Do you like milk? Have you ever tried raw milk? If you haven’t tasted milk straight from the cow you haven’t given milk a real chance. In The Dirty Life Kristin Kimball says, “If you do not own a cow or know someone who owns a cow, I must caution you never to try raw milk straight from the teat of a Jersey cow, because it would be cruel to taste it once and not have access to it again.”
Raw Milk
Many people have questions about raw milk. Isn’t raw milk illegal? Nope, it’s legal to sell raw milk in Washington state. Isn’t it unsafe? Raw milk dairies in Washington state meet stringent requirements and are regularly tested. Because milk is a real food product and can be contaminated, the Washington State Department of Agriculture does require a warning to be placed on raw milk bottle labels. Read about it on the WSDA web site, The Truth About Raw Milk.
Being a real food product means that raw milk is highly nutritious. Raw milk is a complete protein and was even used as a medicine in the recent past. Read more at The Benefits of Raw Milk.
Industrial Milk
Industrial milk in America doesn’t meet stricter European safety standards. You might know about rBGH; industrial dairies raise cows using growth hormones. These substances are legal in America, but increase cancer risks, particularly breast cancer. Explore in depth: Milk: America’s health problem.
Just as beef processors inject ammonia to control salmonella in meat products, industrial dairies rely on pasteurization to kill salmonella in milk. Large processing plants keep milk cheap by leveraging the economy of scale, but that scale also leaves them vulnerable to the breakdown of complexity. A salmonella outbreak in 1985 was traced to a cross-connect line that mixed drinking milk with diseased milk that was “reclaimed” for use in ice cream. Details in of microbes and milk; probing America’s worst salmonella outbreak.
In his (2008) book The End of Food Paul Roberts comments, “One of the most striking things in the war on bugs isn’t that the battle is so challenging but that we ever thought we could win in the first place.” Salmonella and e.coli can’t be detected by unaided human senses. Both processed industrial food and raw food can be contaminated. One difference is, industrial processes depend on sterilizing agents to kill contamination, while raw food producers strive to eliminate contamination in the first place.
Local Raw Milk Dairies
In the Kitsap foodshed (which includes the Olympic peninsula) there are three raw cow milk dairies.
- Karen Olsen’s Blackjack Valley Farm has Holsteins and Guernseys. Karen sells through her farm stand and Colello’s Farm Stand.
- The Krause family’s Fernwood Creamery offers milk, eggs and beef.
- Dungeness Valley Creamery in Sequim milks Jersey cows. You can pick up their milk at the Abundantly Green Farm Store.
