Raw milk is dangerous anyway, bird flu or no bird flu I'm surprised its sold.
1. (And this is the most important) we literally have a solution to it not being safe.
2. When things are unsafe, we (generally) make sure that people are properly educated about the risks. The people pushing raw milk are doing the exact opposite.
3. When something is unsafe, we try to figure out how to make it safe or find an alternative (see 1)
From what I can tell, raw milk per se is not likely to be problematic, but problems can get injected if the cows and/or general milking operation are not handled well. Pasteurizing milk could plausibly be seen as a quick fix to not have to deal with such things well. On the other hand, who would I trust to actually handle raw milk with excellence?
Sounds to me like low-temperature pasteurization might be the best compromise? Kills off what is harmful, but supposedly retains more of the original nutrients?
Part of the issue is that the current farms doing it are heavily regulated and also specialize in this product. If there's deregulation, you're going to see a free for all in states with light regulation.
I personally think the whole thing is very stupid, and considering all of the raw milk illnesses that have been occurring (especially with bird flu), the status quo is fine. But if exposure is expanded...
I do care that it won't give me food poisoning though, that's a lot higher up the list of concerns than vitamin provenance.
More controversial assertions circulate around protein and enzyme content, but studies have failed to find anything making raw milk more "digestible" or causing any detectable contribution to immunity or allergy. The FDA has an extensive discussion on this: https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/raw-milk-...
Most people would probably reject that; they know how to swim and the government should butt out of it. From my personal perspective, informed by my background as a lifeguard and competitive swimmer, I dispute the swimming ability of most of the general public who claim they can swim. Most people who claim they "can swim" are just barely capable of not drowning under ideal conditions. Mandating life preservers for anybody who jumps into a lake or pool would without a shred of doubt save many lives every year. But should that really be done? Is protecting people from themselves really what we should be prioritizing before all else? Sometimes we should let people enjoy things, even if it may kill them.
Perhaps. I don't think someone should be allowed to sell them that way, though.
No, but they do regulate who is selling it. You can't find a cruise ship without life preservers on it - even if you really want to, and you're all about raw water or whatever.
The issue with raw milk isn't random people using their own cows to drink raw milk. The issue is people selling it en-masse. They will lie about the dangers, ensuring their consumers are as uneducated as possible, and then certainly sweep the predictable deaths under the rug.
If you truly don't believe me, go ahead and look at raw milk influencers. When I say they speak almost exclusively bullshit, that's not an exaggeration. Typically they engage in all forms of pseudo-science. Crystals, alchemy, anti-vax, you name it.
These people aren't trying to be honest about the dangers. They live in a parallel universe with different rules.
It's not protecting people from themselves - it's protecting consumers from those who would kill them for a quick buck (i.e. pretty much any anybody if they could get away with it)
Anyway, if people want to practice alchemy too, let them. Let people drink quicksilver if that's what they want to do.
Yes, I already said this. My point was about the dangers around allowing the commercial sale of raw milk and how that’s a fundamentally different problem than just allowing raw milk.
Sometimes they sell sacred geometry pendants and whatever other made up bullshit too.
Point being, they’re almost never honest. So, if they’re telling you raw milk is not only safe, but will cure a variety of modern ailments, just… grain of salt.
They rely on having an audience of gullible and health insecure people.
Symptoms of foodborne illness usually include: Vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain Flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, and body ache
While most healthy people will recover from an illness caused by harmful germs in raw milk – or in foods made with raw milk – within a short time, some can develop symptoms that are chronic, severe, or even life-threatening. If you or someone you know becomes ill after consuming raw milk or products made from raw milk – or if you are pregnant and think you may have consumed contaminated raw milk or cheese – see a healthcare professional immediately.
The Dangers of Listeria and Pregnancy Pregnant women run a serious risk of becoming ill from the germ Listeria, which is often found in raw milk and can cause miscarriage, or illness, or death of the newborn baby. If you are pregnant, drinking raw milk — or eating foods made from raw milk — can harm your baby even if you don’t feel sick. Raw Milk and Serious Illness Symptoms and Advice
We'd consider it a serious problem if we detected it anywhere (drains, door sills, etc).
However, it's from our own dairy, and we know and trust our own sanitation/storage.
By analogy, my neighbors raise chickens, and they occasionally eat them. I wouldn't think twice about that, or about eating a dinner they shared with me. But darned if I could imagine regularly tracking down raw chicken in a wet market instead of buying it from an FDA-inspected place.
