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Post by richardw on Jan 28, 2014 12:23:26 GMT -5
I have just started buying our milk from a nearby dairy farm,they run a Jersey herd which gives a fantastic amount of cream,we pay $1.50 per litre and its just full your own containers.The main reasons for wanting to buy fresh raw milk was that its non pasteurised and homogenised which has much more flavour when compared to supermarket milk,also i hated the fact that milk could only be bought in plastic and as a family we were buying 10 X 2 litre containers per week,so that was a bloody lot of plastic that had to down-cycled. Luckily by law here in NZ we can buy milk direct from the farm but i know its not the case in Australia,there for im curious to know what laws are in place in other countries around buying raw milk direct.
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Post by billw on Jan 28, 2014 12:31:29 GMT -5
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 28, 2014 13:39:03 GMT -5
In big dairy states it is usually illegal or very difficult to legally purchase raw milk. In states without a robust dairy industry the laws are usually more rational. California is kind of unusual in that it is legal to buy raw milk retail, despite being a very big dairy state. In my state of New York it is possible for a dairy farm to get a raw milk permit which then allows the farm to make on-farm milk sales similar to what you are doing there in NZ, the catch being that Ag and Markets never actually gives out any permits anymore and has been actively harassing the farms that have existing permits.
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Post by richardw on Jan 28, 2014 13:39:17 GMT -5
Interesting! i see three S Eastern states are 'legal as pet food',this would make it easy to thwart such a law,how could they police that?
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Post by richardw on Jan 28, 2014 13:49:03 GMT -5
In big dairy states it is usually illegal or very difficult to legally purchase raw milk. In states without a robust dairy industry the laws are usually more rational. California is kind of unusual in that it is legal to buy raw milk retail, despite being a very big dairy state. In my state of New York it is possible for a dairy farm to get a raw milk permit which then allows the farm to make on-farm milk sales similar to what you are doing there in NZ, the catch being that Ag and Markets never actually gives out any permits anymore and has been actively harassing the farms that have existing permits. I'm sure that permits are not given out here,i think its done on volume allowed, as in,X amount per day per milking unit,again dam near impossible to police, thank goodness because i hate the way our worlds becoming so over regulated
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mich
gopher
Posts: 18
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Post by mich on Jan 28, 2014 15:06:06 GMT -5
It's great that you're able to get raw milk on a regular basis, Richard. I tasted it for the first time last year when our neighbours were milking a cow or two and the flavour is amazing - specially on the breakfast cereal. It's not as watery as the commercial stuff and it's not until you try the real McCoy that you realise what you're missing out on.
I agree about the world being increasingly over-regulated - seems like as soon as someone does something stupid, a call goes out for the activity itself to be banned, modified, whatever and "officials" see that as a brilliant opportunity to justify their jobs. Whatever happened to personal responsibility and good judgement? What lessons are our kids being taught if people aren't free to learn the effects of their choices? Provide knowledge about the risks, then leave it up to people to decide. Sure, there are many things that do need to be regulated but sometimes it seems like you can't turn round these days without an objection to it or running foul of some legislation.
Cheers, Mich.
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Post by starry on Jan 28, 2014 15:11:37 GMT -5
It's great that you're able to get raw milk on a regular basis, Richard. I tasted it for the first time last year when our neighbours were milking a cow or two and the flavour is amazing - specially on the breakfast cereal. It's not as watery as the commercial stuff and it's not until you try the real McCoy that you realise what you're missing out on.
I agree about the world being increasingly over-regulated - seems like as soon as someone does something stupid, a call goes out for the activity itself to be banned, modified, whatever and "officials" see that as a brilliant opportunity to justify their jobs. Whatever happened to personal responsibility and good judgement? What lessons are our kids being taught if people aren't free to learn the effects of their choices? Provide knowledge about the risks, then leave it up to people to decide. Sure, there are many things that do need to be regulated but sometimes it seems like you can't turn round these days without an objection to it or running foul of some legislation.
