After reading an earlier post, I just have to ask - what specific health danger(s) are there for a child drinking raw milk? And how young are you talking about? My daughter is eight and we have just started buying raw milk from a nearby dairy where a friend works. Thank you in advance for your answers. Cynthia

-- Cynthia Speer (farmsteader@gvtel.com), July 06, 2001

Answers

The age is under 3, and I have no idea what the health risk is supposed to be. I love raw milk and when I lived near a dairy that was licensed to sell it that way regularly bought it for both myself and my son.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 06, 2001.

As I understand it, the big one is tuberculosis. I WOULD NOT drink raw milk if there was a risk of that. If the herd or cow were certified TB free, then the risk drops way back. I'd still prefer pasteurised, but if I knew the farm (say next door, with a friend working there, AND if I was confident that they were competent to detect mastitis, and would treat it adequately and ensure the pus wasn't put in with their salable milk) then the risks drop into manageable areas. However, I don't know your systems there.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 07, 2001.

Well.....children can start drinking raw milk as soon as they are off formula or breast milk. I think that is a decision that the parent has to make. Actually in the case of goat milk some folks feed their infants goat milk if they cannot tolerate formula. Our grandson was like that. He started on goat milk and improved significantly, the pedictrician was amazed at his turn around.

Here are my thoughts on buying raw milk: Have you been to the dairy? Are they clean, sanitary about milking and handling of the milk? Do they test for TB/Brucellosis on a regular basis? Thats the most important thing to look for. You could probably pasturize the milk yourself, its not that hard.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), July 07, 2001.

If the dairy is shipping milk commercially, the milk is tested every time it is picked up for brucellosis. As for Johnes disease(bovine paratuberculosis) most dairymen test once a year for this disease in this area. Generally speaking, if you've visited the dairy and their daily housekeeping practices show a concern for cleanliness so you feel confident that fecal material and flies in the product are not a problem and the equipment is free from milkstone indicating it is broken down daily and cleaned properly, I would not hesitate to use the raw milk. The days of undulent fever, etc. are pretty well gone with modern testing methods.

-- Sandra Nelson (Magin@starband.net), July 07, 2001.

A few years ago, unpasteurized juice was all the rage until people started getting sick from e-coli in it. Am I being naive, or is this not the main concern?

-- xx (xx@xx.com), July 07, 2001.

Don, I have read that it has been determined that bovine tuberculosis is not able to infect humans. The human tuberculin bacteria is not the same. The reason people used to get tuberculosis from milk is because humans with TB used to milk, coughing, into open pails. Of course, the warm milk was the perfect environment in which to culture the Human TB virus. But Tb is not spread by raw milk which has not been around infected humans.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), July 07, 2001.

xx, the need for pasteurisation of Orange Juice is because the fruit falls on the ground, which may have been fertilised with manure. Those oranges had manure bacteria on them. Orange Juice which is made from clean oranges is not a problem.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), July 07, 2001.

Hi everybody - thanks for all the answers and anyone else, please feel free to comment also. This is a commercial dairy, milk is picked up every other day - so I assume it is being tested. I see my friend using disposable wipes of some kind on the udders before the machines are hooked up and the dairy looks clean to me. Also have seen her cleaning the tank after the milk has been picked up. I know I could pasteurize it at home, using the method described in the other post; but someone stated there that you are killing a lot of helpful enzymes, microorganisms when you do that. So, I don't want to be unsafe; but I also don't want to kill any added benefits of us drinking raw milk if there is no real health risk. This is a nice looking Brown Swiss herd and we enjoy churning the butter too. Thank you again and anyone else, please feel free to comment. Cynthia

-- Cynthia Speer (farmsteader@gvtel.com), July 08, 2001.

We've been drinking our unpasturized milk for almost 20 years. We had our last milk cow for over 17 years. Every year when she calved, we had our vet come and test her for TB and draw the blood for testing for brucellosis.

Once, after many years of this, the vet asked, "Why are you still testing this cow? We live in a TB free, brucellosis free area."

We told him it was a decision we made when we chose not to pasturize her milk. Many animals come and go from our farm in a year's time and there is always that chance that she was exposed to something during the year, over the fence, or from the deer.

