Pasteurize, baby!

is better for you than the crap that passes for pasteurized milk.

There is a very good reason milk is pasteurized and if you'd ever been in a dairy barn during milking time, you'd know why.

Still, you are free to buy a cow and pasture it in many exurbs. If you want to take the risk yourself, you are welcome to it.

even the cleanest one can keep it is still pretty rank. Cows crap all over everything, including their own udders. There's a reason for pasteurizing. Even if you clean the udders, there's no promise a cow won't crap in the middle of milking. They crap when they crap.

And if you've ever milked one by hand, you know how they can shuffle, kick, and crap. Forget that. These days I get milk at the store if I need it. I don't drink milk (I'm intolerant) but I do use it in cooking.

Properly sterilized milking machines, latched to properly sterilized udders, can withstand the cow crapping in the middle of milking. The milk never has contact with air, let alone crap. Cows crap all the time, as you say.

Still, as I said in my other post, there are other pathogens that cannot be solved as easily as fecal contamination, and the ways to prevent them (preventative antibiotic treatment, for one example) doesn't appeal to the majority of people who want to drink raw milk. It would take a very special dairy to get me to drink raw milk -- I certainly wouldn't drink it from a farmer's market or some other place where I hadn't been able to inspect their milking operation myself.

This is from a person who comes from a family of dairy farmers... the last time I drank raw milk it was wonderful and certainly the cream from it was a heck of a lot tastier than store-bought half-and-half, but I also had a lot more confidence and could watch the cows being milked myself when I walked down there with my glass jug to get a gallon.

Cow teats are dipped or washed with a mild disinfectant but this does not eliminate bacteria.

Milking machines normally receive a hot detergent wash followed by a sanitation cycle with chlorine bleach. This is disinfection, not sterilization. Most bacteria are killed but not all.


Should also note that pathogens can also be in the milk itself when cows have mastitis but aren't symptomatic. No amount of sanitation can prevent that.

The French have been using unpasteurized milk for hundreds of years and it's still available all over the country. So why are the French able to do this without making everyone sick like some would have you believe? They produce raw milk with a uniform set of standards that insures it's just as safe as pasteurized milk. Those standards are much higher than the standards for pasteurized milk. The dairies have to be inspected far more often and the milk has to be sold in a shorter length of time. Other things like the diet of the cow is important so that they produce the good bacteria in their milk that prevents pathogens from becoming a problem. Feed the cow the wrong diet and fail to inspect that the cows are producing enough good bacteria means sooner or later you're going to have problems.

For further reading, see the competitive exclusion principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion

The reason milk is pasteurized is to increase shelf life.

The other vaccines were just to sell vaccines.

Cheers!

Does milk have a “built-in” safety mechanism that prevents bacterial contamination?

No. Disease-causing organisms can only be eliminated in milk through pasteurization or by adding chemicals to the milk. Pasteurization is the best method of eliminating disease-causing organisms in milk and the only method routinely used in the United States.


My farmer uses grass-fed cows and goats to produce raw milk, so isn’t it safe?

Outbreaks of illness related to raw milk have been traced back to both grass-fed and grain-fed animals.



I’ve heard that many organic and raw milk producers are creating sanitary and humane conditions for raising animals and producing “safe” raw milk and raw milk products (like cheeses and yogurts). Does this help reduce milk contamination?
Adherence to good hygienic practices during milking can reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of milk contamination. The dairy farm environment is a reservoir for illness-causing germs. No matter what precautions farmers take, and even if their raw milk tests come back negative, they cannot guarantee that their milk, or the products made from their milk, are free of harmful germs.

Germs such as Escherichia coli O157, Campylobacter, and Salmonella can contaminate milk during the process of milking dairy animals, including cows and goats. Animals that carry these germs are usually healthy.

was there milking away.....birthing calves, swimming in irrigation ditches, cleaning the milk tank....

Never had an issue with that awesome, freezing cold milk in that SS pitcher in the fridge.

That's my proof.

