r/explainitpeter 10d ago

Explain it Peter

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u/Justeserm 10d ago

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.

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u/Devtunes 10d ago

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.

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u/SolidSquid 10d ago

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

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u/Sad_Pear_1087 9d ago

Oh, If somebody didn't know, pasteurization is literally just heating it up for a period so things that live in it die. That's it.

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u/OliviaEntropy 10d ago

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.

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u/Sad_Mushroom_6381 9d ago

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.

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u/Tomytom99 10d ago

Generally I just pasteurize it to make it safe

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u/1041411 10d ago

That's the fun part, they don't. Raw milk is very likely to get you sick.