Raw milk outbreak from 2023 reported | Hacker News Reader

Raw milk outbreak from 2023 reported

arstechnica.com

21 pointssea-gold16 comments

If one is willing to accept the risk, where's the best place to try unpasteurized milk for a taste evaluation? I tried it once before, obtained from a small regional grocery chain that sold it with lots of warning signs. I expected it to be a sort of forbidden culinary delight, based on online anecdotes and the fact that people are willing to pay more and risk harm to drink it. But it just tasted like any other milk to me. (By way of contrast, fresh orange juice tastes notably better than the pasteurized kind.)

My dad used to buy raw milk and I attest the same. Meh. We have good local dairy farms and the pasteurized milk is great. I never saw the benefit of raw.

The raw milk I used to have tasted a lot better to me.

I do not know whether that was because it was very fresh (bought from a vending machine at the farm) rather than because it was not pasteurised.

It's almost surely because of where you sourced it rather than its rawness. I have a friend who is a cheese monger, which like what a cool job, and they source fresh high fat content milk from a local dairy farm. He brought some home to us to try since he talked it up so much—apparently it's what they use in their coffee while working—and oh boy it's the best milk I've ever had.

My guess is some wires get crossed where someone tries a raw milk and it's the first not grocery store milk they've had and so clearly the difference must be that it's raw. Can't really blame anyone for the confusion, until my friend talked my ear off about cows I thought milk was milk.

Feed stock for the cattle matters a lot, it's not for marketing reasons that varieties of cheddar range from white to yellow to cartoonish orange. Certain types of cheese (particularly Friesland in the Netherlands) end up with a lot more butterfat than other types of milk.

Good point. I am now wondering if there is another source of fresh local milk.

Almost certainly just the fat percentage. It's common for cows to produce milk at notably higher fat percentage (often more than 5%) than the mandatory minimum standard for "whole milk" (3.25% in the US) that large commercial producers centrifuge and re-blend down to to maximize profit.

Most consumers are unaware that "whole milk" is a specific commercial regulation that does not mean "all the original milkfat", and this gets in the way of educating people about the danger of drinking milk raw. Add a bit of pasteurized cream back into your pasteurized milk and see that it tastes much better.

My house! But seriously, I'd say that "raw" makes less of a difference than freshness and the cow's diet. (After all, milk is made out of what the cows eat, and several notable compounds can only be synthesized with a grass-based diet.) Herd health, breed, cleanliness, and milking frequency all make a difference too.

If you can find a local-ish place that rotationally grazes the cows and milks once per day, I'd say go for it.

Most people don't make a difference between raw and pasteurized milk when drinking it. I tasted raw milk and I don't think I can. Obviously, you need to compare the same quality of milk, full fat is going to taste different than skimmed.

Raw milk cheese is different. Most people can taste the difference between raw milk cheese and pasteurized. It doesn't mean that they prefer the raw milk version though. Raw milk cheese usually have more diverse and intense flavors, but it can also mean more off-flavors and inconsistencies. For me that's what makes it interesting, so, raw milk cheese all the way!

Of course, raw milk and raw milk products are more expensive, and food safety has a lot to do with it. With raw milk, you have to work quickly and with stricter quality control.

Isn't drinking raw milk a very risky thing to do? What's the benefit here?

Not “very”. The pasteurization process is enough to denature some nutrients

Questionable (at best) benefits and yes generally viewed as too risky by most people to consume.

It seems like most people pushing "benefits" of raw milk use the same conspiracy theories to try to say that the many studies are false. And then judging by this particular farm, also downplay the risk and their impact (but not quite 100% since everyone knows there is a risk, it just now much).

If a healty adult wants to make the (questionable) decision to drink raw milk themselves that is one thing. But the parents giving this to their kids should be investigated for child endangerment. There is zero reason that should be acceptable.

Raw = unpasteurized. That's it. Everyone claims it's "better" but that's likely mostly a reflection of freshness since anyone drinking raw milk these days is likely at the end of a very short supply chain.