But on this one? Totally. I love raw milk, and I live close to a dairy farm. I see what they do, and their milk is fantastic.

I smoked for 20 years and never had so much as a cough. Its harmless. That's how I know!

drining cows' milk?

really?

I wouldn't drink raw milk as an adult, cause I guess that I know better now..but as a kid, it was the bomb.

I also smoked the dairy hands' Marlboros as a kid, but, as an adult, I won't touch a cigarette.

Age and education, ya know?

Reminds me of the days I used to remove asbestos without a mask.

how many times does one have to drink raw milk without a reaction to call it an "anectode"?

1, 5, 35, 1000? Cause I'm thinking that drinking dairy milk and smoking cancer sticks are 2 WAAAYYY different things...but, hey, I could be wrong

We removed asbestos without masks for decades and never had any problems. Then 3M wanted to sell masks and made up some fictional disease.

Shit is better for you than shit. Damn but that's funny.

Nutrition escapes so many. I hate how the end result makes me giggle.

In the sticks, you can get fresh dairy products and also see where they are coming from. That's about the only benefit of living in the sticks, but I digress.

Funny, how recent studies have tried to find out why the French are healthy

Africa - Although milk consumption in Africa is fairly low compared to the rest of the world, in tribes where milk consumption is popular, such as the Maasai tribe, milk is typically consumed unpasteurized.

Europe - French Roquefort, a famous blue cheese, which is required by European law to be made from raw sheep's milk. According to the regulations in the European Union all raw milk products are "legal" and considered "safe for human consumption", and can be sold without any price, variety or quantity restrictions. However, the European countries are free to add certain requirements, usually special sanitary regulations and frequent quality tests (at least once per month) are mandatory.

France - Raw milk and especially raw milk cheeses are considered the standard for high quality dairy products. Many French cuisine traditionalists consider pasteurized cheeses almost a sacrilege. Many traditional French cheeses have solely been made from raw milk for hundreds of years.

Germany - In Germany, raw milk is commonly called Vorzugsmilch.[11] It is sold widely in all health food stores, large supermarkets, gourmet delis and delicatessen sections of department stores, and in most of the German predecessors of health food stores called Reformhaus. Raw milk is legally sold in the entire country, and the same goes for raw milk cheeses, which are especially sought out and promoted by the health food and slow food movements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_milk

I eat raw-milk cheese. The local health food store sells raw milk - have not heard of any consequences in this town.

There is raw milk and there is raw milk, just as there is clean food and contaminated food.

But then those Europeans, what do they know, after hundreds of years.

I wonder if the OP has posted similar screeds akin to "Another massive 'factory farm egg' recall..." (http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/massive-egg-recall-in-34-states) or "Another 'e coli beef' incident..." (http://www.jamestownsun.com/event/article/id/153371/group/News/) when it comes to factory farmed foods. We pasteurize milk from factory farms because it's festering in disease due to their unnatural diet and living conditions. So, really, pasteurization has allowed for producers to subject the cows to such harsh, inhumane, and unnatural conditions.

Grass-fed beef, by the way, has amazing health (and more environmentally friendly) benefits: http://eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

This country believes in defunding EVERYTHING so Mitt Romney can pay 14.6 percent federal income tax.

I've been told that cheese undergoes ripening and colonization by non-pathogenic bacteria, which makes it safer for human consumption.

Because it has lower water activity, which slows microbial growth. Most cheeses have low enough pH to prevent the growth of pathogens too.

Prevented this. The contamination occurred after pasteurization.

occurs there is not much you can do about it.

Pasteurized milk is a very safe product, but it can and sometimes is contaminated after pasteurization which means it can and does make people sick from time to time. Raw milk contains good bacteria that can prevent pathogen growth. That's why raw milk under the right circumstances, can and is just as safe as pasteurized milk. The OP titled his thread Another "raw milk" incident as if to say that this never happens with pasteurized milk. It does. And since pasteurized milk is often associated with very large milk producing operations, there is the potential to make a lot more people sick.

