(Akilesh Ayyar) wrote in message om>...
> I bought some organic skim milk recently, supposed to expire November
> 7. I sampled a little bit and it tasted funny.
>
> I can't describe it any better than to say it had a kind of
> "high-pitched sweetness," the kind of sickly sweetness medicine might
> have to make it go down better. Not good at all. But then the milk
> didn't seem lumpy or terribly sour or in any other way bad.
>
> I've purchased this brand and type of milk for months and months, and
> it's never had this taste before. I thought it might be just one
> particular carton, but both the cartons I had bought at the same time
> taste this way.
>
> I remember this unpleasant flavor once or twice before in milk at
> various places. Any idea what causes it?
>
> Thanks.

Diet. I dunno what area of the country you are in, but with the
change of seasons, it is likely that the cows were supplemented with
some other food source that what they normally consume. It may just
be that you were lucky to experience the sudden change twice so far.

-L.

On 10 Oct 2003 16:13:19 -0700, (DRB) wrote:

>In this day and age... It's just not feasible to do things like they
>did a long time ago. My best advice if you want the milk like you
>remember, go out and buy a cow (guernseys are better than jersey's,
>imo.. much sweeter and gentle tempered.. Jersey's are just plain evil
>to work with..) Then, go get some antibiotics for that sore throat

On a commercial scale you're right, it's generally not feasible to try
to turn back the clock.

On the home front it can be different if that's what you want. Seek
out some homesteading forums such as www.homesteadingtoday.com and
you'll find folks who are still doing just that.

When I was a teenager we drank raw milk every day for several years
and never had a problem that could be attributed to the milk. In
fact, I quite liked it and intend to go back to having it again when
we can get our personal circumstances arranged in such a way as to
allow it.

Of course, one does have to be ever so particular about sanitation and
have the animal tested for the necessary diseases.

BTW, thanks for participating in this thread. I've found it very
interesting.

......Alan.


Post no bills

snip

I know I shouldn't do this and I keep telling myself to stop but I just
can't resist. I know most of y'all are of the age where all the milk
comes from sanitized conditions (you think) and a hand never touches the
udder. Well back in 'the good ole days' I vividly recall sitting under
the back end of a cow trying to get the milk into the bucket. Had the
cow kickers on and all but all too often old bessie would put a foot in
the bucket or maybe decide to empty her bowels or bladder while I was
milking. Decision time came, whether to take the milk to the house as
if nothing happened or throw it away and take a licking. Guess what I
did most often. Now, I do not drink milk of any kind. Don't start a
thread about chicken eggs as that is even more gross.. Have a good day,
with your milk and eggs. :-)

at Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:13:19 GMT in
> , (DRB)
wrote :

(Alex Rast) wrote in message
>. ..
>> at Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:53:12 GMT in <de56271e.0310091253.a8aef61
>> @posting.google.com>, (Akilesh Ayyar) wrote :
>>
>> >I bought some organic skim milk recently, supposed to expire November
>> >7. I sampled a little bit and it tasted funny.
>> >
>> >I can't describe it any better than to say it had a kind of
>> >"high-pitched sweetness,"...
>>
>> November 7 = Ultra-Pasteurized....
>
>UP and UHT are two different things. When I get home, I'll pull up
>the reference from pubmed.

I agree. UHT is even worse. But UP is already bad, and still subjected to
very high temperatures, over 200F. UHT is the stuff that's so sterile you
can store it at room temperature.
>
>
>> I find it bordering on unethical that dairies adopted these practices
>> without informing the consumers.
>
>Just to clarify, it's the bottlers/processors--not the dairies
>themselves.

Also agreed, I was using "dairy" as a generalized term for the bottlers,
because that's what the individual consumers actually see. If I wanted to
refer to the farms proper, I'd call them the "dairy farms", because they're
quite invisible to most consumers and not what a consumer would associate
with the "dairy" they're familiar with.

>
>I also find it distressing that so few
>> consumers appear to notice, much less care. There seems to be an
>> assumption that sets in that "milk is milk" - a commodifying attitude
>> that lets the producers
>
>Again, lets distinguish the dairyman from the processor. Most
>cases,not the same man (or woman). I think of the dairymen as the
>producers.

For the consumer, this is an arbitrary distinction, in the sense that from
their POV, the processor is the producer. Furthermore, from an economic
POV, the processor is also a producer because they're not the end user of
the product.


>... In Kentucky, I was astonished to
>> discover that what was passing for "whole" milk back there had a
>> milkfat content of 3.2% !
>
>And your point is? The average milk fat percentage of holstein milk
>is 3.3%. Since greater than 90% of the cattle in the United States
>are holsteins, 3.2% sounds pretty whole to me.

