Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Got Milk OFF TOPIC

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Naomi Counides" <naomi@oznayim.us>
  • To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Got Milk OFF TOPIC
  • Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:26:03 -0600

I milk my own goats. I have evolved a technique involving putting my
strainer with disposable paper filter inside the bucket so that all
particulate matter is strained out as the goat is milked. This also
prevents flies from swimming relays in the milk. I consider this cleaner
than the milk I get using my machine which even though I wash and dry the
udder and teats and thoroughly clean the machine after every use may have a
few particles floating. We use hand/bucket milk for the house and cheese
and machine milk is fed to the kids.

Milk is a wonderful medium for growing bacteria. Clean handling is very
important. Flies around the barn are very irritating. Flies in the milk are
a hazard.
Naomi

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Mark Angermayer
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 2:04 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Got Milk OFF TOPIC

Yes, it's more precise to say they don't dump milk just because antibiotics
can be detected. The whole issue of detecting possible toxins may be best
summed up by a conversation I had with a researcher at Bayer Crop Science.
He told me some problems of some outdated regulations. Apparently many
regs. for pesticides were written with phrases like "no residue". When the
regs. were originally written the best detection equipment was in ppm. Now
with advances in science, they can now detect parts per billion, which,
according to the researcher, leads to a lot of pointless and uneccesary
expense in licensing pesticides. At some point the miniscule residue level
is essentially zero, even though it may be detectable.

I don't know what the allowable levels for various antibiotics are in milk.
I do know they dump milk though. My wife, more precisely, works as an
accountant for a dairy regulatory agency. The accounting for the dumped
milk loads comes across her desk. In terms of hormones in milk, BST (the
only hormone used for dairy cows) is naturally produced in the cow anyway.
Cows supplemented with extra BST do not pass extra BST through their milk.
The FDA maintains there is no health risk of milk from BST cows.

In saying that, most non-organic milk is produced from non-BST cows, so it's
becoming a mute point anyway. For many years, the dairy industry has
voluntarily moved away from using BST because of public opinion. Some
states will not allow the marketing of BST milk. The move away from BST is
not from concerns about health issues of BST treated cows, but because of
negative consumer opinions. Perception is reality.

As an interesting aside, some people in my wife's office will not drink
organic milk. They've been on too many organic farms where the fly problems
were horrendous. Indeed organic bulk milk tests many times higher in
bacteria count than non-organic milk. True, pasturization kills nearly all
the bacteria anyway, but they still won't drink organic. Again perception
is reality.

Mark
KS






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page