From a public health perspective yeah pasteurized milk is obviously superior but it's one of those redundancy things that isn't necessary if every party from tit to mouth gives a crap. Farmer isn't gonna sell you crap if he can help it. You're not gonna drink crap if you listen to your nose. Where it gets tricky is when there's a bunch of potential middle men moving a bunch of product who could potentially risk it moving some questionable stuff around and plausibly dodge blame or adulterate the product so it's not obvious that it's bad. Both of which were a problem 100yr ago which is why we have standard pasteurization today.

Personally I think with modern robust supply chains there could be a place for raw milk in the market but it sure would be expensive after accounting for the extra QC one would need to drink it right.

And this is coming from someone who drinks ultra pasteurized lactose free because it lasts the longest.

The benefits: it contains bacteria common in mammalian breast milk, and none of the proteins have been changed by the heat of pasteurization. Many people drink it as a probiotic food, and for the taste.

As for the risks. An industrial milk farm skipping pasteurization would be a catastrophe. That's because some small percentage of the cows have harmful bacteria on the utter or in the milk duct, and industrial farms mix all the milk together. Bacteria multiply in the milk so even a small amount would taint the whole batch.

In order for raw milk to be safe, farms have to keep the milk from each cow separate and test it. Testing for specific bacteria is reasonably accurate and cheap. When you buy a bottle of raw milk, it should be from 1 cow tested independently. That's the modern safe way to do it, not everyone is doing it right.

Small farms have pivoted to raw milk because they can charge more for it. Large farms are unable to do this since they have invested heavily in processes that mix all the milk and heat it. That is the real reason for the raw milk controversy. It's bad for the milk lobby's bottom line. You would be right to think people's choice in milk is a ridiculous thing for everyone to care about, and no one really does; it just seems that way in the media and on the internet.

My cousin in Europe drinks milk from one of his neighbors everyday. He does heat it first, I don't know how hot it gets and if it kills as much as the pasteurization process.

The benefit is you get the freshest milk possible less than a day old, from a cow you can visit and see that it is being treated well. And since its your neighbor you can ask what they feed the cow and say no if they are feeding them newspaper or other shit.

The downside of course is you have to live on or close to a farm, or in my cousin's case be in a country where its totally normal to have animals in your yard in the city. (City outskirts to be clear, 10 minute drive to the city center from his house if that.) I got on the roof once when I visited and saw over the wall his immediately next door neighbor's hogs.

About the risk: yeah its risky but humans have always drank raw milk until very recent times and still do in many parts of the world. You don't drink or sell milk from a sick cow or if the milk doesnt pass the smell test. Drinking raw milk is risky for most people because we live in packed cities and get our milk from factory dairy farms that could be hundreds of miles away or more, and the industry has evolved around the idea of let the animal be unclean, let the animal products be unclean, and then deal with sanitizing the dirty animal products. Milk gets aggressively pasteurized killing the bad bacteria but also the good. Meat (chicken mostly) gets bleached with chlorine. And there's color preserving injections all over to both make the meat heavier by volume and keep it from changing color through natural processes like oxidation. Have you ever seen natural pork be pink for more than a few hours after its been exposed to the air? The ham is a sham.

>He does heat it first, I don't know how hot it gets and if it kills as much as the pasteurization process.

As a dude who regularly buys raw buffalo and cow milk for pasteurizing it at home, i'm pretty sure your friend is doing exactly the same thing, meaning that he's not consuming raw milk.

There's no industrial magic to milk pasteurization. Slowly heating it in a double boiler to 63 Celsius for 30 minutes or 73 Celsius for 15 seconds (while stirring it to prevent scalding or boiling and to prevent the formation of a surface skin of fat you want to stay inside the milk) will sterilize fresh raw milk into being completely safe for drinking and etc.

Useful step if you decide to try the same: cool the milk quickly afterwards in an ice bath, so that it goes to below 20 Celsius as soon as possible. This will prevent bacterial formation during a prolonged cooling process.

EDIT: If you do pasteurize milk at home, it will still be creamier and thus tastier than most store-bought milk. The reason why: because the fat content is higher. Commercial milk producers only need to leave 3.something % fat in their milk to legally call it "whole" milk (at least wherever I've lived). They skim the rest off for other dairy products like sour cream and etc. Raw milk directly from a cow often has well over that percentage of natural fat and you get to keep it all in place.

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