And therein lies an enormous part of the problem. Holsteins are a breed
specifically bred for maximum milk volume, with minimal attention paid to
taste or possibly even nutrition. That may be acceptable for industrial
milk users, i.e. companies who use milk as an ingredient in other products,
or who turn it into powdered milk, etc., but IMHO it's not a good standard
for milk that's actually going to hit store shelves. I don't deny that the
milk being supplied probably didn't have fat skimmed off, I'm saying that
when the focus, in milk production, brings us to breeding and feeding
programs that eventually produce milk of such low milkfat content, the
priorities of the system are very poor.

....
>
>Given that it was ultra-
>> pasteurized as well, why not just add white dye to water and sell it
>> as milk?
>>
>> ... A good, unhomogenized, raw, whole (5% milkfat) milk is a
>> sensuous thing - smooth, rich, with an almost candy-like sweetness
>> (no, not an artificial/chemical flavour), and nuances of the fields
>> the cows grazed in.
>
>Raw unpasteurized milk is not what I want to drink.

I'm not saying that everyone should be *forced* to drink raw milk, I'm just
saying that it should be made available as an allowable *option* for those
who wish it. Then they can choose the risks they take.

> My grandparents
>also farmed, and my dad and uncle had an incredibly number of sore
>throats and other illnesses until my grandmother bought a pasteurizer
>when my dad was about 9. Immediately, they stopped being so sick.

While it's inarguable that drinking raw milk increases the risk of illness
substantially, I must say that many of the risks associated with it are the
result of the poor sanitary practices often in place. If one were to make
raw milk available, it would have to be milked in carefully sanitized
conditions, within clean facilities, stored at appropriately low
temperatures, and delivered to the stores quickly. This would make such
milk carry a high price premium. Not everybody would want to spend that
kind of money, but I would be, for one, and I think it's dangerous for the
industry to assume such a cost-driven attitude that only the cheapest
possible products are available to the consumer.

>My uncle and dad also still tell how they hated the unhomogenized
>stuff. the way my uncle--now a 49 year old man--and my dad--now 51--
>tell the story, it had to have been pretty nasty.

Different tastes. Also possibly different priorities. A lot of people find
the need to shake or stir unhomogenized milk an excessively irritating
inconvenience. Others probably find the very rich mouthfeel over-the-top -
too coating. But to make it unavailable, or virtually unavailable, to those
who might want it is too restrictive. My main point was, though, that the
worst of it is that in its very unavailability, most people don't even have
the opportunity to try it even to know whether they like it more or not.
The industry might say there were a lack of demand, but a large part of
this lack of demand, is, I think, the result of lack of exposure. People
who've never tried something have no way to know what they're missing.

>
>, but could they not at least use LTLT (low-temperature, long-
>> time) pasteurization? In this technique, the milk is only subjected to
>> relatively mild heating (140-160F) for a rather longer time. The
>> gentler process minimizes the change in flavour.
>
>I think a lot of bottlers still actually use this process.... I know
>UHT milk as to be labled,and I think the UP milk as to be labled too
>(but not sure on the UP milk).

Usually they must label. But the label is invariably inconspicuous and
usually the containers have no other exterior markings (such as a different
colour or shape) that would give the consumer the knowledge of what they're
buying. If you take all the cartons of pasteurized milk off the shelf and
replace them with ones that to all external appearances look exactly the
same, with the lone exception that, somewhere on the label, there is in
small type an additional "ultra-" appended onto the "pasteurized" label the
consumer has seen before, virtually no one is going to notice, even if they
know the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized, which is
already unlikely. They might notice that all of a sudden the milk tastes
different than it used to do, but very few of them will make the connection
between the altered flavour and the change in processing.

>
>> As you can tell, you've stumbled upon one of my pet peeves...
>
>In this day and age... It's just not feasible to do things like they
>did a long time ago.

I disagree. Modern times don't require abandoning older methods. It's a
case of rational use. You have to look at when a new method actually makes
sense and adds value, and when it's actually reducing the value, adding
extra effort, introducing irrational processes, etc. And I couldn't be
further from a Luddite. Not only do I find new technology exciting and
fascinating, as well as useful, I work in an industry and profession
specifically associated with advancing the technological state of the art.
But I'm as violently opposed to the blind embracing of the new and modern,
as if newer were automatically better, as to the anachronistic holding on
to the past, as if everything were going downhill.


