350
..the fuck is wrong with this guy?
From it emerged a 64-year-old dairyman, burly and tan, who left the engine running as he lumbered toward me with open arms.
“You must be Mark,” I said, warning him I wasn’t one for hugging.
“I’m a hugger,” he said, pulling me in anyway. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime.”
Fucking huggers. So many of them do this, as though it isn't super invasive. Like people rubbing the belly of a random pregnant woman.
“I’m a hugger,”
Cool, I'm a stabber.
The farm screens each batch for four types of bacteria: salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria, all of which thrive in the intestines of cattle and can contaminate milk through microscopic flecks of infected feces. The microbes can cause a constellation of symptoms in humans, from vomiting and diarrhea to sepsis, kidney failure and even death.
“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.
Wow, I can't believe that's legal (I mean, I can, but...). Makes it clearer why I and other immunocompromised individuals are not supposed to eat raw cheese.
It would not be legal in a civilized country.
specificaly e.coli o15h7, the one that cause hemolytic kidney diseases, with the shiga-toxin.
“You must be Mark,” I said, warning him I wasn’t one for hugging.
“I’m a hugger,” he said, pulling me in anyway. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime.”
The writer sums up this guys character in just three sentences.
This is con man behavior.
The lack of respect of others with these people is absolutely disgusting
Yuck.
Part of me wants to let the consumers just get sick and let nature sort it out. It just sucks that it's children being harmed with no say in the matter
Caveat Emptor, sure.
But so much of this is based on maliciously propagated misinformation. It's the same shit asbestos, lead paint, and cigarette companies were doing in bygone days. Going into national media, lying their asses off, and then kicking the blame down to their customers when they get caught.
lol
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Most people who have to eat have no say in the matter.
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Jesus christ The Jungle means nothing in the modern age
Let the MAGATS die!!!!!! Stop trying to save the MAGATS! Natural Selection is at work don’t interfere!
I'm not sure what's done differently, but in France you can find raw milk and not get sick, and we make a shit ton of cheese with raw milk without problems (3/4 of the production). It is not advised for childrens or peoples with health risk though
they probably use other sterilizing procedures, than heating up the milk. what RFK jr is reccomonding is drinking right from the teet, and also allowing the milk to sit at room temp for hours, or days.
maybe france refrigerates it immediately.
Of course it need to be refrigerated immediately, this seems to be common sense here 😅
People get sick from raw milk cheeses in France constantly.
This article from ANSES mention that the current risk is low, even if it can happen nevertheless. "However, there is still a residual risk and it is important to identify new ways of optimising the current control measures. "
That little bit there is absolutely bullshit.
In France over the last decade, 34%, 37% and 60% of outbreaks of salmonellosis, listeriosis and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) infections respectively have been linked to the consumption of raw-milk cheeses.
These numbers are absolutely horrendous of you know what they mean.
Salmonella is the most common foodborne pathogen. Most outbreaks are small (due to poor sanitation). They are estimated to happen multiple times a day. 34% means that somebody is getting sick, daily.
Listeria and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli are deadly. Knowing that 37% of listeria and 60% of E.coli deaths are directly linked to raw cheese. Frances cheese industry and government is accepting completely preventable deaths. Simple pasturization can prevent 90-95% of these cases.
Quality and control matter a lot. Another good example is MettBrochen (raw pork toast)
60% looks scary, until you look at the numbers behind : "In 2023, 2,231 outbreaks of foodborne illness were reported in France, affecting 22,282 people, of whom 549 (2%) sought medical care (hospitalization or emergency room visits) and 19 (0.1%) died." Admitting that raw milk was associated with 60% of the deaths, this is still a relatively low number compared to the numbers of consumers. https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/en/toxi-infections-alimentaires-collectives/national-bulletin/outbreaks-foodborne-illness-france-2023-report
Idk about france but in the US it's just grifters doing it, no attention to quality control. You can see the guy literally says that IF they catch some bad milk, they turn it into cheese. It's straight up criminal, that man should be thrown in prison for what he's doing.
That's sad, raw milk does carry risk if not done properly and following high quality norms. Agreed this should be criminal
it isn't different. raw milk has just become politicized in the us because of rfk.
It’s slightly different in that we don’t get sick from it…
That just isn't true. A quick search returned this and this. Just like in the US it seems to be very rare. There are also plenty of other foods like melon, greens, meat, etc that can cause similar sickness. My point is that these rare cases that involve raw milk in the US are being publicized because RFK is a proponent of raw milk and is Donald Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Raw milk wasn't just legalized and it didn't just start making people sick in the US rather the media just started reporting on it in order to blame RFK for it.
Maybe the magat farmers doing this use the same old pasturized procedures, just without actually pasteurizing? The safety and cleanliness is designed around "good enough". Because, if you're sterilizing after collection anyway, it's fine. However, it is not enough cleanliness if you're not also sterilizing after collection.
Or
These magat farmers are likely just doing whatever they want. The FDA doesn't function anymore. There are almost no inspectors or inspections anymore. Regulations have been rolled back across the board. Not that it matters if you're not inspecting. Since trump took office, food spoils much quicker.
And on top of all that, these raw milk farmers are on trump's untouchables list. So also, they can double do whatever they want.
There's a saying that I'm probably misquoting, to the effect of "it is very difficult for a person to believe something is wrong when their livelihood depends on it being right". He sells about $160,000 a day in various raw milk products; he will never believe that he's wrong.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Ironically the quote is from Upton Sinclair.
Nobody said it's a mountain you can't climb. What pathologists and others have been saying is that we've climbed this mountain before, and people got sick, some died, so let's decide rationally to not "climb this mountain" a.k.a. not do this raw milk thing anymore.
It's also a mountain that literally everyone climbed for thousands of years before Louis Pasteur. This isn't some new fucking concept, it's the default form of milk lol
Fuck him for saying he's a pioneer. A reverse pioneer, maybe.
Right, and with Pasteur a large fraction of the population shifted. And before that, for instance, heating milk before inoculating it with yogurt culture was a practice for a very long time.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization - adopted late 1800s
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
The fuck happened in Asia during the 50s? Is that Maos fuckup and resulting famine or am I missing something.
Bingo! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine - 1959-1961 - 15-55 million famine deaths. Damn!
"It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million), with newer estimates concentrated around 30 to 46 million excess famine deaths."
Shhhhh, .ml will hear you!
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This has echoes of melamine in baby formula with the same profit motive. I wonder if he'll see the same punishment.
I look around at the world today, and I think we've made it too safe. We need more Darwinian selective pressure. I think anyone over 18 can have raw milk and raw milk products, clearly labelled. Govern it like alcohol and let selection take its course.
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!
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.
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.
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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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