CDC admits not a single person has died from consuming raw milk products in 11 years Learn more: ht

reply to post by TechUnique


There are some bacteria (and/or viruses, but I don't recall clearly) that can be within a cow and not make it sick, but will make a human who consumes it's milk very sick. My wife milks a cow and processes the milk into kefir, yogurt, cream cheese, cream, etc. We are very "conscious" of our consumption and the raw food argument is mostly garbage. If you are concerned with taking in good bacteria, make some kefir or yogurt and you will get the good without much risk of the bad.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the freedom to risk their health over principle or even just preference, I am simply suggesting a stable course when consuming milk (especially if you have little ones with developing immune systems - not to say that you should coddle their immune system, but risking serious illness is simply gambling with your child's health - and for what profit?).

Originally posted by PrimalRed
Alcohol deaths are a bit misleading as decision making is factored in. People don't die from drinking one drink, some things to keep in mind in respect to alcohol death statistics.
Drinking Heavily for years= alcohol related death
Drinking too much in one night can= alcohol related death
Crashing your car drunk= Alcohol related death (more than one if you kill someone else
Doing something stupid while drunk= alcohol related death
With most of those things the danger is in the choice people made with alcohol not the alcohol itself.

With raw milk it can contain a number of things that can kill you or make you sick from having one glass. So stupid decisions can make alcohol kill just drinking raw milk can make you sick. Im not saying that raw milk should be illegal im just saying that statistics can be misleading.

edit on 17-11-2011 by PrimalRed because: (no reason given)

Like I and others have said before me..
You have to always check the manufacturing source of whatever you are buying to consume.

Anything can kill you under the right circumstances, obviously common sense plays a major role. Raw milk should NOT be illegal although I know you aren't arguing against that.

The whole legality of raw milk is a whole other can of worms, well at least in california it is. In california raw milk is legal yet the advocates insist that it is not. In california (and other states) you can produce and sell raw milk so long as you get the permits and you allow your milk to be tested for safety. This always leads to the appeal to conspiracy. So what happens is places start selling and producing raw milk without a permit and play the victim card when they get raided. The permit thing is not exclusive to raw milk, to sell any type of food you need some type of permit and health inspections even if you are producing conventional milk.
Raw milk is legal, what they want is to be unregulated which is dangerous for everyone.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


We all know how many people die every year in this country from prescription drugs and that is perfectly legal and even expected, what a joke.

Still I also remember when I was a child that milk was delivered in horse carts in big metal containers, the glass bottles came after, until the I left the island it was still delivered in glass bottles, during the 80s all that was gone and you could only buy milk in stores.

My grandfather had a farm that is how we always got fresh milk, they also made cheese and butter.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

We all know how many people die every year in this country from prescription drugs and that is perfectly legal and even expected, what a joke.

Again, misleading statistics
Abuse of RX drugs to the point of OD = death by RX drug
Suicide by RX drugs= Death by RX drug

And prescription drugs are not "perfectly legal" they are heavily regulated which is why they are prescription drugs and not OTC

S & F for a positive post on raw milk.

I can't buy raw milk in Michigan so I have my own cow. The whole thing has been an educational process for me and has turned into a passion. Raw milk earned it's bad reputation over a hundred years ago when city dairies were established to take care of two problems. 1. A need for milk in the city. 2. Swill from the whiskey distillaries needed to be disposed of, so they fed it to the dairy cows. The mortality rate of children under the age of six sky rocketed compared to the children who were raised in the country. They traced the deaths back to the poorly fed dairy herds inside the city.

The cows were fed mash from the distilleries rather than grass, and the milk they produced was bulked up with flour or plaster to make it appear fresh.

source

If a cow is fed it's natural diet of hay and grass there will be no e-coli present. Cow's are ruminant animals and have an intricate digestive system. When they are fed grains or swill (grain left over in distillaries) they get all sorts of infections and bacteria that can cross over into their milk.

I wish some reasonable adults who are not motivated by profit would come together on this issue and give it a fresh un-biased look.

Yes, there were raw milk deaths in the past. We know what caused them. We also know how to have healthy and safe raw milk. There is a risk involved in many things we do and we still do them (drive an automobile, etc). To take away our choice of raw milk is repressive.

