One of the most exciting things that has happened with this blog over the past year is a large increase in the international readership. This is exciting to me as they bring a unique perspective to the discussion, contribute suggestions and ask questions that those of us living in the United States have perhaps never considered before.
One question that I’ve been getting recently, particularly from readers in India and Eastern Europe, is how to consume raw dairy safely when the cleanliness of the source is questionable.
People in these countries typically boil their raw milk first before drinking. Â However, the information they were reading on this blog and elsewhere about the health benefits of raw milk had prompted them to reconsider this practice. Â They wanted to start consuming fresh dairy in order to enjoy the significantly improved nutritional profile of milk that has been completely unheated.
What to do in this situation? Â I put this question to Tim Wightman, President of the Farm to Consumer Foundation and grassbased farmer extraordinaire to see what he had to say.
Three Methods for Ensuring Raw Milk Quality
If you are unsure of your raw milk source or are using it for the first time and are not yet 100% comfortable with your decision, try one or all of these methods to set your mind at ease:
- Buy only small amounts of raw milk at a time and use up within one to three days. Bacteria that cause food borne illness with the exception of Campylobactor require more than a few days to develop in the quantities necessary to cause human illness.
- Make homemade (unheated) kefir with the raw milk before consuming. Â If the milk is of questionable quality, the kefir won’t set right and the end result will be whey and milk solids or a very runny kefir that won’t be desirable for consumption.
- Probably the best way to drink raw milk and have peace of mind even if you are not completely sure of the cleanliness of your source is to freeze the milk for two weeks first before thawing and then drinking. Â Food or drink frozen for that period of time is considered safe to consume. Â As a bonus, raw milk that is frozen and thawed that ends up quite close to its original form with only just a few very small milk solids floating around is a good indication of quality milk.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
We raise our own grass-fed meat and dairy animals, but the only two diseases that we test religiously for are TB bovis and Brucellosis because these are the only two diseases that are passed to humans from the infected animals themselves. Brucellosis cannot be killed by freezing as mentioned in this article under ‘Meat edible?’ ). This disease is called undulant fever in humans and typically causes sterility in males because of the prolonged high fevers associated with it. “Animal” TB as it is sometimes called, isn’t killed for at least 14 weeks at freezing temps as indicated in this article ). Bovine/Caprine TB most definitely has been spread to humans and there have been studies done that are nearly 100 years old proving that. The signs and symptoms of the animal form of TB aren’t the same in humans as the human TB (it doesn’t usually settle in the lungs and therefore doesn’t cause coughing, for example). In the case of adults, our immune systems are able to cope quite well against the animal TB, but in the case of children this form of TB typically settles in the bones and causes extreme malformations in joints. A childhood case of TB bovis is probably what gave the humpback of Notre Dame his shape and such physical malformations were common in the old French Quarter in New Orleans until pasteurization of milk become common.
We are fortunate enough to live in a country where these two diseases are down to an extremely small percentage, but both of them can have lifelong consequences unlike the other kinds of ailments that you are just as likely to get from your poorly washed spinach as your local raw milk source. Having lived in countries where one or both of these diseases are so common in the livestock that to drink raw milk from an uncertain source is a virtual guarantee that you’ll get sick, I would NEVER recommend drinking raw milk unless you know the animals are tested regularly for these two diseases because the risks are too great. I wish something other than pasteurization killed these two rascals, but to date, I’m not aware of anything other than heat that does the job effectively. By all means, skip milk altogether before playing with these diseases if you live in a country where they are common.
I for one appreciate this researched reply. I live in Africa and although we enjoy raw milk while in the US, I would never drink raw milk here because everything about it is unknown (the source, the sanitation/health of animals, workers, facilities, etc.) I will stick to the advice of 145 for 15 minutes. I would have to agree with those who have been thrown under the bus already (being accused of being big dairy or otherwise) that I think the recommendations given in the article are a little too light.
Hi Lisa,
I agree with your point of view.
Would you please explain what the 145-15 advice is?
Hello Rachel,
I appreciate your input very much. I think it is sound and well thought.
I live in Mexico and I need to give raw milk to my child with special needs. I know of an organic farm which is great but their milking process is not clean as it should, so I will not risk my daughter’s health.
Would you please let me know if I can do my own testing for the diseases you mention in the raw milk I buy from my source with unguaranteed cleanliness?
In the past before drugs people used to drop a pure silver(or as pure as they were before 1964)
coin in the container of milk . This would kill all bacteria and kept the milk safe to drink. One can still do that today or a quicker way would be to mix in an ounce or so of colloidal silver with the milk. I make my own CS so it is very cost effective and I would trust this over any other methods mentioned here. ….Den
Sarah, Our family has been raw milk drinkers for years and never been sick except one time. We bought some milk from a different farmer than we usually did but knew another family that had been buying from them for a few years, so figured it was fine. I don’t know if it was just a bad batch or what, but we all got sick, that is, only the folks who drank the raw milk. Those who didn’t drink it didn’t get sick. The remarkable thing is that before I realized it was the milk, (I thought it was just a regular tummy bug, although a very fierce one) I took the kefir that I had made out of this same contaminated milk and was giving it to everyone who was sick and they all got better almost immediately. I realized later that the milk was contaminated after a lot of phone calls to learn that EVERYONE who drank that batch of milk was sick. In the families that bought milk that week, the family members who drank the milk were sick and those who didn’t were fine. Also, I might add that those who drank the kefir made from that same milk got better and those who didn’t ended up in the emergency room.
