So... raw milk? Aibu?

[NewYoiker]

Milk man is now using a big dairy distributor so I've found a lovely little farm that also do door stop delivery in glass! Win!

They mainly do raw milk.. is raw milk any good? Or should I stay away from the ew that milk might kill us as my DH said

There is always a risk with raw milk. Also, it won't be homogenised so you will get cream plugs on top, where the fat has separated. There's nothing wrong with that, but a lot of people dislike seeing big lumps of cream gloating in drinks or on cereals.

Floating not gloating!

Please, for the love of god, stay away from raw milk!

Raw milk sold to the public is heavily regulated and can only be sold directly from the farmer to the customer - no middle man- but it can be delivered. Read about it online, talk to them and find out what methods they use to keep it safe. You can then make up your own mind. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how safe it is. The good bacteria in it also have health benefits.

PS non-homogenised milk is also much better for our digestion. Normal dairy crest while milk is pasteurised but is not homogenised and is delivered to the door in glass bottles all over the country.

We often make a special trip to a farm that sells raw milk at its coffee shop . And ice cream. It's a special treat at a trusted place on a trip out. We get pasteurised milk delivered. Milk is pasteurised for a reason.

The reason milk is pasteurised is that it is the most reliable way of keeping it safe when dealing with mass production. However, it isn't the only way of achieving this. There is no point in being reactionary or taking the advice of strangers who haven't even visited the farm. Talk to the farm themselves. Find out what processes they use. This article might interest you:

www.hookandson.co.uk/page27/index.html

Does it taste different or something? If it doesn’t, why would you bother? Or take the risk?

There might be something to this. DH drank raw milk all through his childhood and when tested for TB resistance in his teens (everybody was back then), he came up positive despite never having had TB

I did as well despite never having raw milk (or much milk at all) ever!

It’s not worth the risk. No matter how careful they are with hygiene there’s still no guarantee it’s safe.

Also, it won't be homogenised so you will get cream plugs on top, where the fat has separated.

I have fond childhood memories of having sliced banana with creamoffthetopofthemilk (and yes, it was all one word!)

We also used to buy, presumably raw, milk fro the farm house when on holiday as children in the 1970s. We used to walk up there with a jug each morning to get it filled.

I love raw milk. I did have to stop using it for a year when having chemotherapy but am back on it now. My gut cannot tolerate pasteurized milk, it gives me awful stomach cramps and the shits. And yes, I did grow up on a farm in a rural area and still live in the area. I would only ever buy raw milk direct from a farm that I know.

I grew up on green top raw milk, the farmers son used to let the kids ride on his open sides of his milk cart around the estate. The farmer used to deliver milk down one long street with a horse and cart. The horse knew which houses to stop at and walked onto the next house while the farmer went up the garden!
I was premature and always had green top as my mum was convinced raw milk would boost my immunity! Reading this thread I was very lucky.

I happily drink raw milk. Knowing exactly where the food that I consume is important to me.

Talk to the farmers about their processes. They will have to be an improved food handling plant which will come with it's own strict criteria for minimising risk. For example in the south west area that I live TB in cattle is high and as such no farmer can get a licence to sell raw milk as even if their cows are teating clear the risk is higher.

The health of cows and hygiene practices of farming are always improving and as such the risk of contamination has improved since the 40s when pasteurization was introduced.

If you're not happy with the potential risk of unpasteurized have a look to see if there are any farms that sell pasteurized milk. I have a friend who has a milk vending machine on farm for pasteurized milk. The milk is collected that morning and pasteurized on farm and sold at the farm gate. You get the same taste (well similar) to raw milk as it is fresh and not homogenized or standardised but have the peace of mind that it is pasteurized. You also get to know that you have a massive reduction in food miles for your milk and can see the cows that produce it for you.

Also to inform people on this thread the UK has been brucellosis free since 1985.

