New Superbug Strain Found In Cows and People 144
sciencehabit writes "A novel form of deadly drug-resistant bacteria that hides from a standard test has turned up in Europe. Researchers found the so-called MRSA strain in both dairy cows and humans in the United Kingdom, suggesting that it might be passed from dairies to the general population. But before you toss your milk, don't panic: The superbug isn't a concern in pasteurized dairy products."
We all know what happens when stories like this (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't even matter if it's pasteurized. How many people in the general population even know what pasteurization means? Some food purists only know that the process makes food taste a little different, even if it's healthier as a result.
Re:We all know what happens when stories like this (Score:5, Funny)
How many people in the general population even know what pasteurization means?
It clearly refers to free-range milk. You know, letting it wander around in the pasture all day. Pasteurization.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
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It's even funnier because it is so ironic.
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Ahhh, it's that whole bio-fad, then?
Well, thanks for the info, I'll go for pasteurized then. Thank god you informed me so I know what milk I can still drink! Can you imagine, just lately I've seen a label on milk about it being "homogenized", and I don't want homo genes in my food!
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Better than the folks around here* who specifically seek out unpasteurized "raw milk" like it's some sort of magic formula and feed it to infants. (This is why there are liability concerns and why various state legislatures feel a need to prohibit the sale of raw milk.)
Don't you love pseudo-religious "environmentalism"?**
(*people near San Francisco, and especially Marin County to the north.)(** a brand of new-age spirituality also associated with the likes of homeopathy. as opposed to, you know, real e
Re:We all know what happens when stories like this (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't even see the problem in your post, because it is so ingrained into our society.
Your first sentence is fine. Make fun of those people all you want. It is your second (perens) is where the problem is. WHY is there liability for RAW milk, in such a way that a STATE feels like it needs to regulate it by laws? You realize that this line of thinking is why we call it the "Nanny State", right?
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DiHydrogenMonoxide is deadly if mishandled, it should be regulated. It is also used in Torture, which means we should ban it completely.
You can drink Pasteurized milk, and nobody is stopping you.You've made the mistake of confusing having a choice as preventing you from making it.
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H2O is regulated. The government sets standards for its purity levels somewhat based on scientific studies. They set regulations on things like just how much arsenic in the water is safe to drink. I'm rather glad they don't take a Libertarian/Tea Party stance and leave it up to industry/big business to decide that for me. I for one am happy that for the most part I don't have to worry about my kids drinking tap water.
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Whoosh.
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Re:We all know what happens when stories like this (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy does not need to be marked as troll. He's right. People don't know what pasteurization is. Ask someone. And many "food purists" think raw milk is better. (It is under extremely controlled situations and if your immune system is capable of handling 'variations' as they occur! hint: many people are so clean that a common cold is a a pygmy disaster waiting to happen to them)
And yes, he is also correct in pointing out that people over-react wildly and stupidly. Maybe not the slashdot crowd, but most definitely the fox-news crowd among others.
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Kinda funny! But not really.
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(In case you didn’t know: Milk from a healthy normal cow in a species-appropriate environment doesn't have any unhealthy germs. That just happens if you feed them with animal meal, and let them stand in their own shit [which they hate], so that their udders become dirty, and their immune system falls apart. That's also the reason they give them so much antibiotics. It's disgusting. Pure unscrupulousness and greed.)
So you're saying that cows are sterile unless you make them stand in shit?
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Why? Because cows have those germs naturally as part of their GI tract. Germs that in large quantities are harmful to humans. Food poisoning from bad milk has been a problem recorded well back into the middle ages and earlier. It has been seen on many different types of farms not just factory farms and from free range cattle and is well studied and known by science.
Your friend has a milk allergy. It's possible that different forms of milk won't aggrevate it as much, but likewise some people will have a
Re:We all know what happens when stories like this (Score:5, Informative)
If that were true, then scrapie, BSE (mad cow disease), and other transmissible encephalopathies would not exist.
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Unfortunately, the over-use of antibiotics (in animal feed; washing up liquid; hand soap etc) allows pathogens to develop resistance to them which can lead to "superbug" strains.