The main reason milk is pasteurized has nothing to do with pathogen growth and everything to do with increasing shelf life. This allows mass quantities of milk to be produced in a central location and distributed over a large area. So instead of 38 people getting sick, you have 13,000 people getting sick.

If there is a problem with raw milk then I guess you can add colloidal silver to it or something.

Vaccinations were originally developed to fight smallpox. The one's since then were just to sell more vaccines.

Pasteurization occurs either in very large vats or in very large heat exchangers. As such there has to be plumbing, tanks, and bottling equipment which the milk has to go through before it is bottled. All of these have the potential to introduce post-pasteurization contamination.

Raw milk has beneficial bacteria which prevent the growth of pathogens through a process called competitive exclusion, so there is protection against contamination.

And people end up being infected with the disease they were trying to prevent. To some that is a reason to stop vaccinations.

It's a lot like raw pork that way. Trichinosis was way overblown.

I'm not sure why you insist on using fallacious analogies.

For a couple of reasons.
1.The milk is hot. While it is hot, it is killing any bacteria that it is in contact with.
2. All dairy plants undergo daily sanitation. This kills any bacteria that could possibly grow on the equipment.
3. Dairy plants test surfaces for pathogens, even dirty non contact surfaces like floors and drains. Plants can be shut down on that basis.

Can you cite two cases in the past 10 years where several people got sick from pathogenic bacteria in pasteurized milk that was traced back to before the consumer opened the container?

properly of course. And proper sampling and batch testing done. If this is done it is as safe as any other processed food which requires refrigeration. And it is way safer than raw milk. There is just no comparison.


The "raw milk has beneficial bacteria...." assertion has no scientific basis.


http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html#enzymes

who are not old enough to make an informed choice. If you want to take risks ok but it is not ok to impose risks on children.
The fact that you are not convinced of the dangers is not a basis for public policy. The agencies charged with protecting public health in the United States, the FDA and the CDC, are convinced of the dangers. If you encourage someone to drink raw milk and they get sick it is no skin off your back. If the FDA and the CDC fail to warn against it and someone gets sick they will suffer consequences. As for the CDC and the FDA, they form their recommendations based on peer reviewed science. Numbers of sources of information otherwise is irrelevant. Majority does not rule when it comes to food safety. The bacteria don't stop making people sick just because lots of people think they cannot make them sick. "If raw milk is not a hazard...." Yes, lots of things follow if you accept a false premise.

Lots of thing follow if you accept the false premise that raw milk is inherently dangerous. Raw milk is not even close to the most dangerous food out there. All I have to do is point to packaged meat products like cold cuts, ground beef, and sausage, which manages to make thousands of people sick every year and manages to kill with good regularity. So what does the CDC and the FDA do about this? Almost nothing. When the media attention gets too great they have a crackdown, then everything goes back to the way it was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html

So do you really think the CDC and the FDA has a bigger interest in public safety, or the safety of the agricultural industry? Consider that the FDA vehemently goes after raw milk which manages to make very few sick, yet does virtually nothing about packaged meat products. Kinda makes you go, hmmmm, especially when you consider that ridiculously simple things like pathogen testing would make the entire industry considerably safer.

Cargill is the largest privately held corporation in America. If they were a public corporation, they would be #13 on the Fortune 500. That puts them right between AT&T and JP Morgan, with no accountability to public shareholders. The dairy industry in the US is no longer the domain of smaller local dairies. Huge conglomerates control massive segments of the dairy industry. The National Milk Producers Federation is a huge lobby in DC. These people exercise tremendous influence over what you eat and drink every day.

And it is individual dairy farmers who are most adamantly opposed to selling raw milk - or at least want much tighter regulation of it - because they know that outbreaks of sickness from raw milk will have a negative impact on all milk sales. I got this straight from my cousin, who owns a family dairy with his two sons in upstate New York. He is appalled at what some dairy farmers in Pennsylvania are doing. Pennsylvania actually has a pretty good certification program but some Amish farmers opt out of the certification process and sell their raw milk anyway to foodies who are woefully and deliberately ignorant about the risks and wrongly think that because the dairy farmer is Amish he is using organic methods to produce the milk.