--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

In rec.food.cooking, on Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:01:45 -0700, Coas****cher
> wrote about Milk Tastes Funny -- Why?:

>
>
>snip
>
>I know I shouldn't do this and I keep telling myself to stop but I just
>can't resist. I know most of y'all are of the age where all the milk
>comes from sanitized conditions (you think) and a hand never touches the
>udder. Well back in 'the good ole days' I vividly recall sitting under
>the back end of a cow trying to get the milk into the bucket. Had the
>cow kickers on and all but all too often old bessie would put a foot in
>the bucket

I've done my share of milking, but I never had the cow put her foot in
the bucket. I always held the bucket between my knees, maybe you had
it sitting on the ground.

>or maybe decide to empty her bowels or bladder while I was
>milking.

LOL. You learn to move real fast when the tail starts to go up.

Joan

Joan Ellis wrote:

> LOL. You learn to move real fast when the tail starts to go up.

Trolls never learn.

nancy

"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
...
> at Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:13:19 GMT in
> > , (DRB)
> wrote :
> >... In Kentucky, I was astonished to
> >> discover that what was passing for "whole" milk back there had a
> >> milkfat content of 3.2% !
> >
> >And your point is? The average milk fat percentage of holstein milk
> >is 3.3%. Since greater than 90% of the cattle in the United States
> >are holsteins, 3.2% sounds pretty whole to me.
>
> And therein lies an enormous part of the problem. Holsteins are a breed
> specifically bred for maximum milk volume, with minimal attention paid to
> taste or possibly even nutrition.

As the daughter of a cattle breeder, I attest to this. Cattle breeding is
incredibly, incredibly comple--and a lot of attention is paid to nutrition.
Milk volume is only *one* production trait. Currently, the most attention
is focused on protein content, with premiums being paid for milk that's
higher in protein. Also, a lot of emphasis is being put on increasing the
CLA's--healthy fats--in milk as opposed to the unhealthier polysaturates.
Just 10-15 years ago, there was an emphasis on butterfat, with premiums
being paid. However, as more and more Americans become health conscious,
there has been a demand with milk that has less fat and more protein in it.

As part of some reasearch for my Ph.D, I had to pull up some numbers on milk
fat percent from the late 60's/early 70's, and the fat content of holsteins
really hasn't dropped except by a few tenths of a point.

That may be acceptable for industrial
> milk users, i.e. companies who use milk as an ingredient in other
products,
> or who turn it into powdered milk, etc., but IMHO it's not a good standard
> for milk that's actually going to hit store shelves. I don't deny that the
> milk being supplied probably didn't have fat skimmed off, I'm saying that
> when the focus, in milk production, brings us to breeding and feeding
> programs that eventually produce milk of such low milkfat content, the
> priorities of the system are very poor.

The priorities of the system are where they need to be. We are meeting the
demands of the majority of consumers. We are giving most of the people what
they want, and that's milk with less fat in it. It's the same same thing
with pork. Most people want the lower fat products. There are very few, it
seems, who want the higher fat stuff.


> >
> >Raw unpasteurized milk is not what I want to drink.
>
> I'm not saying that everyone should be *forced* to drink raw milk, I'm
just
> saying that it should be made available as an allowable *option* for those
> who wish it. Then they can choose the risks they take.

Then talk to the USDA about it. Should it be available to those who want
it? It seems so, but you also have the US Government trying to watch out
for the idgets in society who don't take the time to educate themselves
about the risk associated with raw milk.
>
> > My grandparents
> >also farmed, and my dad and uncle had an incredibly number of sore
> >throats and other illnesses until my grandmother bought a pasteurizer
> >when my dad was about 9. Immediately, they stopped being so sick.
>
> While it's inarguable that drinking raw milk increases the risk of illness
> substantially, I must say that many of the risks associated with it are
the
> result of the poor sanitary practices often in place. If one were to make
> raw milk available, it would have to be milked in carefully sanitized
> conditions, within clean facilities, stored at appropriately low
> temperatures, and delivered to the stores quickly.

These are requirements that all US Grade A dairies (dairy farms) must meet
to begin with. Only Grade A dairies can sell fluid milk for human
consumption.

This would make such
> milk carry a high price premium. Not everybody would want to spend that
> kind of money, but I would be, for one, and I think it's dangerous for the
> industry to assume such a cost-driven attitude that only the cheapest
> possible products are available to the consumer.

What I'm going to say to begin is that the dairy industry has tons and tons
of incredibly well-educated econimist, etc. We know how things need to run
for the industry to do the very best it can. We typically don't take kindly
to people who have no clue how the system runs to make suggestions.

The goal isn't for "the cheapest products available". Butter and many types
of cheeses are pretty pricey. The price that farmers get--and thus the
price of milk--is a supply and demand thing. Farmers also spend an ungodly
amount on feed. Most of them shell out the bucks to get the very best feed,
etc. available for their cattle. This means that the product you receive is
higher in quality.

