14 hours ago, weedy said:
without disagreeing with the gist of the rest of your post, that bit is somewhat like saying "my grandfather smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day and lived to 99, so smoking is harmless..."
pasteurization of milk HAS saved lives.
Weedy, with respect, my "anecdotal" thing was a joke - as in, I'm alive. Guess it fell flat. I wasn't using that as any basis for my argument, and never would.
I understand your point of view. Yes, in an era when sickened cattle were in tightly cramped urban lots, fed leftovers from distillers grains, their milk combined into tanks and shipped to points far and wide, pasteurization was necessary. Just as now, when milk is gathered from large farms, under only slightly better circumstances, with cows stuffed with antibiotics, the farms' milk again combined; yes, pasteurization is necessary.
It is not only unnecessary, but less healthful, if you're drinking raw milk from known small producers using known practices, with healthy cows fed on food they should be eating (grass - pasture) as I do. Pasteur's germ theory of disease was a landmark development in the history of medicine, but as with all models, it has it's limitations, and here, I'd say, is one.
Just an illustrative example. Vacherin - named d'Or in Switzerland, du Haut-Doubs in France. In France, raw milk. In Switzerland, pasteurized. There has been a history of listeriosis with this cheese - a soft ripened cheese, gooey and stinky as all get. Raw milk, of course, even more dangerous because of the limited aging time, high water content, and soft paste. Right?
Except it has been the Swiss, pasteurized version, Vacherin Mont d'Or, that has had the history of outbreaks - even deaths, tragically. To this date, as far as I know, none of the cheeses from France - all, by French law, made with raw milk - have been tainted with listeria.
This is just one example. There really is an entire scientific body of evidence that supports the notion that it isn't so much the presence of microbes - wonderful, delicious, living yeasts and bacterias - in our foods, but rather how well they take over an ecosystem to prevent or contain the growth of pathogens to acceptable or lower limits. The above Vacherin story merely illustrates this.
Another, somewhat related. The fertilizer theory of agronomy. That without fertilizer, you cannot have good growth. So, we've killed our growing fields, now, to the point where the farm's earth really is a kind of dead fiberboard, there merely to push the sticks of plants into, a substrate to drown with fertilizers.
Doesn't it make sense to allow the microbes that transport oxygen to plant roots, to thrive and let them do their job? All without the cost and detrimental effects of fertilizers?
Anyway, big subject. I've studied it quite a bit, as I love natural food, make it, hunt for it, as I love the earth, so I want to know what drives it all. Not saying anyone is incorrect, but I'm convinced by what I've studied, and know my personal choices. I drink milk from a farm of 4 beautiful girls - and I'm grateful for the gift.
