Avoid raw milk due to infection risks: pediatricians

[NickB79]

Source: Yahoo from Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women, babies and kids should not drink raw or unpasteurized milk, a group of pediatricians said on Monday.

Because of infection risks, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases and Committee on Nutrition also said sales of unpasteurized milk, cheese and related products should be banned in the U.S.

Pasteurizing kills bacteria that can be present in raw milk. It involves heating the milk to at least 161 degrees Fahrenheit for more than 15 seconds and then rapidly cooling it.

"It's kind of like riding in a car with seatbelts," Kathryn Boor said. "If you've got the opportunity for a safety barrier, which would be pasteurization, why wouldn't you use it?"

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/avoid-raw-milk-due-infection-risks-pediatricians-052719625.htmlLink to source

---

Having grown up on a small family dairy farm, drinking raw milk daily as a kid, and now working in the dairy industry, testing both raw milk and pasteurized, cultured dairy products made from that milk, I entirely AGREE with this.

Unless you can guarantee that the milk you're drinking comes from well-cared for cows and is properly handled from teat to table, don't drink it. If someone gave my daughter a cup of unpasteurized milk from a 500-head factory dairy farm, I'd slap that shit out of her hand like it was toxic waste. I've seen with my own eyes the bacterial loads that some milk supplies carry before pasteurization.

[KurtNYC]

1. Why opt for fear when there are inspections and testing available

Pasteurization is no substitute for inspections and GAP. Yet it provides a false sense of security and does not address the underlying problem of disease and health in the milk industry. In some states raw milk must be 5x cleaner. Here are test results for Colorado producers:
http://windsordairy.com/weekly-raw-milk-test-results.html

Meanwhile, raw milk is legal and sold in EVERY country of the EU plus Africa, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand.

If pasteurized milk contains nothing beneficial, since the good is cooked out with the bad, then what is the point of drinking it at all? The cooking also kills bacteria which make nutrients in milk bioavailable once ingested.

[veganlush]

2. cattle milk is made for baby

cattle. Cows don't produce milk for humans, they produce it for their own young. No animal, including humans, need mother's milk into adulthood. If it's not your mama, it's not your milk. boycott cruelty, go vegan

[appal_jack]

3. corn seeds are for baby corn!

corn seeds are for baby corn! Corn doesn't produce seeds for humans, it produces it to make their own young. No animal, including humans, needs corn into adulthood. If you're not a C4 grass, it's not your seed. boycott cruelty, go air-itarian!

broccoli is the unpollinated flower of the brassica plant! Broccoli doesn't produce flowers for humans, it deserves to have a healthy sex life and to make its own young. No animal, including humans, needs broccoli into adulthood. If it's not your mama, it's not your flower. boycott cruelty, go air-itarian!

Or, I dunno, maybe eat spirulina & chlorella, and some other green prokaryotic slime, if one can be so bold as to actually exploit cyanobacteria. Or does that make me an oppressor too?

Look veganlush, you can eat anything you want, actually. Just don't go lecturing me about what's 'natural.' Things can be right and beautiful and deeply embedded in our cultures and even ecologically regenerative (i.e.- mob grazing, holistic resource management, etc.), and yet still not be entirely 'natural.' Humans have been modifying their environment and the organisms around them for millennia. And you know what? My ancestors have probably been herding animals and milking them for longer than your ancestors have been planting seeds toward some annual botanical holocaust of epic proportions...

-app

PS - I'm just kidding about the 'botanical holocaust.' I'm an avid organic gardener. But I know that the fruits and veggies I enjoy (and meats, eggs, and cheeses too) are all the products of intense human selection, breeding, and agriculture. And, I try not to lecture others about what they eat. It's obnoxious, all the more so when based upon spurious information.

[veganlush]

6. milk and meat

animal "products", require (especially in modern times with factory farming) aware, fear-and-pain feeling, dog-like creatures to suffer and die after short lives in cruel confinement. It's not debatable, there's plenty of video and other evidence. It's entirely unnecessary and we could all be living healthier lives without it. Bill Clinton has taken on such a lifestyle and it because his doctors told him it was his best chance at a long life enjoying grandchildren someday. As far as I know he's not an animal advocate, just someone that wants to live and longer healthier life. No adult needs milk for any reason. Personal "tastes" sure don't justify the costs to the individuals who are enslaved to provide it.

[HockeyMom]

4. True, but what about expressing breast milk?

It is not "pasteurized" and could get contaminated from a breast pump, bottles, or just sitting in a fridge? Sometimes even a breastfeeding mother cannot give baby her breast. Just playing devils advocate here.

My daughter had a milk allergy as a child. The only milk she could drink was goats milk. They didn't have it in containers on supermarket shelves back then, so I bought it powdered and mixed it with water. I suppose processing it into a powder was the same as pasteurization?

[1000words]

10. +1

"If it's not your mama, it's not your milk."

[Indi Guy]

5. Top Ten Reasons To Drink Raw Milk...

• 1. Raw milk is vastly more nutritious than pasteurized milk.
  
  
• 2. Raw milk contains enzymes.
  
  
• 3. Raw milk contains probiotics.
  
  
• 4. Raw milk is easier to digest — even for the lactose intolerant.
  
  
• 5. Raw milk is safer than pasteurized milk. It contains “built-in safety systems” that help destroy pathogens:
  
  
• 6. Raw milk is better for cows.
  
  
• 7. Clean, nutritious milk comes from healthy cows that eat grass, not sick cows eating grain.
  
  
• 8. Raw milk is better for farmers. Raw milk can help turn the economy around in rural America.
  
  
• 9. Raw milk doesn’t go “bad” like pasteurized milk does.
  
