A guest blog. (Because I chickened out on this one.)
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 2:57pm.
I don't do that anymore, not with the water, not with milk. My water comes from a tap or, in an extreme emergency, from an insanely priced $1.69 bottle. My daily quart of milk is always pasteurized. It's not homogenized only because its skim. The other day an item touting the superior benefits of raw milk showed up on the Huffington Post, which you can read here: I thought it would make good fodder for my blog, but I didn't quite feel enough passion to form an adequate response. Not so my fellow Lancaster Farming staffer, Charlene Shupp-Espenshade, an actual dairy farmer. Here was her take on the topic, in an email circulated 'round the office: While I like raw milk, that list is a pile of well... you know what. The fact that they say raw milk does not make you sick - they must not be from California, where people are suing a raw milk dairy farmer because their daughter died from a bad bug that was in the farm's raw milk. And we had a nasty environmental mastitis bug on the farm last year and we broke from drinking raw milk until we resolved it. Food keeps you alive. It can also kill you. What's a government to do? Pass some laws. Write some regulations. That makes sense, actually. But, says Brian Snyder, of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, there has to be some commonsense philosophy guiding the regulators. He delivers some plain talk about food safety in an opinion piece in our current edition. Your next cow dog probably won't be a Rottie...
Raw milk is a hot button for farmers who do or do not produce it, and for consumers who do or do not drink it. I drank raw milk now and again growing up. And I put my face directly into cold, clear springs (one of which had a resident lizard), and occasionally sipped from mountain streams when I was on a hike and my canteen went dry.
Hey guys,And I would like to live wherever there is no inspection for dairy farms. Last I checked we have at least two a year, but can have up to four (federal, state, co-op, milk marketing board, etc.). And it's hard as heck to pass. And that's IF you don't have a quality problem, then the co-op/dairy is camped out with you until it's resolved. If it's not resolved, they can refuse your milk and you are forced to dump.
Sorry - soapbox here - but you can tell the (Huffington Post) editor never farmed.
Raw milk does not make milk better. To get quality milk - raw or pasteurized - you need a farmer who takes good care of his cows.
Charlene Shupp-Espenshade
Special Sections Editor
Lancaster Farming
