Regular readers will know that I do not condone the raw milk hysteria. To read the holistic press, you’d think it was the best food ever invented. In fact I’m on record with the BBC (1986) as saying that if there was one food on Earth I would ban it would be milk. I would make hundreds of millions of people well within a week. I’d be famous!
Seriously, though, milk is DEADLY. I don’t care what Joe Mercola says. And please don’t write and tell me YOU can drink raw milk and you are fine. That’s like saying you live in a pit of snakes and you haven’t been bitten so far!
New and sobering statistics show that raw, or unpasteurized, milk causes 150 times more dairy product-related disease outbreaks than pasteurized milk. And states where the sale of raw milk is legal have twice as many outbreaks as states where it is illegal, according to a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study (CDC).
The 13-year review looked at more than 120 dairy product-related outbreaks that occurred between 1993 and 2006. The outbreaks caused more than 4,400 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations and three deaths. Raw milk products — including cheese and yogurt — caused 73 of the outbreaks (60 percent) and most of the 239 hospitalizations.
Unless milk is pasteurized — heated to kill harmful bacteria — bacteria can accumulate in collected milk, multiply and cause illness, the researchers said.
The study found that 13 percent of patients in what they called the “raw milk outbreaks” were hospitalized, compared with 1 percent of those made ill by pasteurized milk products. That’s 1300% more dangerous, if you want to play at silly statistics.
Against that, pasteurized milk and cheese tended to cause milder outbreaks, such as norovirus and Staphylococcus aureus.
During the study period, about 2.7 trillion pounds of milk was produced in the United States. By comparing that amount to the estimated 27 billion pounds (1 percent) consumed raw, the study authors determined that raw milk products cause 150 times more outbreaks proportionately than pasteurized milk.
The study appears Feb. 21 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the CDC.
Study co-author Barbara Mahon, deputy chief of the CDC’s Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch, said in the news release: “While some people think that raw milk has more health benefits than pasteurized milk, this study shows that raw milk has great risks, especially for children, who experience more severe illnesses if they get sick.
“Parents who have lived through the experience of watching their child fight for their life after drinking raw milk now say that it’s just not worth the risk,” she added.
I my view, milk is such a crappy food, why take the risk? Why drink the stuff at all? It seems to cause osteoporosis, as I have said often. In the USA, with the highest per capita intake of milk in the world, fractures of the femur run highest; in China, where the traditional diet was milk-free, osteoporosis was unknown (God help them; I hear they have now got McDonalds).
For (hundreds) more reasons not to consume milk at all, see www.notmilk.com
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