So, in terms of inherent substances in the milk, yeah, there isn’t anything per se that we need to take care of in cow’s milk, in normal healthy cows. Normal healthy cows being the big caveat here, because if you have got some subclinical mastitis – mastitis is a very, very common infection that may be shed into the milk. That won’t necessarily be great for a human drinking it.
The big one that you would be concerned about with unpasteurised milk is tuberculosis, bovine tuberculosis. So, the way that milk is pasteurised in the UK, pasteurisation is not a standardised process. When you pasteurise, you pasteurise with a given pathogen in mind. So, pasteurisation is heat treatment, right? But, how hot and for how long are the questions.
The protocols that we use as standard for processing milk in the UK are intended to reduce the load of bovine TB, because back in the 50s, post-war, we were trying to ramp up agriculture, because we’d all been starving for a few years. No one liked rationing from what I’m told. I wouldn’t like it either. Bovine TB was a big deal. So, they put in place a control program from then, and pasteurisation was one of the elements of that, to stop it spreading through the human population.
Now, TB is kind of making a bit of a comeback in humans, but typically in overcrowded urban areas, and human TB rather than bovine TB. So, that would be my main concern about drinking raw milk.
Full disclosure, I will happily drink raw milk. Quite a number of the farms around here and I try not to play favourites, because there’s a lot of them who I’m connected with in some way. There’s normally vending machines, so you could go along with your bottle. You pay, it’s normally a pound, or £1.20 for a litre of milk. To a farmer, that’s amazing. I can’t highlight how amazing that is. So, classically, they’ll be paid like 35, maybe 40p for a litre of milk. You’ve given them two and a half times that. So, that’s really, really good in terms of their business. So yeah, I will happily do that. If I knew a farmer had issues with TB, I may be a little bit more reluctant. So, where I live as well is one of the higher risk TB areas of the UK. So maybe, here I’d be a little more reticent. If you’re in a low TB area, you’ve probably got very little to worry about. Bit of a trade off.
I guess probably in terms of feeding it to anyone immunocompromised, it’s probably a no-no. Very young children, probably a no-no. But, for kind of healthy adults outside of the TB issue, which is an issue of everyone, probably pretty safe. But, on the other hand, we pasteurise for a reason, right? So, you forget the safety measures of your peril. Most of the time it’ll be okay, but on the one that it isn’t, it’s probably going to be regretted. So, yeah, raw milk, tentative thumbs up.
