Raw milk: should it be legalized in the US?

For now, let's put aside the safety concerns and health impact. And lets also put aside the obvious conspiracy here. Here are the two main reasons why I feel raw milk should be legalized in every state:

1) Driving raw milk sales underground could only make it less safe. I wouldn't want to have to buy milk from a shady character in a barn. I appreciate the sanitation oversight and frequent safety certifications which can only happen when the sale is legal.
2) No government should have the right to pose an outright ban on the sale of food, especially such a basic staple like milk. Even where the sale of raw milk is legal, such as PA, ominous warning labels must adorn the labels. Where's the warning labels for the rest of the food we eat, but shouldn't be. This is unfair treatment. Where should we draw the line for government intervention in these matters?

. . . .growing-up . . . I was the 'shady character in a barn' . . . milked cows (by hand) . . . drank raw milk (and churned butter from the cream). The only problem I remember was in the Spring when the cows ate wild onions . . . .tasted terrible on oatmeal!! So . . . raw milk was 'legal' then.

Go Raw Milk! Unfortunatley the word raw in reference to a common cow in the field is a bit off. it's too bad growers pump them with so many drugs and hormones. Although these can be filtered out with a bit of ingenuity.

Now raw elephant milk, watch out! lol

Servant_ said:

Go Raw Milk! Unfortunatley the word raw in reference to a common cow in the field is a bit off. it's too bad growers pump them with so many drugs and hormones. Although these can be filtered out with a bit of ingenuity.

Now raw elephant milk, watch out! lol

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. . . on the farm growing-up . . . we didn't even know there were 'drugs and hormones' were . . . . just 'grass-fed bovines'!

Raw milk should be legal to sell..I'm not even sure on what grounds it has been outlawed.

Raw meat can make you sick if you mishandle it yet it's perfectly legal to sell.
Raw eggs, same.
Even raw vegetables can.

The ban on milk sale is absurd. In fact it may even promote a less sanitary production environment.
So without even getting into the beneficial health aspects of raw milk versus pasteurized, I say the law is founded on reasons that are less than measured.

Several years ago a bill was introduced in the UK parliament to ban raw milk entirely from the UK. The bill was quickly abandoned when it was made known that the Queen has a special heard of cattle that she uses to keep all members of the royal family supplied with raw milk.

Since I am a libertarian I am fully supportive of removing any and all restrictions and allowing individuals to make their own choices.

The biggest issue with raw foods is the time from source to the dinner table, and that journey could be long with many opportunities for microbial infections especially if the handlers do not take appropriate care - and that usually means greater costs.

I have bought raw milk from my local farmers market which is about as close as I could get without too much inconvenience.

The Western A Price foundation are pretty staunch defenders of the raw milk campaign.

On a slightly more negative note. I was just reading Loren Cordain's new book on Paleo 2 where he comes out very strongly against milk, whether raw or not.

I have been on the fence concerning milk for the past 20 years, and while I like Ice Cream and cheese, I have never been sure of the health attributes of dairy.

There is considerable marketing hype about the health benefits of milk but all recent independent studies do not show any benefit from milk and in many cases strong indications against it.

Of all the foods that can produce allergies milk is at the top of the list. Some 65% of the world population do not have the gene that enables them to generate lactase which is needed to digest milk - i.e. they are lactose intolerant. But the vast variety of alien proteins, growth and bovine hormones that we consume from milk are quite worrying.

So for now I am not going to consume any dairy. The new term I have come to adopt when discussing milk is that it is essentially filtered cows blood. Ideal for a new born growing calf but entirely inappropriate for human consumption.

I'm one of the billions of lactose-intolerant people on this planet (one-fourth of my ancestors were Jewish) so the closest I can get to milk is cheese. I do manage to simulate milk for an occasional bowl of cereal by mixing one part cream into two parts water, and it doesn't make me unbearably flatulent.

But as a fellow libertarian and Libertarian, I agree with Cris. Let mature, informed citizens take whatever risks they want, so long as it causes no direct (or dire indirect) harm to others.

My lactose intolerance didn't kick in until I was about thirty. (Since virtually all babies can drink milk or they'd starve to death, lactose tolerance into adulthood can be viewed as an unremarkable instance of neoteny. So the attenuation rate can easily vary from individual to individual or population to population.) When I was younger I discovered raw milk and found it to be much more delicious than the cooked variety. If you buy it from a supplier you trust, which probably means directly from the farm, the risk is well within the range that we accept on a daily basis, such as riding in a subway car where a certain number of the other passengers are guaranteed to be sick and contagious.

Today I'd worry far less about the things in the milk that came out of the cow, than about the things put into the milk by agribusiness. It's as full of hormones and antibiotics as the rest of our food! Maybe you haven't seen articles about hermaphrodite fish being caught in your own aquifer, as I have about the Potomac River.

Since my condition kicked in I have tried goat milk. It seems to be considerably more digestible, and although it's an acquired taste I rather like it.

Goat milk, and cheese, is awesome. And I'm all for straight-from-the-cow milk because that's what was available on my grandpa's farm as a kid and I found it to be udderly delicious.

Personally, I believe all laws that "protect the stupid" (such as seat-belt laws, helmet laws, food-laws, etc) should be abolished... instead, make them suggestions, but with a catch - if, for example, you are in a car accident, if you were not wearing your seatbelt, your insurance provider is not liable for any injuries you sustain.

Simple enough - those with an ounce of intelligence will continue to protect themselves as they do now - the idiots will be weeded out courtesy of natural selection and their own stupidity

Yes, for chrissakes. How else are we ever going to be able to make decent cheeses at home?

raw milk?
as in straight from the cow?
used to drink it as a kid, not bad as long as the cow had some discretion about what it chomped on.
i guess the biggest advantage would be being able to skim off the fat.
this would allow you to have skim milk and a starting point for your own butter.
homogenized milk will not allow you to do that.

AlexG said:

Yes, for chrissakes. How else are we ever going to be able to make decent cheeses at home?

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What if that turns Americans into cheese eating surrender monkeys?

I'm not lactose intolerant, but I don't drink milk. It's kind of disgusting.

And what are those benefits?