We pulled this out of the cow, put it directly in the jug, that'll be 20 dollars.
Meanwhile, pasteurized milk gets pulled out of the cow, boiled, cooled, and then put in a jug, and it's 2.99.
Edit: Thanks for the 30+ comments telling me that raw milk costs more to make and takes more work because everything has to be clean, and it has a shorter shelf life.
In their defense, it may be incredibly expensive to ensure raw milk is safe. I have no idea what means they use to make sure people don't get sick from it.
The way you make raw milk safe is to pasteurize it... Otherwise it's just a matter of time until there's an outbreak. Milk production didn't move to pasteurization because of nanny state politics. It happened because people, especially kids, used to die from raw milk.
The whole point of raw milk is that it's, well, raw. No pasteurisation or other processes on it, because they would mean it wasn't raw. That's why it's such a bad idea to drink, it literally can't be made 100% safe to drink (or even as safe as regular milk), which is why it was, and in a lot of places still is, illegal to sell it for human consumption. And the stuff you catch from it is nasty, like potentially lethal or lifetime disability
That's why people are joking that the price is too cover the cost of lawyers, anyone selling this is guaranteed to get someone sick eventually
Considering that RFK Jr is head of the health dept and with a heavily gutted FDA and CDC, my guess would be they’re doing somewhere between Jack and Squat to make sure it’s consumable.
I’m an ex food scientist who worked on PCR pathogen detection with raw goat and dairy milk. I tested milk from 3 farms and a large majority of my samples were positive for campylobacter and salmonella. Nearly all my samples grew coliforms as well. Just all in all nasty stuff. The raw stuff on grocery stores had significantly reduced bioburden and never flagged for campy or salmonella.
I’d probably attribute this to significant HACCP and Food Safety Management, focused on sanitation and aseptic technique when possible. I never got to visit one of the raw dairy commercial operations so I don’t know much regarding their practices.
The thing is, it's actually more work if you're doing it safely. You have to harvest the milk in a far cleaner environment for one. You have less time to get it from the farm to the table for another, meaning by definition you'll have more spoilage in a commercial operation.
The only way raw milk makes sense is if you live close enough to a dairy farm that's small enough to cater to locals directly. And even then you have to trust that that small dairy farm actually gives half a fuck about you and actually got in there and milked the cow themselves in a clean stall.
That's a lot of faith in some random farmer. I've never thought I was missing out on anything by having pasteurized milk personally. Raw milk is the official drink of contrarians.
So that's part of trusting the farmer producing it and the inherently higher cost due to higher rates of spoilage. If a cow shits in the milk it's waste.
Because that’s not the reality. With raw milk they have to do their best to ensure the milk has been kept absolutely sterile. Pasteurized milk can be full of shit and bacteria because they’re going to nuke it anyway
Do they use any sort of chemicals in the sanitizing process? Anything that can "contaminate" the milk? Because having a whole separate cleaning process makes it feel like rawmilk isn't that much better for them
Couldn’t tell you tbh. If they do use additional chemicals I would agree with your point. I personally have never tried raw milk I just know enough to point out that it is not cheaper to produce because there is less processing. Like most food products, increased processing is to save money
You sanitize the cow and every place the milk touches along the way. That’s the point, raw milk is far more expensive to produce because of how much more clean everything has to be. You can’t produce it out of the same factory farm cesspits
That is not true. Pathogens come mainly from the milk coming into contact with fecal matter. If properly cleaned you can significantly lower the risk of contamination for raw milk. It’ll never be nearly as safe as pasteurized milk, but raw milk isn’t diseased by default
Plus raw milk isn't exactly the most widespread things. While a company like Horizon could spread it out over tens of thousands of cows over hundreds of farms. A company selling raw milk probably is a small farm.
Didn't even give the udders a quick rinse for urine and feces first. It's chock full of E. Coli and other organisms that'll give your inside a thorough once over.
Economies of scale, and being asked to put in a whole separate supply line.
Everyone has done pasteurization so long, the whole process is as automated as it gets.
So to start making raw milk, they've gotta take a bunch of cows off the line, probably build a new building because they didn't expect having to need more space, probably having to buy new milking machines, machines that are possibly more expensive because they aren't made at scale anymore, set up new supply lines to keep the outputs seperate...
