Re: Raw milk a difference in opinion

Hi folks,

I'm new here, but getting good information about this topic is very dear to my heart as raw goat milk and raw goat milk kefir have been pivotal in restoring my health. Something that I've learned over the past year of having my own goats is that what the animals are fed makes a huge difference in the palatability and health of the resulting raw milk. We need to be careful of making blanket statements about raw milk because it's a living food and indeed as such fragile. There's a great group now on yahoogroups discussing the Science of this very thing at RawDairy@yahoogroups.com

borrowed from there: Just to give you a summary of some of the info about raw milk safety,
let me speak to this a little. Grassfed raw milk contains 3 or 4
anti-bacterial agents, or pathogenic inhibitors. They are Nisin,
Lactoferrin, Lactoperoxidase and TiO2. These are enzymes and peptides.
They exist in large quantities in grassfed, healthy milk. They exist
in low levels in grain fed milk. They are also destroyed by
pasteurization. This makes pasteurized milk a very delicate product,
and one which is easily contaminated. Many outbreaks of food poisoning
have occurred from pasteurized milk over the last few decades. The
stats are in the link I passed you.

In addition, raw milk has thousands of good bacteria, like
lactobacillus and acidophilus, such as what is found in yogurt. Again,
these high levels of good bacteria are not found in grain fed,
confinement dairy milk, usually from Holsteins. The high levels of
good bacteria not only nourish our gastrointentinal tract, but they
also protect the raw milk from pathogen contamination. It's like
having a good stand of grass in your lawn. If it is strong, the weeds
(pathogens) will be choked out by competition from the grass (good
bacteria.) So even if healthy raw milk does get, say, a little e-coli
in it, that e-coli will normally be gone within 24 hours. Mark McAfee
of Organic Pastures proves this over and over with his pathogenic tests
that he performs on bacteria every so often. He takes a sample of his
milk and works with a nearby university to conduct the experiment.
Basically, they inject the milk sample with e-coli, salmonella, or
listeria and within 24 hours the pathogens they injected are gone from
the raw milk. His cows are in So. CA and are 100% grassfed. It is a
very happy herd. You can check it out at www.organicpastures.com.
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