I don’t really understand the concept of illegal raw milk though. Why can’t people consume raw milk if they want? If anything, make it illegal to feed to children (except of course, raw breast milk!!)
Some of the comments in this thread really left my head scratching. Food borne pathogens were a major burden on humankind for millennia, advances in microbiology and hygiene have massively improved the life span. All of that gets belittled in the comments as some minor stomache ache.
Btw the rules were not made “a long time ago”, the law restricting the sale of raw milk was passed in 1987 in the US.
I just find it weird that we start applying germ theory to combating tubercolosis outbreaks, find out raw milk is a problem, FDA makes recommendations to limit the sale of raw milk and sell only pasteurized milk back in the 1920's.
Now there's this whole rejection of past experience and known dangers because of a belief in the naturalistic fallacy. Not everything "natural" is good for you. Drinking milk as an adult isn't even natural. It's nice sure, but it's not natural.
43 states allow the sale of raw milk in some form or another, but this sale is largely restricted from grocery stores. Of course the FDA recommends limiting the sale of raw milk, why wouldnt they? On a commercial scale allowing the sale of raw milk in grocery stores could be disastrous. But it’s not consumed on that scale and that’s outside of the context of this discussion - which is about it being legal to drink (not sell) raw milk.
These are false equivalencies to the question of restricting raw milk consumption. E.g., it’s illegal to not wear a seat belt because i don’t want a stranger splattered on my windshield - that affects me yet i would have had no choice in the matter.
Think about the question of limiting lead content in food stuff; the equivalency would be bacterial testing requirements in raw milk, not the restriction of consumption of raw milk. You can support advances in microbiology and hygiene without legally restricting raw milk consumption. The consumption of tuna isn’t illegal yet undoubtedly if you ate tuna every day for a few months you would likely contract lead poisoning!
Others can get contagious diseases from milk. That affects you. You didn't make the choice to drink that raw milk.
> Think about the question of limiting lead content in food stuff; the equivalency would be bacterial testing requirements in raw milk, not the restriction of consumption of raw milk. You can support advances in microbiology and hygiene without legally restricting raw milk consumption. The consumption of tuna isn’t illegal yet undoubtedly if you ate tuna every day for a few months you would likely contract lead poisoning!
The gigantic difference there is that it only takes one bad bottle of milk to kill you or make you seriously ill whereas eating something with slightly elevated lead content won't do much and only becomes a problem with long term exposure. I'm also pretty sure you don't check the lead content of every batch, but instead do sampling. You can't do that with milk because as noted it only takes one.
I’m still not convinced that the answer to local farmers selling raw milk to their friends should be outright jail time - rather than enforcement of testing standards. I’m not familiar enough with the upfront costs of that to know whether it’s economical. You mention it “only takes one” but the reality is contamination in raw milk is rare enough that it is also essentially a long-term risk as well, particularly when consuming from 2-3 cattle.
Again, I dont drink the stuff but i certainly sympathize with rural communities that believe it’s in their rights to do so.
Put up next to those, a ban on buying raw milk seems kinda odd. If we're gonna ban selling raw milk why not ban serving raw fish too? "But it's safe if it's fresh and prepared properly". So is raw milk.
I'm not saying this is good. I won't personally eat raw hamburger or raw seafood. I have no urge to drink raw milk. I think you're playing Russian Roulette with your intestines if you do.
It just reminds me of weed being illegal (still is in a lot of the US) but tobacco and alcohol being legal despite the massive amount of lungs and livers they have ruined (not to mention stuff like drunk driving). Winners don't do drugs of course but it just doesn't make sense to ban this drug but allow that one which is arguably worse in every way.
Edit: thanks for the answers everyone. My mum’s a dairy farmer and so was I during my high school weekends. My family’s been drinking raw milk for the past 20 or so years.
So it’s interesting to know what scary stuff is out there lurking and that a debate has formed around something I had grown to normalize. Tb is obviously a big one and my family being near a native forest increased that risk.
Honestly though, the only thing about drinking raw milk for me was you needed to shake it to mix the 2 inches of cream on top. So now I live somewhere I can’t even buy fresh milk, every time I get the milk out of the fridge it gets a habitual shake :s
Raw milk itself isn’t bad, it’s just very very easy to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria.
Proponents of raw milk claim it has health benefits due to the lack of cooking, both on a chemical level and a bacterial level.
"It's not bad for you, it just makes it incredibly likely to get contaminated with pathogenic bacteria"
Raw milk itself is fine, it’s in fact incredibly nutritious- which is why it’s so difficult to keep it from being contaminated. It’s a great breeding ground for pathogens.
In my mind, anti pasteurization types are like anti vaxx light, they didn’t have to live through times where food borne illnesses ran rampant, and therefore don’t appreciate what our scientific ancestors have blessed us with.
>“Raw milk is not pasteurized, or heated up to a temperature of 140 degrees F for 20 minutes, a process that kills off bacteria that can cause foodborne illness, including Salmonella, listeria, and E. coli.
TL;DR: food poisoning
> Prior to industrialization, dairy cows were kept in urban areas to limit the time between milk production and consumption, hence the risk of disease transmission via raw milk was reduced. As urban densities increased and supply chains lengthened to the distance from country to city, raw milk (often days old) became recognized as a source of disease. For example, between 1912 and 1937, some 65,000 people died of tuberculosis contracted from consuming milk in England and Wales alone. Because tuberculosis has a long incubation period in humans, it was difficult to link unpasteurized milk consumption with the disease.
There are also liability implications if it is served in a commercial setting, which many jurisdictions just don’t want to have to deal with.
Counterarguments? Is there a big need for dairy milk if, say, oat milk or something else can provide the calcium and other vital nutrients Americans usually get from milk?
The obvious alternative is not oat milk but pasturized milk.
My dad can tell the difference between oat and lactose free dairy milks in tea, so he has both in a day.
You can't do raw milk at scale - so no one will be allowed to. Raw milk yogurt and cottage cheese is out of this world my mom(Russian) and friends in Lithuania with a farm make this as well at the farm and the difference is night and day. you really should try full fat raw milk cottage cheese with honey and walnuts.
In North America, many of these laws were passed in the early part of the 1900s [1]. I don't think that were very many mega producers at the time, though I'd love to be proven wrong.
Also in my experience it's really hard to avoid contamination. My family farm works hard to keep their cows healthy, happy, and clean, and still has occasional issues with high somatic cell counts in their milk. It doesn't help that cows will (rarely) decide to release their bowels while you're milking them...
[1] https://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/a-legal-history-of-ra...