Not TB free, though

We've bought raw milk from a local very small farm for years. Organic diet, free ranging field cows, calves are kept with the mother till grown. Never been ill so far. Years we've been collecting it every week from him.
'Shop milk' gives me the troubles but raw milk is digestible and it's amazing that there's no reaction to it. I give to my cats as well for this reason (No diarrhoea or vomiting) and it's so so creamy, it's gorgeous.
I trust my local farm because I witness the standard to which he keeps his cows and how clean his practices are. I would strongly think again if this were not the case, especially so if the distance of the farm is far away.

tanselle...

Raw and pasteurized milk contain similar amounts of lactose (14, 28 ). However, raw milk contains the lactase-producing bacteria Lactobacillus, which is destroyed during pasteurization. This should, theoretically, improve lactose digestion in raw milk drinkers ( 29 ).

I’ve been drinking it for 3 years now, as have my teens. No problems thus far!

Milk has developed over 310,000,000 years. It's the only thing besides eggs that is a full-spectrum food that provides every nutrient that a growing body needs. We now kill everything in it, the good and the bad, in order to protect from pathogens that can cause illness.

Illness is bad. But....

The primary indicator that milk has been pasteurised is the inactivation of alkaline phosphatase. This has recently been found to be a primary preventative factor against asthma and alergic diseases. Asthma kills over a thousand people a year in the UK. The allergic protection from raw milk doesn't just extend to lactose intolerance, but a large range of other allergies (confirmed by skin-prick test). Enteric Coated Lactoferrin supplements have been found to reduce median obesity. The fat globules in milk provide enteric properties (they get the good stuff to the gut and it's not destroyed by stomach acids). Lactoferrin, in a study in human breast milk, was 35-90% inactivated by pasteurisation. Both Lactoferrin and milk oligosaccharides have been found to improve intestinal barrier function, so while e-coli O157:H7 (which produces Shiga toxin which can lead to organ failure and death) is not killed off in raw milk as it would be in pasteurised*, it's also less likely to cause serious health problems for raw milk drinkers as they benefit from protective effects.

Raw milk also has antiinflamatory properties. This provides significant preventative effect against infection and fever.

The Advisory Committee for the Microbiological Safety of Food rank the risk from raw milk to the public lower than pasteurised milk, as outbreaks from raw milk are small (due to the low distribution) whereas 2 failures in pasteurisation in the US, for example, affected 400,000 people due to the mass distribution of pasteurised milk. It's far more likely that pathogens introduced to a bottle of milk will incubate far more successfully in the pasteurised milk than in raw milk, which has tons of microflora in competition with it (so don't drink from the bottle unless you're going to finish it).

The risk of illness via pathogens in milk are approximately 150 times higher in raw milk than pasteurised. That's a lot - but the risk is miniscule in pasteurised, and it's 150x a miniscule risk.

The biggest risk from raw milk that's taken from an established producer of raw milk (ie, not from a tank of milk that's destined for pasteurisation) is from allowing the temperature to rise. Milk is evolved to be digested within 45 minutes of it leaving the breast. Raw milk producers will filter and chill this as soon as possible after it leaves the udder. However, transporting it in warm conditions and leaving it for ages before drinking appears to be the biggest risk factor.

The composition of cow's milk is very similar to human milk (probably the same for goats etc, but all of the information above is from published articles, and I don't want to deviate from it). The CDC strongly promote breastfeeding, and give advice on breastfeeding while ill which largely comes down to "don't breastfeed if you have Ebola or active Herpes Simplex Virus sores on the breast" **, yet they strongly advise against drinking raw milk due to the risk of pathogens. That seems hypocritical to me - the milk's good for you or it's not.

• Raw milk doesn't contain e-coli O157:H7 without contamination. A report on an outbreak caused by raw goats-milk cheese confirmed that the pathogen existed in multiple places around the farm, in the faeces of the goat that produced the cheese, but not its milk.

** TB isn't mentioned as regards breastfeeding by the CDC, but the advice I found elsewhere about human mothers with TB is to breastfeed while ensuring that you're not breathing on your child as it's an airborne virus, which implies to me that you don't get TB via milk, but from contamination of it - which would be killed off by pasteurisation, but also which wouldn't be there if it's from a good herd and taken according to good animal hygiene and milk handling practices... which are things that raw milk producers will need to ensure given the amount of liability they take.