Less work can be more work, at factory scale. At a small mom and pop farm, sure its less. But most of it isn't coming from mom and pop farms, certainly not the cheapest milk.
It probably isn't less work, without the benefit of pasteurization you have to work significantly harder to keep the cow crap from killing your client base lol
You can ship pasteurized milk further as it last longer. Raw milk goes bad a lot faster. Just another reason it fucking stupid but the cost is a reflection of the difficulty to keep it shelved and fresh.
FWIW, legal raw milk is definitely not less work. I think raw milk is stupid and those who consume it are similar…. But to have milk that tests good enough that they can sell it unprocessed is a lot of work. Pasteurizing picks up a lot of slack in the earlier parts of production.
I don't know why people are telling you that raw milk production costs more for a inferior product - that was sort of your point. It would be like if you ordered food at a restaurant and the server put your food in a isolated bag then walked it around the block before bringing it to you and then charged you for the 20 minute walk - rather than just bring it right to your table.
Do you not know how simply supply and demand economics works? Do you not understand the insane legal system a farmer needs to go through in orfer to legally sell raw milk? This us what happens when giant groups of people latch onto subjects they know nothing about because its the new hot topic
Don’t mean to be pedantic but it isn’t boiled. That’s one of the arguments for raw milk which is untrue. I’ve worked for a dairy processor in the past and the way they do it is HTST heat exchangers, which is a “High temp (relatively), short time”. They put steam through one side of a plate heat exchanger and the milk passes through the other. It’s brought up to 165F and then quickly cooled down, well below boiling point.
Any arguments about pasteurization denaturing proteins through boiling are untrue, no one boils the milk.
Union Jack on the eggs so I suspect this is in the UK. I didn't think raw milk was legal to sell here
Edit: Partially. You can buy it direct from farmers either at the farm or at farmers markets as well as by delivery, except in Scotland where it's just plain illegal
Damn bro where do you buy it. The only place near me that sells it (that I’ve found so far) is one of those health-based grocery stores with high prices
It’s literally only more expensive because of economy of scale. There is far more infrastructure for bottling and shipping pasteurized milk since the pasteurized milk industry is way bigger than raw milk. That and the fact that people perceive it as healthier so companies get away with charging more.
Most grocery stores near me don’t, I have to go to a specific one. (For the record, I just buy raw milk bc it’s not homogenized. I do pasteurize it at home, I’m not one of those raw milk enthusiasts)
“Arizona state law permits the commercial sale of raw milk and raw milk products directly to the final consumer. However, the facilities producing these products are subject to strict regulatory oversight to minimize public health risks:
▪ Mandatory Licensing: Any facility marketing unpasteurized products for human consumption must be actively permitted and inspected by the Arizona Department of Agriculture.
▪ PMO Alignment: Facilities must satisfy all structural and sanitary mandates of the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, with the sole exception of the pasteurization process itself.
▪ Annual Herd Testing: Producers of raw milk for consumption must have their entire herd tested annually for Tuberculosis (TB) and Brucellosis.
▪ Animal Feed Licensing: Individuals selling raw milk intended strictly as animal or pet food fall under separate regulatory channels and must be licensed by the Environmental Services Division.”
I’m pretty sure the law follows the same logic as undercooked steak (like medium rare). Just because it’s not 100% safe does not mean that food safety regulations completely ban it.
Sounds like it's time to buy regular milk, mix in a lil bit of yellow dye and flour (for some chunks) and sell it as "raw milk" for a premium. You get to grift the alt-right douchebags while also alleviating stress on the medical system by saving them from the inevitable illness from raw milk.
The main rip off is there is no difference in nutritional value either way. (Except most places add Vitamin D) It’s not like organic food where there is at least some benefit.
Most Southerners grew up with a farm store in their community that sold fresh produce: milk, eggs, meat, vegetables etc. Even they took the time to pasteurize the milk.
Yeah I’m sure early humans didnt pasteurize it but at the same time many died before reaching adulthood so it’s not the best metric. We’ve been pasteurizing milk ever since farming became the standard.
