Raw milk may be more natural, but without the intervention of man it is much more of a health risk. On its website, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland states:“Drinking unpasteurised (raw) milk potentially exposes people to E. coli O157 and the risk of serious illness. The sale of unpasteurised cows’ milk has been illegal in Ireland since 1997. However, many dairy farm families still drink raw milk. Farmers should not give visitors unpasteurised milk.”

Breeding “Natural” Cattle
The vast majority of milk consumed in Ireland comes from cows. No big surprise there. But where do modern dairy cattle themselves come from? Cattle have been domesticated for tens of thousands of years and throughout that time, Irish farmers have selected the best heifers and bulls, breeding them to maximise milk yields and choosing those animals best suited to the Irish environment.

Housing and Feeding
Many Irish farmers house their animals in winter in large sheds. They provide silage and supplement the diet of cattle with various trace elements. If man left “nature” to itself, this feed would not be available and our milk would have different properties that those selected by man. Without human intervention, the cattle death rate would increase whilst milk yield and quality would decline.

Disease and Antibiotics.
This excerpt from the farming section of a recent Irish Independent newspaper shows just a tiny proportion of the effort that the modern farmer must put in to produce “natural” milk that is safe for human consumption. “At the farm, I did the usual tests on pulsation, vacuum reserve, vacuum level, and regulator leakage and neutral/earth voltage. All values were within normal limits. Next, I inspected the cell count data and about 10pc of cows were millionaires plus. Observation of milking was next on the agenda. Cow behaviour was good, but with 30 units and two operators in the 750mm angled parlour there was not much time for pre-milking preparation. ” Read the rest of this entry »