I was watching the news and they were talking about the dangers of unpastuerized milk and getting listeria from it. Now this is not something I want..but I have read over and over about how raw milk is better..any thoughts on this? Am I putting my family at risk by not pastuerizing the milk? How big of a danger?

Cindy

-- Cindy in Ok (cynthiacluck@yahoo.com), March 23, 2001

Answers

I posted my opinion on this and was blasted for it. I am strong though. Their is a list already on the forum of all the diseases you can catch from raw milk. The real scare with most of these is very much like the scare of Listerosis. You simply don't know your doe has listerosis until she is very neurologically impaired, AFTER, she has milked family milk for you for several days. Listerosis can come from simply feeding a bale of hay that has a very small amount of mold on it, grain that the bag got wet on and how many children feeding really look at the feed, do you throw a whole 50 pound sack out because their is a little discoloration to the alfalfa pellets in your feed? O.K. folks answer Cindy's question, don't clog the board blasting me again :) this time I am going to forward the private hate mail!! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), March 24, 2001.

Well,here goes again.Vicki gets blasted by half the board and I get blasted by all of Vicki's apostles.We don't bother to pasteurize.Vicki's statement is true as far as it goes BUT it's what she did not bother to say that really matters.How many people have you known or even heard of that had listerosis?It is mentioned in the literature because it does exist.That doesn't mean that it is much of a threat to anyone.You have a better chance of hitting the lottery twice in a row than getting listerosis from goat milk.Consider the billions of gallons of raw goat milk that are consumed each year.It's just not something to worry about.

-- JT (gone2seed@hotmail.com), March 24, 2001.

I don't know how much of a threat listeria is, but I pasteurize because I have small children drinking the milk, and because it is easy. Why take chances with the little ones being exposed unneccessarily to anything? Just my opinion, not trying to start a fight.

-- mary, texas (marylgarcia@aol.com), March 24, 2001.

Vicki,

I have looked all through the goat and even cattle posts and am unable to find your previous post. Could you tell me where to find it, or copy and send your email to me?

-- sasha (vizsladogs@hotmail.com), March 24, 2001.

I apologize if I over looked it in the archives, I THOUGHT I had read about it somewhere, that the risk was minimal, but thought I would post and see what happened. If in doubt, ask, right? We have been drinking it for awhile now and are ok, the goats are all ok. I grew up on it raw, but sometimes, watching the news can be scary. I didn't know what caused it though, moldy feed..I will watch out for that. Thanks Vicki and Mary, everyone else that posted.

-- Cindy in Ok (cynthiacluck@yahoo.com), March 24, 2001.

Adwala juices were very popular around here as they where suposed to be healther, then children died because they wernt pastuerized so now they are pasterized.better safe then sorry.

-- kathy h (ckhart55@earthlink.net), March 24, 2001.

Ok.... don't be too hard on vickie guys... shes very knowladgable and what she says is usually backed up by scientific fact or experience. I guess pasturization is up to the personal owner. If you know your goats and their health and have had them tested and feel safe then don't. I don't pasturize the milk we use for our own consumption, but.... you can bet your last penny i do for the fudge and cheese i make to sell. i'm not taking any chances. and...... there was this goat dairy that made cheese in northern VA that was shut down last fall from guess what? Listeria in the cheese. they had to recall all the cheese and lost their butts on that one! Don't know how they got the listeria, it was never mentioned, but these are the types of incidences that Vickie is referring to, all it takes is one chance.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), March 24, 2001.

I don't have goats, but have been reading a lot of the threads because I'm considering getting either a goat or milk cow. I don't know why some of the folks on the forum blast Vicki for her advice on goats. She seems to be one of the most knowledgeable people on this forum, and she tells you the facts as she sees them. If folks don't like her viewpoint, just do what you wanted to do and go on. She has her opinion, others have theirs. My relatives drank unpastuerized cow's milk for years with no ill results. Still, I've heard of others in the community that drank raw milk and ended up with various and assorted ailments from the milk of a sick cow. It's like life. There's always a risk.

-- (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), March 25, 2001.

There's really no simple answer to this question, because whether raw milk is safe is almost entirely dependent on how well you can recognize disease in your milk animals. If you know what you're doing you run very little risk from drinking the raw milk of your own animals. I've done it for 26 years, and never gotten sick.

If you're clueless, however, the risks change.

Take Listeriosis, for instance. One hopes even the most clueless person would know enough not to drink milk from a milker with a 106°F fever, who's stopped eating and begun showing central nervous system symptoms like circling. But that form of listeriosis is not contagious through the milk even if you did drink it. It's in the much rarer abortion form of listeriosis that listeria bacteria is shed in the milk, yet I hear routinely of folks milking animals that have aborted in late pregnancy without regard to why they aborted.

That's where luck comes in...

As for cheese (which is where all this concern for listeriosis in the media is originating), it seems most of the listeria bacteria problems come from post production contamination (rather than from raw milk), and there is some indication that modern cheesemaking techniques (like long term cold storage and the disruption of normal gas exchange during aging from vacuum sealing) encourage the growth of listeria in commercial cheese.

-- Julia (charmer24@juno.com), March 26, 2001.

Well, I had already been pastuerizing the milk for the small children ,just not what I was drinking (you know, swipe a cup, stick it in teh freezer to drink later before the children drank it all). It doesn't matter right now anyway, a dog killed all my goats this morning. I plan to replace them once I have a barbed wire , hot wired fence or something, and the dog is caught/killed. I am very sad right now, sorry. I am such a worry wart when it comes to food, I will continue to pastuerize the milk at least for the children.

-- Cindy in Ok (cynthiacluck@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001.

I'm so sorry about your goats!!!

-- Cindy (jmcndy@micron.net), March 30, 2001.