Re:US cheese (Score:4, Informative)
Organic milk? (Score:2)
You mean the one NOT squeezed out by robot-cows?
I just love how people use that magic-yet-imprecise word for absolutely everything.
Hey, you know why Han Solo's kids are the healthiest in the Galaxy?
Cause they are organaic. [wikia.com]
Re:Organic milk? (Score:5, Interesting)
But why stop there... (Score:2)
When you can have organic water, [treehugger.com] from organic land [highland-spring.com] and organic charcoal air filters [organicairfilter.com] that I suppose will give you organic air.
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No, you can buy unpasteurized cheese in the US.
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Good organic milks are actually pasteurized at a lower temperature, I can not find this taste test in their archive, but it appears the poster has made up his own reasoning. The reason that most organic milks taste different is the cows eat very different diets than their conventional counterparts. In fact with many organic milks the taste varies by season as the grasses/diet changes with the seasons. I would be willing to bet the taste testers didn't like the organic milk because it actually had flavo
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Maybe so, but all the organic milk you can buy around here is ultra-pasteurized (higher temperature). As for me, I buy the organic milk because I can buy it and not have to worry about it going bad before I use it. (Shelf life is typically five or six weeks.)
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Definitely not yoghurt because yoghurt from unpasteurized milk would leave you the whole day sitting on the pot trying to shit your guts out.
In fact, even pasteurized milk is somewhat dangerous as yoghurt base, UHT is safer.
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Because normal pasteurisation doesn't kill all bacteria.
UHT milk works just fine for yoghurt by the way. And at least in Germany it is labeled as H-Milch (H stands for "haltbare" - durable) and is sold unrefrigerated. I haven't done any cheesemaking, though, so I cannot speak about that.
"The superbug isn't a concern... (Score:2)
"... in pasteurized dairy products."
Right. As if the only route by which this organism could get to humans is through dairy products. Scenario: dairy worker, gets scratched and infected with superbug at work, sees doctor for treatment (unsuccessful), enters hospital for treatment, infection spreads, becomes one more nocosomial infection we have to deal with.
Re:"The superbug isn't a concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, fair enough and point taken. I misconstrued the quoted sentence as happytalk intended to minimize the hazards of a new MRSA strain and conflated it with my long-standing concerns with the near-universal use of antibiotics in raising animals in the meat and dairy industries.
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And there it is (Score:5, Interesting)
Not long ago, there was a story about a group suing the FDA to stop antibiotic use on cows. [slashdot.org]
It has been known for a long time that the continuous use of antibiotics lead to the cultivation of "superbugs." And here we have it now.
Will the FDA actually take notice on this issue now? We'll see I guess...
Re:And there it is (Score:5, Interesting)
But think of the profit loss! You think this country was founded on the principles of taking care of future generations?
Gimmie my quick buck and to hell with the future.
Yes I'm being satirical but its pretty much how everything works. From superbugs to climate change to renewable resources to giving away liberties to fight the 'secret new enemy'
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Thats funny, I dont think it was founded on either of those principals. I rather thought "freedom" and "restricted government" were the primary principles.
But no, carry on, lots of regulation is exactly what the founders meant with the 10th amendment.
(NB-- I actually think this might be a good place for regulation-- but to state that thats one of the founding principles is absurd)
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Have you read the biographies* of some of the founders? Many were upper class citizens who were merchant class and were not angry at "freedoms" lost, but rather the profits lost by the taxes imposed by the King. Freedom was a half-truth about not wanting someone else limiting their profits, and sounding good to the masses.
*I have recently had to read/quiz my daughter on biographies she's reading for school. As I read through them, all I could think was - damn, these guy were really modern age Republicans,
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Just because you disagree with their supposed motivations (and I will admit I am not qualified to speak to the founders motivations in detail), doesnt mean that their conclusions (restricted government, representation, checks and balances) were flawed.
I would wonder, if one has so much trouble trusting large corporations with power, why would you want to turn around and grant so much more power to an even larger, more bureaucratic, and more entrenched federal government-- particularly when it has shown such
It's bigger than the FDA (Score:2)
Re:It's bigger than the FDA (Score:4, Insightful)
Hehe... no, you didn't miss anything. What you did do, however, is presume my statements were limited to bovine livestock. And I am speaking of the prophylactic use of antibiotics in the dairy industry, it's true, but I did not specify.