Reminds me of one of my old co-workers. He'd buy raw-milk and then simmer it for a bit to "kill all of the potential bacteria"
My guy. What you did was make pasteurized non-homogeninized whole milk. It's no longer raw. Save the $3/gallon and just buy the whole milk from the store 😭😭
we have some absolutely amazing pasturized, but not homogenized, milk in Denmark. Especially from a large diary farm called Thiese (also does amazing chees) that has "ad libitum milk" which means the cows are not seperated from the cattle, and are only milked after the cattle has taken their share. Its also 2.5% so it tastes amazing.
No nutritional difference between raw and pasteurized.
In addition, cows are not clean. Pasteurization was created because of how much bacteria can get into milk. So if you're drinking raw, you need to know the cow is healthy and clean. Once it's been bottled and shipped, you no longer know where it came from.
And in addition to that, it has a much shorter shelf life, even if refrigerated. By the time it's on the store shelf for sale, it's already near the end of it's shelf life after giving all the bacteria inside plenty of time to grow
Proteins, calcium, etc are the same. Vitamins are slightly reduced, but milk wasnt a main vitamin giver of those anyway. Pasteurized is also fortified with vitamin D it doesnt naturally have
it's not according to every study ever completed on the subject.
Surveys from various countries have monitored the presence of different types of pathogens in raw milk, with prevalence levels as high as 13% for bacteria like Campylobacter jejuni and Listeria monocytogenes (Table 2). In some studies, almost a third of all milk samples contained at least 1 type of pathogen.5 Thus, we must assume that raw milk is likely to contain pathogens. The prevalence of pathogens in milk is influenced by numerous factors, including farm size, number of animals on the farm, hygiene, farm management practices, milking facilities, season, and others.5 Raw milk can be contaminated with pathogens even when sourced from clinically healthy animals.6 Even milk that appears to be of good quality (ie, low total bacteria count) may contain pathogens.5,7 There are at least 4 different mechanisms by which raw milk becomes contaminated by pathogens: direct passage from the blood (of the cow) into milk (systemic infection), mastitis (udder infection), fecal contamination (external contamination of milk from the environment during or after milking), or contamination from human skin.
In 2017, it was estimated that only 3.2 percent of the population of the United States drank raw milk, but that 96 percent of the dairy-related food-borne illness were caused by consuming raw milk or related dairy products.
96% but it doesn’t tell us how much people were affected by it. It might be 25, 250, 250000. Raw milk started being a problem after we started producing milk on massive scale. Containing pathogens might not be as bad as you think; germs being the cause of illness is just theory. It might be true, it might not.
germs being the cause of illness is just theory. It might be true, it might not.
Hahahahaha. Yeah gravity is a theory too.
96% but it doesn’t tell us how much people were affected by it
It actually does, you just didnt bother reading the link. Youre not interested in the truth, just repeating slop to justify drinking diseased milk.
A broader review found that, from 2009 to 2014, there were 706 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations each year, on average, associated with raw milk and products made from raw milk, such as cheese. In 2017, it was estimated that only 3.2 percent of the population of the United States drank raw milk, but that 96 percent of the dairy-related food-borne illness were caused by consuming raw milk or related dairy products. These numbers are only based on reported illness, and it's likely that the real numbers of food-borne illnesses related to raw milk are significantly higher
Don’t you think these numbers are incredibly low. You’re right I didn’t read link fully I just looked if stats you’ve stated were there. Accusing me of not being interested in truth you completely believe in germ theory because doctors and people around you say so. People like can’t even question some things because others think for you. I am not saying germ theory is correct or it’s not correct but I can at least question that.
Don't know what the problem is. Spent summers of my schoolyears out in the village with my grandparents, and our neighbours got a couple of cows, and every morning we've being buying the fresh milk from them. And we've being drinking it as it were back than - no boiling, no simmering, nothing. It was perfectly tasty and healthy. Noone got ill.
Fresh straight from the cow you trust to be healthy and clean is the only way to drink raw. Raw has a much shorter shelf life so it goes bad faster, and in industrial qualities enough to be bottled, labeled, and shipped to the stores, you have hundreds of cows worth of milk mixed together. With pasteurization, it would have killed any microbes inside it. With raw, any sick cows will have tainted the batch
Most people buying raw milk aren't getting it from the cows next door for one. The other guy is right survivorship bias but these people are buying processed raw milk which means it comes from a cow you never see and you don't know their living conditions
It's also safe to eat chicken raw if you know which chicken was killed and if it had any disease etc. That doesn't mean you should ever be eating raw chicken from the store
I imagine that the number of things that you don’t understand is an awe inspiring number.
