As someone who grew up around a small farm, raw milk is not inherently dangerous. We drank plenty of it and it was always fine. However, it’s safe with caveats, if the milk has been collected in a hygienic manner from a well managed farm with good controls (to avoid contamination with salmonella, e-choli etc) and if it’s been collected from healthy cows. Cows can pass diseases through their milk the same way human mothers can through their breast milk. Probably the biggest ones to be aware of (in the uk at least) are Tuberculosis and Brucellosis but there are plenty of others.
Those are some pretty big caveats. And if they’re not met then there is a reasonable chance raw milk can make you pretty sick (or dead). You may be happy to trust someone else to have the checks and vigilance to be confident in raw milk, but I’m not sure I would, especially from a faceless large dairy corporation. With large commercial herds, there is no way the farmer/s know each cow and its condition when they have so many head to look after. And financial pressure doesn’t push towards erring on the side of caution…
I grew up on a small dairy farm as well until I was about ten. We lost the barn to a fire and switched to grain/beef farming, my parents have always said our “stomach flus” became way less common once we stopped drinking raw milk.
Also this is an individualized view of health, raw milk should be illegal to consume as it increases the risk for all immunocompromised people in our society (which there’s a lot more of these days due to COVID).
Yeah can’t argue with your anecdote, though it doesn’t match mine.
I also agree that raw milk shouldn’t be sold to the public as it’s a dangerous gamble, and capitalism dictates that its production will tend to be more dangerous than less.
![[Not the Onion] Customers are asking for H5N1 milk.](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/efbeb763-21ee-4ba3-accf-b1e6e59dc973.jpeg){kind=link}
As someone who grew up around a small farm, raw milk is not inherently dangerous. We drank plenty of it and it was always fine. However, it’s safe with caveats, if the milk has been collected in a hygienic manner from a well managed farm with good controls (to avoid contamination with salmonella, e-choli etc) and if it’s been collected from healthy cows. Cows can pass diseases through their milk the same way human mothers can through their breast milk. Probably the biggest ones to be aware of (in the uk at least) are Tuberculosis and Brucellosis but there are plenty of others.
Those are some pretty big caveats. And if they’re not met then there is a reasonable chance raw milk can make you pretty sick (or dead). You may be happy to trust someone else to have the checks and vigilance to be confident in raw milk, but I’m not sure I would, especially from a faceless large dairy corporation. With large commercial herds, there is no way the farmer/s know each cow and its condition when they have so many head to look after. And financial pressure doesn’t push towards erring on the side of caution…
I grew up on a small dairy farm as well until I was about ten. We lost the barn to a fire and switched to grain/beef farming, my parents have always said our “stomach flus” became way less common once we stopped drinking raw milk.
Also this is an individualized view of health, raw milk should be illegal to consume as it increases the risk for all immunocompromised people in our society (which there’s a lot more of these days due to COVID).
Yeah can’t argue with your anecdote, though it doesn’t match mine.
I also agree that raw milk shouldn’t be sold to the public as it’s a dangerous gamble, and capitalism dictates that its production will tend to be more dangerous than less.