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Health See other Health Articles Title: Behind the push for pasteurization Behind the push for pasteurization If you love your milk so fresh you can still hear the moo, watch out: Big Dairy is coming after you – again. Two lobbying groups backed by untold piles of dirty dairy dollars are urging lawmakers to put raw milk out to pasture, calling it a "significant food safety hazard." But as long as we're talking farm, let's call that what it really is: hogwash (yeah, another farm word came to mind first... but I try to keep this family-friendly). The International Dairy Foods Association and the National Milk Producers Federation want all unpasteurized products to follow the same standards as other milk products – in other words, they want everything pasteurized. But the problem with raw milk isn't that it's dangerous – because it isn't. I've been drinking this stuff for years, and I'm just one member of a small-but-devoted army of raw-milk lovers. And believe me, we're healthier than most people. No, the problem is that it's harder for Big Dairy to turn a profit on raw milk, and harder to tax. Think about it – legal raw milk would mean small farmers everywhere could sell it at market price direct to consumers from roadside stands... the way many of them now sell peach pies. Big Dairy wouldn't earn a dime off that. And Uncle Sam gets nervous because it would be difficult to keep tabs on all these small operations at tax time. So instead, farmers are essentially forced to sell their milk to Big Dairy for a fraction of its value. But the dairy barons can't ever tell you that... so they pretend it's about safety instead. I'll say it again: Hogwash! Pasteurization sucks many of the nutrients out of the milk, including vitamins C, B6 and B12. It even sucks the calcium out – any calcium you find in store-bought milk is usually added during fortification. All that, and it's still not guaranteed to be perfectly safe. People still get sick and even die from bacteria in pasteurized milk – bacteria that, in theory, shouldn't be there. One study found that between 1982 and 1997, 220,000 people were sickened by salmonella in pasteurized milk. During that same period, not a single person reported getting sick from raw milk. Raw milk should be celebrated... instead, we're forced to hide and sneak and find creative ways around laws designed to stop us from getting our milk... like buying shares in cows the same way some people buy partial ownership of vacation homes. If you're interested in all the benefits of raw milk, visit a local dairy farmer and see what he can do for you. Not only does the real stuff taste far better than that milk-colored store-bought junk, but it contains more essential nutrients like calcium, vitamin D and a natural antibiotic called lactoferrin. Raw milk drinkers will tell you the benefits include weight loss, better immunity from colds and even pain relief. One warning: Drinking raw milk means you may be treated like an outlaw... when all you really want is a chance to do your body good. You may like you chicken baked, broiled, grilled or fried... but odds are you're also enjoying it with a heaping helping of contamination. Consumers Union, the organization behind the magazine Consumer Reports, found bacterial contamination in nearly two-thirds of store-bought chickens during a recent test. And guess what? That number's an improvement! Just two years ago, they found 80 percent of all supermarket chickens to be contaminated. In the recent analysis, the company bought 382 fresh broiler chickens from 100 supermarkets in 22 states. And they found the number-two cause of food-borne illness, campylobacter, present in 62 percent of the chickens. Not only that, but they also found salmonella – our leading cause of food-borne sickness – in 14 percent of the chickens. Still feel like getting your meat from factory farms? These numbers may shock you – but I'm not surprised in the least. It's a testament to American resilience that we're not dropping dead left and right from massive waves of food poisoning, and not just from the chickens. I won't eat any of the contaminated garbage that emerges from these filthy factory operations, and not because I don't like meat. I'm a certified carnivore – but I only eat grass-fed beef and meat from free-range chickens from smaller farms that know how to keep things clean and safe. More expensive, sure – but this isn't an area where you want to skimp, because once meat enters those big soiled slop-halls, anything can happen. Just take a look at the recent news out of Texas, where a Tyson plant that makes seafood soup was cited for food contamination. FDA inspectors found "serious violations" there... so here's what they did: They sat around for a couple of months... and then they wrote the plant a letter. I wonder if they used a quill dipped in ink and sent it via Pony Express, too. Meanwhile, seafood soup from this place is out there on supermarket shelves right now... and the plant is still in operation, probably in the same condition – since the company has of course denied any problems there. One more reason to avoid canned food at all cost. Ruffling feathers and kicking cans, William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.
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#1. To: Original_Intent (#0)
I guess that someone wiped the cows ass and dunked it in the milk.
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