>
> >My uncle and dad also still tell how they hated the unhomogenized
> >stuff. the way my uncle--now a 49 year old man--and my dad--now 51--
> >tell the story, it had to have been pretty nasty.
>
> Different tastes. Also possibly different priorities. A lot of people find
> the need to shake or stir unhomogenized milk an excessively irritating
> inconvenience. Others probably find the very rich mouthfeel over-the-top -
> too coating. But to make it unavailable, or virtually unavailable, to
those
> who might want it is too restrictive. My main point was, though, that the
> worst of it is that in its very unavailability, most people don't even
have
> the opportunity to try it even to know whether they like it more or not.
> The industry might say there were a lack of demand, but a large part of
> this lack of demand, is, I think, the result of lack of exposure. People
> who've never tried something have no way to know what they're missing.

The main thing here is the whole USDA and their regulations. Personally, I
think a lot more people would still stick to the homogenized/pasterurized
milk. There is a push towards "niche" markets--it really is the hot trend
right now-- and perhaps raw milk would be one of them. However, most of
these farmers don't want to risk having their license to sell milk taken
away from them, and thus their means of income. You have to understand that
these people have families to take care of, cows to feed, and loosing their
income source--even possibly their farms and homes-- would be catastrophic.

> >
> >, but could they not at least use LTLT (low-temperature, long-
> >> time) pasteurization? In this technique, the milk is only subjected to
> >> relatively mild heating (140-160F) for a rather longer time. The
> >> gentler process minimizes the change in flavour.
> >
> >I think a lot of bottlers still actually use this process.... I know
> >UHT milk as to be labled,and I think the UP milk as to be labled too
> >(but not sure on the UP milk).
>
> Usually they must label. But the label is invariably inconspicuous and
> usually the containers have no other exterior markings (such as a
different
> colour or shape) that would give the consumer the knowledge of what
they're
> buying. If you take all the cartons of pasteurized milk off the shelf and
> replace them with ones that to all external appearances look exactly the
> same, with the lone exception that, somewhere on the label, there is in
> small type an additional "ultra-" appended onto the "pasteurized" label
the
> consumer has seen before, virtually no one is going to notice, even if
they
> know the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized, which is
> already unlikely. They might notice that all of a sudden the milk tastes
> different than it used to do, but very few of them will make the
connection
> between the altered flavour and the change in processing.

Perhaps their should be bigger labeling. Maybe write to your local
processing plants with your concerns.

> >> As you can tell, you've stumbled upon one of my pet peeves...
> >
> >In this day and age... It's just not feasible to do things like they
> >did a long time ago.
>
> I disagree. Modern times don't require abandoning older methods.

What I mean about feasibility is stuff like selling bottles of milk with
really high milk fat. You'd have to have a bunch of jersey/guernsey farms
within a reasonable distance of each other to be able to get enough milk at
a central processing facility so that the facility could break even. I know
with the Guernseys--the breed that my family has--we had wanted to
bottle/sell "Golden Guernsey" milk like they did in the 50's, 60's, whenever
it was. It's been really hard to get it going, since there are so few
guernsey farms. The closest guernsey farm to ours is 3 1/2 hours! The one
jersey farm that's closest to us is 30 miles away, and between our two
farms, there isn't enough milk produced to make it economically
possible--ie. break even at least--to get it bottled and sold.

Smaller farms are the ones with the jerseys and guernseys, with a few
exceptions. Smaller farms are going out--partly due to economic factors,
partly due to younger generations wanting to do something other than farm.

There just aren't enough farms close enough together...

And before you say "it's because people want higher producing cattle", it's
not that entirely. There are a great many Jersey's and Guernsey's that milk
just as well, if not better, than holsteins these days. Holsteins are a
whole lot hardier of a breed though. Guernsey's have the tendency to give
up if they get sick... even a minor illness. Holsteins seem to have more
heifers... And, Holsteins just seem to hold up better in the long run. They
always have.. even 50 years ago.

a
> case of rational use. You have to look at when a new method actually makes
> sense and adds value, and when it's actually reducing the value, adding
> extra effort, introducing irrational processes, etc.

As I said, the value of dairy products is supply and demand. At this
particular point in time, the majority of consumer demand is for milk high
in protein/low in fat. Therefore, low fat, high protein milk _is_ the most
valuable right now.

I think it would be argued that pasteurization is not an irrational process,
and that it's not that much of an effort.

And I couldn't be
> further from a Luddite. Not only do I find new technology exciting and
> fascinating, as well as useful, I work in an industry and profession
> specifically associated with advancing the technological state of the art.
> But I'm as violently opposed to the blind embracing of the new and modern,
> as if newer were automatically better, as to the anachronistic holding on
> to the past, as if everything were going downhill.

