Raw Milk and Auto Quality Standards Have More in Common Than We May Care to Admit
Something about the comment from Jenny @ Sagehill about colostrum (following my previous post) touched me. For a good while, I couldn’t figure it out, but then I realized I was awestruck with the reality that the high-colostrum milk I have been consuming is produced by a particular cow as part of the birthing process. The idea that I am consuming milk intended to provide sustenance for that animal’s offspring, well, it’s a lot to take in.
In fact, the entire discussion about raw milk standards has reinforced the sense that there is a connection with particular animals when we consume raw milk—it’s direct from one or a few cows, unprocessed. For a city slicker like me, that idea represents a total departure from a lifetime of anonymity associated with milk and meat consumption.
Trying to introduce the subject of standards into products that inspire such a deep connection is difficult. In any event, Dave Milano and Steve Bemis are correct in suggesting (following my previous posting) that I was using the term a bit loosely. So I’ll try to clarify, especially in light of an additional comment provided by Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures, in response to my original posting on raw milk standards.
Standards are usually applied on two levels. First there are government/industry standards that allow, for instance, for categorizing dairy products as cream, whole milk, and skim, or meat as prime, choice, select, etc., or that designate how DVDs should be produced so they all work on the players made by different manufacturers.
But then, particular milk and meat companies institute their own individual quality standards regarding things like freshness of their milk or the tenderness of their beef.
When it comes to raw milk, states that permit raw milk distribution have standards in effect—primarily for plate counts and pathogens like E.coli 0157:H7 and listeria. Organic Pastures publishes key standards that apply in California, and how it measures up.
The Organic Pastures summary doesn’t cover everything, such as the particulars of testing for specific pathogens; I agree with Steve it would be useful to provide such requirements from around the country; I’d be glad to provide on this site if I could get some help in assembling them.
Getting back to the second type of standards, what Mark McAfee has been talking about are individual producer standards—in effect, quality control.
This is an issue all business people are faced with at one time or another. How much risk can we take with our product or service before we put others in danger? How many risks with regard to non-life-threatening issues before we damage our brand and credibility with customers? For example, I’ve mentioned that my daughter, Laura, purchases raw milk in Philadelphia. But lately, she’s noticed that probably half the time, her milk goes sour within two or three days of her purchasing it, suggesting that producers or retailers are letting it sit longer than they should. It gets her wondering, if the producers and/or distributors are slackening on delivery times, what other corners are they cutting?
A vivid example of varying company quality control standards can be seen in the automobile industry. Japanese auto companies have over the years been more attentive to the fine points than American manufacturers, and the differences are clear to see in the annual Consumer Reports auto quality ratings.
What Mark is saying essentially—and it’s the first time I’ve heard anyone say it quite this way—is that producing raw milk isn’t much different from producing automobiles.
“As you start to use (the standards) there will be areas that may need to be changed a little for each farmer and his special set of conditions. The farmer then must realize that safety is then going to be moving that much against him, however so slight. Adding grain is not a problem but as you add more expect different bacteria in her manure and this goes against raw milk safety. Same goes for antibiotics. As these factors add up...so do your odds of a pathogen being found in your raw milk…In the past raw milk has had a black eye during some time periods in our American history. Study these periods and you begin to realize the factors that cause raw milk safety issues… There’s a complex production process, and each time you deviate from the optimum practices, you increase the risks of a problem, minor or major. A farmer needs to use the best possible practices every step of the way. It’s easy to screw up.”
While an auto manufacturers and even food producers are given the benefit of the doubt and allowed a few serious screwups, that’s not the case with producers of raw milk. All that has to happen is someone gets even mildly ill, and governmental authorities are just sitting around waiting to pounce and put you out of business.
It’s difficult to let go of the emotional overlay that comes with raw milk. It is a fragile product in more ways than one.
The Complete Patient
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Reader Comments (4)
Instead, I buy OPDC milk and butter at another store (4-store local chain of natural foods, similar to WF in format, but locally owned by a family and with more local suppliers) that nearly always sells out of their milk before the weekly OPDC delivery. I time my weekly shopping to coincide one or two days after the OPDC delivery. I check the dates on the bottles and ask for some fresher dated bottles from the back if what is on the shelf seems like it is from the previous week's delivery. I put the milk in my cart right before checking out and bag it in insulated bags with freezer packs.
At home, the milk is stored on the bottom shelf of the fridge, the coldest area. I keep thermometers in three levels of the fridge so I know which foods to keep in which temp zones (no, I am not this persnickety about everything, but it's amazing how many people have no idea that that their fridge has warm and cool spots or they make three stops with cold groceries in their warm car, etc. and that's why their milk goes off too soon).
In general, I can get the unopened OPDC to stay fresh well over a week, sometimes as much as two weeks. Milk is immediately returned to the fridge in our house, not allowed to sit on the counter or table. Opened containers especially, *do* change flavor as the week goes on, because the natural bacteria consume the lactose and make lactic acid. But that is a taste issue, not a safety issue. When it gets too sour or bitter tasting to drink, then I bake it into a custard, make ice cream or soup, or let it continue to sour (on the counter) and then drain it for cheese.
There has been the occasional container of OPDC milk that went off entirely too soon, and I cooked it into something like soup, custard, etc., but it hasn't happened very often. I try to choose a bottle from the back of the shelf to make sure I haven't chosen one that another customer has put in a cart, carried around, then put back (it happens).
Lately, I have been buying local fresh goat milk that is delivered to a cooler at my front door with eggs and meat, so our consumption of OPDC milk has gone down (saves me a weekly trip to that one store). But we will go back to OPDC milk when the goat milk dries up later in the year. The goat milk behaves much the same way as the OPDC milk, except it starts out tasting pretty much like cows milk, then the "goat-y" taste developes and increases through the week.
I buy a pasteurized/homogenized brand from a local dairy processor when I buy jugged milk, because I don't know of a farm of over 100 cattle where they could possibly buy milk from locally. What concerns me even about that is that I do know the local dairies use herbicides, pesticides, and occaisionally antibiotics. But most of their cows are pastured. Most of them raise their own feed and don't use hormones.
And after breastfeeding 4 children, it seems second nature that milk changes as the child changes. And that what a cow or goat eats affects the milk it produces. How come most people don't know this? How come getting close to our food is what brings us back to knowing it? I hope my children know these things by now. I would be embarrassed to raise a child who didn't. I wish the kids growing up in the city knew it like they knew how to work an ipod. It is pretty basic and easy to know. There is too much cement between kids and the reality of what sustains their lives nowadays.
Gwen