MILK AND DAIRY FOODS
A team from Edinborough have confirmed that standard pasteurizing times and temperatures for fluid milk deactivate HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 viruses
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.30.24308212v1
Q: What are the facts about unpasteurized milk?
A: I regularly took samples of the morning's shipment of raw milk as it was delivered to the dairy. It was destined for pasteurization, but samples were taken to help identify sources of contamination, cows with mastitis, and other infections. I have also investigated numerous sporadic cases and outbreaks of milk-borne diseases in both the UK and Canada. Decades of data on milk-borne diseases reveal the following:
1. It is entirely possible to drink raw milk and through good luck live to a ripe old age without illness intervening - but don't count on it. Virtually ALL milk-borne illnesses arise from raw milk (or pasteurized milk that was contaminated with raw milk). That means that ALL the burden of the illness from milk involves RAW milk.
2. About 30 different disease agents are found in raw milk and not in pasteurized milk. These include Brucella, enteropathogenic E. coli, Staphylococi, Streptococci, Q fever, Listeria … the list continues. And tuberculosis is not out of the picture - see #9 below. Some of these are inside 'healthy' cattle and goats but without any symptoms. Should these agents infect humans, illness often results.
3. Enterohemorrhagic E. coli is a fairly recent addition. It’s a normal inhabitant of the bovine animal, but can cause illness and even death in the human, especially if your kidneys become damaged.
4. Cleanliness of the animal and the barn is fine, but think about the normal excretion process…. the dropping solids and liquids fall and splash onto the ground inches away from the udder. The udder can be assumed contaminated at all times. A quick wipe or sponging does NOT sterilize the udder.
5. Raw milk contains pus cells. leukocytes, and bacteria. You are gambling that the bacterial contamination is less harmful rather than more harmful. (Strange gamble)
6. “Lost enzymes” is a common misguided argument against pasteurization. It’s FALSE. Enzymes are species-specific. Any enzymes in bovine milk are intended for the bovine animal. Human enzymes function in the human.
7. “Nutrition” is another claim. The greatest loss is some of the vitamin C. But seriously, who depends on the the tiny amount of vitamin C in milk as their main source of this nutrient?
8. Today’s generations have lost the memory of the dramatic drop of non-pulmonary tuberculosis to virtually zero when pasteurization became established. TB of the brain, eye, liver, skin, bladder, intestine, kidney, etc., were common in the first half of the 1900s, especially in children. About 6% of all human tuberculosis was caused by M. bovis, the bovine species of the tuberculosis bacterium.
[ See: R.M. Hardie & J/M/ Watson. Mycobacterium bovis in England and Wales: past, present and future. Epidemiol Infect. 1992 Aug; 109(1): 23–33. MCID: PMC2272235 PMID: 1499671.]
9. Pasteurization stopped these diseases dead in their tracks. Now, know-it-all urban warriors, supported by the odd celebrity chef and movie starlet, are campaigning for the right to drink raw milk.
10. Canadian provinces do not allow the sale of raw milk, nor even giving it away to the public because the diseases in #2 will return.
11. All the milk-borne illness outbreaks in the last few years in those US states that permit raw milk sales have been traced back to RAW milk.* (As an aside, TB in dairy herds has NOT disappeared. Many dairy herds in N America have positive TB reactors. Ireland right now has a very worrying increase in TB+ animals in large dairy herds.)
12. The innocent and gullible still flock to the outlaw farmer who either sells raw milk through the internet, falsely described as “not for human consumption” or by offering "shares" as part-owner of the “condominium cow” - in which city folk “purchase” a kilogram of the living cow and claim “ownership” of the animal, thus claiming legal consumption of its milk. If circumventing the law appeals to you, just DON’T involve your kids in the scheme.
13. If you obtain raw milk, pasteurize it yourself ! - And you don’t need to boil it, just bring it to 145 F (63 C) for 30 minutes, or 161 F (72 C) for a few seconds).
