raw milk (which, for some reason, seems to remain some sort of esoteric food to urbane folk).
The quality of food production in the U.S. in the present day is phenomenal compared to that which most living human beings experience. I can't see how mass produced raw milk would work any differently than the other foods we consume. When we discover problems with quality and safety in our food supply, it is only a lack of will that stops us from solving them.
Speaking of lack of will: about those other human beings...
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I don't care so much about raw. . .
. . . but milk surely tastes better when the cows get to graze. And the quality of the pasture matters, too.
I grew up in the West of Ireland, surrounded by rich, green pastures full of small, shaggy cows. I even worked one summer for a large-animal veterinarian, so I'm well aware of the potential for unsanitary conditions on small farms, and the health troubles of cattle. Cows there got tested regularly for Tuberculosis and Brucellosis, and the farmers themselves were at risk for Brucellosis, a terrible disease.
The only time I've ever had raw milk was in France, while on a student exchange. The family I stayed with would walk down the road with a tupperware jug and an egg carton, to pick up milk and eggs from the neighboring farm. The milk was still warm from the cow, but the barn was ankle deep in muck, and the farm's dog seemed to be allowed to lick the sieve. . . this did not inspire my confidence. They, like all French farmers, had their health certificate posted prominently, so they were somehow managing to pass inspection. Oddly, it's sometimes difficult to find milk in Europe that's *only* been pasteurized - they seem to feel that as long as you're pasteurizing it, you might as well go whole hog, and sterilize it, so it will last for weeks in an unchilled box. The flavor of that stuff is ghastly!
So, I'll be sticking with the (regular, not ultra-) pasteurized organic milk, but I'll keep spending upwards of $8 a pound for Irish butter for my table (I can't afford to cook with it at that price!). Since it rarely snows in Ireland, the cows get to graze at least a little all year, and the flavor is incomparable.
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And then there's TB and Brucellosis
Even though I grew up on a Scottish farm drinking raw milk every day, I wouldn't consider it now. Besides all the strains of salmonella out there, some of them quite deadly, TB and Brucellosis are also things you definitely want to avoid.
BTW raw milk did nothing for eczema in my case. I suffered from it all through my childhood, raw milk and all. Fortunately it disappeared at puberty. No teenage acne for me, just blessed relief from itching and flaking.
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Truely A Catch 22!
I have heard the positive and negative arguments about raw milk. My daughter's teacher told me about how she and her family were continually reinfected with strep throat when she was young, and they finally traced it back to the raw milk they were drinking. But as I see the orders grow larger and larger at my chiropractor's office, who has a raw milk and cheese delivery brought to her office on a weekly basis, I believe it must be beneficial!! It just goes back to the idea, you need to KNOW where your food comes from. EAT LOCALLY!!! And pay attention!!
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Like I'd Believe ANYTHING the FDA says...
These are the same chuckleheads who are trying to tell me cloned meat is good for me. They're so far in the pocket of the agribusiness dairy/meat lobby their heads are covered in lint. I should trust them?? Yeah, about as much as I trust Halliburton and Bush.
The FDA is not about protecting the American consumer, it's about protecting agibusiness, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to wake up (and read Marion Nestle's "What to Eat.").
If the FDA says it's bad, that must mean you'll see me rushing to my food co-op this weekend to buy a bottle of raw milk. I've seen it there for sale, but didn't really know what it was for. I'm actually looking forward to trying it.
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Oh gosh, not those local-food elitists again!
It seems that every time a food-related topic comes up on Salon, a certain number of correspondents use it as a reason/excuse for touting "locally produced" foodstuffs over "imported." Please folks, get a clue...planes, trains and trucks are part of our culture, they're not going to go away, they are remarkably safe and efficient means for transporting various foodstuffs to people who would not otherwise have the opportunity to eat them. (Or drink, for the matter - bet a lot of you just couldn't do without your French or Chilean wines, right?)
"Locally produced" food is fine, but it's essentially a Luddite sub-cult of the American Way of Eating in the New Millennium.