Oooooooh, somehow I missed the raw milk chat on this thread!
Well, here's my two cents worth... My Dad grew up on a farm, and drank a lot of raw milk from their milk cow. He'd drink 2 gallons or more a day in the heat of summer during haying season. Now, he's back on a farm with his wife and four kids (including me
). We got our first milk cow in July of 2007. Currently, we're milking three cows twice a day. Our family has drank well over 1,000 gallons of raw milk since then, plus many gallons of raw yogurt (yes, we measure our yogurt in gallons
), and many pounds of raw butter and cheese, and have NEVER become sick from it.
Raw milk has many health benefits, as several of you know. Plus, it's delicious! I can no longer drink "store milk." That stuff is one of the most nasty things in the grocery store.
But, if the big commercial dairies were to suddenly stop pasteurizing their milk, and not change their procedures, there would be a LOT of people getting sick. Their milk is not kept clean. I've heard of many dairy employees with the attitude of "Well, they pasteurize it anyway." They strain out any noticeable chunks of "stuff," and then pasteurize the heck out of it to kill EVERYTHING, both good and bad. Then they homogenize it, so that it won't separate into cream and skim milk (homogenizing is a VERY unhealthy-for-you process, BTW). Then they sell it, and say it's a very healthy source of calcium.
Also, I hate their line about "Good milk comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California."
They paint this picture of cows out in the sunshine grazing on lush green pastures, when really this is so far from the truth. They are crowded together in filthy pens, fed hay, grain, hormones, and constant antibiotics just to keep them alive, and then have a short lifespan of about six years.
By contrast, our three cows are ages six, seven, and ten. The ten year old (our original milk cow
) is starting to act old and turn grey, but the other two are still acting very young, sometimes kicking up their heals just for the fun of it in their pasture.
They are fed no antibiotics, no hormones, and minimal grain only during milking. We keep them on pasture with free-choice hay during the winter. They have clean running creek water to drink, and several shade trees. They also have company in each other, without being at all crowded. I think America would be so much healthier if they drank fresh raw milk from small farmers.
Chicken2010: I very much agree with BirdBrain...
"I can appreciate your enthusiasm for a subject that you are studying. It reminds me a bit of myself in nursing school. I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the stuff I was being fed as gospel truth was in fact just that. I didn't know that I was being fed a pack of half truths and some outright lies by very well intentioned good people who had been trained by the same system."
