Published July 19, 2010
Obligatory cow photo (Skinnyde/Flickr)
The milk in your morning cereal is most likely pasteurized, which means it was heated super-hot to kill all the bad bacteria and then immediately refrigerated cold for preservation. Lovers of unpasteurized milk say that process kills all the flavor, too.
This morning NPR reports on the growing fight between raw-milk enthusiasts (they call it “real milk”) and health experts who say the stuff is dangerous. Unpasteurized milk, handled improperly, can poison you with the same strain of E. coli that turned up in ground beef, spinach, and cookie dough. It recently sickened 30 people in Colorado. But it’s really, really good.
I have never tasted raw milk, but people tell me it’s so good they can’t go back to pasteurized. Problem is, raw milk is banned in many states — and expensive and hard to find everywhere else.
Here in Massachusetts, where it’s illegal for supermarkets to sell raw milk, enthusiasts form buying clubs and take turns driving out to one of about 20 farms in the state. A story by WBUR’s Bob Oakes and Lisa Tobin on the efforts to ban these clubs quickly became one of the most viewed and e-mailed stories on wbur.org.
The NPR story says advocates even claim raw milk is healthier, but scientists — including those at the FDA are dubious.
- If you want to join a raw-milk buying club in Massachusetts, the Northeast Organic Farming Association has a list.
- NPR.org has a fun explainer on Louis Pasteur’s experiments (he did it to preserve beer).
- Anti-raw: realrawmilkfacts.com
- Pro-raw: realmilk.com
Do you drink raw milk? How do you get it?