Some time back I asked a ?? about buying Raw Milk

A few weeks ago, I asked a question about how you couldn't buy raw milk in the three states in my area.

West Virginia just passed a Bill making the selling of Raw milk legal.

But ya gotta watch/read the link on the local news!!!
Poke here

Another pointless food fad. I grew up drinking it,so did our kids. We drank it right up until the cows went down the road just over twelve years ago. That said,I wouldn't drink raw milk from anybody else's herd even if it was half the price of store bought. There's just nothing to gain.
Should it be illegal in a free country? No. Is it a smart thing to do? No.

(quoted from post at 14:56:43 03/09/16) Another pointless food fad. I grew up drinking it,so did our kids. We drank it right up until the cows went down the road just over twelve years ago. That said,I wouldn't drink raw milk from anybody else's herd even if it was half the price of store bought. There's just nothing to gain.
Should it be illegal in a free country? No. Is it a smart thing to do? No.

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My wife was buying it for a few months, then a woman got some sort of fever, buying from the same farm. I insisted that she stop buying it. No sense in getting sick for a fad.

rrlund- I just wanted a few gallons to show my grand daughter how to churn butter.

I grew up on raw milk, cream, butter, and ice-cream. I've gotten raw milk from a trusted source from time to time when I crave some of those old concoctions, but don't know if I'd go out of my way for it. The part of the article I didn't get is when it paraphrased supporters as saying raw milk is more ethical. What am I missing?

From 1957-67 my dad had a dairy at the edge of town in Knox, Indiana. Back then milk was sold in glass gallon jugs. At milking time people from town were lined up. We had a large stainless steel milk tank. Before the milk had a chance to cool, it went into the gallon jugs at the other end of the tank. Back then I think dad got $.50 a gallon. Not sure if the board of health or something happened, but soon after dad installed a milk processing plant. We then bottled, pasteurized and delivered. Some people didn't want their milk homogenized so we sold some that had the cream floating on the top.

You can make butter from pasteurized milk, just not homogenized, because that tears the fat cell walls so they will not group together.

I live in WV. This was a highly debated topic that went on for days.Our state is broke, our roads are in the worst shape they have been for 30 years. Our tax base is dying from the war on coal.Public employees insurance is in trouble and the only 2 bills our great legislators are bragging that they passed, is the right to carry a concealed weapon without a license and the raw milk bill.

DavidG
It's been a long time, but I think our homogenizer pressurized the milk to 3000 psi and sent it though a small opening to break up the walls. I recall it had an adjustment to increase the pressure and pressure gauge. All this equipment had to be stainless steel, taken apart and cleaned each time we were finished for the day. Checked with a UV light to make sure there was no milk or bacteria left behind. geo

I grew up drinking raw milk. Since leaving the farm I have had a lot fewer cases of stomach flue. I have since realized what my mother called stomach flue was probably food poisoning likely from raw milk. It is very hard to day after day, cow after cow to have zero manure in the milk. Manure is full of E coli. Just think how many teats a dairy farmer washes per year. Did he get each and every one of them clean each and every time? Very hard to be perfect. I don't plan on drinking raw milk again.

Yup,

The homogenizer is a positive displacement pump capable of producing several thousand PSI, the fluid is squeezed through the screen, sometimes it went through 2 screens a first and second stage.

Q-fever meningitis is just one illness that consuming raw milk can cause.
Colorado allows it kind of sort of. To be legal the farm owner has to set up a cow or goat share program and sell interest in the animals. After someone owns interest in an animal they are allowed to what it produces. The money paid is to be for care and feed of the animal not the sale of raw milk. The milk is then a byproduct that the part owner is entitled to. It's a way around the health department laws.
I had a share program a few years back. People loved it, but as the farm owner there is allot of work involved other than milking, bottling, and cooling. you still have to test animals for TB and Berculosis each year and have milk tested on a regular basis by a lab to prove that you don't have high bacteria counts or antibiotic residues.
You have to pass the same inspections as a Grade A dairy. Milk must be cooled to below 45f within 30 minutes (demonstration required) a customer list with their contact info on hand and available to the Colorado Department of Health at all times. Udders and teats must be washed before and after each milking (goes without saying). Animals must be machine milked. No hand milking allowed. Equipment must be washed before and after each milking. If it was washed and sanitized more then four hours before use it had to be washed again before use. My milker got washed four times a day. Commercial quality chemicals must be used. And the list goes on and on and the inspectors are extra picky when they know you are selling raw milk. It is very high risk for both the producer and the consumer. You are not allowed to deliver or process in any way. If the owner took their sweet time going home and let it warm up and they get sick it's on you as the producer as you will not be able to prove it was not bad to start with.
Customers are really bad about washing out glass containers well enough to be refilled too. I generally washed all return containers again before filling. Even though I required return containers to be ready to be filled it would be my backside in trouble if they were filled dirty and someone got sick.
I finally stopped doing it. Way too much work for a little pay.
I still milk my goats and consume the milk raw, but I know how it's all being done. If I did not and was buying it from somebody I would never do it and would pasteurize it first. The only milk I sell now is dyed green and labeled for animal use only for people bottle feeding goat kids, a calf, or pigs and so on.
A guy locally got in a huge mess selling raw milk years back. His equipment cleaning was not up to par and he had bacteria growing in his equipment. He also had a few doe's with mastitis that he was milking. He had six people in the hospital along with an infant that almost died. I have no idea how that all worked out for him, but it did shut his business down overnight. He was milking something like 100 goats and selling all the milk. He was licensed, but that does not cut the mustard if someone gets sick. He was on the hook.

