Might have been smart to clean the teats first and here in the states cows are tested for that.

@misstuffy I don't think that was the problem at all . One of the cows was already infected . They were checked regularly as the milk was either sold to one of the big dairies in the region or used to make Fontina cheese .
Just a bit of bad luck really ... Didn't put me off it though , drank it for years .

@MarcIveson There are a lot of benefits to raw milk, the healthy bacteria in milk is killed with pasteurization.

That is a herd share and some states address the issue specifically by outlawing it. Iowa thought of that one too.

In America raw milk sales have been very safe. AS a goat producer I can tell you we deal with listeria in goats and guess what? It can be cured believe it or not.

Another thing, most people who buy raw milk were raised on it. They do know how to handle it properly. Humanity has been drinking raw milk for thousands of years and Pasteurization has only been around for a century or so and was only chosen due to the lack of refrigeration options at the time.

@misstuffy sorry I trust my health board training more. Especially given that I have seen Listeria's effect with my own eyes. I grew up on raw milk as well that doesn't give me magic superpowers.

Your state is going to do this and people will die. Just another example of humanity getting rid of a rule because the rule was effective, like vaccines. People stopped getting them because they worked so well no one needed them. Now we are seeing old pathogens return.

Thank you neighbor (you're one of the closest members to me geographically)!

Raw milk kills. It's fairly safe for something like a day... fairly safe.

Cows can contract and carry TB, for instance. Their milk is contagious. Did you know that? How are you going to "handle it properly"?

If large scale raw milk sales are allowed in your state, it is going to kill people. Often children. It is a statistical certainty.

@engineer_in_nj Again there have been no real health issues with raw milk. If you want to outlaw anything that can be unsafe then our entire food supply is suspect.

@ScottAHurst the key is proper handling, people who milk are highly regulated, animals and milk must be tested constantly and safety standards adhered to. It is no more dangerous than other food sources and in fact overall safer.

"Again there have been no real health issues with raw milk." This is simply a lie.

If you want to know the truth, you look at the stats of large numbers of people for as long as possible. You can reliably find a small signal with a lot of data. That is how it is done. Take a class in statistics and really dig into the studies. They are beyond compelling.

Here is an example - [cdc.gov]

"It is no more dangerous than other food sources and in fact overall safer." You seem to be holding a religious belief.

Most kids are weaned or sold as bottle babies, there are a lot of folks who buy bottle babies for their pre 4H kids to do at County fair.

@misstuffy They are weaned so the milk can be sold?

@Lysistrata many are put on a cheaper replacer, others are sold as bottle babies for 4h and some folks do a practice where baby gets mom all day and separated at night so the owner gets that first milking of the day so they are sharing mom. Sadly some dairies will just simply kill the buck kids but lately they are getting too valuable for meat.goats can be weaned as early as 8-10 weeks of age.

More importantly most can drink naturaly homogenized goats milk

I havent either, but you are right dairy animals are tested a lot. No milk testing positive for antibiotics can be sold. If the milk truck comes and you have antibiotics in your milk they will make you drain it out on the ground and the driver has to watch you do it.
P.S. That case with the kids would also be incredibly rare.

@misstuffy I'm sure that it is really rare and that there will be more safeguards put in place as time goes on.

@Ktcyan It is indeed incredibly rare and those who sell milk and have issues do get shut down pretty fast. Whats funny is even law enforcement in Iowa is not up to date on laws. The Amish were taking and selling raw milk at the market in Chariton and the sheriffs saw them, apparently don't know the law or they would have stopped it and didn't. Farmers marker is not the place to be selling raw milk. It needs to be kept cold and not allowed to warm up. This is where issues come in.

You have to sign a release but the only reason we went with Pasteurization back in the day was a lack of proper cooling technology on the farms. thats it.

@sarahjustme @misstuffy well it would be easy for me to have an opinion, but everyone can have an opinion. The question is: what are the facts? It is hard for people like me to find out the facts related to complex questions by myself, so why not see what experts have to say on this? And experts seem to agree overwhelmingly that if there are health benefits of drinking raw milk at all, they are not worth the increased health risks and can easily achieved in other ways.
This has been found by several what are called "meta-studies": extensive reviews of the scientific literature of hundreds or sometimes thousands of scientific studies looking into every detail of this.
One from the US which is easily accessible on the internet is this one:
[jhsph.edu]
Here is another overview article on this: [ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
I will go withthe evidence backed insights on this as I do with religion.

@josmi6699 for every expert that backs that view there is another to refute it. Fact is properly cooled and handled raw milk is safe, Fact is there have been more deaths from contaminated LETTUCE than raw milk, fact is we sell raw meat and we know how to handle it . This is about choice, raw milk loses a lot of protective benefits when it is no longer raw milk

@josmi6699 I am with you on this one. Thankfully we have pasteurized milk, probably saved my kids lives as often as I find milk left out all the time. There are quite a few kinds of pathogens killed by proper pasteurization, and some of them are difficult to trace back to sources. (TB)

@misstuffy Just because other food products are not always safe is not a good reason. Foods consumed raw are always higher risk than cooked ones. Not gonna eat raw pork or chicken even if it may have more nutrition.

@arnies My point is raw milk overall is pretty safe and it is up to the consumers to learn how to use it. Properly educated they can and do with out issues.

@misstuffy actually no, the argument that experts disagree and therefore any layperson's personal opinion must be equally valid is something commonly used by people who simply believe strongly in something, usually against actual scientific evidence, like e. g. anti-vaxxers. If you read the studies i cited and dig deeper into the scientific papers they are based on you will see that there is mostly agreement among them as to the facts and almost as much agreement as to the cost/benefit trade-off.
Of course, one can always bring up the "freedom" argument: if people deliberately want to put themselves at risk, why not let them? Base-jumping and free soloing are much more dangerous but there is no law forbidding this.
The reason laws are necessary and good in some cases is that the damage can go beyond the individual making that decision in some cases: with raw milk, the youngest children are those most at danger, and with the anti vaxxers it is not just the own children but the whole rest of society put at danger because of some people stubbornly ignoring science and believing really strongly they know better.

@farmboy2017 Sarah is correct in that is is the handling, filtering and immediate cooling are key, keeping the does clean etc.

@misstuffy There used to be several small dairies around my area that had raw milk available but the govt shut it down. Now the dairy world is dominated by those huge facilities where they milk thousands of animals to death. What makes me mad is how they conceal that fact from the public. A non industrialized cow has a lifespan of 25 or so years while the industrialized animal lasts 4-6. They get about 45 lbs of milk from the industrial animal every day. That kind of production is exceptionally short term and short sighted.

@farmboy2017 WHat makes it worse is the large dairies are paying the farmers so little for their milk many did go out of business and even the economics of scale can't help them when the prices go too low.

You are correct we are indeed animals! I can't wait for them to legalize this, of course we have beenc close before and been shut down but I think this time might be the one. If so I have a list of customers.