So why is the FDA and the CDC spending so much of it's resources fighting a non-problem, while not changing a thing about real problems that continue to get worse? Corporate influence is really the only thing that explains it.

And if raw milk sales really were negatively influencing pasteurized milk sales, as your cousin alleges, where's the data on that? It should be ridiculously simple to prove.

Instead the past administration and the Obama administration is spending huge amounts of money shutting down Amish farmers. Really? It should come as no surprise that the man behind this effort is none other than Michael R. Taylor, who has been going back and forth between the FDA, the USDA, and Monsanto.

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2011/06/07/food-safety-chief-defends-raw-milk-raids/

So you still think it's the raw milk producers that are adversely affecting big dairy's business? The reverse is much closer to the truth, and it's not just raw milk. It's small farmers in general.

Is it a non-problem for the kids on kidney dialysis as a result of drinking raw milk?

"And if raw milk sales really were negatively influencing pasteurized milk sales, as your cousin alleges, where's the data on that? It should be ridiculously simple to prove."

Of course I didn't didn't say that.

"So you still think it's the raw milk producers that are adversely affecting big dairy's business?"

Of course I didn't say that either.

Just to be clear, what I said was that my cousin believes that outbreaks of illness from raw milk will negatively impact all milk sales. Is this a reasonable fear? I don't really know but it might be in light of some of the recent experiences with e coli poisoning from contaminated spinach and other cases of food borne illnesses. When people panic they tend to stop buying products which have been implicated, even in a tangential way. You may think this might be "ridiculously simple to prove" but the real reasons why people buy or don't buy something is not so simple to prove. Correlation is easy enough, showing causation, not so easy, particularly when it comes to behavior.

Basically you're just trying to channel an emotion based argument, and a very poor one at that.

Guess what happened to the woman who recently went on a rampage against he raw milk producer who she claims gave her son kidney disease? Her ambulance chasing lawyer had to settle out of court with the insurance company that represented the dairy. The amount wasn't disclosed, but it couldn't have been much because the dairy got a lower insurance rate the next year. The California Dept of Agriculture also found no evidence the dairy was at fault and reimbursed them for the recall:
http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blogimages/CDFA%20_recall_stipulation_release.pdf

Thanks to the misinformation by the CDC, FDA, and the dairy industry, there's plenty of cases where people allege raw milk is the culprit when they get food poisoning yet zero evidence is actually found linking the source back to the dairy.

Raw milk and lots of other products make people sick from time to time. The question of whether raw milk is a safe product or not does not depend on whether or not it makes people sick. It depends on whether raw milk is more dangerous than other comparable products like lunch meats and ground beef. So far the FDA and the CDC haven't made that case.

The CDC and the FDA also suppress relevant data showing the health benefits of raw milk including two studies which suggest an inverse relationship between raw milk consumption, asthma and allergies while at the same time promoting other studies against raw milk which are dubious at best.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17456213

Kinda makes you go, hmmmm.

society protects kids from irresponsible adults. Your little story proves nothing except that lots of people sue. So what? Proves nothing about whether raw milk is a good idea or not. It is the raw milk advocates who make arguments based on emotion rather than science, not those recommending against it. Basically the argument is it tastes great so it must be good for you. Well so does sugar.

Saying it's all about the kids introduces nothing substantive to the argument and is purely intended to evoke a response from emotion rather than reason. Spinach makes kids sick too. Does that mean we should ban spinach? Hot dogs kill kids with predictable regularity. Does that mean we should ban hot dogs?

If you think that's all there is to the argument for those who advocate raw milk, then you either haven't seen their arguments or you can't understand them.

Bringing up something and then objecting to its having been made a part of the argument is a little silly, imo.

The reason children are invoked is because (1) they are in no position to make a reasoned decision on the risks and (2) they are more vulnerable to the pathogenic bacteria which may be in raw milk. These are facts, not an emotional argument. If you want to label that an emotional argument, so be it, but it is no more emotional than saying that raw milk tastes better and is better nutrition for kids, which is what the advocates of raw milk do say.