Pasturization could hardly be called a de-advancement. As for the rest of
it, like I said, it has to do with declining cattle numbers... (And, BTW,
the numbers of holsteins are dropping just as much as the smaller breeds...)

DRB

"Nancy Young" > wrote in message
...
> Joan Ellis wrote:
>
> > LOL. You learn to move real fast when the tail starts to go up.
>
> Trolls never learn.

You buy them books, and buy them books, but they just keep tearing the pages
out...

(Alex Rast) wrote in message >...
> at Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:13:19 GMT in
> > , (DRB)
> wrote :
>
> (Alex Rast) wrote in message
> >. ..
> >> at Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:53:12 GMT in <de56271e.0310091253.a8aef61
> >> @posting.google.com>, (Akilesh Ayyar) wrote :
> >>
> >> >I bought some organic skim milk recently, supposed to expire November
> >> >7. I sampled a little bit and it tasted funny.
> >> >
> >> >I can't describe it any better than to say it had a kind of
> >> >"high-pitched sweetness,"...
> >>
> >> November 7 = Ultra-Pasteurized....
> >
> >UP and UHT are two different things. When I get home, I'll pull up
> >the reference from pubmed.
>
> I agree. UHT is even worse. But UP is already bad, and still subjected to
> very high temperatures, over 200F. UHT is the stuff that's so sterile you
> can store it at room temperature.
> >

While not to US consumer tastes,for some of us that don't live in the
US, UHT is a logical option. We buy milk in one liter boxes that can
be stored at room temperature. Refrigerate after opening. If the power
goes out and the milk spoils, its a liter or less that spoils, not a
gallon. If the power fails and the market or bodega doesn't have a
generator, the UHT milk doesn't spoil. I've tried the regular, in
jugs, refrigerated stuff here and about every third or fourth jug had
spoiled due to lack of refrigeration somewhere along the way. Same
with the refrigerated, plastic liter bags of milk. I bought the
refrigerated, cardboard box stuff also, same thing. I opened a single
serving container, stuck in a straw, took a drink and spit it out all
over the restaurant table I was sitting at. It had soured. Remember,
not everyone reading this newgroup lives in the US or Europe or even
in parts of those areas where power supply is problem free.

Sandi

at Sun, 12 Oct 2003 02:31:04 GMT in
> ,
(DRB) wrote :

The long reply is below. However, I'll summarize my position he it
appears, from what I read, that the general thrust of your message is that
there is no demand for high-fat milk. My point is: you can't expect people
to demand what they have no access to in order even to be able to know what
they're missing. A good market serving the public benefit must provide real
choice in order to be effective.

>"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
.. .
>> at Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:13:19 GMT in
>> > ,
>> <(DRB)
>> wrote :
>> >... In Kentucky, I was astonished to
>> >> discover that what was passing for "whole" milk back there had a
>> >> milkfat content of 3.2% !
>> >
>> >And your point is? The average milk fat percentage of holstein milk
>> >is 3.3%. ...
>>
>> And therein lies an enormous part of the problem. Holsteins are a
>> breed specifically bred for maximum milk volume, with minimal
>> attention paid to taste or possibly even nutrition.
>
>As the daughter of a cattle breeder, I attest to this. Cattle breeding
>is incredibly, incredibly comple--and a lot of attention is paid to
>nutrition. ...

That's one of the reasons I put "possibly". There are 2 parts of this -
first, that there's no way I (or anyone else, for that matter) could know
so thoroughly about every dairy's practice to claim that no attention to
nutrition was being paid. I merely suspect that at some dairies it may not
receive a particularly high priority.

>... However, as more and more
>Americans become health conscious, there has been a demand with milk
>that has less fat and more protein in it.

This is an area I also think needs work, although I can't deny it's a
reality. A lot of Americans seem to have been convinced that fat is the
Mother of All Evil, to be avoided at any cost and in virtually any form.
They get obsessed over reducing the fat content in everything. To that
group I say, why not buy skim milk if you're that concerned? In addition,
might it not be possible that those who really are concerned about health
in that way aren't buying whole milk anyway? If that were the case, could
not the dairy industry be producing a product for a minimal-demand market
(i.e. a "market" consisting of people who are concerned about fat on the
one hand, but still persist in buying whole milk on the other). Meanwhile,
again, if this were the case, there might well be a market consisting of
people who aren't so worried about the negative possible impacts of fat to
obsess over every last percentage in their diet, who buy whole milk, who
would prefer whole milk of higher fat content? I don't believe this is a
hypothetical scenario.


