"Ranée at Arabian Knits" wrote:
>
> In article . com>,
> "Pete C." > wrote:
>
> > Claiming that "nearly all illnesses and deaths from dairy in the US have
> > been linked to factories which use pasteurized milk" attempts to
> > demonize the factories and/or pasteurized milk and implies that
> > unpasteurized milk is safer, which is simply not true.
>
> My issue is with the assumption that pasteurization ensures safety
> while raw dairy ensures illness. It is not the case.

No, it is not the case, however it also does not justify the implied
claims in your earlier statement.

What is true is that you have a much higher probability of becoming ill
from unnpasteurized milk products than from pasteurized milk products,
but in both cases the probability is very low.


> If you read up on
> the history of pasteurization you will find that the reason it became
> necessary was because of a lack of interest in cleaning up whiskey
> dairies, rather than because there was a general problem with milk.
> What has resulted is that most modern dairies are now much like those
> whiskey dairies, rather than cleaner. They count on pasteurization to
> cover the problems, which is better than passing the problem on, but
> that doesn't address the root problem. This has created an environment
> where the illness of the animals, the conditions they are in, their
> feed, the cleanliness of their housing and milking facilities are seen
> as not as important as they ought, since all those bugs will be killed
> in pasteurization anyway. That is bad practice. On top of that,
> pasteurization does not kill all the bad bugs, leaving "super bugs,"
> much like the over use of antibiotics and antibacterials does.

The simple fact is that cows are naturally filthy animals and most dairy
farms are not worse than cows in their natural environment. A some dairy
farms are a lot cleaner as well.

>
> > Statistically, since like 0.l% of the population consumes unpasteurized
> > milk products vs. the 99.8% that consume pasteurized milk products, you
> > would expect that most issues would relate to the prevalent product.
>
> Since you have just made up that statistic, I have no reason to
> consider it as anything but your own conjecture. It also ignores the
> fact that most milk contamination happens _after_ pasteurization,
> rendering the pasteurization moot.

My statistic is a reasonable estimation of the population of the US that
consumes unpasteurized milk products. Even if it is off by a factor of
10, it still points out why nearly all milk related illnesses are linked
to pasteurized milk.

Your argument is rather like claiming that Lamborghinis are much safer
than Hondas since there are far fewer accidents involving Lamborghinis
each year than Hondas, completely ignoring the 1,000,000:1 ratio of
Hondas to Lamborghinis.

Where contamination typically occurs in milk products in no way
invalidates what I have said about the huge disparity in the pasteurized
milk consuming population vs. the unpasteurized milk consuming
population. Indeed your statement about where contamination occurs does
invalidate your implication that the pasteurized milk is less safe than
the unpasteurized milk.

It is very clear where your bias lies, but your statements shouldn't lie
to try to support your bias.

>
> You'll have to excuse me if I trust raw milk from a dairy whose cows
> I can see, who eat on pasture most of the year and have hay when they
> can't, and whose milking parlor I can visit over the milk from these
> "safe" dairies who pool their milk, keep their cattle in small spaces,
> eating grain rather than grass, who cannot keep these USDA approved
> places from having disease and bacteria spread in them and simply recall
> when their lawyers decide it is statistically in their favor.

You have every right to trust whatever source of milk products you want.
You do not have the moral right (free speech after all) to bash the
extraordinarily safe US commercial dairy products with false claims. For
every glass of your unpasteurized milk that is safely consumed, millions
of glasses of pasteurized milk are safely consumed.

> You don't
> have to read anti-agribusiness literature to find this. Read standard
> agricultural magazines, dairy newspapers. The reason for those
> antibiotics in our beef and milk? Because they are sick all the time
> from eating a diet which gives them scours, AKA continual diarrhea, and
> standing knee deep in their own filth. It is standard to give the
> cattle preventative antibiotics in the industry because it is standard
> for them to be sick.

Here you are confusing, perhaps deliberately, they vastly different
conditions that beef cattle are frequently found in (feed lots), vs.
dairy conditions. Even then, you are vastly exaggerating as feed lot
filth is ankle deep at most. Also the feed for dairy cows is vastly
different than the feed for beef cattle in feed lots.

>
> We now live in farm country. We see which dairies and ranches have
> the crowded and smelly animals and which ones let their animals range
> and manage their waste. We don't buy meat from the grocery store with
> some very specific exceptions (brands and companies we know at least
> don't plug their animals with grain and drugs).

Certainly it is nice to be able to survey the conditions if you have
local options available and the time to do it.

> If we have to buy store
> milk, we only buy Organic Valley milk, because although it is
> pasteurized, their cattle is pastured and you can get unhomogenized milk
> (why do they homogenize milk? So they can take more of the cream for
> butter and still call their whole milk whole, even though it has about
> half the cream of real whole milk. The discussion of what the chemical
> process of breaking the fat globules down at that level does to people
> is another objection we have).

Wow, now you're really off base.

First off, most consumers prefer low fat milk, so removing much of the
cream isn't much of an issue.

Second off, you really are off in left field claiming that
homogenization is some chemical process when the truth is that it is an
entirely mechanical process.

I suppose you also think that refined sugar is chemically treated as
well, vs. the truth that it is nothing more than spun in a centrifuge to
separate the crystallizes sugar from the molasses.

>
> The bottom line is that the USDA considers Twinkies and Fruit Loops
> safe, but thinks that raw milk and home butchered meat is dangerous. I
> know where I will take my chances.

Again, you're stretching the truth. Raw milk and home butchered meat are
*potentially* dangerous.