Beyond the Raw/Pasteurised Divide | Hacker News Reader

Beyond the Raw/Pasteurised Divide

milktrekker.substack.com

39 pointsmerrier15 comments

The microbiology of milk and milk products in certainly complex and 'raw vs. pasteurized' is an oversimplification, but practically, most people look at milk and cheese with "is this safe and healthy to consume" in mind. So when the author says this, it avoids that question.

> "There are many factors influencing this ecology which I will refrain from getting into further in this piece (teat treatment, animal bedding, milking equipment, climate, herd size and health, farming practices)."

If all milk was produced by a herd of cows living off the grass in some bucolic Swiss canton, with a careful farmer ensuring no udder infections etc., well, it wouldn't be a concern.

However, what if the cow was injected with growth hormones to double milk output per cow, and then treated with prophylactic antibiotics to prevent the resulting udder infections, and locked in a stall and fed with alfalfa laced with three different kinds of herbicides and pesticides? What happens to milk with trace antibiotics when you try to make cheese out of it using microbes?

See this:

"Whole-Genome Sequencing of Drug-Resistant Salmonella enterica Isolates from Dairy Cattle and Humans in New York and Washington States Reveals Source and Geographic Associations. (2017)"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28389536/

If you're going to ingest that product, ultra-pasteurization will at least kill all the salmonella, but even so it doens't sound that great.

> However, what if the cow was injected with growth hormones to double milk output per cow, and then treated with prophylactic antibiotics to prevent the resulting udder infections, and locked in a stall and fed with alfalfa laced with three different kinds of herbicides and pesticides?

Then your meat and milk would be illegal to sell, in every country in the world but one.

I have a personal, non proven, theory about Salmonella. I think it used to be a in a lot of food, but we didn't care most of the time as we were used to it. With things getting cleaner, we got sensitive to it, and it's now a problem because our immune system can't fight it as well and people get very sick out of it.

I remember we used to get eggs from an old lady in my mothers village when I was a kid. Dirty eggs, full of chicken crap, very cheap (5 francs a dozen).

They had a rich and flavorful taste, texture was full and round, and you felt like eating a ray of sunshine at breakfast.

One day friends from the city that ate only supermarket stuff came by, and ate the eggs. They loved it.

And they also got very sick.

The eggs could have been marinaded in salmonella but if you cooked them (which you did?) they'd be sterile and safe afterwards. So maybe a coincidence or something.

Yet the USA bleach their eggs so I assume there is a risk a contamination somewhere.

But yes, it is all anecdotal.

Don't knock it, it's still useful evidence even if just one data point. I don't like the HN habit of pinning anecdotal on things just so as to dismiss them.

> So when the author says this, it avoids that question.

Because raw vs pasteurized gives you no idea on that point. You can get Listeria-infected pasteurized cheese and get very sick (it happens every ones in a while, due to mishandling in the factories) and you can eat raw cheese for your entire life at a country-level (France for instance still has a lot of raw cheeses) without significant health effect. The seriousness (that is: regulation and controls) of the entire production line matters much more than pasteurization of the input milk (which merely ease the process for industrial, more than it offers any protection to the consumers)

The raw milk products that are sold are generally from something approaching your Swiss cows, yes. There are legal controls of various sorts in countries where raaw milk products are available. This is my local raw milk/cheese/butter/etc dairy for example https://fenfarmdairy.co.uk/

If you know and trust your farmer, and if you are in good health, raw milk is great. We've fed it to our kids since age 2.

If you don't want to drink raw milk but would like to enjoy a fresher, more plain milk taste, I strongly recommend whole microfiltred milk.

I don't know if it's available everywhere, but it's a process that is legal in France as an alternative to pasteurization, and it preserves some of the milk original qualities, albeit not all of them.

My kids have been raised on organic raw grass-fed milk widely available in California. Also, our eggs are never refrigerated - we buy them from farmers' market and they say out even in the hottest summer days - no issues so far and they don't wanna drink any other milk! The best thing abour raw milk is that it's naturally homogenized and they drink true whole milk without any complaints!

Been drinking raw milk for years. Also noticed that some lactose intolerant people are able to consume raw milk without any issues. People have been drinking raw milk from various mammals for eons. The risk associated with it is when dairy farmers don't use hygienic practices or make mistakes. When mass producing milk at scale, hygienic practices eats up time and money, so pasteurization provides a blanket solution to not having to waste time being too careful or worrying about making a hygienic mistake.

There is nothing that raw milk could offer that would make me risk drinking it. Cheesemakers should get an exception though.

That’s wild! Where I live In Australia, I have access to a huge local farmers market community. Nothing wrong with the raw milk I can buy. Actually I have pretty bad intolerance to dairy from the super market or heavy processed dairy. But I can say the goods at my local dairy farmer.

I buy almost nothing from the shops.

Used to drink raw milk as a kid when spending holidays at my grant aunt village. It was usually still warm.

It's the most delicious and easier to digest milk I ever had. I have wonderful memories of it.

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