The Gastrocast

Again with the Raw Milk? Enough already? No, not really. . . .

What really gets my goat, or cow or sheep is that people try to skirt the regulations. People who do this are the very reason there are regulations to skirt. . . .This article mentions two separate, yet linked, skirters. One, a huge Organic Dairy selling Raw Milk as pet food. The company does this knowing full well that Humans are drinking the stuff their selling as pet fodder–why? To get around the regulations that Raw Milk is illegal for sale in Oregon, but not California where the company is from.

The second part of the same article mentions something which I have written about before. . .Cow Shares and the Washington State Dairy which spread e. coli among their shareholders. Now the shareholders are planning to sue the dairy. EXCUSE ME??? WTF? They entered into a spurious "contract"–to become share holders in a cow and its milk so as to avoid regulations requiring a dairy to be licensed and regulated, and thereby get Raw Milk they otherwise would not have been able to get–and now they are going to prosecute? Whoa there! Perhaps the rest  of us should sue them for being idiots in the first place. I am very sorry that their children were hurt by their actions and the actions of  disreputible farmers who are too cheap to insure the quality of their products, but come one–take some personal responsability here!

People like this are going to bring more and more needless regulations down on something which is already a hot topic. I feel the regulations which are already in place are there for a reason–at least they allow Raw Milk to be sold and consumed. If the few remaining states which allow the sale of Raw Milk ban it because of these morons, then where will we be? In an even worse situation (some of which already exists)–people forced to smuggle raw milk and break the law, and even more un-regulated and possibly dangerously unsanitary milk share situations. Milk or any food is only as good as the quality of its source. When things go wrong it’s usually due to Human Laziness–remember the Schwann’s Salmonella Ice Cream incident a few years back–yup thousands of people made sick because someone was too lazy to wash all the raw egg yolk from a container about to recieve cooked ice cream batter. The larger question is why do 10,000 gallons of egg yolk, or 10,000 gallons of ice cream batter need to be shipped from place to place. . .but let’s not get started on a Buy Local rant just now. . . .

Unpasturized cheese, Raw Milk, Chicken Broth–hell, even a pastrami sandwich can be perfectly safe or they can mow you down like nothing else. Caveat Emptor–we need to be as wary of what we’re buying and who we’re buying it from as the sellers need to be of who they’re selling to.

In another, unrelated case, Humans may be at risk–a slim risk–of getting Rabies from drinking Raw Milk from a Cow which contracted Rabies. It is reported the farmer is doing all he can to aid officials. A bit strange, but understandable–I mean who would think about vaccinating cows against rabies?

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Idiocy is alive and well as we can see from two different articles on two sides of RAW consumption. Both cases involve unconsenting, unknowing children and both involve a lapse in judgement, imho.

In the first case a woman who grew up drinking raw milk has sought it out for her own children. All well and good. I do believe this is very acceptible despite what the government and many people say. However, I have always believed that infants do not have what it takes to withstand even a slight problem with Raw Milk. It’s one thing if Raw Cow Milk is consumed by the mother and passes the benefits onto her baby in her own Mother’s Milk–the best case. But unless you are milking the cow yourself and getting its milk checked regularly, or know and absolutely trust the source of your raw milk (as I do) then children under 3 or so should not be drinking it. There is too much chance of a reaction or a problem and it’s not worth the risk.
We drink Raw Milk from a licensed Raw Milk Dairy. My wife grew up drinking Raw Milk from her family’s dairy cows. My 5 girls prefer it to "store bought" calling it, instead, "cow milk" as if the other is some alien entity.  But we have always held off feeding Raw Milk to the girls when they were infants because we are not gambling people. Nor do we wish to end up in the sort of hot water mentioned in the second case of idiocy–a far worse case to my way of thinking.

After my brief brush with Raw Food last summer, I am even more wary of it as a dietary movement. But I think it is especially dangerous, stupid, crazy if Raw Foodists think that they can feed their children, from infancy, a Raw Food diet and nothing else. Again, where is mother’s milk, or suitable, proper infant nutrition? That this stuff happens in the First World is crazy, because in this, people in the Third World have far more sense.
While I think the punishment was harsh in one extream–banning the couple from seeing their other children, after their infants death–I don’t think 15 years probation is exactly what is needed either. Nor do I think the case should be appealed for some harsher sentence involving jail time. What these people need is counsiling, proper education about Raw Food, health and nutrition and to be forced to go on a public speaking tour–at their own expense–to promote wisdom which will prevent their brand of idiocy from being repeated.

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