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“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” McAfee acknowledged before my visit. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer. And I’m going against the grain here. I’m climbing a mountain they say you can’t climb.”

...

“We catch these things and divert the milk immediately,” McAfee said of the pathogens.

I assumed that after diverting batches, the farm discarded them.

Later that day, I learned otherwise.

“We have a red-flag system here, where if there’s anything that gets really out of whack, they can immediately tag the milk, and it doesn’t go to anything but cheese,” McAfee told me. “Because, you know, cheese is resistant to pathogens.”

Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process.

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[-] foodandart@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago

The thing that pisses me off the most in all of this is the fact that it's not the pasteurization that changes how milk is processed in the gut the most, it's homogenization.

Dude could make his milk 100% as safe and industrial milk if he just pasteurized it and left the long-chain milkfats and solids alone.

It's when the milk is homogenized, after the cream is separated that the fat chains are shattered and the gut absorbs the fats, instead of passing them through.

You won't get the shits from whole raw milk and as you get older and you can consume cream and butter and it doesn't cause digestive problems.

I lived on a farm and we traded eggs for milk from a neighbor that had two Jersey cows, We'd get a gallon glass jug of milk from her and it would sit in the fridge and the cream would separate.. dad would skim it off and it would be used for coffee and baking and the remainder was for us to drink and whooooo.. Jersey cows have the highest milkfat content of all the breeds.. It was creamy, rich and filling.

Would go to school with nothing but a glass of milk in the morning and was fine - all through my junior and senior years.. If there was a question that the milk got a bit of something in it, (usualy the cow would flick it's tail while getting milked, or hair would get in the pail..) she'd let us know so we'd just coddle the milk for 15 to 30 seconds at 165 degrees farenheits..

The rest of it, that cooking depletes nutrient quality, it's baloney. It's the homogenization that causes more degradation of the milk quality than anything. It's all bullshit marketing since the mid-60's anyhow, FFS, in the 1950's "skim milk" was considered unfit for human consumption because it had been stripped of most of the milkfats and solids. (which, honestly, the solids are gross to those who've not encountered them..)

This farmer's a jackass. Coddle the milk, dipshit, if it's making people sick because you've got too many cows to maintain a clean milking environment. Feh!

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's when the milk is homogenized, after the cream is separated that the fat chains are shattered and the gut absorbs the fats, instead of passing them through. You won't get the shits from whole raw milk and as you get older and you can consume cream and butter and it doesn't cause digestive problems.

I think this is an old misunderstanding about homogenized milk. The fat chains aren't "shattered", the globules of fat are just dispersed into smaller droplets that become surrounded by casein so they don't reform.

This leads to faster and easier digestion because you have increased the surface area of the fats and the proteins from the solids. Now that doesn't mean the fats in unhomogenized milk arent digested, it just takes longer. If the fats from unhomogenized milk would "pass through without eventually being absorbed, then things like butter wouldn't be as bad for you as it is.

The rest of it, that cooking depletes nutrient quality, it's baloney. It's the homogenization that causes more degradation of the milk quality than anything.

Again, this is a long debated but incorrect understanding of homogenized milk. Homogenization is a simple mechanical process that does not diminish the nutritional value of milk. What it does do is speed up the digestion of milk, which may be why you felt fuller for longer when drinking unhomogenized milk when you were younger. It's actually easier and quicker to digest, and the smaller fat particles actually make it easier for vitamin d to attach to it. The homogenization process also makes the proteins form softer curds in the stomach making it easier to digest.

1950's "skim milk" was considered unfit for human consumption because it had been stripped of most of the milkfats and solids. (which, honestly, the solids are gross to those who've not encountered them..)

Skim milk isn't created through the homogenization process, it's done through a separate process called centrifugal separation.

I spent some time on my uncle's dairy farm up in ohio. A lot of what you are talking about was a pretty common understanding from some of the old hands about homogenization when I was younger.

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

This farmer’s a jackass. Coddle the milk, dipshit, if it’s making people sick because you’ve got too many cows to maintain a clean milking environment. Feh!

I came to a similar conclusion from a completely different angle. If the industry standard is for homogenization and pasteurization, then those provide a nice barrier to contaminated milk hitting shelves. With that in place, a dairy can operate with some dirt/filth in play and easily ship some unclean product. Remove that barrier, but don't change practices at the dairy, and we get the problem we have now.

Europe gets away with shipping raw product, probably because the standards at the diary are higher since there's nothing downstream to clean up any mistakes.

[-] Krusty@quokk.au 1 points 1 day ago

Derping the herp.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
358 points (100.0% liked)

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