So, I do think it’s possible to get sick from raw milk esp. if you don’t know the farmer. I do think it’s pretty rare though. We still drink raw milk and haven’t had a problem since. I just always stay with a farmer I know. As a matter of fact, after this event, I was truly amazed at the healing power of kefir. I am assuming that the good bacteria in the kefir wiped out the pathogens in the bad milk and in the digestive tracts of those who drank it.
Interesting post, Sarah. The question of getting sick from raw milk in foreign countries seems more of an issue of cleanliness of the containers used to store the milk rather than the milk itself. When you examine CDC numbers of illnesses blamed on raw milk – even if you accept their conjecture of raw milk as the cause as being true (an open question itself given the rarity that raw milk samples test positive for pathogens) the risk of illness is so low it should be touted by health authorities as one of the safest foods the public can enjoy.
In ‘The Milk Book’, William Campbell Douglass talks about swill dairies, and raw milk from ‘dirty’ sources being fed to prisoners in the early 1900’s as causing almost no illnesses. The inherent protective factors in milk – specifically the lactic-acid producing bacteria and the enzyme complexes including lactoperoxidase make it extremely difficult for pathogenic organisms to grow – even with deliberate innoculations.
This is what I’ve always heard as well, but try telling that to the nay-sayers. I’ve tried explaining that pasteurized milk would be a way better medium to grow dangerous pathogens because all of the “good”, pathogen-fighting bugs have been killed, rendering the end product a perfectly sterile environment for the growth of poisonous bacteria. Unfortunately, “sterile” is what most uninformed consumers are looking for in their food. Something is going to grow in all that milk, I’d rather have it be the good bacteria!
“In the old days” …they used a silver coin to preserve their raw milk. It lasted about double the time and left no after taste. Does anyone know of any ill effects from that. I know that I take colloidial silver and I make it for my friends who have psoriasis and it is a remarkable how fast it works on it.
I milk my own Jersey cow to get raw milk. We love it! I make cheese, yougurt, butter, best cream in the world.
Hi, Sarah
I, too, am thrilled to hear that it’s okay to freeze raw milk, since I have to drive a long way to obtain it. There are weeks that we go without because I have to work on the pick-up day. How wonderful that I can make a monthly run instead of a weekly run. Can the yogurt be frozen as well? What about the cream?
Thank you for all the time you put into educating all of us!
Love this Sarah! You do such a great job researching, and finding strategies to help everyone get access to traditional foods! Best to you in 2012!
Sarah, I’m wondering about the kefir. I have resorted to buying my milk in a gallon, because a one-gallon jug is $10. here, but half-gallons are $8. What I do then, since the milk doesn’t get used that quickly (it’s just my hub and me) is to immediately make kefir with it.
I’m wondering about the consistency of kefir. Mine turns out with varying degrees of smoothness or chunkiness, various levels of separation, and takes various amounts of time to culture. Now, after reading what you’ve said, I’m concerned. Our house stays at the same temperature, summer or winter, most of the time.
How soon does raw-milk kefir need to be used?
My other question is in respect to the milk’s flavor – what kinds of chemicals are appropriate for the farmer to use in cleaning, and should they taint the flavor of the milk? Our milk occasionally has a chemical-type of taste, and I’m wondering if that is from the cleaning solutions, or is there a bacteria (not necessarily a bad one!) that could have that flavor? I notice that my kefir gets that flavor a bit more strongly after a few days, but the fresh milk has a slight flavor at times as well. Is this normal?
I don’t think a chemical taste is normal Ann. I’ve not ever had this experience and I’ve had raw milk from many farms over the years. I think you really need to have a conversation with your farmer about that. My hunch is that it’s something used to clean the holding tank.
I have some kefir in my fridge that is about 2 months old and it is fine. It does tend to separate more as the weeks pass, but it was creamy and smooth when it first was made.
It truly saddens me that things have to get so inflamed! I realize that people can get sick from raw milk, and do at times, and I’m sure anyone who takes the time and makes the effort to provide raw milk for their families does as well. there is risk from many of the foods we eat on a daily basis. Nourishing our bodies unfortunately, does present the possibility of illness.
I also realize, however, as an informed consumer, that people get sick from a variety of other foods as well, and that the raw-milk debate has attained the status of a witch-hunt. No one seems to bat an eye when parents feed their children the raw-fish and rice combinations that sushi restaurants sell, or a rare steak in a restaurant, school lunches every day, or, for that matter, McDonald’s “food” (and I use that term with a snicker) many nights a week in lieu of good wholesome meals cooked at home. All of the above-mentioned foods are unhealthy, dangerous, and will sicken a child with varying degrees of speed. Food-borne illness is not the only danger that foods present, and parents and families take risks with food choices every day.
I would love to hear from anyone who remembers the report that came about from a parent trying to sue one of the big, corporate chicken processing brands when their child ate the chicken and got salmonella poisoning. The judge declared that that parent should have been aware of the “inherent risks associated with eating chicken,” and that the parent was responsible for the child’s illness – not the chicken processing company, and she was not allowed to sue. Does anyone else remember this?
To me this story clearly outlines why the raw-milk debate is a farce. Why wouldn’t the same be said for families that choose the risks associated with raw milk? It clearly proves that our benevolent government wishes to control us, and not to protect us.
On the whole, I find the group of folks choosing raw milk to be some of the most informed consumers I’ve heard about. They do the research, and are trying to find ways to better nourish their children.