41 replies to this topic

[TimG]

I love milk. I was thinking of trying raw milk just to see how it tastes and what all the hoopla was about. The stats Scampi linked put the kibosh on that...

 

I'll stick to Promised Land dairy Midnight Chocolate milk if I want a tasty milk treat. That stuff is tastier than it has any right to be and it shouldn't give me the Salmonella's.

[Scampi]

Hewitt's Dairy and Kawartha Lakes both in Ontario have delicious choco milk here (not to mention the ice cream lol)  Pasteurized! 

[qa_maddy]

These stats pretty much say it all....

Yeah it's basic statistical analysis. I get a lot of "pro-raw milk" people in my comments that like to bring up the amount of Leafy Green recalls. 

While I'm not trying to open that can of worms - there are so many more consumers of Leafy Greens than your raw milk consumers .

 

And a note from a post above? It varies state to state but the sale of raw milk as human food is fully illegal (like in my home state) in a handful of states and it's not supposed to be sold interstate at all.

The cheese gets a pass for interstate sale due to the aging process it undergoes, but making cheese with known pathogenic Milk (which Mcafee did) doesn't guarantee it's going to be safe to consume after the aging process. 

This product is, in my opinion I guess, fundamentally unable to be controlled in a meaningful way. There's a reason pasteurization is considered one of the great scientific discoveries. It unquestionably saved lives and continues to. 

I'm not about to risk bird flu, or TB, or Salmonella when there's no significant difference nutritionally between raw and pasteurized milk. 

[GMO]

Yep agreed qa_maddy. The older I get, the more I start to get my head around the food safety systems that honestly, HACCP deals with pretty badly. You could even argue traditional pasteurisation falls into this.

 

Ultimately the old adage of "sh** in, sh** out" holds for most systems. You shouldn't be relying on pasteurisation even to clean up a really buggy raw material. That's why larger processors place so much emphasis on the quality of incoming milk. But when you don't even have that pasteurisation that's a worry but I think it's not just that. You don't have the oversight of a company buying your milk who will penalise you for poor microbiological quality. So while that's a prerequisite, it does have an impact especially if you then don't have pasteurisation. Will a dairy farmer with his/her own parlours and dairy willingly throw milk away if s/he feels like s/he doesn't have to? Nah it's all "natural" right?

 

I know I'm going to get a bit "woo woo" here but I do have some sympathy with those who argue our food is too "clean" that it lacks the natural microflora. In western countries, it's a fact our gut microbiome is less varied than in developing countries. 

 

Comparative study of the gut microbiomes between Western and Indigenous cultures – Implications for health and disease - ScienceDirect

 

And that is believed to at least contribute to many of the chronic diseases in the west, but diets quickly shift our microbiomes and there are 101 other things to do long before drinking raw milk. Eating a lot of diverse fruits and vegetables, exercise, low stress, avoiding antibiotics unless completely necessary and removing them from the food chain, eating fermented foods, breastfeeding our kids, eating high fibre diets, removing nitrites etc etc. 

 

It does make me wonder though while UPFs are frankly, mostly based on even more woo woo science than I'm stating here, a potential mode of action could be two fold. Firstly, that the food is mostly lacking any significant microflora and certainly nothing beneficial and secondly the fact a lot of ultra processed foods are low in fibre, fruits and vegetables.

 

All that said, at no point is raw milk, (that we know to be dangerous) advisable. There's just not any evidence that proves it's beneficial and plenty that proves it's not. It's Russian Roulette. A very large barrel admittedly but it's still risking your life for bravado not for benefit.

[SQFconsultant]

The Real Reason Raw Milk was Banned...

 

https://t.me/mvipaddywhack/153831

[GMO]

The Real Reason Raw Milk was Banned...

 

https://t.me/mvipaddywhack/153831

 

You want us to read something from Telegram Glenn? Is this peer reviewed?! 

[Scampi]

You want us to read something from Telegram Glenn? Is this peer reviewed?! 

 

 

Agreed    in this forum in particular, bring the proof not anecdotes 

[MDaleDDF]

Regardless of where it came from, it's full of inaccuracies.   It was not 'the foundation of human nutrition', ever.   I'd challenge that wheat and wine were wayyyyy more important in human history than milk.   And not all cultures in the past 10k years drank milk, that's patently untrue.   The Greeks found milk disgusting and used it for cheese only.   Natives of both North and South America were entirely dairy free until contact with Europeans.   Etc etc etc.

 

Making wild unsubstantiated claims about its safety in a time when food illness was not tracked, and was probably responsible for untold amounts of sickness and death (just ask Abe Lincoln, lost his mother and a few others from milk sickness).

 

The entire blurb is a confirmation bias masterpiece and not rooted in fact.

Edited by MDaleDDF, 15 June 2026 - 01:40 PM.

[tadelong]

Glenn confidently stated on his blog the Covid-19 vaccine would (I kid you not) kill us all in 2 years. His views on pasteurization are unlikely to have much merit. I may be 3 years a sheeple ghost, but I still get diarrhea like the rest of us.

[MDaleDDF]

I agree neither with the text he posted, or piling on a fellow poster that's done a lot of good on the site.   Views vary, respect shouldn't. 

 

Since you brought it up, I'm not a fan of the vaccine either, and as was posted in another thread perhaps survivorship bias is affecting the vaccine.  Who knows.  While rare, and as with any vaccine, fatal side effects have been medically documented and confirmed.    For me, not worth it for something that affects me the same as the flu.   I don't get the flu shot either, yet here I am.    And I'm not anti-vax, had all the standard vaccines, so has my son, but they're time tested.   The covid vaccine was rushed through very quickly.   If I were high risk for covid death, I might take it.   I'm not.  

 

In 2025 the flu was responsible for 45k deaths.   Covid 34-53k.   