>...
> That may be acceptable for industrial
>> milk users, ...
>> ... I'm saying that when the focus, in milk production, brings us to
>> breeding and feeding programs that eventually produce milk of such low
>> milkfat content, the priorities of the system are very poor.
>
>The priorities of the system are where they need to be. We are meeting
>the demands of the majority of consumers.

When a fairly significant proportion of the majority is industrial users,
the system has an automatic skew. High-volume purchasers have a capability
to dominate product availability, to the point where end-user consumers
often have a greatly diminished influence on what they can buy. IMHO, I
think we need an additional market segmentation - dairies that produce
exclusively for the commercial sector, and ones that produce exclusively
for the retail sector.

>> >
>> >Raw unpasteurized milk is not what I want to drink.
>>
>> I'm not saying that everyone should be *forced* to drink raw milk, I'm
>just
>> saying that it should be made available as an allowable *option* for
>> those who wish it. Then they can choose the risks they take.
>
>Then talk to the USDA about it. Should it be available to those who
>want it? It seems so, but you also have the US Government trying to
>watch out for the idgets in society who don't take the time to educate
>themselves about the risk associated with raw milk.

I agree the US government must bear a share of the responsibility. But why
do they take it upon themselves to try to protect people against their own
stupidity? Usually, it comes down in the end to fear of lawsuits. This is
swerving WAY off-topic, but in order to correct that problem would require
major legal reform. I think this does need to be done.

The other issue that comes up is industry lobbying. Powerful industrial
concerns or very large dairies have the kinds of dollars to lobby
congresspeople effectively. Usually these kinds of operations are the ones
at greatest risk for putting out the kind of contaminated product that
causes the problems. Since correcting these kinds of issues often costs
money they don't want to pay, an easier and cheaper solution for them is
often to lobby for legislation that pushes out their smaller competitors.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to require processing practices that
are relatively cheap for the large corporation but impossibly expensive for
the small producer. The big corporations, by virtue of their size, can
really only produce for the largest markets (in the consumer sector, this
means the broadest demographics), but by squeezing out the small producer
who could occupy the niche markets, they end up eliminating choice for the
consumer.

....
>> While it's inarguable that drinking raw milk increases the risk of
>> illness substantially, I must say that many of the risks associated
>> with it are
>the
>> result of the poor sanitary practices often in place. If one were to
>> make raw milk available, it would have to be milked in carefully
>> sanitized conditions, within clean facilities, stored at appropriately
>> low temperatures, and delivered to the stores quickly.
>
>These are requirements that all US Grade A dairies (dairy farms) must
>meet to begin with. Only Grade A dairies can sell fluid milk for human
>consumption.

In this case, I was referring to a level of monitoring and control that
would certainly exceed processes already in place. I'm not claiming that
dairy production resembles a pigsty, I'm saying that it could be improved.
The big one is quick distribution. I believe it should arrive on shelves
within at most a day. This places an absolute necessity on local
production. Cross-state shipment is OK for pasteurized, but not something
you could get away with if you were wishing to market raw milk in addition.

>
>This would make such
>> milk carry a high price premium.
>
>What I'm going to say to begin is that the dairy industry has tons and
>tons of incredibly well-educated econimist, etc... We typically don't
>take kindly to people who have no clue how the system runs to make
>suggestions.

I believe that it is unwise to assume any given person is completely
ignorant of an industry or system. I believe it is also unwise to dismiss
suggestions out of hand because the assumption is that the suggester is
relatively ignorant. This presumes that the expert must know everything
that the non-expert does in a particular field, which is simply not true.
No matter how knowledgeable a given person might be, there's always a
chance he doesn't know some fact or has missed some insight that a less-
knowledgeable person might possess.

>The goal isn't for "the cheapest products available". Butter and many
>types of cheeses are pretty pricey.

I agree, and therein IMHO laid part of the problem I was talking about.
Because of their high price, they divert use of milkfat as well as quality
milk into those markets, leaving very little available as simple fresh
milk. I'd like to see more attention paid to the possibility of choice
across the entire range of products, not simply in a few, narrow areas
(e.g. in cheese you can find hundreds of different products, where in milk
your typical "choice" may amount to 3 brands, at most)


>> ...My main point was, though, that
>> the worst of it is that in its very unavailability, most people don't
>> even
>have
>> the opportunity to try it even to know whether they like it more or
>> not. ...
>
>The main thing here is the whole USDA and their regulations.

It's easy to make the USDA the scapegoat, but when it's the industry (or,
to be more specific, lobbyists for the largest players in the industry) who
is often driving what regulations are being adopted, that's an exercise in
finger-pointing.

