Raw milk in “The New Yorker”

From Dana Goodyear, at the Culture Desk at The New Yorker:

“…In Barber’s experience, though, whether or not milk is pasteurized is secondary to what the cow—in his view, a “vector for the grass”—eats: not only are pasture-fed ruminants eating food they evolved to digest, but also their milk reflects the subtle, seasonal changes in the field.

“Grain-feeding is a little like pasteurization,” he said. “It’s a dumbing down, an evening out of the flavors.” In the battle over raw milk, which I write about in the magazine this week, Barber sees a more important point being lost. “The picture is not just about pasteurization,” he said. “It’s part of a much larger question about how you’re raising the cattle and what quality of milk you’re trying to produce.

Raw milk thoughts on Kat’s Food Blog

As far as I know, Kat is just another blogger sharing her perspectives on food and the culture that surrounds it. Here’s a bit of what she says about raw milk in a recent post:

Media mashup of pictures and titles from Kat's blog. And yes, that's Kat on the left.

“I don’t drink raw milk. I used to think all those raw milk people were crazy. This past spring I started getting raw milk locally, just to try it out. Now I use raw milk for making my yogurt and I can’t go back! If someone took away my raw milk, I would be the one going crazy!

Author G. K. Chesterton, on “Cheeses”

G. K. Chesterton on “Cheeses”, from G. K. Chesterton’s works on the web, specifically from “Alarms and Discursions”, 1910:

“My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,’ is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: `If all the trees were bread and cheese’ – which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony.

“Waiter, there’s soup in my bugs”

Jeff Gordinier writes, in the NY Times, about dining on insects: (after all, one can’t be banging on about raw milk ALL the time)

Illustration from the New York Times story

“SOMETHING happened when Kisha Moorehead looked into the bowl of live worms.

So what else are we not allowed to eat?

Excerpted from a story on updatednews.ca:

“Just because it’s edible doesn’t mean it’s legal. There are some foods that federal and state governments ban or severely restrict because of health concerns, to preserve a species, or even in response to inhumane preparation methods. Check out some dishes and ingredients currently banned in the U.S., plus some recently made legal.

Unpasteurized Milk

Banned: Twenty-one states ban the sale of raw milk. Some states permit sale in stores, while others only allow sale direct from farms in small quantities.

Reason: Unpasteurized, or “raw,” milk was a household staple in U.S. homes before late-19th-century implementation of pasteurization techniques intended to make milk safer. Laws banning raw milk are meant to protect consumers from harmful bacteria, but proponents of raw milk argue that current standards in farm sanitation make the unpasteurized liquid safe to drink.

Ackee

Banned: Importation of the raw fruit is banned in the U.S.

Reason: This pear-shaped fruit — the national fruit of Jamaica — contains edible flesh, but inedible black seeds. Those seeds contain toxins that can suppress the body’s ability to release an extra supply of glucose, plunging one’s blood sugar level and potentially leading to death.

Mangosteen

“Legalize raw milk” says celebrity chef Jamie Kennedy, of “Knives and Forks”

From a recent post on The Mark:

Photo by Desiree N. Williams available under a Creative Commons Licence... via "The Mark" website

“Canadian laws on the safe handling of milk through the heat treatment process known as pasteurization came into effect during the 1930s. In 1938, it became illegal to sell raw (unpasteurized) milk in Canada.

There was a good reason for this: pasteurizing effectively kills pathogens in milk that cause tuberculosis. Refrigeration wasn’t as technologically evolved at that time, so there were serious problems with handling milk safely. Heat treatment was a catch-all solution.

Groundhog Day Ground Hog cooking contest with farmer Michael Schmidt

This groundhog-day event at Cava restaurant in Toronto was held last Tuesday, February 2, 2010, and featured raw dairy AND PIG farmer Michael Schmidt among the panel of four judges. Here’s a report on the proceedings from Malcolm Jolley, of the “Good Food Revolution” blog. Malcolm was also a judge at the event:

PUT PORK ON YOUR FORK 4 groundhog day -- left to right: Judge Michael Schmidt from Glencolton Farms, Chef Chris McDonald of CAVA, Daniel Speck, Sasha Chapman and post author Malcolm Jolley

“On February 2nd North Americans from Pennsylvania to the Bruce Peninsula and beyond learned they could looked forward to six more weeks of winter. Chef Chris MacDonald also remarked, tongue-in-cheek, that evening that his brothers (and sisters) in toques could look forward to 10 more days of Winterlicious.