The problem is clear, present, immediate and demonstrable. For the FDA to fail to act now would mean they are ignoring the facts as available to the world public. Even the US government which has long been a denier of climate change has eventually acknowledged it as fact.
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...agribusiness makes over use of antibiotics a primary part of their operation in order to grow bigger fatter animals faster.
In the case of cows in feedlots, they feed'em antibiotics because corn makes cows sick, so they try to keep the cows healthy enough long enough to make feedlots profitable.
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It has been known for a long time that the continuous use of antibiotics lead to the cultivation of "superbugs." And here we have it now.
Well what the hell do you expect? Idiots from marketing, to 'health' to government have spent the last 10 years have been telling people to use shit like *insert antibacterial* crap.
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They're much too busy rubber stamping hair and penis pills and otherwise funneling profits into big tobacco and big pharma to concern themselves with such trivialities as human health.
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Will the FDA actually take notice on this issue now? We'll see I guess...
They HAVE taken notice. Their solution is to ban unpasteurized dairy products, going so far as to raid health food stores and Amish farmers.
antibiotic resistance has already been solved (Score:2, Interesting)
I just posted on reddit under reddit/r/science because I got tired of reading news pieces like this. Antibiotic resistance has been taken care of by the use of bacteriophages. Basically phages are viruses for bacteria and they continually evolve with the ever evolving strains of bacteria. For each type of bacteria and the different strains there is a phage which will kill it.
For more info please read my post: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/hr0gk/hey_redditrscience_just_so_you_all_knowwe_have/
Now i
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Bacteriophages have no ability to infect humans. In fact, they can only infect a specific kind of bacteria; it won't kill other bacteria. Which is really good because if it was so easy for viruses to jump from one species to another, we'd all be dead already. Phage literally means "to eat". Once all the bacteria are dead, their food will be gone and the bacteriophages will die off.
Phages could be very useful as another line of defense against bacteria. I know if I was infected with antibiotic resistant
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More like swallow a slightly toxic fly to poison the spider.
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Obligatory:
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime roll
Evolving (Score:2)
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Re:Evolving (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be good, but what would be the reason for the descent of that colony to stop being immune to the previous drugs?
genetic bitrot
Re:Evolving (Score:5, Informative)
Because the mechanisms that allow a bacteria to survive exposure to a given antibiotic come at a cost. It's not the genes themselves that confer resistance - it's the expression of those genes. And the same process that introduced the resistance-conferring gene works to eliminate it if it's no longer needed.
For example, there is a class of antibiotics that work by dissolving the bacterial cell wall. After repeated exposure germs evolve thicker cell walls, which makes this class of antibiotics less and less effective. But in its absence the thicker-walled bacteria version will be out-competed by its thinner-walled brethren, since thin walls are less resource intensive.
For the most part the antibiotics we use are just synthetic versions of chemicals secreted by various organisms (bacteria and fungi, mostly). If bacteria could pass down cost-free resistance they'd already be immune to anything we could throw at them.
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it's the expression of those genes
Can we finally all agree now that there's a limit to freedom of expression?
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The mutations are generally costly. Antibacterials, for example, target molecules that only bacteria have to have a minimal effect on humans, like how penicillin works on bacterial cell walls. Those molecules are originally there basically because it benefits them in some way. Since taking even a huge cost is better than dying, those that do away with what the antibacterial attacks would live and propagate. Naturally, once you stop using the antibacterial by switching to Z/AA, there's no benefit to living w
Article, for those without access (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/new-superbug-found-in-cows-and-p.html?ref=hp [sciencemag.org]
A novel form of deadly drug-resistant bacteria that hides from a standard test has turned up in Europe. Researchers found the so-called MRSA strain in both dairy cows and humans in the United Kingdom, suggesting that it might be passed from dairies to the general population. But before you toss your milk, don't panic: The superbug isn't a concern in pasteurized dairy products.