Greg

gregCO- Lots of good information. Thanks for posting.

Selling raw milk is a bad idea, there is a reason that pasteurization was invented.

We drank our own milk, when we were milking. So did my Father in law. Our neighbors wife got rheumatic fever, or something, and Dad said it was caused by bacteria in the milk. We had to wash everything up good, Dad seen to that.
But I'm like RRlund, I wouldn't be drinking anyone else's milk.

David G- I can't find just "pasteurized" milk. All I want to do is show my Grand Daughter how butter was churned. I know, I could buy a few cartons of 'Half & Half' and churn that. But, I wanted her to experience the 'start to finish...end product' example.

We raise all the other critters, hogs, chickens, beef cattle, etc. But, no Dairy cows.

IF you have a beef cow that is fresh and will allow you to milk her you could do that. Let it sit in the frig and separate and skim off the cream and go. Milking a beef cow might be as risky as drinking raw milk though.

Greg

When I was a kid dad milked one cow and we drank whole unpasteurized milk. When the cow died of old age we started buying whole milk from the next door neighbor who had a small grade B herd of Brown Swiss. This neighbor wasn't very good at cleaning udders so in the spring when the mud was deep the milk we brought home had a slight gray tint to it. We did strain it and that cleaned it up but my mother started pasteurizing from then on. For a few months dad took care of his uncle's Guernsey so we had Guernsey milk during that time but I don't remember my mother pasteurizing it. Boy did we have cream though. That was fifty years ago.

I agree. It is a fad. I don't know what raw milk goes for in other areas around the country, but along the front range of CO it brings a premium. People will pay $10 to $12 a gallon thinking they are doing a good thing for their family. It doesn't keep long and offers all sorts of risk. $2.50 at the store is a good deal. I don't know how cow dairy guys do it and survive. I love the dairy industry and had a Grade A at one time. Lot's of work to stay poor unless you had a mega dairy and could grow your own feed.

Greg

gregCO- Thanks for the suggestion. But, I buy feeders.

Q-fever meningitis is likely what it was. Not good.

Sorry, but be careful, you can get pretty sick.

(quoted from post at 15:24:42 03/09/16) A few weeks ago, I asked a question about how you couldn't buy raw milk in the three states in my area.

West Virginia just passed a Bill making the selling of Raw milk legal.

But ya gotta watch/read the link on the local news!!!
Poke here

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I read thru the posts and then went to the URL that Greg1959 submitted and read that. Now, I am, for lack of ANY knowledge on the subject, completely overwhelmed, as all I ever heard about drinking raw milk was that you were flirting with a case of [b:0eb7604ec4]undulant fever[/b:0eb7604ec4] which information was drummed into my head by my stepfather who had grown up on a 'tenant' farm in the '30s and never had a good word for farming until he passed away at 84.
BUT .... in the '80s and into the '90s my wife and I, along with our 2 kids, lived and thrived drinking raw milk from a trusted friend's small herd. So, is it good or bad? Can be either, I reckon .... BUT what is reported on in the link seems to be way more believable than what the FDA feeds us! :shock:

If your going to make butter you don't want milk you want cream. Churning cream separates the fat from the butter milk and the curds of fat is where the butter comes from.

Unpasteurized cow's milk has been known to carry TB and Brucellosis. Our family drank raw goat's milk for years because it is easier on
your stomach and almost naturally homegenized and TB and BRU are almost unheard of in goats.

Undulant fever from goats milk is usually fatal. We pasteurized all the milk we used and never drank raw milk.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm a firm believer that all the old ways made the previous generations tougher ! The ones that made it through WWII lived pretty long lives. Seems to be dropping off more and more as time goes on. Way too many young people and kids with cancer and all sort of weird things.

At the time our kids intestines could not handle cow's milk but they never had a problem with goat's milk. We also researched about the safety of drinking goat's milk and could not find any recorded cases of brucelosis in goats. If it occurs it is very rare unlike cows.

When I was a kid I had to drink goats milk but it was pasteurized . Like I said undulant fever from goats milk is usually fatal.

I grew up on raw milk. Was never sick because of it. We milked two cows twice a day. Drank it warm and cold. Only processing was to put it thru a strainer. When we wanted butter it went in the cream seperator. Cream would float to the top, drain off the skim milk. I hand cranked a lot of butter over the years. The skim milk was fed to the pigs, they loved it. And I am not all that old to have experienced all of this , will be 62 on the 16th.

When i was a kid a farmer down the road would sell raw milk. He would put it in the refrigerator and leave the door open to his shop if we wanted milk we would leave money in a can it was the honor system. Inch of cream on top, that was the best milk i ever had.