Organic Crime: The Raw Milk Underground

Hey you, yeah you. Pssst. Over here. We've got some milk. Yeah, the good stuff. Unpasteurized. Shhh. Keep it down, the FDA is listening.

The Brooklyn Paper is reporting (sort of) on their aborted attempt to infiltrate Brooklyn's raw milk underground. Why underground? Because it's illegal to transport raw milk across state lines with intent to sell it for human consumption. Why? According to an FDA report on raw milk, over the last 5 years there have been 18 "outbreaks" of bacterial related illness involving raw milk or raw milk cheeses. That is in 15 states. 451 people were sickened, some having to be hospitalized. They list some types of bacteria that might be found in raw milk, including campylobacter, escherichia, listeria, salmonella, yersina and brucella. They also go on to list diseases that raw milk products can cause, such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, polio, strep throat, scarlet fever and typhoid fever. As the article points out, the pasteurization process kills a bunch of these bad things, but unfortunately kills alot of th healthy stuff too. The sad thing here is that store bought milk has been known to cause a ton of health problems. That is probably why alot of people are willing to drink the raw stuff. At any rate, the FDA needs to stop their continued biased practices across the board, and they need to not tell people what they can and can't drink.