The Simple Reason

I am known for a lot of words . . .in person, online. . .

I'm going to try to make this simple, to make it short. 

In America, you can buy raw chicken and eggs. You can buy raw seafood, cantaloupe and leafy greens. All of these foods cause mass illness all over the USA each year. They causes deaths, as well. But still. . .they are sold. Simply put, whole - real foods in their natural state have some marginal risk. Big deal. So does driving a car on an interstate over a back road.

When we sit down to order at restaurants across the county, we can order raw oysters, beef steak tartare (minched raw beef), sashimi (raw sushi/fish), uncooked produced (which results in a huge amount of food borne illness each year), Cesar dressing (made with raw eggs) and eggs over-easy (mostly, raw) collected or processed in massive factories or in bulk, and all we encounter are little warnings that say, to paraphrase: "Eating undercooked foods may pose risks," at the bottom. We also encounter some level of illness. The question about raw milk isn't is there any risk. Instead, the question is does raw milk present more risk than the other raw foods consumed in the USA, and that answer has always been no. Further, The next question is. . .if we are cooking raw milk before selling, then why aren't we cooking every single raw food out there? Should Americans be able to decide how their food is cooked? Is raw food, as you say, poison? Really? What a Joke.

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2009 Food Code allows food service establishments to serve raw or undercooked foods at a customer’s request as long as the customer is informed about the risks associated with consuming undercooked food," (Living Strong online) and yet, because dairy is controlled by essentially 3 major corporate buyers in the USA and is a roughly 100 billion dollar industry where Kraft Foods (one of the 3 Major Buyers) enjoys buying milk from controlled Grade A dairy under Government regulation at $1 a gallon (keeping the producers in poverty or receiving tax payer subsides), those who operate small, local raw milk dairies are prevented from letting consumers, that would prefer access to the REAL product, purchase it; and the government denies small farmers the sale of the real product at $10 per gallon, as well, in a state they cannot afford to do such a thing.

The government has willfully perpetuated that raw milk isn't safe, though no data backs this up when it is compared to other raw foods, and tremendous independent data and long time use in American prior to the 70's show how very safe it is. The government has watched dairies without any instances of illness close over the last 40 years, like here in Wayne county, WV, because raw milk sales promote local sales at higher prices than bulk sales, and thus they impact very powerful corporations who have a lot of funding to lobby very hard against change.

Most states in the USA have access herdshares or raw milk sales, though. Almost all have some form of raw milk sales or herd share in operation. Actually, WV has an active raw milk market, too, but the purchases are usually from farmers from Pa, Ohio, Va and Ky, where sales or shares have long been legal. 10% of the population in the USA drink raw milk daily, many times a day. There have been no large outbreaks of food borne illness from actual raw milk according the CDC in 30 years, though many other raw foods have had deaths and mass illness related to them, like Cantaloupe. While many residents drink raw milk in WV daily from out of state farmers and we've had no notable outbreaks, we've given a huge amount of business to farmers outside of out state each year. Outrageous.

All of this is not able to be explained ethically or reasonably. And those who ramble on about the dangers of raw milk have already drank something anyone barely thinking knows is the real danger in our society. . . and that is from the Government's teat. That is what scares me. . .not milk from a cow.