MRSA, short for meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a drug-resistant form of the widespread and normally harmless S. aureus bacteria. Many people walk around with MRSA in their noses or on their skin yet don't get sick. But in some hospital patients and people with weakened immune systems, MRSA thrives, and it is blamed for about 19,000 hospital deaths a year in the United States.
Mark Holmes of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and colleagues stumbled upon the new strain while studying mastitis, or infected udders, in U.K. dairy cows. Some milk samples from sick cows contained S. aureus bacteria that grew in the presence of antibiotics, which is one test for MRSAs. Yet the same samples turned up negative for the drug-defying bacterium when the team used PCR, a DNA amplification technique, to detect a gene called mecA, which is found in all MRSA strains.
The PCR test doesn't always pick up variants of the gene it's meant to detect, however. To check this, the researchers sent a cow S. aureus sample to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which sequenced the bacterium's entire genome. "Lo and behold, there was a mecA gene there," one whose sequence overlapped with the better-known mecA by a surprisingly low 60%, Holmes said today in a press conference.
The researchers then looked for this mecA gene in people. They tested 74 samples of S. aureus isolated from people from the United Kingdom and Denmark that were drug resistant in the antibiotic growth test but not in the PCR test—most from carriers but some from patients who were sickened by MRSA. They found the new mecA in about two-thirds of the samples, they report today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. A nearly identical mecA gene has also now been reported in human samples from Germany and Ireland.
The strain is still relatively rare—it probably makes up less than 1% of all detected MRSA cases, the U.K. team says. But its prevalence appears to have risen in the past decade. "More likely it's been around in the environment for a long time, and it's just getting into the human population," says University College Dublin microbiologist David Coleman, whose team reports on the Irish samples today in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
The new superbug probably isn't leading to missed infections, at least in the United Kingdom, because hospitals that suspect a patient is infected with an MRSA nearly always use the antibiotic growth test in addition to PCR, Holmes says. (Patients with a confirmed infection then receive antibiotics that work on MRSAs.) However, many hospitals in continental Europe are moving toward using only PCR tests; this is a warning that those tests need to be modified to test for the new mecA gene, Holmes says.
The study also points to dairy cows as a possible reservoir for the bug, just as pigs seem to pass MRSA to humans in the Netherlands. The bug probably doesn't get to humans through the milk supply, because almost all milk in the United Kingdom and Denmark is pasteurized, a process that kills bacteria. But workers who come into contact with infected dairy cows could be carriers. Holmes's team reports "circumstantial evidence" for this, such as the fact that genetic subtypes of the human and cow samples from the same geographical areas were nearly identical. "The main worry would be that these cows represent a pool of the bacteria" that farm workers spread into the human popula
antibiotic resistance has solved ~80 years ago (Score:2, Interesting)
This is scary (Score:1)
Terrible news. And no pasteurization does not make me feel safer. If the stuff was found in dairy cows it would not be surprising if a similar bacteria was found in cows raised for food. And guess what, most people do not cook beef well done.
Furthermore, if cows become incubators of drug resistant bacteria (which seems to be happening), then it is only a matter of time before some drug resistant bacteria that can be transmitted by air mutates up in a cow's belly and gets transferred to a human handler of th
Zombie Cow Infestation: Day 1 (Score:2)
Pasteurization (Score:3)
Maybe this will put a stop to the raw milk nonsense.
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What rare steak nonsense?
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Since when is cooking a steak well done cooking it "properly"?
I define "properly" as high heat, 3-4 minutes each side, for a sirloin cut.
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Your personal anecdotal experiences don't amount to acceptable countervailing evidence that it is an unhealthy practice.
Here is a link to a recent article on the topic.
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/1/93.full [oxfordjournals.org]
Please note that the increased consumption raw milk post 2005 has led to several disease outbreaks in the US.
Advocacy of the consumption of raw milk is a VERY wrong-headed position.
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Today is the first I've heard of the "raw milk nonsense". I'm frankly amazed this exists at all. In Australia and Canada and probably other countries selling unpasturised milk is illegal.
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I was horrified too. In the past year I have learned that for every real and beneficial advance in public heath or modern medicine there is a fringe group somewhere that thinks that this advance is wrong, detrimental and should be opposed as much as possible.