Once we had an upsetting situation about the raw milk. A family came to visit from a large city. Almost a year later, they called to say that one of their children tested positive to TB. The doctor asked if they had drank any raw cow's milk - and, of course, they remembered us. We told them that the cow had been tested, but we would test her again, - which we did. We breathed a big sigh of relief when she tested negative. Don't know what our liabilities would have been if the test had been positive. I am very sure that they were going to see just what our liabilities were, if their child had been exposed to TB at our dinner table.

I sent them a copy of the TB test report and they dropped it. We were feeling very vulnerable for a few days.

Did it change our feelings about not pasturizing? no Another vet friend of ours says his greater concern is about staph and strep infections through raw milk.

It boils down to this. Keep everything fanatically clean, cool the milk FAST, store it super cold and test the cow.

-- homestead2 (homestead@localnetplus.com), July 08, 2001.

Lord has anyone thought about what is in the pasturized milk that you get from the store? do you know why they have to pasturize it? Mostly to control the bacteria count that was in the milk at the [pickup time. If you are going to buy raw milk from a dairy ask to see their raw bacteria milk counts and if their over 30,000 parts per million then think again unless you're going to pasturize. Better yet keep your pwn cow or goat and keep everything clean ad fresh.

-- Diane Brown (oleoranch3@aol.com), July 09, 2001.

Lord has anyone thought about what is in the pasturized milk that you get from the store? do you know why they have to pasturize it? Mostly to control the bacteria count that was in the milk at the [pickup time. If you are going to buy raw milk from a dairy ask to see their raw bacteria milk counts and if their over 30,000 parts per million then think again unless you're going to pasturize. Better yet keep your own cow or goat and keep everything clean ad fresh.

-- Diane Brown (oleoranch3@aol.com), July 09, 2001.

And do you know how long that milk has to wait before pickup and processing? Days sometimes. So of course they have to pasturize it. And folks who have dairies and ship milk have to have their bacteria levels under a certain amount or else we can't ship. And of course we have to go through inspections and be SANITARY! that is the key to this whole discussion. And as for diseases, well.... you have a lot more to worry about that TB/Brucellosis, there are many zootonic diseases that are communicated as well such as CL. And i read someplace that you can't kill the bacteria that causes CL by pasturization. So if you choose to purchase from a small dairy then by all means take precautions, we as dairyfolks have to. Well... some of us do anyways!

so, if you choose to NOT buy pasturized whole milk then you have to be understanding of the remifications of such. I choose not to sell raw milk even though I can legally. I even have insurance on our tanks and such, even liability insurance, but you know what? its not worth it to me to get caught in a snare like the lady who mentioned the TB scare. too many lawsuit happy folks out there.

for our own use i don't pasturize, but for everything else i do with the milk i do, just to be safe. but then i know my herd and the health of my goats. So its back to a personal decision and what you are willing to risk as both a buyer and seller.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), July 09, 2001.

Pasteurization destroys the enzymes and turns a healthy drink into an unhealthy drink.

-- Rick7 (Rick7@postmark.net), July 09, 2001.

Most folks on lists like these have not had stock for 20 years. Most folks on lists like these are newbie's with their first cow or goat with very little information about the animal. Most folks on lists like these usually don't have a dairy background to even know if they visited a farm if they were being told the truth or not, I know I couldn't have read a DHIR cow sheet with a somatic cell count on it, they could have told me it said anything. Most folks on lists like these couldn't diagnose the beginnings of mastitis, listerosis, Brucelossis, CL, Cryptococcosis, Leptospirosis, Louping Ill, Meliodiosis, Q fever, Staph, Toxoplasmosis, or TB. Just a list of the zoonic disease's passed in the milk to humans, from Goat Medicine.

Bernice and I share a nice little newbie site on MSN, just this last month a gal had a doe die from Listerosis, she had been on the site complaining about the does loss of balance and loss of MILK PRODUCTION, just what risk her family is/was in we don't know. I have very simialar rules for selling as Bernice does. And though I do drink the milk raw from my does, I certainly don't recommend new folks to do this with new stock. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), July 09, 2001.

Pasteurization destroys the enzymes and turns a healthy drink into an unhealthy drink.

-- Rick7 (rick7@postmark.net), July 12, 2001.