Raw Milk Facts

Erika,

You might want to check out a book called “The Untold Story Of Milk”,
by Ron Schmid. Lots of info in support of raw milk.

Amazon has a summary at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0967089743/ref=mp_s_a_2?qid=1290686729&sr=8-2

Dan

Does the CDC put out “Morbidity/Mortality Weekly”?

It’s a real publication with reported disease data reported on a weekly basis (if I’m remembering fro my microbiology classes correctly).

Also, Erika, you are on the Food Democracy Now (http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/) mailing list, aren’t you? They might have some facts already sorted and compiled.

Once again the industry argument of guilt by association is “kicking the dog”. The fluid milk market is over-producing and thus, prices are low. The standard ag econ response – get bigger to spread the fixed costs. That makes perfect sense, produce more milk into a saturated market and when that doesn’t fix it, blame the dog (raw milk)! For crying out loud, they’ve already got a government price support structure that the raw milk folks don’t get to dip into. What more can they want?

The arguments that will be thrown at you for banning its sale will likely be the “x” number of bacterial species that are found in raw milk, many of which are also not destroyed completely by pasteurization.
Here are a few things I ran across from googling “raw milk”.

OPDC milk products are highly pathogen resistant. In more than 120 million servings, and more than eight years of intensive testing, not one single pathogen has been found or detected in our raw milk samples.

As part of the Food Safety Program at OPDC, OPDC tested all of its cows manure in the summer of 2008 and found no Ecoli 1057H7 present. The manure pathogen tests were performed at the UC Davis and CDFA milk products lab in San Bernardino CA.

In summary, it has been theorized that the combination of grass feeding, no antibiotics used, no hormones, and low levels of grain used in diet cause a change in the cows immune system and rumen. This change in physiology directly inhibits pathogen development in the milk (actually a transfer from environmental contamination that does not seem to occur; there are no bad bugs in the manure that transfer into the milk and the clean raw milk is highly pathogen resistant).

http://www.organicpastures.com/faq.html

Production of nisin
Raw milk contains lactococci. If favourable conditions for growth occur then high numbers will result. Some Lc. lactis strains produce the antibiotic nisin. Nisin is a broad spectrum antibiotic and if produced it will inhibit some starter cultures …….
Natural indigenous antimicrobial proteins

The ability of raw milk to inhibit the growth of many bacterial species has been known for many years and one of the earliest reports was authored by Hesse in 1894.

http://www.dairyscience.info/inhibitors-in-milk/51-inhibitors-in-milk.html

Sorry, I started to get carried away!! Get ’em Erika.

@dominiquer60 22305 wrote:

I am sharpening my pencil and preparing for what those western NY farmers have to through at me. The guys in the east don’t care and would rather vote yes and support keeping opportunities open for those that don’t have the chance to inhert mega dairies.

Give ’em hell, Erika! Best of luck to you. Might help if you invite a reporter from a respected local paper to attend the hearing. Bureaucrats listen much better when someone is taking notes… Somehow people seem to associate QC with larger operations. That’s a crock…

Carl,

You are right with regard to both the right to provide TO a customer as well as the right of the customer to CHOOSE a product. You all might have a better handle on what to expect “argument -wise” from the opposition but I would be concerned that the “food safety” points could hurt the raw milk side unless they are addressed in a well-thought out respone.

If it comes down to the “rights” of one group vs the “perceived” safety of consumers, you know where most legislators will place there vote. That’s not to say the rights aren’t an issue nor the benefit(s) from having a way for new small farmers to get in the game.

I don’t know about taking this approach, but one could make the argument that milk (even pasteurized) is not a “safe product” with the evidence being the number of illnesses resulting from consuming pasteurized milk. But in reality, no is meat or any food stuff is “completely safe”. There is always some risk in eating – and one variable is the consumer’s knowledge of proper handling and preparation.

I do agree milk is a great medium for growing stuff – good and bad. But knowing that, why wouldn’t we ban all milk and milk products? Because we, the public, are willing to accept the risk (big or small) of consuming those products – AND they’re yummy.

On a side note, hang tough Erika. As inspiration, 3 local residents here in ID are still fighting the good fight against Conoco-Phillips and Exxon-Mobil – trying to stop hundreds of giant loads of oil processing equipment from using a 120 mile+ scenic hwy headed for the Alberta oil sands. So far, these folks have been able to get an injunction, get over-ruled by the ID supreme court and then force another session of public meetings.

Check out http://www.fightinggoliath.com for inspiration and info. Small voices can make a difference.

Hi yal!

hope i’m not too late to chip in, here’s a page that i think will be interesting.http://www.healthbanquet.com/raw-milk-raised.html

and there’s a personal testimony from my grandfather, who told me he would often wait as a kid on the barn treshold for his mom to milk the cows, and then drink the milk straight from the bucket.
he’s over 80 now, fit, nimble, and still has all of his teeth!

i’m all for raw, so good luck!