That should be "because" not "despite". Your body needs to acclimate to the microorganisms/contaminants in your foods. It's quite likely if you gave that same raw milk to someone who lives very cleanly, it would make them quite sick.
This is quite common when people from developed areas travel to much less developed areas.
So if you're controlling for risk in other places I think anyone would be fine with that.
But the impact of 1 bad batch of milk getting mixed into a supply for an entire region, is a lot worse than your small scale. The risks probably aren't as well controlled at other farms as well.
Definitely think a difference in scale is a difference in kind here.
It's interesting how often situations occur where there's a whole lot of people who are RIGHT even though they sound like they have opposed opinions.
Can the human mind unravel the mysteries of why it might be okay to drink raw milk from your own cows while holding large scale commercial endeavors to a higher standard? I think it's possible. I'm optimistic.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-safe...
- "Robert Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a proponent of raw milk consumption, disclosing in 2023 that it is the only milk he drinks."
https://www.statnews.com/2024/11/24/bird-flu-h5n1-raw-milk-l...
That’s certainly a good idea, since those products have been repeatedly shown to increase all cause mortality.
However, there is strong industry (and bipartisan) pressure to block the parts of his agenda that make scientific sense, so I’m not particularly optimistic.
Maybe apply pressure to your representatives? This seems like a rare case where they could have a big positive impact.
How is "ultra processed" defined?
If he wants to make useful changes perhaps stop corn (high-fructose) subsidies and get rid of tariffs on 'regular' sugar.
Accepting that HIV and AIDS are linked would also probably be useful for a Secretary of Health:
> In his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the War on Democracy and Public Health, Kennedy writes that he takes "no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS,"[292]: 347 but spends over 100 pages quoting HIV denialists such as Peter Duesberg who question the isolation of HIV and the etiology of AIDS.[311] Kennedy refers to the "orthodoxy that HIV alone causes AIDS"[292]: 348 and the "theology that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS,"[292]: 351 and repeats the false HIV/AIDS denialist claim that no one has isolated the HIV particle and "No one has been able to point to a study that demonstrates their hypothesis using accepted scientific proofs.": 348 He also repeats the false claim that the early AIDS drug AZT is "absolutely fatal"[292]: 332 due to its "horrendous toxicity."[292]: 298 Molecular biologist Dan Wilson points out that Kennedy falsely claims that Luc Montagnier, the discoverer of HIV, was a "convert" to Duesberg's fringe hypothesis. Wilson concludes that Kennedy is a "full blown" HIV/AIDS denialist.[311][292] Epidemiologist Tara C. Smith suggests that Kennedy's book "even flirts with outright germ theory denial," quoting a portion where Kennedy contrasts germ theory with terrain theory.[312]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#HIV/AIDS...
Also, not denying the effectiveness of vaccines:
* https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/how-rfk-jr-fals...
Nor should it. The government is not my mom, it does not have the right to dictate what I (or anyone else) can and cannot put into my body. By all means, regulate it and come down hard on anyone who doesn't meet the regulations. But an outright ban is stupid and always has been.
I bought unhomongenized milk from him, but he would not even consume his own "home grown" raw milk or feed it to his family the day it was obtained from his cows. He ran everything through a pasteurization process prior to consumption.
I do wonder how many folks actually are preferring the unhomogenized flavor vs. the "raw milk" flavor and simply don't understand the difference? Having had both a long time ago, I really don't think I could have told you the difference in taste.
It's crazy to me such a mundane subject as become a political statement. I do wonder how much further society has to fall down this rabbit hole before it recovers - or if it ever does.
A healthy human might not get too many problems, but children or a weakened immune system can have far reaching consequences that includes death. Raw milk/cream certainly is different than the usual supermarket version, but for food safety the laws are just damn sensible. So sensible that most countries implemented them without question.
You can buy unhomogenized milk pretty easily at health food stores etc. People generally don't prefer it though because shaking it is annoying, it curdles more easily in cooked applications, and spoils faster for some reason. But for people with a culinary preference for the "raw" texture it's an option. But most people wanting raw milk want it for political/ideological reasons not gustatory ones. An insane sentence I could not have imagined needing to write 20 years ago.
You can also just mix skim milk and cream right before drinking. Tastes richer for a given fat content.
(We started doing this when we had people who wanted skim, 1%, 2%, and whole all sharing a fridge. Though later we ended up with people only wanting whole and the small taste improvement wasn't worth the hassle of mixing anymore.)
The flavor of milk changes with what the cow eats, so if cows are on pasture then the flavor will change over the year as the grasses change and if they are on hay for part of the year that obviously changes the flavor as well.