The Plain Dealer – March 05, 2006:
Pssst . . . got raw milk?
Christina Trecaso does; the unpasteurized product — which is illegal to sell in Ohio — is chilling in the refrigerator at her Copley Township home. Just don’t ask Trecaso where she acquired the fresh-from-the-farm liquid. The underground doesn’t share its secrets.
Ohio outlawed raw milk sales to consumers in 1997. In 2003, the last dairy farm grandfathered into selling unpasteurized milk to individuals relinquished its license following a salmonella outbreak. Raw milk can carry disease-causing organisms that cause a host of foodborne illnesses, according to health officials.
“Is raw milk worth the risk?” asked Mizer. “This state doesn’t think so.”
where is Nancy Regan when her country needs her???
Glad to see my old hometown has finally made the big time. My CHS pride is at an all time high.
“Is raw milk worth the risk?” asked Mizer. “This state doesn’t think so.”
Good thing the State is concerned with such pressing matters. It’s hard to beleive that people have survived so long with out proper milk regulation!
I grew up on he farm and was raised on “Raw Milk”. I think it tastes bettter then that crap at the supermarket. I think because of the raw milk I dont get sick all that often because, like most young kids, I grew a immunity to all the stuff in it.
my grandfather lived in Ohio, when we visited him he only had raw milk, it was so much better tasting than the store bought stuff. He lived to 98….I don’t think the habit killed him.
I think people praising farm milk aren’t really praising the raw milk sold here. Was the milk you drank never heated? That is the same as pasteurization.
If you drink bovine lactate, you’ve been brain washed by special intrest. Would you drink milk if it was from a dog or an elephant? Here is an intresting fact, cows which a scant half century ago could produce only 2000 pounds per year of milk can today produce 50,000 pounds per year thanks to genetically engineered growth hormone. The USDA allows milk to contain 45 million white blood cells or pus per ounce. Read more at http://libaware.economads.com/milkletter.php
most people drinking bovine lactate are not drinking milk from factory farms. factory farm cows produce unnatural amounts of milk. family farm cows do not produce unnatural amounts of milk, do not die from unnatural diets with added hormones and chemicals. most consumers seeking raw milk are obtaining it from grass fed, family farm raised cows.
I work in the milk industry, including a stint in QA. And there isn’t a snowball’s chance in HELL I would drink raw milk.
I would be interested to see if those supporting raw milk consumption have ever been to a dairy farm at milking time.
If so, they would no doubt know that about 0.1% of raw milk is honest to goodness cow dung, hair, and body cells.
No doubt next week we’ll have a group of fringe dwellers spouting their democratic right to drink public swimming pool water.
I drank raw milk for the first 18.5 years of my life before I left our chemical-free home farm for college (we also had free-range chickens before it was “hip”). Best stuff in the world. $1/gallon of milk and $1/dozen of eggs. That was 1983. I would still drink it if given the chance (home farm cows have since been sold). We used to have to drive to the post office to get our mail (no rural delivery), so we delivered milk and eggs to the neighbors in our small town — they all grew up on this milk also. Took the milk to every chuch dinner, too. No one got sick.
As for the free “0.1% extras” that alphgeek mentions — yes, we had that in our milk too — but we used a modern invention called a “milk filter” to keep that out of the final product. The flavor of our milk was always rated “Excellent” in the monthly tests conducted by the milk plant. Cleanliness was always important — as we were drinking this product, too!
Sad thing — in 1983, Dad made $13 (in 1983 dollars) per 100lbs of milk sold (about 12 gallons). Milk price paid to farmers in Feb 2006 in New York was $12.20 (in 2006 dollars; http://www.dailydairyreport.com/data/ddr030306.pdf — see 3 year graph). Milk in 1983 at the supermarket was $2.20/gal/2% — today it averages $2.50-$2.70/gal/2% (only 20% rise in 23 years — I wish the prices of cars, lodging, gasoline, etc. had that kind of inflation!). Farmers sell at wholesale, and buy at retail. I’ll step off the soapbox for now…
raw cow and goat milk was the thing for around 4500 years….and man seems to have survived the *dung*, *hair* and *body cells?*
I would imagine that most of the people who are seeking it out these days are just nostalgic or read all the stuff on the growth hormones.
I don’t remember my grandfather heating it, but he may very well have.
Raw milk can cause a host of illnesses, and death. The typical victim is a child, young adult or someone with a compromised immune system. Children either need dialysis for their shortened lives or don’t survive if the pathogen is E. Coli.
Ohio, Oregon and Washington are in the news regarding raw milk because of recent E-Coli and campylobacter outbreaks in those states. The home dairy that caused the Pacific Northwest illnesses of 18 people (including complete kidney failure in two toddlers) did not even have a sink where workers could wash their hands before milking.
One problem with the Internet is that there can be a thead like this on which no one says why legislation exists. There are good reasons for the laws against selling raw milk.
Raw milk…bovine tuberculosis…etc. Joshua–people drank it for thousands of years, for sure…check life expectancy rates for 1000 AD….
I just want to know who the person in the picture is?
there were a whole host of other factors that made life expectancy shorter in those days. Milk(raw) may have been 1….but you have to factor in that people died of things that are barely a blip on our health screens today Bill.
