Raw Milk

Most mornings I watch "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. Lately their dialog has been all about the many Republican candidates and this morning they reported on Ron Paul in New Hampshire. Paul's big political spewing included a promise to make raw milk legal. This was pandering to the dairy farmers in New Hampshire who (in my educated opinion) should be making ice cream and cheese and not trying to get a market for raw milk!

I've written on this before and I'll keep writing because this is so very important. DON'T DRINK RAW MILK, no matter how sweet and happy you think the farmer and the cows may be.  Milk comes from the cow's udder which is directly in front of the cows rear end where the manure comes out. Manure carries
ecoli and all those other bad bacteria.  Let me tell you folks, cows don't have a clue about cleanliness. As they step in their own manure it splashes on to their udders. They lay down in their own manure and drag their udders through the manure. And yes, the farmer "washes"  the udder down before milking, but have you ever got up close and personal washing a cows udder? The udder is tender and you can't scrub at it twice a day without making a very tender and unhappy cow.  If you are out their  using your hand sanitizer all day long you know how drying it can be. Most farmers wash down the teats with a rag dipped in a bucket of some cleaning solution. It's not normally a big scrubbing job. Can you really think a cursory wipe of the udder is really killing bacteria?  You wipe down the shopping cart in the Kroger's because you don't want to get bad bacteria on your hands. How can anyone think the cow's udder is sterile clean. It is not!!!!   I can't begin to tell you how this makes me see RED! Here we go again with ignorance running rampant through the political process, not to mention the general public. 

We have the most clean, safe food supply in the world. Would I like to see us do better - absolutely. But making our food better doesn't include making it less safe.