Yes there are risks everywhere. But the point is not to take unnecessary predictable and avoidable risks. The risks of raw milk are quite predictable and avoidable.

I know the arguments for raw milk - "nutrient dense," useful enzymes, beneficial bacteria etc. And even if we accept those arguments, I am saying that the risks outweigh any potential benefits because enzymes and beneficial bacteria can be added back to pasteurized milk and the resulting product will be much safer. And the "nutrient dense" argument is based on no science at all that I know of (if there is valid science for it the burden of proof is on those making the claim) so I would say that it is strictly an emotional argument, to use your terminology.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that raw milk is not "nutrient dense" as defined by nutritionists, but no more so than pasteurized milk.

They should have to clearly state to their customers that they use raw milk products and the dangers associated.

Malfeasant bank executives and war criminals are still walking free in America but we've got to prioritize. Unpasteurized dairy products are leaving a trail of bodies everywhere.

nt

or grandchild. There is a big difference between raw milk which has gone straight from your own milk cooler to the refrigerator in the house and raw milk produced and bottled by someone else who you do not really know (you may know the farmer but do you know the guy working for him?)

I would only drink raw milk from my friend's dairy today.

And it is delicious. Think of store milk like the Kraft Parmesan cheese you get in the green container and raw milk like the aged Parmesan you grate yourself at home. There is a huge difference in both taste and quality. http://www.westonaprice.org/

if you made a quality cheese with pasteurized milk and one from raw milk, and used a double blind study, people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

... because it's not as easily prevented as contamination with shit -- which is how this particular outbreak happened... fecal contamination of the milk.

Yes, I have spent a lot of time in MANY dairies. Properly sterilized milking machines, latched to properly sterilized udders, can withstand even the cow shitting in the middle of being milked and not get fecal contamination.

But since the bacteria that cause brucellosis are blood-borne, not fecal born, if the animal that's being milked has it, it's very difficult not to get the bacteria in the milk. Testing herds is a gamble and feeding preventative antibiotics is generally not exactly what "raw milk" consumers want in their milk.

If I ever find another dairy like the one I drank raw milk from, where I could inspect the entire operation and knew the people running it, knew that they watched their cows for signs of mastitis and would not allow them to be milked if they showed ANY signs of bad health... then maybe I'd drink it again.

For now I'll trust Louis Pasteur, who certainly helped prevent much disease caused by milk being stored at improper temperatures or for too long, and who helped make milk a staple that could survive the food chain. Raw milk will curdle when poured in hot coffee three days from the cow.

And people before me for thousands. You need to know your source. It should be legal and it is ridiculous that it isn't. Why do people just assume that other people who do things differently they they do are wacky? I researched and found that raw milk is a far superior food than the milk you buy at the grocery store, which can be legally made from powered milk. Do some research before you just assume. http://www.westonaprice.org/

And thousands before me, as well. It's ridiculous that people try to mandate what other people eat. I eat sushi, and that's a damn sight more dangerous than raw milk if prepared wrong.

Raw milk sharp cheddar cheese is a paradise that most people should experience, in my view. And Roquefort? I love dairy, and it hasn't harmed me yet.

That's one raw-milk product that CDC has given the OK to. Parmesan, too.

But soft cheeses, no.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516.htm

It's a hard cheese.

Stilton may be aged as little as 9 weeks, which might be borderline.

let it age.

It was wonderful stuff. When I married and moved away, it took me a long time to adjust to the taste of milk in a carton. It just isn't the same.

We were scrupulously clean with our milking equipment and milk handling procedure and our cows were tested regularly for brucellosis and tb. Our cows were grass fed with a little dairy feed at milking time and had good quality hay during the winter months.

My dad always joked that our cows gave pastuerized milk. My mom tried to make some kind of cheese one time, but after 3 days of sitting out, the milk had not clabbered so they just gave up on it and threw it out.

