Ever vigilant about stoking fears among their constituents regarding the threat of governmental overreach, Republican leaders, as a form of political strategy, frequently crow about all the things liberals allegedly want to take away from working Americans. The White House is coming for their guns, they say, or perhaps their gas stoves — or even pints of raw milk that have potentially been contaminated with bird flu.
In early December, Sonoma County, California, declared an agricultural disaster when two poultry farms had to kill their entire flocks to try to stop “highly pathogenic avian influenza” — or bird flu — from spreading. This particular strain of bird flu, H5N1, had first been reported in the United States in early 2022 and since then, tens of millions of turkey and chickens at commercial farms have since been killed to try to suppress the outbreak.
As of June 9, ten states, including North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and Texas, have reported outbreaks among dairy cattle and […]
Good! Let the nutcases drink their raw milk. Fewer nutcases would be the result. Is that bad? When dealing with really stupid people, sometimes you just have to let them go their own way.
In the meantime, those of you who are sane, drink pasteurized milk!
Living in an area with a large Amish population, raw milk is pretty normal here. In fact I don’t know a single person Amish or otherwise who has ever gotten sick drinking it. Equipment sterilization and refrigeration has come a very long way since the days of Louis Pasteur. I certainly wouldn’t call anyone I know who drinks it nutcases. Like everything in life there is a small risk and it’s up to individuals to make their own decision as to the level of risk they are willing to accept. From my observations the real underlying issue that is driving people’s anger is the fear of corporations and regulations controlling food people are allowed to grow and consume themselves. It doesn’t take looking at many weeks of Schwartzreport to realize that such fears of overreaching corporate control over society might not be as outlandish as one would wish.
Nate, I think that your observations are spot on.
I was raised In Pennsylvania on raw goat milk from my mother’s herd. We never took ill from it, nor did any of the local people who came to the farm to get it. However, the animals were tested every year for a number of possible diseases including TB and tight control was kept over how they were milked and how the milk was temporarily stored. Mass production of milk for grocery stores does not allow purchasers to know the exact source for the milk and thus provides no way for the consumer to know how safe the original raw milk might be. With this blank system and especially with the avian flu threat, only a fool would buy raw milk for consumption from the store. If you don’t know exactly where it came from and how it was handled, you deserve to get sick.