Cheers, Mich.
Fear of litigation sparks most rules and regulations unfortunately.
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Post by steev on Jan 28, 2014 15:43:51 GMT -5
There ought to be a law against "I might do something stupid and it's your fault for not preventing it" litigation.
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Post by richardw on Jan 28, 2014 16:16:47 GMT -5
The key is not to keep the raw milk in the fridge too long, though there no chance of that in this house hold,my three teenagers can mow through milk like a mob of land based Piranhas
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Post by templeton on Jan 28, 2014 16:54:27 GMT -5
There was a listeria recall of cheese products here a couple of weeks ago. I think the issue about regulation vs overregulation is when the consequences are prety dire, and the risk might not be apparent, -thinking of my 85 year old mum, for example. I must say I have little sympathy for heroin addicts - who doesn't know that heroin is addictive? But I can imagine someone (my mum) picking up a bottle of 'raw' milk, and thinking 'that must be healthy, unprocessed = good'. That said, there are a number of other at risk foods that don't seem to get the same policing as raw milk. t
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Post by blackox on Jan 28, 2014 17:12:37 GMT -5
I think it's mostly prohibited here in old Ohio. I remember seeing a few small cartons for sale, priced ridiculously high of course, at a small health food store once: I've never seen it again. The law mostly gos unenforced, but if the wrong (or right) person catches you in the act, they can do some real damage.
We're lucky to have small goat farmers as friends. We trade a few dozen eggs for a gallon of raw goat milk. Even pasteurized goat milk is hard to come by, and comes with insane prices when you do find it.
I believe that anything bad that comes from drinking raw milk is due to the fact that most "normal" people have poorly functioning immune systems so can't handle much when it comes to a little bit of bacteria. That and most large American retailers like to keep there products sitting out for months at a time, so of course unsterilized milk is going to grow huge colonies of all kinds of bacteria in it. Sometimes the store bought milk can be years old.
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Post by allyh on Jan 28, 2014 18:06:40 GMT -5
You can buy raw milk and cream here in Australia (Victoria at least). It has to be marked "not for consumption", but people buy it to drink/eat. It can be purchased at some farmers markets and health food shops, so it is packaged in plastic containers like the stuff you buy in supermarkets.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jan 28, 2014 18:41:24 GMT -5
The map link shows that farm sales in Texas is legal, but even so farms are very afraid to sell it. Pretty much you have to be a friend of a friend to find a source, and even then it's just left in a farm icebox and you dump your money in a jar so that it isn't actually passing from their hand into yours. We used to be able to get fresh apple cider at a nearby farm, but the feds cracked down and told them it had to be pasteurized before they could sell it and the equipment was too costly.
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Post by MikeH on Jan 28, 2014 20:45:01 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Jan 28, 2014 21:19:56 GMT -5
While I recognize the risk in eating ANY product not bearing the stamp of official regulation, as well as the special circumstances of the very young, very old, and immune-compromised, I must agree with Blackox; too many of us in the "First" world are out of touch with real nature and it's coming back to bite us in the ass. I have an acquaintance, a highly-placed surgeon at Oakland's Children's Hospital, who is very impressed at the general vigor of the immune systems of the immigrant "Third" world children she sees.
I think the problem is that, say 5% of the population will have a serious problem with some organism, so we take actions such that 100% "will" be protected from it, the result being that, in the "unlikely" event of an outbreak of that organism, 95% of the population has a serious problem.
Has anyone noticed how small the world has grown and how rapidly people, goods, and organisms can get from place to place, even from places that don't have super-protective regulatory agencies to those that do?
Not to put too fine a point on it, here in California, when drought gets serious (like now), our flushing mantra is "When it's yellow, let it mellow; when it's brown, flush it down". Yet I have a house-mate who seems incapable of peeing into a "used" or gray-water flushed toilet (he's lived through several of our droughts). I think he's afraid something is going to swim up the stream and give him an infection. I doubt a salmon could swim that fast, but what do I know?
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