Got Milk?

I learned a bunch of things about milk this week. Most of it somewhat terrifying.

First on deck; in my new home state, North Carolina there an underground community, covert black markets, dark of night back alley dealings in contraband...

Am I talking about something cool like medical marijuana?

Nope. Milk. OK, not just any old milk - raw milk. Unpasteurized, inhomogeneous milk.

Apparently it's illegal to sell raw milk in North Carolina for human consumption. There's a "pet" loophole though. You can buy raw milk to feed your "cat". And there are quite a few folks doing just that.

I've listened to both sides of the argument, and will sum them up:

Pro raw milk:
Real, living milk full of enzymes and helpful bacteria that tastes incredible and can cure everything from asthma to allergies. Pasteurization was introduced in a time when food purity was a joke in this country, and was intended to be a stopgap measure until dairies could be cleaned up, but there were big profits to be had for large dairies and grocery stores because the product now lasted longer and could travel great distances.

Anti raw milk:
There no inspection, regulation, and you'll get listeria, campylobacter or e.coli 0157:H7 and die.

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it yet, but I can tell you this much - now I'm 100% determined to get my hands on some. For my pet.

Quite frankly, I see more than a few parallels between pasteurization and irradiation.

Next - Monsanto has decided to sell off it's synthetic hormone rBGH (Posilac) to Eli Lilly for 300 million. I guess they finally got tired of trying to sue everyone who wanted to let consumers know that some milk wasn't produced using artificial hormones.

And Monsanto is trying very hard to be the most evil company in the world.