* That is, drinking raw milk intentionally, or unknowingly, or drinking milk that was supposed to be pasteurized but subsequently contaminated by raw milk. (See the Jewel Dairies episode, 1982)
Question: Did people get sick from milk more often before there was pasteurization?
Yes!... Non-pulmonary tuberculosis affects every organ and structure in the body… bones, brain, liver, eye, penis, intestines, skin, etc. It was very common before pasteurization of milk - especially among children, and it was usually fatal through a long, painful process. We rarely see this type of TB these days in Europe, North America, Australasia, or in any region where pasteurized milk is the norm.
You may have heard of brucellosis. There are several types, but those affecting bovine (cattle), ovine (sheep), and caprine (goats), are very much reduced where milk from these animals is routinely pasteurized. It was also called undulant fever or Malta fever, a reference to the former practice on that island of taking herds of goats around the streets to be milked on the customer's doorstep.
Many types of Streptococcal diseases can be spread by unpasteurized milk: including strep sore throat, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever. Pasteurization brought milk-borne strep diseases to a halt. The list goes on to include Q fever, listeriosis, campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, yersiniosis, even diphtheria, and in modern times we can add enterohemorrhagic E. coli among milk borne illnesses. All of these are routinely prevented by simply heating milk briefly to 161 F (72 C), and cooling quickly.
Q. Can I just cut off the mold on cheese and eat the rest?
A. Hard cheeses (Cheddar, Cheshire, Edam, Gouda, Parmigiana, Lancashire, etc.): trim, discard, and enjoy the rest if the surface has just a small amount of white mold.
Soft/fresh cheeses, (Fresh curds, mozzarella, ricotta, feta, cottage cheese, etc.): best to dispose of it all because by the time you find it, the mycelium has probably grown all through and the taste will be affected. Without knowing the type of mold, it is not safe to consume.
Try preventing mold from growing in the first place. Remove the cheese from any plastic wrap. Wrap in paper (parchment, or a couple of layers of paper towel work best) before placing in the fridge. The cheese must be allowed to slowly dry out. Molds occur where the cheese meets the plastic because of condensation. The dryer outer surfaces can still be cut and used normally. And even if the last piece becomes as hard as Parmigiana, DON’T throw it out! Hard cheese is perfect for grating and using on all kinds of dishes, exactly as is done with the hard Mediterranean cheeses. The taste is even stronger!
Don’t allow your cheese to become moldy. Don’t waste perfectly edible, safe, nutritious food.
Q. I've heard that hard cheeses (Cheddar, Gouda, Edam, Havarti, Cheshire, Leicester, Parmesan, etc.) should be discarded if unrefrigerated for more than two hours. Is this correct?
A. This is not correct. These cheeses were produced hundreds of years before refrigeration was invented, and were successful ways to preserve the nutrition available from milk even for years. It's true that cheeses retain their characteristic tastes, appearances, and textures if retained at the cooler "cellar" temperatures where they were originally stored, but they do not not in any way become hazardous or unsafe if brought to room temperature for extended periods. The reason is that cheeses are the result of a lacto-fermentation in which the lactose (milk sugar) has been converted to lactic acid, dropping the pH (that is, raising the acidity level) of the cheese and inhibiting any other (harmful) bacteria from growing or even surviving. Although these cheeses are made mostly from pasteurized milk, any surviving pathogens such as Staphylococcus or E. coli cannot grow in the cheese, and are slowly reduced to near zero by 270 days.
Q. Cheeses made from raw (unpasteurized) milk have a better taste, so why should any cheese be made from pasteurized milk?
A. If you examine the source of the cheeses that cause illness you will find that they are "soft" cheeses, and not aged. The many types of soft cheeses from the Loire Valley in France, for example, or imported Mexican queso fresco varieties are found to contain the bacteria causing listeriosis, tuberculosis, yersiniosis, brucellosis and Staph. and Strep. infections. Why? because these bacteria were in the milk and not killed by pasteurization. These types of cheeses were not aged sufficiently, and these bacteria survived. Check the labels and avoid cheese made from unpasteurized milk.