I believe the concerns started out as a health and safety issue but grew into a multi-billion dollar heavily lobbied industry with the guy in the middle making all the big profits.

I guess screwing the farmer and the consumer is the American way.

Milk be it raw or processed is not good for your body. Dairy has a laundry list of negative effects on the body, some of which are increased BMI and increased risk of allergy. Human beings were never intended to drink cow's milk baby cows were.

Show me another species of animal that for all of it's adult life suckles the tit of another species other than humans.

Originally posted by hardamber
S & F for a positive post on raw milk.

If a cow is fed it's natural diet of hay and grass there will be no e-coli present. Cow's are ruminant animals and have an intricate digestive system. When they are fed grains or swill (grain left over in distillaries) they get all sorts of infections and bacteria that can cross over into their milk.

two things here
1. That is just not true
2. You are combining 2 different issues. Grass fed cows and raw milk are two separate things, to say otherwise is just wishful thinking.

I wish some reasonable adults who are not motivated by profit would come together on this issue and give it a fresh un-biased look.

Are the raw milk producers also not there to make a profit?

I believe the concerns started out as a health and safety issue but grew into a multi-billion dollar heavily lobbied industry with the guy in the middle making all the big profits.

So if a raw milk producer made it big and started making lots of money would they be the bad guy then?

I guess screwing the farmer and the consumer is the American way.

edit on 17-11-2011 by hardamber because: (no reason given)

The big dairy companies have just as much to gain as the smaller farmer. Do you think that the larger producers would not immediately jump on the band wagon and save millions by not pasteurizing their milk if they could? Think...

I grew up on real milk and to this day i will still stop at the farm and grab a gallon when i can there is nothing better than milk from the bulk tank at the local dairy farm.

That being said its self life is incredibly short so i can understand the pasteurizing process as a way for it to be more stable and bacteria free for a longer period of time since not many people live near a farm to get fresh milk daily.

Originally posted by Dilligaf28
Show me another species of animal that for all of it's adult life suckles the tit of another species other than humans.

Show me a human that suckles the tit of an animal? We are the only species that milk another species but we are not the only ones to drink the milk from another animal. We are also the only ones who use the internet, is the internet bad for you, what about clothes cars? We are also the only ones to farm vegtables, should we not eat vegtables that are produced on any type of farm?
Cats will drink milk from another animal, what about all carnivores? Do snakes only eat the dairy free mammals?
explain this

www.thenakedscientists.com...
Red Billed Oxpecker, a bird that can perch on the udders of an Impala and drink its milk. Elsewhere, in Isla de Guadalupe, feral cats, seagulls, and sheathbills have been observed stealing the milk directly from the teats of elephant seals. So perhaps milk stealing does happen a little more than we currently know.

The "Green" tobacco that your not allowed to talk about on ATS has never killed anyone in the last couple thousand years, I could add a "learn more" but it would be removed as this post will most likely be. Yay Free Speech

reply to post by mileslong54


Its probably not that you are not allowed to talk about it and it is probably more of a case you just spamming the subject when we are talking about raw milk and your weed has nothing to do with anything

reply to post by PrimalRed


Are you associated in any way with the dairy industry? Do you know what a dairy farmer gets per pound for milk?

What do you know about grass fed dairy cows? What do you know about a ruminating animal?

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what you are talking about, but you are not coming off that way.

ETA: I have more to say. When I come back from doing chores I'll post.

reply to post by PrimalRed


You missed the point. No other animal on earth regularly ingests milk from another species. Yes sometimes birds and such may drink some milk but are they doing this every day day in day out? Chances are they are not so your comparison doesn't really stand.

Your internet comment is a straw man.

You feed the cat milk it doesn't go get it all of its adult life from another animal.

Originally posted by PrimalRed
reply to post by mileslong54

 

Its probably not that you are not allowed to talk about it and it is probably more of a case you just spamming the subject when we are talking about raw milk and your weed has nothing to do with anything

I can see you've learned a lot in your 17 days here.

Originally posted by Dilligaf28
reply to post by PrimalRed

 

You missed the point. No other animal on earth regularly ingests milk from another species. Yes sometimes birds and such may drink some milk but are they doing this every day day in day out? Chances are they are not so your comparison doesn't really stand.

That is what we call moving the goal post, you said

Originally posted by Dilligaf28
Show me another species of animal that for all of it's adult life suckles the tit of another species other than humans.

