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Raw-milk fans to have a cow on the Common Monday morning
By adamg on Fri, 05/07/2010 - 2:06pm
UPDATE: Had to change the original headline - There'll be plenty of spilled milk to cry over on the Common Monday morning - because protesters decided not to dump milk after meta-protests about how wasteful that would be.
The Common will revert to its original purpose as a place to graze cows as people who drink raw milk protest state plans to make it tougher for them to get their un-pasteurized beverage.
The Organic Consumers Association and the Massachusetts chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association say they were mooved to action - and to defy state officials by downing raw milk - by a proposal by the state Department of Food and Agriculture to prohibit the sale of raw milk anywhere outside the farms that produce them. This would effectively ban the raw-milk "clubs" that have sprung up in recent years to get milk from farms to people who don't want their milk heated up.
The protest begins at 8 a.m. on the Park Street side of the Common. Please note: "2 pm Cow leaves Boston Common."
The department has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. on Monday on the proposed regulation, which also specifies how raw milk should be treated to minimize the risks of bacterial infection.
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Comments
yuck.
well thankfully it is supposed to be only 61 on monday - if it were going to be 90 and sunny, I think that being anywhere near there would be out for me. the smell of sour milk can induce instant vomiting.
perhaps this will, er, have positive impact on the squirrel and pigeon population down there.
After several people said
After several people said they thought dumping milk was disrespectful, the organizers have removed the milk dumping from the plan.
No Location Sense
Wouldn't it be better to have the protest on Louis Pasteur Ave?
Oh well. When they all get Salmonella I will laugh at them.
Shame is that these are the same sort of woo woos who won't vaccinate their kids.
I would find it ironic if all
I would find it ironic if all these protesters were questioned and admitted to boiling their water during the MWRA emergency for that reason alone.
Why?
One of the advantages for humans who took up dairying was that cows can drink water and eat food that is not fit for humans and turn it into milk that is fit for humans to drink.
I'd still rather sanitize my water by making it into beer, though.
Not entirely true
If you are certain of the source (healthy cow) and date/time that the milk was collected, it's a clean drink.
Pasteurization became necessary when people moved away from farms and into denser urban areas where they couldn't just get the milk straight from the source. In order to trust the source and see that it could be stored longer and travel further without concern, it had to be pasteurized. As farming became an industry, more farmers were keeping sick cows in their herds to keep production up and that led to the higher possibility of tainted milk from the source. Today's raw milk buyers don't have that problem because they often go straight to the source again (like was done before)...or have a farmshare-style arrangement where the milk is brought to a central locale to be picked up by everyone around. Unfortunately, that's the arrangement this specifically nullifies again.
We still hold true to pasteurization being necessary...just to be safe. There's nothing inherently "dirty" about milk that comes out of a healthy cow. It's not the same as the anti-vax nutters.
Just FYI, I'm not a raw milk drinker.
Flashback to grade school field trip.
This sends me back to about 45 years ago when on an elementary school to the Common we learned to hand milk cows. I have not used the skill since but still recall how to do it.
A bit later in life, my Ex used to like to get raw milk on Cowhampshire trips but I thought it “tasted like cow”.
Disgusting. Ironic that the
Disgusting. Ironic that the raw milk these people consider themselves entitled to really belongs to the cow's baby. Eating the breast milk of another species is a foul practice--whether the pus and mucus have been boiled out of said milk or not.
PETA much?
Do you kill puppies with the same hands you used to type that nonsense?
Propaganda spreads ignorance
That "pus and mucus" you refer to are the result of factory farming. Pulling teats with your hands is not factory farming. Then again, I doubt that you have ever been close enough to a real cow to have the slightest clue how drastically the dairying practices differ, either.
Furthermore, the modern dairy cow produces far more than what her calf can eat - or even twin calves, or that bummer calf that needs a mom and got one. Humans have changed that equation by providing extra food for cows during their lactation cycle and selecting for higher production - long before anybody knew what a punnett square or pasteurization was, mind you!