This morning I came across an article that people were getting sick drinking raw milk from a farm in Wisconsin. My family (including my 1-year-old son) drinks raw milk from our backyard goats everyday. I completely understand keeping a clean milking area/pen and following safety food handling practices. I would never drink unpasteurized milk from a factory farm but in responsible small time farms goats milk is fantastic.
As is my custom I started googling. One thing that I found out which was really interesting was the fact that in the past 11 years there have been zero deaths related to drinking raw milk; however, 15 people have died from eating tainted cantaloupe. Hmmm… should we start banning cantaloupe? That seems to be more deadly. The government likes to say that they are protecting us by not letting us drink raw milk but we still can go out and eat big macs or tainted produce all day. I think the government still needs to regulate the farms selling raw milk but let me choose whether to drink it or not.
I tried to find an unbiased article to link to the bottom of this post on benefits or a study on raw milk but I couldn’t find that. Either the article was from the government saying you’ll die from drinking raw milk or a holistic article stating that you’ll live forever if you drink raw milk. I am not sure if raw milk is 10x better or 100x better for you than pasteurized milk but I do know I am happy knowing that there is nothing added to my milk and that this is the way natural milk was supposed to be… not messed with. Basically, pasteurization destroys a lot of the nutritive value of milk. I also don’t like the fact that my milk can be qualified as organic just because instead of tons of antibiotics or hormones it only contains just under the limit to be considered organic. Pasteurization has been said to destroy beneficial bacteria found in raw milk. It kills the natural enzymes and destroys the chemical make-up of calcium in raw milk. Calcium is vital to the growth and health of children. Pasteurization has been implicated in everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer. Truly, the resulting product after pasteurization is not raw and living, but rather “killed and dead.”
I remember moving out onto our farm 4 years ago and really wondering if I could just take that apple off that tree and eat it or take the egg out of the chicken coop and put it right into the skillet. It’s sad to think how disconnected we’ve become from our food… real food that is. When people think about where there food comes from they picture a large grocery store. We need to get back to basics and when we think about our food we think about nature and the wonderful goats and chickens providing it for us.
I guess we will never know the truth if raw milk really is better for you… I for one am going to stick with my backyard goats.
mauledbydesign 
Totally agree with you on this. People are so disconnected from their food – and people are eating garbage daily. I’d love to take on the things you have (pigs, chickens, etc) but my husband does not want to move far from the city – nor does he want to have a farm/animals. But, that doesn’t mean we have to buy low quality, highly processed food from big box stores.
We are new to farming… 4 years ago we got our first chicken. It’s so nice to be raising it ourselves and show our kids that. But local organic food are so easily accessed now! My uncle lives in minnesota (elk river) in a suburb and he has backyard chickens! His neighbors don’t complain so I guess it’s who you have as neighbors.