The internet has given all of these opinions a forum and I am amazed at how many people are such uncritical consumers of and adulterants to these ideas.
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I have done just that. In general the sites that are promoting raw milk are also promoting all sorts of other nonsense as well including homeopathy, high cholesterol diets, and that you shouldn't get your children vaccinated. They are seriously screwed up.
There is a reason that it is generally illegal to sell raw milk products. People get sick and sometimes die from drinking it. It spreads serious diseases including some forms of tuberculosis.
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Re: Let's look at the big picture here. (Score:1)
Right, because antibiotic-resistant superbugs in raw milk obviously killed off most of humanity prior to the discovery of pasteurization....?
So here's the issue: all industry gets scaled up for the sake of profit. works great for manufacturing and mechanized processes, but the process of creating food isn't mechanical. we aren't purely mechanical beings, and we shouldn't be gaining energy from chemical food; this is a fairly clear statement and it's not difficult to see the ramifications of doing so (e.g.
Well, there is a "superbug" out there right now (Score:1)
That's it! (Score:2)
I'm not sharing the bathroom with the cows anymore.
Is it really a super bug.. (Score:2)
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So don't worry about this, worry about EHEC in vegetables instead. Haw-Haw!
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For you, there's a version in Spanish cucumbers.
Re:Scaring you away from healthy foods (Score:4, Informative)
Raw milk is quite dangerous.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/cheesespotlight/cheese_spotlight.htm [cdc.gov]
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Except in your example, and that of the CDC, the cheeses are all soft. Soft cheeses don't develop proper cultures to kill off the bad bacteria cultures that promote proper flavoring, textures and so on. Then again, I drank raw milk for 20 years. My parents, grand parents, and their parents before them drank it for years as well. I suppose there's more of an issue in this day and age of people not following what we'd call on the farm of 'don't wipe your mouth with shit' method of keeping things clean. S
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They do. Much like I replied to the other post, google and other search engines are your friend. Antiseptics kill(not all are equal however). Antibacterials can promote selective resistances, and force bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics.
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Perhaps, although this is a highly controversial area at the moment.
What is clear is that:
1. There is no apparent health benefit from using antibacterial soaps.
2. There are no apparent health consequences from the induced antibiotic resistances found in some in vitro experiments.
All in all the best thing would be to not have these products as there is no benefit from them.
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I guess I'm less concerned if a bacteria evolves resistance to bleach, since bleach is useless as a medicine. If I get infected with a sodium hypochlorite resistant bug, then I doubt the doctor was going to prescribe me a tablespoonful of Chlorox for it anyway.
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Triclosan use doesn't promote bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
Re:Scaring you away from healthy foods (Score:5, Informative)
Really now? You could just use google and have saved me the 10 seconds to point out what I already knew what right. It does indeed promote bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/3/621.short [oxfordjournals.org]
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Then again, I drank raw milk for 20 years. My parents, grand parents, and their parents before them drank it for years as well. I suppose there's more of an issue in this day and age of people not following what we'd call on the farm of 'don't wipe your mouth with shit' method of keeping things clean.
I congratulate you and your family for not getting sick from raw milk.
But what works on the farm rarely works when scaled up to industrial quantities.
Further, your anecdotal evidence is overruled by the mountains of historically reported illnesses and deaths from raw milk contamination of:
e-coli, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter and brucella
Pasteurization is not some conspiracy to pollute your precious bodily fluids or restrict your god given rights.
It saves lives
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I agree and that was my point. AKA the 'don't wipe your mouth with shit' because when you're doing things on your own farm, you're more careful about how you're cleaning a teat. The same reason why when you're slaughtering, you're careful not to puncture the intestines, kidney's, bladder too. But on an industrial process? Pft.
Pasteurization is fine and all that, but don't dictate to me that it's illegal if I own cows and want to get milk unpasteurized, and drink it myself, for my own use.
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Re:Scaring you away from healthy foods (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, many diseases were transmitted via unpasteurized milk, particularly tuberculosis.
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Funny, I grew up on raw milk. Then again, it was from my own farm. I don't drink raw now, but only because of convenience and cost.