Here in NC I recently heard of one of these buying clubs that transports unpasturized milk products (and other stuff) across state lines to NC. It was stated that they come from “Amish farms up north” that supply the club. I told the person promoting the club that I think one would be taking one’s life into one’s hands if one chose to consume such unpasturized products.
Well now, that’s the consumer’s choice is it not? It’s getting so that the only people who have a choice in this country are pregnant women.
I’m not knocking you, but I grew up on a dairy farm. I consumed raw milk from about 2 to about 18. I had no problems. It’s good stuff — way better than that pasteurized pond water you buy in the store.
While I would agree that there are standards to be met, raw milk is the best tasting, best for you version of milk there is. When I was a kid, I drank raw milk from the cows on my grandparents' farm. It's all in how healthy the cows are, and how clean the operation is. Both of which my grandparents knew first-hand. All I cared about was the tall, cold, really tasty glass of milk.
I grew up drinking whole milk straight from the cow. I milked the cow before school and again when I came home. I am now 66 years old, six four and 265 pounds and stronger than ninety percent of the young men I know. That unpasteurized milk really messed me up something terrible. I continue to destroy my health by eating cantaloupe, watermelon, blueberries and vegetables from the garden and wild blackberries that grow all around here. Sometimes I wash the berries, sometimes I just eat them as I pick them. I wonder if I will live much longer.
I strongly believe that it is unsafe to consume unpasteurized milk products.
I believe just as strongly that it is the right of a free people to eat whatever they like, regardless of the results. If the government has a right to tell you not to eat raw milk, what about saturated fats? What about HFCS? Artificial sweeteners? The list is endless.
Either we possess our own bodies or we do not. If we don't, there is literally no end to what the government can and will do to "for" us.
Well a few decades after pasteurizing came another invention widely used today even in transporting food. It's called refrigeration and they make trucks well equipped for refrigerated transport.
Most farms who grow their own food, milk their own cows, and process their own meat understand refrigeration and use it. The milk in these cases isn't sitting in a milk can on the side of the road it's immediately refrigerated thus the chances of contamination, bacteria, etc, are pretty low. Most farmers have far more common sense and knowledge of handling their product than some commercial operations and most involved government agencies.
The reason many of these laws were enacted was prior to everyone having immediate adequate access to refrigeration capabilities. To be honest I'd really worry more about store bought items as some retailers have no qualms about putting refrigerated items back in the cooler that have been sitting in carts perhaps hours.
“I think one would be taking one’s life into one’s hands if one chose to consume such unpasturized products.”
My family owned a dairy when I was a kid, not a very big one only about 40 cows. We grew up on raw milk, made our own butter from that same raw milk. Raw dairy products are no more dangerous than pork or poultry products, it’s all in how it’s handled.
Back in the day cows had a lot of diseases that could be transmitted through milk. Modern technology has cleaned them up. No one would add a cow to their milk herd without having her tested. Most states are now considered brucellosis free and I haven’t heard of even one cow with tuberculosis in my lifetime in my area but these diseases used to be common.
Pasteuration was vital when the process was discovered and has saved countless lives but modern technology makes it much safer to drink unpasturized milk than ever before.
We are transplanted city folks who drank raw milk and made our own butter with it for over 10 years. It was wonderful and no one was ever ill. You need to inspect the farm and know the dairymen. Most are super clean. They and their children and grandchildren drank it, as well. Selling legally out of the bulk tank was extra money for some farmers back when milk prices were awful, as they are now.
We also still eat farm eggs. They _are_ washed. We eat farm pork, beef and chicken every chance we get and often butcher it ourselves. Ditto with venison.
Most of what we are told is simply scare tactics. Back during the Depression, the Feds killed pigs and dumped milk to make them cost more on the excuse that they were *helping* the farmer get a better price. Then, the city folk were filled with propaganda about how the farmers “at least ate free” in order to stir up a farm/city animosity.
Do you think, in the event of of some sort of disaster or emergency, that the inspectors will be there or anyone will care? People all over the world subsist on their own milk and meat and have for thousands of years. The human race survived. Farmers understand cleanliness in producing the final product.
You would be wrong about that.
How do you think the human race survived for all these thousands of years without pasteurization? Pasteurized products are a recent phenomena.
Just a word to the wise.... if you come on FR as a noob and start talking like you're promoting big government control of everything, or that you're believing their propaganda, you're not going to last long around here.
Unpasteurized products, milk and eggs or not, are NOT the health issue that the government would like you to believe. There are too many other factors that play into whether the E. coli or salmonella are going to cause you problems than just whether or not it's been pasteurized.
Besides, pasteurization hasn't put a stop to those kinds of outbreaks anyway. They still happen.
We don't need government control watching out for us. all for our own good, of course, cause they know better what's good for us than us ignurint, unwashed masses could possibly know.