About the author
Jo Hartley
Wife, Mother of 8, and Grandmother of 2
Jo is a 40 year old home educator who has always gravitated toward a natural approach to life. She enjoys learning as much as possible about just about anything!

First up, I dismissed her as a weirdo off with the fairies, then I thought 'if she is a mother of 8 and a home educator' one has to admire her energy if nothing else.

Her blog tells me nothing and the authors website seems to be a Yank site trying to flog some 'snake oil' cure for everything.

If Jo is a good mother and home educator, she would not have much time to learn about much else.

What does 'gravitated towards the natural approach to life' mean. Did she give birth at home without medical intervention? Did she breastfeed all 8 kids? Does she cook over an open fire and grow all their own veges, make butter and kill their own meat? Did she vacinate the kids?

Having a website or using a ballpoint pen is hardly natural.

Some people have a strange concept of what is natural. Maybe she eats and drinks so I suppose that is natural. The 'natural' thing for her seems to be just spin.

Natural fluids are breastmilk and water. Why would she have the slightest interest in what is in or out of cows milk?

Banjo

What is it what you would like to told, what are you defending?
Would you rather listen to hogwash advertising spiels from the money grabbing milk/pharmaceutical industries? Besides..have you ever tasted raw cows milk fresh from the teat,oh may be you've never tasted mothers milk. Lets look at it...raw cows milk is for calves true? If you were to give calves homogenized/pasteurized milk what would happen to their immune system? Now if human mothers haven't got enough breast milk and haven't got goat's milk at hand, would we let the baby die or do we get the next best thing, which happens to be raw cows milk. Just add it up will you? Instead of knocking everything.

Raw cows milk is hardly the next best thing, eftfnc. Many babies died in the past from polio, scarlet fever and other diseases transmitted through raw milk. Imagine what they can do to a babies immune system.

These days we have infant formula, which is very good and contains all the necessary vitamins and minerals necessary for infant development, without the disease.

And whatever you may think, drinking raw milk that may be infected out of a silver container will not prevent you from catching polio or any other virus.

eftfnc,
I was breastfed as an infant but do not recall the taste. I milked a cow and the family consumed the raw milk for about 25 years, so yes I have a good idea of its properties and the taste.

If I recall my early rural studies correctly, its the firstmilk or colostrum that contains the anti-bodies that the newborn absorb. This is only for a number of days after birth and there after it does not matter what milk or milk replacer the calf drinks. I have fed dozens of calves with milk replacer which is like powdered milk but contains animal fat.

So your argument about anti-bodies does not stack up. The newborn can only absorb the anti-bodies in the first few days. That is why dairymen allow the calves to suck the cow for a period before putting the calf on replacer or skim milk and the mother returns to the milking herd.

Jo says she gravitates toward the natural things. Well humans are about the only animal that drinks milk from another animal. How can that be deemed natural. As I said before some people have quaint ideas about 'natural'.

I get heartly sick of people trying to convince others they support the natural things, when basicly they don't have a clue.

Pasturisation is done to kill any bacteria and that is fine by me as these days I don't know where the milk has come from or who handled it.

eftfnc,
Why can't we buy raw milk? Simply because it is unhygenic. If I sold you raw milk and one of your kids got sick I would be the worst in the world and you would sue the pants off me. Even if my methods were totally clean and the contaminant got in after you took delivery.

Its very simple really.

eftfnc, simple really. Raw milk carries potentially dangerous organisms. http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/cheesespotlight/cheese_spotlight.htm

Probably not too bad if you get it straight from the cow, but any storage provides opportunities for these organisms to multiply and cause health problems.

Hence the requirement for Pasteurization.