And i did, now they don't do it often enough to please you. So now you want an animal that does it every day, you moved the goal post.

Your internet comment is a straw man.

No it isn't, it was a question. A straw man would be "you think milk is bad, cats drink milk OMG YOU THINK CATS ARE BAD!!"

You feed the cat milk it doesn't go get it all of its adult life from another animal.

It does if you feed it milk or if it hunts small rodents outside it gets milk. Feral cats get milk too
www.mastozoologiamexicana.org...
The whole "humans are the only ones to drink milk from another animal" thing is BS

Originally posted by hardamber
reply to post by PrimalRed

 

Are you associated in any way with the dairy industry? Do you know what a dairy farmer gets per pound for milk?

Does that really matter?

What do you know about grass fed dairy cows? What do you know about a ruminating animal?

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what you are talking about, but you are not coming off that way.

ETA: I have more to say. When I come back from doing chores I'll post.

edit on 17-11-2011 by hardamber because: (no reason given)

I noticed you really did not address anything i said, you simply just started questioning my knowledge on the subject as if it would make anything i said untrue.

i guess the old visual test and old sniff test has stood the test of time. It is pretty common sense training fro chilsd to adult. If it smells bad don't drink it. If it has bacteria on it, do not eat it. I need the government to tell me this or create a study on it, wasting my money?

Originally posted by mugger
i guess the old visual test and old sniff test has stood the test of time. It is pretty common sense training fro chilsd to adult. If it smells bad don't drink it. If it has bacteria on it, do not eat it. I need the government to tell me this or create a study on it, wasting my money?

A little too simplistic, I highly doubt you or anyone else can smell Campylobacter, e coli and Salmonella.

Where do I start?

First 1837 illnesses purportedly from raw milk in the US. No deaths. Sounds scary doesn't it. Put that into perspective. Out of 300,000,000+ people in the US, 1,837 were sickened by one of three strains of bacteria attributed to raw milk. That is 1 person out of 163,310.

www.cdc.gov...
www.cdc.gov...

According to the CDC, there were 19,089 bacterial illness and 68 deaths in 2010 from all known sources. The primary source for these infections were from beef which was contaminated during slaughter, and other foods contaminated by the human handlers.

Here is a news flash for you, even processed pasturized milk, or previously clean meat can be infected from the unclean habits of the preparers of the food. Who doesn't know that you must not cross contaminate veggies and other foods, with the raw chicken you just cut up on your counter cutting board. You can wash your hands 50 times, did you wash the knife? When did you last completely clean your cutting board? Did you pour your child a quick glass of milk, while you prepared the dinner, and handled the ground beef for the main course?

The point I am making is: There is a tendency to act in extremes over very small (.000000612%) percetages of contamination from raw milk. It is much more likely (.00000575%) yet still unlikely, to have contamination from any other source. Now granted, they state that the actual number of illnesses is probably higher, because many people are not sick enough to seek care. Is it worth removing a nutritious raw food from the food chain, for such a small risk?

Secondly, anyone who has every studied biology, taken a prenatal class, or bothered to read any literature on raising a newborn thru toddler, KNOWS that the best nutrition for babies is Mother's milk, their own mother's milk. As they grow, they may be introduced to cow or goat milk, gradually. Their tummies are not outfitted to digest the foreign milk. Early introduction leads to lactose intolerance and allergies. So the injuries to the under 5 year olds, should already be mitigated by the fact that the babies aren't exposed to the cow milk, raw or otherwise.

BUT, our society, our consumeristic society is led by the big corporations who want you to purchase their formula, their FORTIFIED brand of milk, etc. Their milk that is produced on farms where massive numbers of animals are kept in close quarters fed less than nutritious by products of other manufacturing ventures as well as the ground up bone meal of chickens and other things.

Don't be fooled by the propaganda out there. Read the information for yourself. Do the math. The CDC provided the statistics. The numbers themselves show how big of a mountain was made of the molehill. In the CDC report read further to where they list the COSTS of the food bourne illnesses. $7 million dollars for one patient's diarrhea. Please. That is only because of the corporate mechanism which creates it's own supply and demand. From cow, to milk, to fear, to raised cost, to grocer, to consumer.

Our own stupidity is feeding this farce.