  
• 10. Raw milk tastes better!
  
  http://www.cheeseslave.com/drink-raw-milk/

See also -- Harvard Medical School, “Health Benefits of Taking Probiotics”

...and -- "__good bacteria and many other components in raw milk actually destroy pathogens added to the milk.”

The report in the OP smells of industry tainted "news" designed (once again) to scare people away from healthy foods. People have been consuming raw milk & cheese for millenia.

[jmowreader]

7. The conditions were different a hundred years ago than they are now

When the dairy farmer had three cows and he was so close to town everyone could smell the farm if the wind shifted, you could sell raw milk safely. When dairy farmers have farms with two hundred, or two thousand, cattle and they're two states away, you can't sell raw milk safely.

[Indi Guy]

11. Checkout the links I posted. n/t

[yellowcanine]

16. Actually lots of people got sick and died from raw milk one hundred years ago.

One of the biggest problems was TB and typhoid. Infant mortality rates dropped dramatically when milk was pasteurized.
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/01/24/the-fight-for-safe-milk-pasteurization/#!EaO79

[Scairp]

12. "People have been consuming raw milk & cheese for millenia."

Yeah, and DYING from them too. Why do you think that every school child knows who Louis Pasteur is? This was a major breakthrough in preventing serious illness and death in humans when he developed his method of purifying milk. If you want to drink it, go ahead it's your life you are risking, but children are in adult care and have no choice, so if you plan to give or are giving a child unpasteurized products to said child, you are being deeply irresponsible.

[yellowcanine]

15. "Raw milk contains enzymes." So does poop.

[leftyladyfrommo]

8. I had a friend who contracted brucillosis

from drinking raw milk. It ruined her health. The infection damaged her heart.

It's not just some idle risk. It can have really serious consequences.

[Scairp]

9. This is nuts

My husband, several years older than me and from the English countryside, has told me the story a few times of how his father nearly died from drinking unpasteurized milk when my husband was a child. It strikes me as just a little bit insane in this day and age to want to drink unpasteurized milk and products. I thought everyone knew that it's like playing Russian roulette. I guess not.

[catchnrelease]

13. Letter from dairy owner

This is a letter written as a rebuttal to a story on Fox news and KMPH regarding the safety of raw milk. The letter was also posted on the dairy's Facebook page, and available for sharing, so I'm posting the whole letter. I know it's not going to sway those that don't believe in raw milk but at least it is another side to the story.

This dairy keeps it's cows out on pasture all year and has a mobile milking 'barn' that is moved out to the herd for milking, so the girls never have to stand in mud or dirty dry lots. They walk from the grass, into the milking parlor, and when done walk back out into the pasture. And the facility, and milk is tested routinely by the dairyman for pathogens. I have also collected milk/colostrum from factory dairy farms and seen what crap--literally--and flies are floating in it, so I know what you are talking about. I've been drinking milk from OPDC for at least 10yrs with no problems. In fact I can't drink 'store' milk since all of the lactase has been cooked out of it. So, I guess I'm willing to take the risk and drink the stuff, even if I am not a calf.

Letter:

It would only be fair to consider a statement and coverage of the other untold side of the Minnesota Raw Milk study.

“Not all raw milk is produced the same!”

The Raw Milk study that was released on Fox news and KMPH used a picture of our OPDC raw milk bottle. This story was really biased, highly misleading and unfair about the nature of how un-safe raw milk is. No one called OPDC for a comment prior to the use of a picture of our brand and our product when stating that raw milk is very unsafe!!

In CA raw milk is 100% legal, tightly regulated, state inspected and intensively tested and it can be bought in 625 stores by delighted consumers that are sickened by pasteurized milk. The FDA has identified pasteurized milk as the MOST allergenic food in America. In Minnesota, raw milk is illegal for sale and it is all black market. God knows that kind of practices are being used? Yet the authors of the CDC backed study would like everyone to think that all raw milk is the same and that it is all very dangerous. This is a blatantly false concept and it is not backed by data.

We are LISTED by RAWMI and as a CDFA state inspected raw milk dairy we are subject to very tight regulation and controls. Not one illness has been reported to the state of CA from any consumer of a dairy LISTED by RAWMI since being LISTED. See the bacteria counts and food safety plans at www.rawmilkinstitute.org<http://www.rawmilkinstitute.org>

As you can see, the other side of the story needs to be told. Please work with us to tell the whole story and get this right!

There is a real reason why consumers eagerly spend $16 per gallon for tested and delicious raw milk and shun pasteurized $2.99 per gallon milk. One is digestible and highly allergenic and raw milk is digestible and not allergenic. In fact raw milk has been shown to reduce allergies and treats asthma effectively. ( see PARSIFAL and GABRIELA studies in EU ). 9 children die every day in the USA when properly treated for Asthma by doctors. Every child that drinks raw milk sees asthma and allergies go away!!

Raw milk has killed no one as per the CDC databases since prior to the CDC beginning to collect that data. More than 77 people have died drinking pasteurized dairy products since 1972 per the CDC data mostly from Listeria Monocytogenes.

Lets get the public properly informed.

Thank you!

Have a great and healthy day,

Mark McAfee
CEO/Founder
Organic Pastures Dairy Co

[yellowcanine]

14. Leaves out a lot of fairly recent history of Organic Pastures Dairy Co.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/03/california-department-of-public-health-publishes-final-report-on-organic-pastures-raw-milk-outbreak/#.U0xOovldWac

Organic Pastures chooses its words very carefully as in:

"Not one illness has been reported to the state of CA from any consumer of a dairy LISTED by RAWMI since being LISTED."

Enough parsing there to drive a milk truck through and in particular:


No mention of the illnesses of five children in late 2011 directly linked to raw milk from Organic Pastures