Childbirth was a biggy, woman died more than lived from infections during childbirth, and the kids didn’t usually live long. The common cold could kill a child back then. Lack of sanitation, unclean water, you name it. So it’s hard to say.
Until the age of pesticides all farms were organic, you knew what your milk or beef cattle were eating, because you ate the same stuff more or less. Same with your hogs or your chickens.
All of this is in the past since we now are trying to feed billions of people around the earth.
alphgeek
there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that i would drink milk from your factory farmed milk industry milk either. i’d rather buy it from the farmer that doesn’t house the cows in filthy quarters, load them with crap and then boil the hell out of the milk to get out all of the crap.
most of the people on the message boards that i have visited have visited the farm and seen the cows milked. the farmer has a vested interest in making sure that the customer is informed and that concerns are addressed. they HAVE to be more sanitary than the dairy INDUSTRY because the milk is NOT boiled to hell and back. if the customer gets sick, they obviously won’t be back. further, there are 76 million plus cases of food poisoning each year (often e-coli) that have nothing to do with raw milk (most from salads as most people don’t wash their lettuce thoroughly and the sanitation at the local salad bar is quite lacking). lastly, when you have nursed a child for years as they suffered from sickness (like eczema) and then noticed immediate improvement from drinking raw milk, no one needs to tell you that maybe we outsmarted ourselves on this one. try reading up on the internet, particularly the westonaprice.org site that explains why for years, people did not get sick from raw milk (thousands of years) and that when people did begin to get sick (in the 1920’s), it was because of filthy conditions that the cows were bred and milked in (much like the modern dairy industry) and that when conditions are sanitary (stainless steel cooling tanks, filters, pipes, sanitizers, grass feeding instead of feedlot grains), raw milk is safe AND preferable as the good bacteria in the milk will far outnumber any bad and the good bacteria is what helps OUR bodies heal. check out the testimonies of hundreds of people on the net that can attest to raw milk’s healing properties that they have experienced (not read about but experienced). then try to find one testimony of anyone other than a so called dairy expert or medical expert that says that they think that raw milk is unsafe because it made them sick. you won’t find one.
Folks have you ever had REAL scarlet fever? I did when I was 12-now 59. Drank raw milk from a neighbors goat and the disease was traced back to the poor thing. We knew that after a boy on the next farm drank the milk too and, yep, he got it too. Missed a year of school, got the neighborhood quaranteened. The disease went like this: We hit a fever of 106-108 respectively, broke out in a rash head to toe, a sore throat that allowed only ice chipps and an IV for 1 week( I mean SORE), a headach that would blow the top off a steam kettle, and then the disease gets a foot hold. Our intire body shakes from the chills for a few days then our skin pealed like 2 snakes shedding in the spring, a furocious rotting cabbage smell pervades you and caretakers nostrils as the shedding doesnt only take place on the outside ,it is on the inside too. Our lips,tongues,intestines sloughed, we screamed when going to the bathroom for several days.I missed 1 year of school. I have not seen the neighbor boy all these years but for me. I went from being voted as most healthy 4H member in the county contest just before the disease to having a weekened heart, frail nerves, spastic colon. I have been in the hospital 8 times since and was in OSU hosp just last June again. I figure in the past 47 years I have had $250,000 medical bills. I am sure that if a weakened person or baby or pregnant woman would have caught the disease the outcome would have been dire. Yes we own a dairy farm, 5 generations with the same healthy, vaccinated and tested herd. And that is the secret one MUST live on the land, eat and breath the same germs the cattle have on that land to have some immunity. to the things you and your animals cant be tested and vaccinated for. All disease comes from the soil. Would you have your baby breath the soil coming from a TB or other disease infested 3rd world country? Its no diferent than the neighbors farm. That is why long time farmers are so CAREFUL about carying diseases back to their herds. In fact usually that is the only farmer who is Long Time. Was there milk born disease in the “good old days”. Im here to tell you there was !Too bad I went next door for that glass of milk. Recommend raw milk to the public HELL NO! It aint worth it to be on my concience. The first time (and there definitely would have been a time in our 140 years farming) someone from off farm gets sick they sue the farmer and owns the farm.
I have not gotten real scarlete fever sounds about as bad as a bad case of e-coli 157 which most people get from badly handled meat or produce and not raw dairy. my point being there is no food out there that has not been responsible for at least one death and someone can come along and make the case for not eating green onions ever because they got hepititis C from eating green onions. Drive a car? Ever been in a real accident that crushed your spine? me neither but there are many people who have but does that stop yopu from driving or making the driving of vehicles illegal? No. So why should raw milk be any more illegal than groundbeef from a major meet packing plant that has sickened over 1,000 people with e-coli contamination?
I drink Ohio grown raw milk and do not want a healthful product continued to be outlawed. This is bad for the farmers and bad for the consumers of raw milk products.
Supplimental report in favor of raw milk
Of course they have to ban it! I mean, it could get people sick. Maybe even kill them! We don’t allow people to have anything that will make them sick…ok, maybe alcohol. But not anything that might kill them…ok, maybe cigarettes. But how dare people want to take it upon themselves to decide if they want to take the risk. Can’t they just drink the kool-aid…I mean milk we give them? Let’s go after salt next!