Tom Naughton has a good post today about raw milk.  He looked up the regulations for raw milk in a bunch of different states, and had some fun with how stupid they are.  My favorite is Nevada:

Raw milk sales are legal but, in practice, there are no raw milk sales in the state. In order for a farmer to obtain a permit from the state dairy commission to produce and distribute raw milk, the county milk commission must first certify the farm for the production of raw milk or a raw milk product. There has never been a county milk commission in existence at any time, so to this point, there has been a de facto prohibition of raw milk sales.

Most of us who saw “Brazil” took it as a warning.  Apparently some government folks took it as an inspiration.

And here’s a very good article from a raw milk drinker, telling the story of how they had to work their way through a chain of confidences to contact the raw milk “underground” so they could start getting some.  It also covers the evidence that raw milk is safe and healthy, and why that’s the case.  As the author says, it’s amazing that milk is the only food that you can’t buy unprocessed in most states.  You can buy everything else raw—meat, vegetables, fruit, grain, etc.—and decide for yourself how much you want to cook or process it, but not milk.  Once upon a time, it was sort of about safety, but that’s not what it’s about now at all.  It’s inertia and corporate protectionism, plain and simple.

We drink raw milk and cream and make yogurt from it, but unfortunately we mostly still eat pasteurized cheese.  Hard cheeses like cheddar are just a lot of work, but one of these days I’ll give cheesemaking another shot.

Now that I’ve written my position paper on raw milk, I can move on to the article I had in mind in the first place: making raw milk yogurt.  (As Bill Cosby said in Buck Buck/Fat Albert, “I told you that story so I could tell you this one.”)  If you’re still not sure about using raw milk, or only have pasteurized milk from the store, you can still use this recipe; just watch for a special note in part 2. Read more »

First, a little milk history. Pasteurization of milk started at a time when dirty milk was a real problem. Industrialization was increasing the numbers of cows per dairy—a precursor to today’s huge 10,000-cow factory dairies—so it was becoming harder to give them all good individual care. People didn’t really understand the connection between cleanliness and disease prevention. They couldn’t cool the milk as quickly or reliably as we can today.  They milked into open pails, often without making any particular effort to make sure the cow and equipment were clean, or even to keep manure out of the milk.  (Look at a cow sometime, and you’ll notice that where the milk comes out isn’t all that far from where the manure comes out.  Certainly within splash range.)  This led to a lot of contamination, and a lot of illness as a result. Read more »

Yesterday’s post kind of drained my writing energy, so to paraphrase Mike and the Bots, today’s entry will be an anthology of short, plotless posts.

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