I like my milk pasteurized like everyone else, but the Department of Agriculture is now actually conducting raw milk stings:
Last September, a man came to Stutzman's weathered, two-story farmhouse, located in a pastoral region in northeast Ohio that has the world's largest Amish settlement. The man asked for milk.Stutzman was leery, but agreed to fill up the man's plastic container from a 250-gallon stainless steel tank in the milkhouse.
After the creamy white, unpasteurized milk flowed into the container, the man, an undercover agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, gave Stutzman two dollars and left.
The department revoked Stutzman's license in February. In April, he got a new license, which allows him to sell to cheese houses and dairies, but received a warning not to sell raw milk to consumers again.
"You can't just give milk away to someone other than yourself. It's a violation of the law," said LeeAnne Mizer, spokeswoman for the department.
Organizations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the American Dairy Association have said that raw milk contains health risks because it has not been heated to kill bacteria, such as E. coli.
I realize that pasteurization is a public health issue. You can get a lot of stuff from unpasteurized milk. But frankly doesn't the government have a couple better things to do than mount sting operations on the Amish?
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There is a reason that commercially available milk, especially those from factory farms, is pasteurized, but I fully support the ability to buy or use raw milk in products as long as it is explicitly labelled, since the pasteruization process does destroy some of the flavor compounds in milk. Try a taste test between regular pasteurized and UHT pasteurized milk sometime. Unfortunately, this ban on raw milk also extends to the cheese industry, which can only use raw milk in aged cheese products; not in young cheeses.
So if you want a better brie, head up to Quebec.
I've heard of some locals buying "shares" in cows so that they can obtain raw milk for themselves legally. I've never tried it, but I'm told it's far superior in flavor to the pasteurized stuff.
I tried raw milk once (outside the US). It was delicious -- very creamy.
I understand it also has a lot of important enzymes that get destroyed by the high temperatures of pasteurization.