I confess that I know nothing about most things, only a little about some things, :? and quite a bit about very little, but I do have the internet! 8) A quick search on Mycobacterium tuberculosis turns up sites like the following: https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tuberc ... DSECTION=3 https://www.emedicinehealth.com/tubercul ... cle_em.htm Neither of these articles make mention of unpasteurised milk, so I wondered what Mr Peachey was talking about. It seems he has the wrong bug: from: https://textbookofbacteriology.net/tuberculosis.html Hmmm. "...and rarely in humans." The more I look at the way we do things, the more I suspect that what often passes for science, is actually a process of rationalising untested assumptions(or worse). One of the assumptions here is that food quality can be improved by treating the product after collection (an industrial, post-production approach) rather than by, perhaps, improving the health of pasture (an environmental, pre-production approach). But, as I said, I know nothing. I do wonder, though, if the decline in rates of infection of TB have been matched by an increase in other diseases (eg obesity and its consequences) caused by processed foods. :shock:
mmm obviously forgot mad cow disease there and the hideous amounts of medicines given to livestock to prevent disease as farms became more and more intensive and animals and humans conditions are degraded further. Given my above statement you can see there is good arguments to for possibly not just paturising milk but sterilizing it too.... I feel it all comes back to what were here about permanent culture and encouraging others away from the intensive less permanent consumer driven farming and lifestyles that are currently destroying us and our habitat.
Quite right, EV. A truly sustainable, healthy, culture and society can only be achieved through a healthy environment.
truth behind milk Hi everyone, here are several links about raw milk https://www.realmilkaustralia.com/index.php?page_id=9 https://www.westonaprice.org/ this link have a lot of interesting articles https://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprint ... Schmid.pdf Ron Schmid is the author of "The Untold Story of Milk" According to these articles, raw milk can be a great remedie for several conditions but the milk has to be obtained from pastured (grass) fed dairy cows.
Having recently tasted real, fresh, pasture-produced milk, I can verify that the real stuff is a completely different experience from the substance produced industrially. There is a hubris to the industrial mentality that fools itself into thinking that it has "all the answers", so that everything that is processed industrially must therefore be superior to the unprocessed raw basic product. It is true in many cases, but milk is one product for which this is certainly not the case.
The reason to pasteurise and homogenise milk is not for human health, but to make the stuff last as long as possible before going sour, and look nice for your average city slicker who would shudder to hold an udder. They need that because when you have a herd of a couple of thousand dairy cows, and collect the milk with machines, and put it in a truck to go to the dairy factory to be processed, then put into bottles/cartons and sent to warehouses, then into the supermarkets and across the country - the stuff might be a week or two between cow's udder and being picked up off the supermarket shelf. If it has natural bacteria in it, then it'll go off before it reaches the shop, or at best a day or so after being bought; if it's pasteurised, the bacteria are dead and it'll last. If it's not homogenised, then the fat and milk portions will split up, and when the customer opens the thing they'll see lumps and say, "it's off!" and throw it out. It's not about human health, anymore than it's about human health to breed tomatoes with thicker skin so if they get chucked roughly about in the truck they won't squish. It's about taking a natural product from point A, and sending it to point B thousands of kilometres away, and making sure it lasts and look alright to the customer - that is, to the average customer who knows nothing about producing food. "It's big and shiny, it must be tasty!" Absolutely nothing to do with TB or giving us the squirts or anything like that.
Quite so, Jim Bob. Some time ago food ceased being produced to primarily fulfill the dietary and health needs of the consumer, and became a mere commodity produced for profit, through trade. The more that a product can be moved about, processed, packaged, stored, repackaged and transported, the more profit can be extracted from it. And as with any industrial product, the actual producer receives the least reward for their efforts. Farmers today fork out as much as 60% of their income to the petrochemical industry for fuel, biocides and fertilizers. They borrow the money, and they have to pay it back even if the crops fail. It should be no surprise that milk is not for nutrition. Agriculture is not about food.
While I take your points about profits being more important than the quality of our food and diet, I think you guys are being extremist to the point of absurdity. Spoiled milk can make you very sick, it can kill you. Similarly, however much you despise the industrialised agricultural complex with all its ills, there really can be no denying that it does actually produce quite a lot of calories in the form of food.