>Personally, I think a lot more people would still stick to the
>homogenized/pasterurized milk.

Undoubtedly, because it's cheaper and more convenient. But stripped of the
ability to make any sort of informed decision about the matter, the
customer is really left pretty helpless.

> You have to understand that these people have families
>to take care of, cows to feed, and loosing their income source--even
>possibly their farms and homes-- would be catastrophic.

It's not the farmers' fault, most of the time. As I say, it's the industry,
which moves mostly under the influence of the highest-volume demand. The
problem is, that this highest-volume demand tends to squeeze out all lower-
volume markets, even when they were never competing. The farmers themselves
are caught in the grip of industry forces they can't possibly control. So
they have little choice but to produce according to what the industry as a
whole favours.

....
>> >In this day and age... It's just not feasible to do things like they
>> >did a long time ago.
>>
>> I disagree. Modern times don't require abandoning older methods.
>
>What I mean about feasibility is stuff like selling bottles of milk with
>really high milk fat. You'd have to have a bunch of jersey/guernsey
>farms within a reasonable distance of each other to be able to get
>enough milk at a central processing facility so that the facility could
>break even.

The whole notion of central processing facilities itself is a modern
invention. In order to make it practical, what you'd need to do is have
local farms selling direct, or possibly through much more local
cooperatives, to local groceries. Yes, that would require overhauling the
system, but that's what I do think needs to be done.

....

>> case of rational use. You have to look at when a new method actually
>> makes sense and adds value, and when it's actually reducing the value,
>> adding extra effort, introducing irrational processes, etc.
>
....
>
>I think it would be argued that pasteurization is not an irrational
>process, and that it's not that much of an effort.

I didn't say it was. But I have seen processes introduced in various
industries that really didn't make sense, relative to what the product was,
except from an economies-of-scale versus production-method point of view.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

In article <XZJhb.724010$YN5.646592@sccrnsc01>, Julia Altshuler
> wrote:


> Most popular falsehoods have a germ of truth in them. That's the case
> with the one about not getting pregnant while breastfeeding.


It's not a popular falsehood. It's the truth.


> The body won't ovulate until it has a sufficient store of calories.
> That explains why anorexic women stop menstruating. Same for women
> starving due to famine. Also sometimes true for highly athletic women
> who are in such fantastic shape that they're pure muscle with virtually
> no stored fat.


So far, so good.



> In places where calories are just sufficient but still scarce, it is
> hard to store up those calories while breast feeding. It takes a lot of
> food to feed a growing baby. In the third world, breast feeding can act
> as a sort of birth control. In countries where food is plentiful, it
> doesn't work well at all.



I'm sorry, but I think that you are just making this up. I'm not a woman,
and I'm not a health professional, but I've been married for 31 years and
have three children. In general, lactating human females do not ovulate.
They *cannot* reliably get pregnant while breastfeeding. However, as
Nancy pointed out, there is a name for people who rely on lactation as
their only method of birth control. Stupid is what *I* call them! Women
*do* get pregnant when they are menstruating, and they *do* get pregnant
when they are lactating. Neither the rhythm method nor lactation are
reliable methods of birth control.

--
Dan Abel
Sonoma State University
AIS

Dan Abel wrote:
> In general, lactating human females do not ovulate.
> They *cannot* reliably get pregnant while breastfeeding.


> Women
> *do* get pregnant when they are menstruating, and they *do* get pregnant
> when they are lactating. Neither the rhythm method nor lactation are
> reliable methods of birth control.



The above two comments contradict one another. Still, I'll concede the
argument. I'm no health care professional and was only trying to
paraphrase information I'd read somewhere. I'm not up to doing the
research and citing my sources so I'll leave it up to the readers (both
in the West and in the third world) to decide for themselves.

--Lia

Julia Altshuler wrote:
>
> Dan Abel wrote:
> > In general, lactating human females do not ovulate.
> > They *cannot* reliably get pregnant while breastfeeding.
>
> > Women
> > *do* get pregnant when they are menstruating, and they *do* get pregnant
> > when they are lactating. Neither the rhythm method nor lactation are
> > reliable methods of birth control.
>
> The above two comments contradict one another.

No they don't. They can't *reliably* get pregnant. But they can.

nancy

In article <IrDib.756365$Ho3.193500@sccrnsc03>, Julia Altshuler
> wrote:

> Dan Abel wrote:
> > In general, lactating human females do not ovulate.
> > They *cannot* reliably get pregnant while breastfeeding.
>
>
> > Women
> > *do* get pregnant when they are menstruating, and they *do* get pregnant
> > when they are lactating. Neither the rhythm method nor lactation are
> > reliable methods of birth control.
>
>
>
> The above two comments contradict one another.


