Why Raw Milk?

Hello!

I am a fellow raw milk consumer. I buy raw milk mainly to make cheese and sustain my kefir culture! At the moment I am currently working on a small project for an Anthropology paper at the University of Canterbury studying something that is a part of my everyday (I chose to examine raw milk for this). One of the major things I am interested in for my project is finding out why people buy raw milk, as opposed say to milk from the supermarket. I buy raw milk because it has a higher yield for making cheese and because i like the idea of supporting local alternatives to consumable products. Why do other people buy raw milk??? :)

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  • Hi Elizabeth,

    One of the main reasons that we love Raw Milk is that is seems to be the best choice for our children.

    When our daughter was a year old we began trying to transition her from Breast to cows.. We did try her on formula but it made her really sick for days on end after, and her reaction to store brought milk was pretty much the same.

    It was only after a good friend suggested we try Raw milk, that we looked into it and had absolutely no problems, I was still breastfeeding until 2 years of age but raw milk was a great way of topping her up.

    Only recently we relocated to another city and had a delay on finding a new milk supplier so reluctantly went back on store milk.  Within 2 weeks my son began having stomach upsets and diarrhea  which turned into a hives rash spreading over his body. My daughter began to experience the same thing.

    I had been working away from them for 2 weeks when my husband described this to me.. I turns out that both my daughter and I had had the same reaction to the milk.. and almost the same looking spots in the same places on our body. Stomach upsets etc... etc..

    At that point I cut all milk out of our diet completely for 2 weeks and began the long drive back to source the milk from our old supplier.. Now, back to happy healthy children again.

    Did I mention our family hardly visits the doctors or gets coughs and colds??

    Our whole family swears by it, and my husband will even decline a cuppa at others houses just because of how he reacts after only having 1 cup.

    Overall its going back to the basics.. Raw food & milk are good for your bodies. I'm even now making our own cream cheeses, sauces etc..  I wouldn't have it any other way now :)

  • Hi Elizabeth. we have only recently in the past couple of weeks got a new raw milk supplier in Greymouth area so we had no hesitation swapping to raw milk, apart form reasons already mentioned by people above I like that I can get it in glass bottles, before I had a huge pile of plastic 3L milk bottles to dispose of  as my family drink a lot of milk and we don't have recycling. Also getting it from a single source means you can keep an eye on the health and happiness of the herd and the cleanliness of the milking shed next door :)

  • My initial reason for consuming raw milk was the health benefits and that it hasn't been 'interfered' with, as a few of your other replies have stated. I also make cheese and my own yogurt from a culture someone gave me. All this aside it's actually loads cheaper than the non pasteurised milk in the supermarket, so it's great on my bank balance too.

  • Thanks for all the replies everyone! I'm really enjoying hearing about all of you reasons for consuming/wanting to consume raw milk. I find that a lot of what you are saying reflects my own position on raw milk buying. I just finished reading a book on the history of milk (Milk: A local and global history by Deborah Valenze) which has been incredibly insightful. From a historical perspective I can definitely see why people have advocated for pasteurized and more heavily pasteurized milk in the past. The homogenization of milk has definitely helped with the global expansion of milk production, however at the same time it seems to have resulted in a forced blanket homogenization of milk drinking and consuming abilities which disregards the local at the expense of the global!

  • Whole lot of reasons, the main one being a political/philosophical objection to meddling in my right to buy and eat what I like(presenting no risk to anyone else) by the Nanny State, especially when the rules it imposes are so obviously dictated by business interests. Heat treatment including pasteurisation is the only economically viable way to make mass processed milk safe. The same is not true of single source milk from small, well managed herds. Because raw milk tastes a lot better, the dairy giants would be at a marketing disadvantage if raw milk were to be more freely available. I don't believe our NZ Health Ministry is corrupt, but I think they have taken their lead from the notoriously corrupt FDA in the United States.

    The risks of raw milk are grossly overstated - brucellosis no longer exists in NZ, bovine tuberculosis can be tested for in the herd, listeriosis is far more likely to be contracted from delicatessen meats, and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli from hamburger patties. If one gets one's raw milk from a responsible farmer, the risk is negligible.

    Apart from that, I do like the taste, especially in my kefir and yoghurt, and I am currently experimenting with making inkomazi (African sour milk), which relies on the presence of lactic acid bacteria in the milk, so can only be made with raw milk.

    On the matter of probiotics, the centuries old observation that fermented foods are associated with health and longevity has been hijacked by the food industry, with all the hype loaded on so-called "probiotic strains". Once again the FDA is in the frame with its fraudulent definition of a probiotic as a bacterium that can survive passage through the gut - no necessity to prove any health benefit before an organism can be labelled as a "probiotic". On the other hand what science is emerging suggests that what is important is not specific bacterial strains, but the overall diversity of the microbial flora in the gut, and what better way to enhance this than by consuming a wide variety of microbes, not only in fermented foods, but also in raw foods, contact with animals and soil, and avoidance of excessive hygiene.

    • Really enjoyed reading your message here. Well written and interesting.

    • Richard, that is one of the best replies/ short essays on nutrition and politics I have ever read.

  • I adore Raw Milk. I never liked regular milk before, but now I drink it by the gallon. I live in NYC where it's quite easy to get if you know who to ask. I will be visiting my parents in Christchurch Nov 11 for a month and would dearly love to know where and how I can buy raw dairy products, butter, cheese, milk, yoghurt, keffir, colostrum etc... Can anyone help me? Thanks sooooo much!

    • hello Michelle, if you go to the Christchurch discussion in this group, back in April Noriyo posted a message for folks to PM her for contact details of a supplier in ChCh.

    • thanks, yes I did "friend" her but haven't had a response yet. Thanks for replying.

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