If the milk is spoiled enough to make you genuinely ill, then if you are an adult who can smell and taste, you'll notice before you chug it back, and not drink it. Infants and the frail elderly might have troubles, both with noticing it being off and with only very slightly off milk, but aside from that it's not really an issue. What is a health issue is as mentioned before, TB and the like. Those can be present and are not detectable by smell, look or taste. While it's true that present treatment of animals prevents TB and E Coli, it's also true that that treatment - mass giving of antibiotics, use of vast amounts of water for cleaning (the dairy industry alone uses 1/4 of Victoria's water, mostly for watering paddocks and cleaning out milking sheds and equipment) is what makes the milk safe even without pasteurisation. So if you want to do without the industrial treament of milk by pasteurisation, then you have to put up with the industrial treatment of cows on the farms, and vice versa. Either way, it's industrialised. While it's certainly true that the agricultural industry has been very effective at delivering us cheap calories, it's failed in other areas - mostly resources and the environment. The average Australian has 100lt of milk annually, and 10kg of cheese, yoghurt, etc. To produce this requires 1/9 of the country's water overall, or 2,200 gigalitres, or 110,000 litres per person (source for water use). This is in the range of the water used by you in your house each year if you're pretty wasteful. That glass of milk (250ml) took 250 litres of water to produce. Hell, the water probably has more calcium in it, it'd just be harder to drink! None of this considers the water and fossil fuels required to move the water about, produce the antibiotics, transport the milk and so on. So while the milk, like all our industrial agriculture products, is cheap in dollar terms, it's not cheap in resources. Therefore when the resources run short, it's going to become a lot more expensive in dollar terms, too. So it turns out not to be so cheap after all - cheap today, fucking expensive tomorrow. The story of a goose who laid golden eggs comes to mind.
Hmmm... The raw milk I get lasts at least a week in the fridge, longer if I haven't opened the bottle. It doesn't go off in a day or so. In terms of what makes you ill from milk - there are good bugs and bad bugs. Milk going 'off' is not a problem in and of itself. In fact most cultures intentionally make milk go off as a way of preserving it without refrigeration. And problematic bugs can exists in milk that isn't off. Also, there is a distinct difference between what happens to raw milk as it ages and what happens to pasteurised milk. Raw milk sours naturally and is still edible once it has. Past. milk doesn't sour but goes bad and tastes bad (apparently, I can't stand past milk so have never tried this). One of the main benefits of raw milk is in fact the life that exists in it. Those bugs both assist digestion, and keep bad bugs in check. I'm not sure that disease isn't an issue - once you start mass producing and marketing dairy you have no way of knowing the source of any contamination, so it makes sense to pastuerise then. I feel extremely safe in buying raw milk because I know the farmer and I know that he and his family drink their milk daily, plus many other local families, so he is going to know pretty damn quick if there is something wrong, and he has a very high incentive to keep his dairy clean. I'd also add that he farms organically and doesn't use antibiotics or other chemical inputs to offset not pasteurising, and he's not farming industrially. I'll have to ask him about the water issue, but he lives in a reasonably wet climate. I do agree that water is a huge issue for commercial dairying, especially in terms of irrigation. In NZ dairy farmers are desertifying the east coast by stealing ground and river water to force pasture so they can grow cows in a dry climate. Complete idiots. I'm a big fan of raw milk. I wouldn't want to see it commercialised though. You have to know who is producing it. Keep it local.
I'm guessing the raw milk you get, it came from the cow that morning, from some farmer you know and trust, yes? As I said, the milk most of us get, it'll typically be 4-10 days from cow's udder to supermarket shelf. Taking away 2 days for the pasteurising and homogenising, if we got raw milk it'd be 2-8 days old by the time we got it. It just wouldn't last. I'm aware that raw milk turning sour is not a health hazard - but try explaining that to your average person living in a Western city. It's the same reason we see large, colourful, flawless-skinned, but tasteless fruit and vegetables on the supermarket shelves. Consumers just expect this, and go by look rather than inherent quality, because they're not knowledgeable about what inherent quality is - they've never been to the actual source of the products. A young woman will be able to tell you the difference between Target nameless brand and Versace, but can't sew on a button, a young man can tell you the difference between Holdens and Hyundais, but can't change a tyre. When practical knowledge is lacking, people go on appearances - that's just human.
