An Empty Offer

Raw milk is the very best food available. Or so a lot of people believe. I agree, within a very narrow range. It is the best food available to a baby mammal when suckled directly from the teat of a lactating female mammal of the same species.

Other than that, it's problematical. Oh, cow's milk is still a fine food for those who can properly digest it. So is goat's milk. One does not have to be an infant to get value from it. But in those cases, there is always a middleman. And that always means there is the risk of introduced bacteria. In fact, it's a guarantee that bacteria will be introduced. They just can't be kept out of the system. They are everywhere.

How much risk is there from them? Some are actually beneficial. Some merely harmless. Some are dangerous, causing various levels of sickness. And some are deadly. Drink them and die. The thing is, if you heat that milk to 140 degrees fahrenheit and close the system so no new bacteria can enter and replace the killed bacteria, the milk is now safe, at least as regards bacteria. It's called pasteurization, and was truly the miracle of its time. It still is, but is so commonplace that hardly anybody thinks about it any more. And since we don't think about it, many folk think it's not necessary. In fact, many think it's actually harmful.

It is true that the proteins in milk become denatured from the heating. This means the ionic bonds between the atoms and molecules that hold them in shape become undone. They change, slightly. Think about an egg white when it is heated. The changes in it are from denatured proteins. It's still good to eat. In fact, it's now free of the danger of infecting you with salmonella, providing you denatured the yolk as well. Those nasty little bacteria also get denatured from the heat, and they die, before they can infect you and reproduce. By this time, pasteurization can be counted responsible for saving millions of lives, and vastly improving billions of others. Among them yours and mine.

Even some informed adults think that raw milk is the best and/or only thing for their families. It may have some added value. The risk must be minimal, right? Nobody ever hears of people dying from raw milk, do they? And their dairyman is to be trusted, right? Everything is clean and safe so how bad could it be? So they buy it, drink it, serve it to their families, all the while thinking that they are taking a justifiable and very minor risk.

Maybe they are. But what about their children? Where in all this is it that they are agreeing to take the risk? Where is their informed consent?

A Minnesota dairyman was in the news again today because a number of people got sick drinking his raw milk. His farm was shut down and charges were filed. Today he faced sentencing.

At the same time, my local Senator, Sean Nienow, was also in the news today over the issue of raw milk. He wants to make it easier for Minnesotans to get it. It seems a logical offshoot of the Republican push for deregulation. In order to stem criticism, he even offers to increase inspections of the farms which provide raw milk.

But it's an empty offer. At the same time he's proposing this, he's working to defund the very state agencies that would be tasked with that increased inspection load.

So who's fooling whom?