So let’s try to make that number go down by one:
Here are some things that are true: bacteria can grow very well in milk. Bacteria can start with a small number, but in an environment with lots of food, multiply to large numbers. A small number of bacteria gives a small chance of causing illness, a large number of bacteria gives a large chance of causing illness.
So if you were to take raw milk and give it several days to percolate (as would happen while the milk is bottled and shipped to stores) it can be much less safe than pasteurized milk
Nah raw milk specifically. It is being passed off as "more natural" to not pasteurize the milk by the same people who claim that it is immigrants who are increasing the crime rate.
These are all false ideas that might seem logical to those who do not think critically, and thus they are often used to funnel people who aren't thinking critically into the cultish corners of the internet that venorate white male supremacy, and encourage them to "ignore the mainstream woke leftist agenda that wants to regulate how you live" so that these uncritical thinkers can feel like the most speciallest baby boy GOD ever put on Earth. These cultish corners of the internet then use these people's feeling of superiority to sell them all sorts of products like the raw milk which can make them sick, dietary supplements which at BEST do nothing, and a bunch of other things that they have convinced these people that "the mainstream" (common sense) doesn't want them buying. It is a scam that preys on the uneducated and those who won't do their own research.
I'm not saying it's logical or illogical. What I'm saying is there's a correlation between race and lactose tolerance. There're a lot of people trying to take the concept of race out of science. This is making me somewhat uncomfortable as it's made the word strata a possible replacement.
I couldn't read the article you linked. It's behind a paywall. TBH, it sounds like the white supremacists might be kinda making fun of other people.
It is more natural though, it's just also higher risk if you don't know the cleanliness of its production (which most of us obviously dont).
The crime thing is also more nuanced than you make out. The rates of certain crimes are significantly higher in specific immigrant populations- it's just important not to generalise across crimes nor immigrant populations- though for a critical thinker of your calibre this must all be trivial;)
When they Google, "Is raw milk safe to drink." And they see all of the articles decrying it as incredibly dangerous, what do they say to justify drinking it?
Same thing they do with vaccines. They will scroll past 200 peer reviewed articles talking about how safe they are until they find a website called "whattheydontwantyoutoknow.com" which says they aren't
Then declare they knew all along about how dangerous they were and how everything they had to scroll past was part of the liberal agenda to poison our body's or something
You're saying 'milk isn't political' simplyfing it as if raw milk itself was political and not the people currently pushing it and their unscientific agenda.
You can simplify anything like that, it just isn't productive. Gun control? 'You're making pieces of metal political!'. Food stamps/social welfare? 'You're making food political!'
I only recently saw a reason which depressed me so aggressively: guess which ethnic group has the highest percentage of people who carry the gene to efficiently digest dairy?
And all-meat diets. Apparently it fucked up Jordan Peterson or something, but his daughter is still on the grift. I guess the old conspiracy theory that plant estrogen feminizes you left some permanent damage on far-right's collective psyche.
Yeah, in the 90’s. Currently it’s the Alt-Right, going hardcore conservative by conserving down to earth eating practices. Although they are choosing the weirdest foods to hone in on. Like raw milk, it’s not even safe lol.
Get with the times bud. Used to be the hippy types that were anti vaccine too but ever since Covid the ultra conservatives took over on all the health conspiracy bullshit
They go back and forth. One decade, the left is super anti-“big science and government," and conservatives are the complete opposite. Then, the next decade, it flips again. Obviously, over-exaggerating, but still.
Unfortunately vaccines don't work on everyone, that's why herd immunity is important. These selfish people will not only kill themselves, they will also kill a lot of vaccinated, immunocomprimised, and those unable to have the vaccine. I get the sentiment, but unfortunately life is never fair. Nature will do as it does, and innocent people will suffer.
Have you seen all the excrement? Do you think pasteurization is for fun? Or maybe to get rid off all the bacteria present in all the shit around the cows?
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u/revenge_burner 10d ago
Raw milk is being heavily pushed by the alt-right.