Discussion
captain_cynic said:
cbmotorsport said:
We used to live opposite a dairy farmer in Derbyshire when I was a kid. I used to get sent over to the milking parlour every morning with a glass bottle. No one died.
So those who have actually died... are what exactly.You were lucky, considering that mortality rates were much higher back then I suspect more than a few people died from being sent over to the milking parlour every morning.
Also that doesn't mean the milk wasn't pasteurised. Pasteurising machines can be as small as a large stock pot (they effectively are a temperature controlled pot). Its not uncommon for a dairy to pasteurise their own milk, there's a dairy near me with a self serve machine providing pasteurised milk (because they don't want a law suit when someone dies from raw milk).
So maybe the reason you never got a listeria or E.Coli infection was because the milk you bought was already pasteurised.
In fact with the proliferation of pasteurisation machines in the first half of the 20th century, I'm willing to bet most of these story-tellers have been drinking pasteurised milk all their lives without knowing it.
I was just mentioning my experience, not advocating the consumption of raw milk.
Anyway, just for the record, the milk we collected each morning wasn't pasteurised. You could see it coming from the cows in their bays, through the pipes and into the vat that it was collected from.
Going off the anecdotes on this thread I can't believe we've been wasting so much energy pasteurising milk all these years!
As a farmers son I drank plenty of raw milk growing up. As a PhD level scientist I would probably steer away from it, for two reasons 1) It's basically a perfect microbial growth medium, any issues with handling of the milk, or the health of the animal it comes from and the opportunity for lots of fun pathogens to be ingested are pretty high. 2) Milk is foul!
My parents ran a number of milk rounds as well as the farm so I was press ganged into working on the milk rounds from a pretty early age. I lived with ever present whiff of sour milk, which has put me off the stuff completely.
As a farmers son I drank plenty of raw milk growing up. As a PhD level scientist I would probably steer away from it, for two reasons 1) It's basically a perfect microbial growth medium, any issues with handling of the milk, or the health of the animal it comes from and the opportunity for lots of fun pathogens to be ingested are pretty high. 2) Milk is foul!
My parents ran a number of milk rounds as well as the farm so I was press ganged into working on the milk rounds from a pretty early age. I lived with ever present whiff of sour milk, which has put me off the stuff completely.
Kermit power said:
ZedLeg said:
It's fine to eat or drink any untreated food if you can be sure of it's source. I wouldn't pick up a bottle of raw milk off a shelf because I don't know how long it's been there or where it came from. Just like I wouldn't drink water straight out of a stream because I don't know if there's a dead animal lying in it a bit up the hill.
I wouldn't pick up a bottle of raw milk off any old shelf, certainly. Would I pick one up off a French supermarket shelf when it has undergone microfiltration, has a sell by date on it, and is produced under regulations laid down and enforced by the French ministry of agriculture? Absolutely! Why not? It tastes much nicer!If UK supermarkets were allowed to do the same thing, then I'd buy it here as well, but even if we could throw off that particular shackle of the nanny state, I doubt enough people would be willing to drink it (despite eating unpasteurised cheese without giving it a second thought) to make it commercially viable for the supermarkets.
As for drinking water straight out of a stream, I've done that too, but only in high mountains like the Alps after walking 100 yards or so downstream checking for anything dead. Not something I'd do in the stream running through our local park though!
guindilias said:
We used to get gold-top milk when we were kids, as a treat - delicious. But now everything is homogenised AND pasteurised, so you don't even get the cream floating at the top. Shame.
I've got non homogenised gold top from CO OP before, they don't always have it but it is good G600 said:
guindilias said:
We used to get gold-top milk when we were kids, as a treat - delicious. But now everything is homogenised AND pasteurised, so you don't even get the cream floating at the top. Shame.
I've got non homogenised gold top from CO OP before, they don't always have it but it is good Mr Gearchange said:
We get milk delivered and the silver top (full fat) Isn’t homogenised and the kids fight over who gets to open the bottle and have the cream on their cereal. I imagine their gold top is the same.
If you gave the bottle a good shake before opening it, the cream would be mixed up through all of the milk. Everybody would have some of it. Nobody would have all of it.That's how wars get started.
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