One Small Win for Raw Milk

Raw-milk proponents celebrated a Wisconsin farmer's acquittal on three of four counts related to selling unpasteurized milk and cheese, bolstering their hopes of legalizing the products in America's Dairyland.

Jurors found Vernon Hershberger, a 41-year-old Loganville, Wis., farmer, innocent of producing milk without a license, selling milk and cheese products without a license, and operating a retail establishment without a license. He was found guilty of one count of breaking a holding order issued by the state in June 2010, which barred him from moving any of the food he produced without a license.

The verdict means Mr. Hershberger can continue to sell his farm's products to members of the buying club he started, said one of his attorneys, Elizabeth Rich. He faces as long as a year in jail and $10,000 in fines for the one guilty count; a sentencing date has yet to be announced.

"This is a huge win for food rights," said Liz Reitzig, a founder of Farm Food Freedom Coalition, a group advocating for greater consumer access to natural, unprocessed food. The case "should give small farmers renewed courage to continue to operate within their communities."

Milk is commonly pasteurized to remove harmful bacteria, but advocates of raw milk say the process also wipes out many beneficial nutrients. Raw milk can be consumed on the farm but can't be sold legally in many states, including Wisconsin.

The case followed a nearly four-year investigation of Mr. Hershberger and his farm, Grazin Acres LLC, by the state, the No. 2 dairy producer after California. During deliberations, which capped a five-day trial in Sauk County Circuit Court, dozens of farmers, food-rights activists and Hershberger family members filled the courthouse, sharing raw milk from Mr. Hershberger's farm.

You are laughably uniformed on the subject of raw milk.

However, you wrote that pasteurized milk won’t make you sick when what you meant was there is less chance of it making you sick, so just clarifying.

Dairy products are by far the least named culprit in food borne illnesses. By far.

Now I’m off to eat some raw oysters, hopefully I’ll survive.

Yeah, the CDC misrepresents their statistics because the government wants to put all raw milk producers out of business by scaring the public with bogus information. Good grief, the CDC reports that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products. You can mince words all you want, but that stat is pretty damning....and staggering.

Now, please explain to me where I am uninformed about the risks associated with raw milk. Like most of your fellow travelers in the church of raw milk, when it comes to understanding science, especially related to food, I find that raw milk proponents are among the most scientific illiterate out there. I blame willful ignorance in addition to a failing government system of education.

Prove me wrong, or run away. We know you can argue minutia, but do you have any legitimate knowledge? Or are you just for show?

Oh, C'mon now. This is why you say things like: Pasteurization is so-called safety, the easy way: kill all organisms in the milk

If pasteurization killed all the organisms in the milk, the milk wouldn't spoil, but it does. So you're wrong.

Then you say something like: instead of handling the cows and milk properly.

How does handling milk "properly" eliminate the many dangerous pathogens that enter the milk from inside the cow? No amount of "proper" handling can eliminate that risk. Clearly, you have no experience with the dairy industry.

Then you continue by saying Americans now are missing out on the biggest health benefit in the milk, the organisms.

Exactly what organisms are not present in pasteurized milk milk, that are present in raw milk, and result in such a loss of health benefits?

This is just some of the overwhelming amount of misinformation in your post. Then you have guys like free me come along and give your trailer load of nonsense a thumbs up.

It's no wonder you guys believe what you do.

If pasteurization killed all the organisms in the milk, the milk wouldn't spoil, but it does. So you're wrong.

First, I was wrong from a technical point of view, in that literally all microorganisms are not killed in the process. What I meant, which I think one could reasonably glean from the context, is that the heating process does not discriminate in which microorganisms it kills.

Incidentally, if the milk had nothing alive in it, it would still be subject to microorganisms that come into contact with it jumping in an making a home for themselves (such as in equipment or after being exposed to the air), so it most assuredly would eventually spoil unless it was kept in a 100% sealed, sterile container.

I'm not sure if you acknowledge that the milk naturally has some microorganisms in it that are "good" organisms, i.e., they do not make a person sick and they go right into the human gut and help it to function.

In that regard, I'm not sure if you acknowledge the existence of gut flora in humans.

How does handling milk "properly" eliminate the many dangerous pathogens that enter the milk from inside the cow?

It wouldn't. But the specifics of the farming operation, monitoring, testing, etc., of the cows would the best way to keep the cows healthy and producing safe milk. One key factor is grass vs. grain fed, and grain feed combined with feed lots is posing an increasingly serious public health threat that large farming operations and their feed and equipment vendors do not want to deal with. A tiny summary of that is presented in one of my earlier links, but the reader will have to research this on their own, carefully wading through information presented from biased points of view on both sides as well as that which is less partial. The other link was to a raw milk producer's site, and it detailed the lengths they go to to ensure pathogens do not wind up in their product.

Exactly what organisms are not present in pasteurized milk milk, that are present in raw milk, and result in such a loss of health benefits?

My links discussed farming practices and the organisms, in much more detail than I can, since this is not my field. Please read through what I linked to in its entirety.

Here are two more links:

http://www.realmilk.com/safety/those-pathogens-what-you-should-know/

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=261615

Who do you think sets the standards for raw milk production in states where it is legal? Those are scientist.

Those scientist say it’s safe.

The old CDC study you keep referring to has many flaws including not making their data sets available and cherry picking the years the study covers. However I never addressed that study to you. I simply pointed out that dairy, ALL dairy, is the least likely cause of food borne illness outbreaks, by far. (that’s from the CDC).

Raw milk dairy farms are nothing like conventional ones. Because the milk isn’t pasteurized the cows don’t stand in their own crap all day. The testing done is extensive.

Modern technology has allowed for us once again to safely consume raw milk without owning a cow.

I drink raw milk mostly because the taste is amazing.

If you wanted to be informed you might visit the website of the raw milk producer referred to in the posts above. (www.thefamilycow.com).

But since you keep posting uniformed nonsense and hysterics I suspect you wish to remain in blissful ignorance.

The fact is that any “raw” food must be handled carefully in order to avoid illness.

Now I’m off to make some fresh squeezed orange juice. It won’t be pasteurized like the stuff in the store but I like to live dangerously.

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