The Big Raw Milk Debate

I'm really interested in the big debate thats going on in California right now, where a lot of local dairy farmers are being ordered to shut down their production of raw milk practices. Here is a pretty cool picture explaining the pros and cons of both Raw Milk & Pasteurized Milk. What do you all think? IMO it's very possible that it could be just another way of balancing out the good and bad bacteria we need to manage our IBD.

If you live in the US, here is a map showing which states allow the purchasing of raw milk through retail, or farms, which states don't allow, etc.

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For the record, I've been reading Natural News for months now, and it is a very biased news site, but they do at least provide sources.

I recently looked up some stats and I personally don't think it's worth the risk, especially for UCers who have gut and immue system "issues."

Jordan Reubin, who wrote the Guts and Glory program and the Makers Diet, says raw goat milk was essential to him beating his crohns disease, whether it was fermented into kefir, or just dranken raw.

I buy raw goat milk from a farm to make SCD yogurt, it thickens up much better than the pasteurized carton from the health food store. However both types of milk, when created into SCD yogurt, agree with me completely, as opposed to cow milk which is horrible.

I have dranken raw milk before, it is very good, but since being on SCD, I am totally lactose free and avoid all dairies.

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Don't do it. My son has two classmates who have been in the hospital for the past three weeks with kidney failure from drinking raw milk.

My husband has a colleague whose family member is on a respirator due to raw milk. I do believe it works for some but there is a real risk especially for those who are immunosuppressed. I've thought about trying it but after looking into it can't take that risk. As a child in India we got milk delivered every morning right from the cow but my grandmother would boil the heck out of it before consuming it. And apparently they'd done this for generations. Must have been a reason why.

Kazbern, I agree and even then there are risks. You can buy into a cow in a "cow share" program (that's the only way to get raw milk where I live) but then the storage/handling/transportation have to be appropriate so you really have to trust your source. Anyone here trying raw milk?
I do know a mother in Europe who treated her daughter's severe UC holistically including raw goat's milk and she felt this was a major component of her healing but then her next door neighbour owned the goat and she milked it herself and it was consumed fresh.

really delta? all milk I've ever had in India (punjab, delhi, gurgaon) has always been homogenized at home or before purchase. they cow we got our milk from lived on our street so it's conditions were pretty obvious - perhaps if we owned it but then my family who lived in rural areas/farms boiled theirs too? never had raw milk there as far as I know.

The only way I would even think of drinking raw milk, if I lived next to the Amish people and buy it from them. Even if it is said "organic" milk, it does mean that the poor cows are treated well and not packed in the conctrete barns and have never seen the sun and grass in their lives.

I don't get the issue. Pasteurizing is nothing but heating milk to reduce the bacteria load. When I make yogurt I heat milk in a double boiler to 180 f, which is far beyond what pasteurization for a few seconds does.

The breeding of ultra high milk output cows that require constant treatment with antibiotics to keep them alive and live just a few years because of the stress is the issue to me. I grew up next door to a dairy herd and the utters on most dairy cows today are twice as large. They are so fragile that they can't nurse a calf. The cow must be milked and the calf bottle fed. The utters get constantly infected. This is not healthy and pasteurizing isn't sterilizing...bacteria is still present in the milk but at supposed safer lower levels.

utter=Adjective: Complete; absolute.
Verb: Make (a sound) with one's voice.

udder=Noun: cow boobies

:)

If i were to drink raw milk it would be from a goat, it is more like breast milk. You drank raw breast milk as an infant right?

Yes I know, thats what I don't like to hear -how underreported, unsafe amounts of fecal matter, blood and pus end up in cows milk, disgusting.

I have to say, since I started taking VSL #3, I have no gas at all, so I imagine, depending on the person that raw milk must help with the same.
What I still question is why I'm sensitive to cheeses, as in, this is one of the only products I get gas from.

Interesting discussion, guys. I have mixed feelings as well, but only from my personal experience. And only theoretically as now I don't drink any milk almost at all and will not push any of my family to drink more than they want to.

I'm from Poland, where UHT milk (pasteurized) had been introduced into the market maybe "teen" years ago. When I was small, I used to drink milk, that was store bought raw, then mom boiled it at home. Raw was used to make kefir (the best kefir ever). Me and my sister, as small kids, were not allowed to drink the raw milk as parents probably knew something about not so sterile the whole milking process; we are talking here about times when there were no big diary farms in Poland, All milk was bought from small family run farms, owning two, three milking cows. Milk was usually for family use, the surplus was for selling.

When I was in my teens, I tasted milk that was still warm from milking. The milk didn't smell fantastic, but tasted pretty good, although I preferred freezing cold milk. On the other hand, watching the whole milking process, the tools, the containers and the conditions (and the smell of that warm milk) made me somehow uneasy about the sterility of the raw milk. So I decided that just-milked-milk was not my favorite, but still was drinking the raw, store-brought and from the fridge. Overtime, the UHT milk had been introduced in Poland and now it is easier and cheaper to buy that kind of milk. Raw is still available in the markets.

I have no idea whatsoever if drinking milk had had any impact on my UC condition. Mostly, it was home boiled milk. I had had my share when I was a kid. I stopped drinking milk almost completely years before the UC diagnosis. But, living almost my whole life in the country where raw milk was a kind of common good, I have never ever heard any story of somebody being ill from drinking raw milk back then. As I mentioned, small kids usually weren't allowed to drink raw milk. Moreover, kids living in the country and drinking the raw milk from their own cow, were probably somehow immune to the bacteria and viruses the could be found in the raw milk they drank. And, what is more important, all kids in Poland are given the immunizations for tuberculosis. That is why there maybe weren't so many ill cases back then.

Right now, I don't drink milk almost at all. If any, it's just a drop of it sometimes in coffee. Over the years with UC I just understood that I better do without dairy in my diet. Yet still, I would probably let my kids (when they are older than now and still in good health) to drink the raw milk from the checked source. However, as I am not fanatic about drinking milk at all, I will not spent so much time and money to get that source checked, tested, visited and driven to to get my family some raw milk.