If I knew the source and history of the dairy, I would not hesitate to drink raw milk today.

We were stronger, faster, and just better than the other kids. That's why I never vaccinated my own kids.

Does that mean that smoking is not bad for you?

There are anecdotes, first-person stories of isolated incidences, history, and statistics. I'm of the opinion that all these things need to be considered. I've noticed over the years that there is always a story that supposedly proves the opposite of a scientific study (I eat only 500 calories a day and still don't lose weight!....I ate a strict high-fiber, anti-oxidant rich, low-fat diet, and didn't clear up my clogged arteries until I switched to a high-cholesterol, fat-laden diet!....My tumor went away without chemo because I just prayed it away, showing the power of prayer over technology!....I eat a low-cal diet and excericse hours every day but I'm still morbidly obese, which shows I can't lose weight no matter what!....my grandma smoked for 50 years and never got emphysema or lung cancer so that shows that the studies are wrong in saying smoking is a cause of those things!)

There are always exceptions. But to me that doesn't negate facts that are generally applicable.

You say people have been drinking raw milk for centuries. I don't think people have been drinking raw COW'S milk for centuries, have they? Even so, it doesn't mean that some didn't die from it. They may not have known what caused the death, and of course, even if they did, there wasn't an alternative.

As for me, I drink organic. But it's not raw. I've never seen raw milk in the stores.

raw milk is valid. People have been drinking milk long before pasteurization, that's pretty clear. Raw milk has all the enzymes needed to digest the proteins in the milk. People who are lactate intolerant can tolerate raw milk. It is a great source of quality food and worth spending some time looking into it. The health benefits are great, unlike smoking. http://www.westonaprice.org/

Enzymes are important, but they can easily be obtained in other foods, and in capsule form. That's not a reason to drink raw milk.

But I do think organic is worth it, for what it does NOT have in it. And because the cows are pastured or have room, unlike a regular commercial dairy. At least the cows for the brand I drink are.

I love organic milk. I drink only fat free. It seems to taste better to me, but maybe that's my imagination.

There are health food people out there who say that all dairy is bad for you. Hard to know what's true.

Ground beef manages to kill, as does peanut butter, sliced turkey, pizza, spinach, and dozens of other things.

If you want to start checking off things that might kill you, you're going to have a pretty long list.

Yes people used to drink unpasteurized milk and still do. And they got sick then and still do. The fact is we know how to reduce the risk of drinking raw milk. It is called pasteurization. Just as we know how to reduce the risk of smoking by not smoking. The health benefits of raw milk are few and outweighed by the risks. A lactose intolerant person who can drink raw milk can also drink pasteurized milk with added lactobacillus bacteria and they will be a lot safer than drinking raw milk.

The comparison is not valid. Check out: http://www.westonaprice.org/

People don't get sick when the cows are taken care of and the milk is handled correctly. This is a just another way for corporations to control what we can buy. It really is quite simple.

correct procedures. Look at the example which started this thread. The site you linked is not a science based site. It is an advocacy site for "nutrient dense" foods, which is a concept that is not based on peer reviewed science.

Raw milk tastes wonderful, you just have to know the source.

And I'm not going to stop drinking raw milk. I also like rare steaks. I take vitamins, run and oh, I also eat sushi. Please stay out of my business when it comes to what I eat LOL. It's fine to be against drinking raw milk, that's great for you. For me? Oooo, give me raw milk cheese, raw milk and all of the delicious consequences.

Well done.

Sid

and completely trust my former farmer. I recently moved and now am looking for a replacement source. I take it very seriously and will visit farms and check out equipment and how the milk is handled. The health benefits are truly great and the product is far superior than anything you can get in a store. Why shouldn't I be able to consume a product that a local farmer is willing to sell me if I deem it safe and desirable?

We don't have to ride in cars or drive motorcycles, but we all have to eat.

