US Authoritarianism

ah yes. just the way God intended; we should be drinking raw, non-processed... cow milk.

It’s actually worse, can make you really sick if you get unlucky

The part that gets me is this...

You can get salmonella from unpasteurized milk. This happens a lot...especially considering America pasteurizes the majority of its milk...but when you hear of a milk-related outbreak a lot of the time it's from unpasteurized milk even though percent wise it's a small portion of our milk supply.

Anyway. A healthy adult might get through salmonella ok. BUT. Salmonella can completely fuck up a 3 year old's kidneys FOR LIFE. And it can be just as bad for the elderly.

These are both groups that have other people providing their food. If a 3 year old or child is given milk by mom and dad...well, they drink it. They have no choice in whether it's pasteurized or not. That's why government regulation of milk steps in, to make sure dumb people having babies don't harm their kids through their poor choices.

Giving unpasteurized milk to kids is similar to anti-vaxxers not vaccinating their kids. Basically, the parent involved has gone haywire over any smaller/imagined detriment or benefit, and chooses the action that could bring the MOST harm while thinking they are taking the route of least harm.

With raw milk, parents think the "nutrients" are better or something (even though...you know...we cook most of our food so MOST of our food is heat treated), and the food poisoning from possible salmonella minor/non-existent, when reality the nutrient profile isn't much different between pasteurized/unpasteurized milk, but the salmonella can kill the vulnerable or cripple their organs for life.

It all comes down to people being alive now in an era where we no longer have elders/grandparents telling others about how people used to DIE from these things.

People hear about getting cancer or dementia or whatever all the time, but haven't actually seen the old-school childhood illnesses from tainted milk or viruses or the like, so people make the wrong choice because it's not apparent from their own life experience how bad those illnesses were since they don't have family that talks about people they knew who got sick and died. The science is too abstract for them to internalize, but "choosing your own food" feels good and feels like you're in control...so people go down that route instead because they haven't seen the consequences of salmonella in their own family or in their friends (because there's a lot of barriers in places, including pasteurization of milk, to try to stop/prevent outbreaks.)

The thing to keep in mind when you compare the saga of turn of the century milk production between Europe and the US/Canada is the immigrant population. There just wasn't a market for milk in the urban setting in Europe because everyone knew it was deadly since the Roman times.

Compare that to New York, where they had a large influx of immigrants from small farming communities where children would often drink milk when young and they would buy milk that was sold out of unrefrigerated wagons coming from cows kept in confined spaces within the city. It was murderous, with tens of thousands of children's deaths in New York City alone. Of course this was the age of Cholera so the lives of people in cities came cheap.

The plain truth was adding formalin, which has no safe dose itself, was safer than drinking that shit the way they were selling it. North American cities quickly banned unpasteurized milk once the causal relationship was proven (despite the milkmen complaining).

I grew up milking cows and drinking raw milk as well. The reason we didn't get sick was because of the basic quality control we did as routine. In order for the pathogens to cause illness it needs three things: innoculum, time to grow and the right temperature to grow at.

The milk was immediately put into the fridge when we brought it in. It stayed in the fridge until it was used.

When you have 1-2 gallons coming into the house every day, you use a lot of milk and use it constantly. You don't put a gallon in the fridge and drink over 2-3 weeks. You have to consume, process or dump it because the fridge only holds so much and you only have so many jugs. We made butter and cheese every week at least. No gallon lasted in the fridge more than 5-6 days. Usually it was used in 2-3 days.

We knew the cow well. When she was sick or had an infection, we dumped the milk. We had to give ours antibiotics for mastitis a few times. We dumped the milk until the antibiotic was out of her system as well.

Any jug that smelled off was dumped. It wasn't a big deal since we had another gallon coming in a few hours.