[tadelong]

   Fair! Glenn understands the systems well and has much experience, but I think Qonspiracies belong in the garbage.

   There's plenty of dogma in our industry as well as that of the health professional. At what point does a new technology become 'time-tested?' Operation Warp Speed was for various reasons kind of nuts, but that doesn't necessarily mean its results are unsafe.

For vaccines, I don't just take them for my own protection. I know of at least 3 people who had to be hospitalized for reactions to the vaccine, but I know of over 5 who died from Covid. I'll take that risk. Besides! As mentioned, deaths are not the only metric by which to measure harm. How many person-hours have been lost to sick days? How many people have been doubly cursed with covid first and long covid second? I don't subscribe to the notion that somehow because you were also chronically ill you 'deserved' your covid death, as if a co-morbidity excluded you from any expectation of public safety. I may appear hearty and hale but have immunosuppressants on board 24/7. I've been callously sneezed on then chewed out for being offended.

   I also read GMO's great post on survivorship bias. There's been 5 years of data, now; are new Covid boosters 'time-tested?'  I wonder where the holes in our twin engines are?

   As a Canadian I am naturally more used to gov't intrusion into my private life than many Americans, so there's always the chance I'm just a pushover.

 

   Unlike contagious respiratory illnesses and vaccines, however, raw milk is something you have to go and get yourself. This does put it in a grayer area. I'm personally against it and would rather have its sale banned, but as long as I don't have to drink it I wouldn't change my vote over it. Ultimately there're more important things to worry about. Unless you're McAffee.

[kfromNE]

Probably should be a new topic but - 

Foods I won't eat because of my knowledge about food safety 

 

Raw Milk 

Bean Sprouts

Raw Oysters unless I'm walking distance away from an ocean 

Weddings, picnics etc. at the end of the event/when food has sat out forever

Potluck items - it depends on which employee made it

Chipotle 15 or so years ago when they had a ton of outbreaks

[MDaleDDF]

No way I'm going thru life without oysters, lol.   However, I am extremely picky about time of year, and freshness level.   I have in the past dumped one oyster in my mouth, spit it into my napkin, and happily paid for the rest to be thrown away.    

 

At a food show when I first got into the biz there was a giant seafood place next to my booth, and an awesome lady right next to me at the edge of the booth serving fresh shucked oysters.   She showed me how to do it, how to tell if they're good, etc.   Was my first oyster tasting, and I was hooked immediately.    She told me there's some name for seafood that's been out of the ocean 24 hours or less.   I forget the term....

 

 

Anyways, I also would hard pass on raw milk.   I'm good.   The only reason I touch normal milk is:    #1, milkshakes.    #2, cereal.    I would never have survived college without cereal.   I would have starved to death.    Many a month I ate literally nothing but cereal, ramen, and bread with butter on it....lol.   Happy days.   Somehow I always had money for the bar tho!

Edited by MDaleDDF, 16 June 2026 - 12:24 PM.

[qa_maddy]

Oof working in Seafood for the past 5+ years has fully put me off raw oysters 

Y'all have fun though lol 

[GMO]

There are some areas I do take a risk on. I should rinse my berries before eating but if I'm eating them later, they turn into a pile of mush so that ain't happening. I know... I read on a pack of parsley recently that I should wash carefully before using. I have to admit I'd never noticed that before and the practicality of washing such delicate leaves is frustrating. Genuinely which consumers are really doing this?

 

I suppose in my defence, they all fall under the headings of reasonably expected consumer misuse because it's virtually impossible to follow as directed. To go back to topic, instead it's really difficult to buy raw milk so you have to go out of your way to find it. It's seeking out a way to make your life more at risk.

 

I had a look on the food standards agency and there are 150 farms in the UK licenced to sell raw milk. More than I thought. Only 3 get a "good" rating, the rest are mostly "broadly compliant" with four "improvement needed". I wonder how many people look at the ratings? 

Anyway. I think it's always interesting to take a step back and wonder at why this has become a thing and why now? A lot of it is I'd suggest a push back against our industrialised food system which is open to valid criticism in my view. But I still keep coming back to the fact that pasteurisation is a really mild heat treatment. In no way does it make milk sterile. It just makes it safe. And most people would be improving their gut diversity far more (and more healthily) by just eating a bit more fruit, vegetables and pulses. Lots of the data suggesting that people who drink raw milk have fewer allergies is also based on farming families and guess what? If you're someone who gardens a lot, even at home, you again have more diverse microflora.

 

Something which has unproven benefits and proven harms should never be a legal foodstuff in my view. Where something is addictive, as I've said before, the waters get muddier because banning it doesn't stop it. But as a non smoking, tee total, pasteurised milk drinker it would not bother me personally if anything harmful was banned. And I include nitrites in that too...

[tadelong]

I quite like your phrase, "reasonably expected consumer misuse."

[GMO]

I quite like your phrase, "reasonably expected consumer misuse."

 

Ha ha ha... I can't remember where I got it from. Some HACCP training course or other. But fact is we know that consumers misuse our products all the time and there's an element that you should be building that into your HACCP risk assessments if you know it's happening or can reasonably expect it might.

 

In Codex it doesn't quite say what I typed but it does say this:

"The hazard analysis should consider not only the intended use, but also any known unintended use (e.g. a soup mix intended to be mixed with water and cooked but known to commonly be used without a heat treatment in flavouring a dip for chips) to determine the significant hazards to be addressed in the HACCP plan"

 

I always wonder about how infant formula manufacturers get away with assuming any kind of perfect consumer use in their HACCP plans which I assume they do or the instructions on powder wouldn't be so onerous. Misuse is rife with those products.

 

But anyway. Raw milk is nothing to do with consumer misuse. It's danger seeking behaviour from consumers.