I do know that when I was wwoofing on a small farm in southern India, and we had fresh buffalo and cow milk every day in our coffee and breakfast dishes, it waws homogenised in that the cow milk was mixed with the buffalo milk... The farmer also insisted on pasteurising it - putting it in a pot on a stove and gently raising the heat until it had sat at a certain temperature for a certain period... Of course it still tasted wonderful.
Just came across this in a list of mangulated words: ""Lactomangulation"" "n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the "illegal" side.
Jim Bob, it's true that I get my milk on the day it's come from the cow. But I don't do that everyday, only once a week or so. I get lots of bottles and put them in the fridge (and make yoghurt etc). As long as I don't open them, they are ok, although obviously the cream will go globby eventually. The point I was making is that raw milk DOES last (at least the stuff I get does), and lasts much longer than a day or two, so there is no reason why people can't get raw milk that is cold stored even if it's not from the cow that day. i.e. short shelf life is not a good reason for pasteurisation. Of course having local house cows is probably the ideal (I'd be interested to see some permaculture analysis on sustainable milk production, especially in a post peak oil world). I agree that there are alot of weird reasons for pasteurisation that are more about commerce than problems with raw milk. I also agree that the modern world is largely mad.
now this'll give away my age and cultural/religious upbringing. I remember well the "free" school milk of my early years. Came delivered in neat 1/3 pint bottles. Cute. The metal crates of bottles came delivered with a HUGE block of ice on top. But the nuns used to make the men who delivered it stack it in the sun. We weren't allowed to drink it until lunch time. It was putrid. We got caned if we didnt drink our milk. It was OK to drink it and then go vomit in the long grass. It put me off milk for years. I was just starting to accept milk when you buggers started with this post. I vomited all over again. Even as a six-year-old I couldnt understand why we werent allowed to drink the milk when it was first delivered in the morning. Eventually enough parents complained about their kids getting sick drinking the putrid milk, so the P&C raised money to buy a long bench style fridge to store the milk. Once the nuns got the fridge, they used to hide some of the milk ((to use themselves))) and there was never enough to go around. By then, I didnt care, I was more than happy to "miss out". Apart from instilling a strong revulsion towards milk, the whole episode provided me with a great education/insight into corruption and unethical behaviour by those who society ascribes status for their piety and good works. Appearances arent all they seem - which is basically what JimBob was saying a few posts back!!!!
Richard, do you know why they mixed the buffalo and cow's milk? Was it a taste thing? Or more economical to use them together? Did they make fermented products as well?
Good thread. I knew we pasturised milk to kill off bacteria and a couple of types of harmful virii but I didnt know anything past that. https://www.thehealingjournal.com/prev_issues/2007_apr_may_raw.htm This lady has written an in-depth article on this and other health issues surrounding milk. floot
lysteria I don't know much about TB in milk but I know one of the reasons for pasteurisation is for Lysteria. This type of food poisoning can cause miscarriages. A friend of mine lost twins after she ate 'farm cheese' made from non-pasteurised milk. I believe it is banned, also the manufacture of cheese in Aust. I have heard that we can import cheeses made from non-pasteurised milk but they have to be adequately labelled. I'm not sure that this is the current regulation. As for the 'coctail of chemicals' I can't account for the taste of fresh milk v pasteurised but I know there aren't any chemicals involved in pasteurisation, merely heating the milk to a certain temp (From memory about 60°C) and then refrigerating it. Similarly from what I know about homogenisation, the milk is passed through a fine mesh under high pressure which dissipates the fat molecules. I'm all for permaculture principles but can we please go without the sensationalist stuff, stick to the facts? We don't want to lose credibiity.
milk and MS I know, from unfortunately personal experience, that there is a link between dairy consumption (worldwide) and MS. With the frequency of MS increasing each year (along with a swag of other inflammatory disorders) I wonder if pasteurisation has anything to do with it. Does anyone know if Norwegian milk is pasteurised? Apparently dairy farming communities of Norway have an incredibly high incidence of MS where as fishing communities in Norway have the opposite. Same genetics, same climate, different diet.