No, but I also was too lazy to do the research. It's all in the
percentages. If you (the generic you) are an unwed mother with mistake
number one at the breast, you don't want to rely on lactation as your only
method of birth control, or you might possibly end up with mistake number
two. On the other hand, if you are planning to have another baby pretty
soon anyway, and you are willing to live with the slight risk of
pregnancy, you might wish to rely on lactation as a method of birth
control. You aren't supposed to take drugs while nursing, and oral
contraceptives are one of those drugs.



> Still, I'll concede the
> argument. I'm no health care professional and was only trying to
> paraphrase information I'd read somewhere. I'm not up to doing the
> research and citing my sources so I'll leave it up to the readers (both
> in the West and in the third world) to decide for themselves.


I've done the research, it's called personal experience. Men track their
wive's monthly cycles, and when they don't have any during lactation, it's
pretty obvious.


ObFood: Baby #2 was pretty cranky. The doctor told my wife to stop
drinking milk. My wife stopped drinking milk, and the crankiness went
away! There was something in cow's milk that went into her milk, and
bothered the baby. Once she stopped drinking cow's milk, the baby didn't
get whatever was bothering him.

--
Dan Abel
Sonoma State University
AIS

"Akilesh Ayyar" > skrev i en meddelelse
...
>>
> Ahh, yup. You caught it. It is indeed ultra-pasteurized. Why does that
> affect the taste? Is the taste difference I experienced the kind of
> difference UHT usually produces?
>

The UHT process involves heating the milk to approx. 140 C ( approx. 280 F )
for about 4 seconds ( this is done under high pressure to avoid
evaporation ) several things happen during this process:

1- The proteins in the milk are denatured ( changed ) and release small
amounts of H2S ( smells like rotten eggs )

2- The lactose ( sugar in the milk ) can caramelise if heated too long

3- The milk is completely sterilised, nothing survives this treatment

The 2 first things is what makes the milk taste like it was "cooked"

"Normal" milk is typically pasteurised at about 80 C ( approx 180F ) for 15
seconds.. This is a compromise between killing most of the bacteria ( ~99% )
and not altering the taste of the product too much.. The pasteurising
temperatures may vary due to local regulations.

Hope this answers your question (?)
If not, please let me know and I will try to explain it differently

/peter ( Denmark )

"Q" > skrev i en meddelelse
...
> "Normal" milk is typically pasteurised at about 80 C ( approx 180F ) for
15
> seconds..

For bottled milk typically about 90C for 15 seconds.. Enough to destroy both
the phosphatase and peroxydase enzymes ( these enzymes are used as an
indicator for proper pasteurising )

/peter

"DRB" > skrev i en meddelelse
m...
>> And your point is? The average milk fat percentage of holstein milk
> is 3.3%. Since greater than 90% of the cattle in the United States
> are holsteins, 3.2% sounds pretty whole to me. There simply aren't
> enough jersey's and guernsey's around to pull up that number. For
> example, in our area at home, out of all the dairies, we have one
> guernsey herd (my parents) and one jersey herd. There are about 20-30
> holstein herds though. When you get milk from the store, it's going to
> be a mix of milk from different farms and different breeds.

Hmmm.. thats weird.. I work at a large dairy processing facility in Denmark.
At this one location we process about 300 tons of milk each day, and the
average fat content is about 4.4% ( small seasonal variations do occur )


> Raw unpasteurized milk is not what I want to drink. My grandparents
> also farmed, and my dad and uncle had an incredibly number of sore
> throats and other illnesses until my grandmother bought a pasteurizer
> when my dad was about 9. Immediately, they stopped being so sick.
> It's one of the reasons why my parents always have and still do buy
> their milk from the grocery. My dad didn't want my sister and I
> drinking unpasteurized milk, and my mom (who's an accountant and works
> full time) didn't have time to pasteurize it at home.

Unpasteurised milk can be quite an experience for weeks ahead.. Especially
if the cows have problems with infections in the udder

>
> I think there are regulations that raw milk cannot be sold. I'll have
> to double check that, but I think I'm right.

In Denmark ( where I am at ) regulations say that you HAVE to pasteurise the
milk..
On the other hand: A lot of French cheese is made from unpasteurised milk..

Basically its just about having healthy cows and good hygiene all the way
from the cows udder to the finished cheese

/peter ( denmark )

I normally drink skim milk, and thought the supermarket version tasted very
watered down. One day I mixed powdered milk with water that had been filtered
through my Brita pitcher--it tasted much better, and I've been mixing it up in
the blender ever since. Tastes great, and it's less expensive.

Fran