Why is raw milk sold differently than pasteurized milk?
Now that we’ve covered pasteurized milk lets talk about raw milk. If you’re interested in cheesemaking you’ve most likely heard a lot about raw milk. However, it may have been in the context of ‘Raw milk is good’ or ‘Raw milk is bad.’
Talking about raw milk is often times polarized to the extremes which can make it difficult to truly learn about the pros and cons.
Let's stop and take a moment to consider the fact that a young lamb, kid, or calf gets it straight from the source with no processing and seems to have no concerns with raw milk. But, perhaps this is because little ones drink milk on demand, as opposed to humans storing and drinking raw milk from other animals. With the extra handling and storage there is more room for something to go wrong.
Here’s the path bottled milk takes on its way to you
- First it goes directly from the udder into automated milking equipment and pipelines
- It gets chilled along the way
- Once chilled it’s added to previously chilled milk
- A big truck comes and trucks it to the bottling l*ocation
- It’s usually stored for a few days
- Next it gets processed into retail packaging
- And it goes back into another truck
- Then it travels to a store where it sits for a period of time.
- Finally the milk is purchased
With so many steps and so much time there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong with the milk. However, thanks to hard working facilities, sorting the retail milk chain out with better sanitation, pasteurization, and cold storage milk is safe and available on a large scale.
Imagine if raw milk was taken on this same path, followed the same steps and needed to be stored for the same amount of time. Would it work, would it be safe?
Our opinion on raw milk is that it’s one of the best ways to consume dairy, if you can get it locally to eliminate this commercialized path most milk takes.
Here’s a good path for raw milk
- First it goes directly from the udder into automated milking equipment and pipelines
- It gets chilled along the way
- Then it goes directly from the farm to the consumer
This shorter production chain helps provide high quality, safer milk that is fantastic for cheese making.