I really wish people would educate themselves about our food industry and the benefits of eating local and knowing our source of food. I wouldn't drink raw milk from a farmer that I didn't trust and or from a farm I hadn't visited at some point. No one has any idea where store bought milk comes from when they pick it up off the shelves, yet they trust that.

stuff is in it, I can tell you, you don't want that in your system. One thing that bacteria is linked with is Guillain Barre Syndrome and as someone who spent a week or so in the ICU last year with GBS and still has residual symptoms, I can tell you it sucks and you don't want it. Maybe it's not worth the risk.

During the week, I delivered milk when I was in high school. On weekends and in the summer, I worked in the dairy. The dairy work involved sterilizing all the equipment, after the morning milk production was processed. One of the interesting things I learned there was that the milk was never exposed to any contamination once it entered the pasteurization process. From the time it was pasteurized to the time it was packaged, it was constantly contained in the stainless steel plumbing system. My job, after the processing and bottling was to sterilize the entire system, which was completely disassembled. Superheated live steam was the sterilizing agent.

From the holding tank that was fed by the milking machines to the actual bottling machine (yes, we only used glass bottles), the milk was completely contained in the system.

While people can get away with drinking raw milk for a long time, in most cases, it only takes one contamination event to make people sick. Pasteurization takes the worry of that out of the picture.

only raw mama's milk for my baby.

Mine came from a Chinese restaurant.

I just remember driving myself to the hospital in such pain and walking into the emergency room hunched over because I had no clue what was wrong with me.

Basically this stuff comes from CRAP. The CDC person who handled my case suspected it was someone who didn't wash their hands properly.

I am pretty sure I wished to die at some point.

Do what the French do. Put standards in place - I'd prefer it at the federal level but it's a state issue really...

They have been moving heavily toward pasteurization. So I guess we are doing what the French do.

The French export more cheese than they use domestically. Try getting pretty much any soft serve cheese inside France and then compare it to the same product inside the US. There is no comparison.

And of course it's the Americans fault and the dastardly EU.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/03/frances-distinctive-chees_n_448474.html

...rather than just saying "nope".

I'm not going to trade jabs with you for the sake of mental masturbation. If you want to play silly condescending bullshit games, feel free to play with yourself. I'm not going to reply to you further in this thread.

Cheers!

First, your text: "The French export more cheese than they use domestically. Try getting pretty much any soft serve cheese inside France and then compare it to the same product inside the US. There is no comparison. "

Now the link: "What has changed is the kind of cheeses the French eat.
Raw-milk cheeses, which until World War II and the arrival of the U.S. military accounted for nearly all French production, now make up only 7 percent of annual consumption, according to the cheese-boosters' group. Now most French people go for pasteurized, mass-produced, plastic-wrapped varieties like emmenthal, camembert and the orange-colored mimolette, and processed cheeses like the Laughing Cow brand."

Maybe the Laughing Cow cheese is better in France?

If it is to be allowed farmers will demand to ship raw milk products nationwide.

I prefer raw milk. It is far superior in taste and feels like it has greater substance. Everything you do entails a risk, when it comes to choosing milk, I prefer the local raw milk from the farm I know.

Nothing quite like it.

Like I said, we all weigh the risks of our actions and take on those risks willingly.

than on the expertise and diligence of a very much larger number of dairy farmers.

I grew up on a farm and drank raw milk.

But I wouldn't drink raw milk sourced from multiple farms, mixed, bottled, transported, and sold in stores.

Raw milk cheese older than 90 days is pretty safe. But not young soft cheeses.

According to a 2009 review, milkbourne disease outbreaks made up approximately 25% of all food and water contamination disease outbreaks in 1938; pasturization is largely credited for a dramatic decrease in milkbourne disease outbreaks, which made up less than 1% of food and water contamination disease outbreaks by 2005.[1]

the right to persona choice. Without doubt, there have been measurable benefits to wide pasteurization. But, more than viruses and bacterias are lost when milk is pasteurized.

Like the drug trade, when products are forced underground and made illegal, they are also made less safe. It should be an individual's choice whether to drink raw milk, pasteurized milk, soy milk, rice milk or no milk.

I think that's where the public health concerns come in. Adults are free to consume what they want.