Quote Originally Posted by birdgirl73
That's why it's pasteurized and heated to sterilize it. Cow teats are notorious for getting infected and nasty, what with calf mouths and milking machines sucking on them and the way they hang and drag around in cow dung and other horrifying substances. My granddad had a dairy farm. Dairy farmers aren't supposed to milk cows with infected udders, but it probably happens all the time anyway.
The cows milk thing is a double edged sword though.
By pasteurizing the milk, a lot of the enzymes it contains are destroyed, making it less digestible.

This is one of the reasons that a level of lactose intolerance is so widespread.

Humans simply don't naturally have the enzymes necessary to break down cows milk proteins.

If you were to feed a calf only pasteurized milk, it would be unable to process the proteins too. It would then become ill from malnutrition. Not to mention the antibodies that the mother cow passes along through her milk.

A dear friend of mine in Vermont has started drinking only raw milk from his friend's small herd of dairy cows because of this. He's also raising ALL his own fooed- veggies, eggs, and hunting for game. Honestly he has never looked so good in his life, and the weird health problems he'd been having are GONE.

If cows were still hand milked, the disgusting contamination from the automated milkers would not necessitate pasteurization.

And if we all lived closer to our food sources, we wouldn't have to add so many preservatives to our food so it could travel long distances to us.

How about birdgirl for MOD?