Discussion
Where does all the milk go?
PretzelPirate: This should have included the insemination and slaughter as well. That cow didn't come from nowhere.
kenty: Thank you. I was a little bit disappointed that these more sinister parts were occluded but I guess that is to be expected after all, the dairy industry spends insane amounts of money to keep us gaslighted. Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant...Let's also not forget that the article basically skips what rennet actually is just naming it an enzyme.
teddyh: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”— Carl Sagan
josefritzishere: I appreciate the raw milk warning in there. Raw milk kills people ever year. It gets lost in the flood of dairy marketing.
manofmanysmiles: I'm pretty sure people who drink raw milk are aware of the risks.
fwip: [delayed]
Animats: There's a raw milk lobby. [1][2]But behind the regulations, at the barns and on the front porches where warm, frothy milk is exchanged for crumpled paper bills, something is happening that even the keenest regulator cannot get his hands on: the source of the ebb and flow. It is not churned in government office buildings or at federally regulated packaging stations, but by people coming together in pursuit of a shared vision of the good life, whether that’s raw milk, an unsprayed chicken carcass, or a homeopathic remedy that is not FDA approved. Maybe you can’t farm, but you can support someone who can.Alta-Dena Dairy in Southern California used to be the nation's largest producer of raw milk, but too many people died.[3][1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/10/the-alt-ri...[2] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-power-of-knowing...[3] https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/...
guyzero: They very much are not.https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1iydxaa/raw_milk_nearl...
hombre_fatal: I'm not sure. Judging by my own family, I think a lot of them have been info-silo'ed to think pasteurization is harmful and that "They" want to keep raw milk from you.I'd liken it to claiming an anti-measles-vax person is aware of the risks of measles. They might not believe in the risk at all.
9rx: > Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnantIs that... controversial? Obviously a cow normally gives milk without being pregnant. It wouldn't be able to feed its calf otherwise.
efskap: They didn't say during pregnancy. Cows only produce milk after giving birth to a calf, so they're regularly inseminated.I think a lot of people don't realize we're hijacking their reproductive systems, instead assuming cows constantly produce milk.
magicbuzz: If you were breast-fed, you drank raw milk as a child. And pasteurization removes/diminishes nutrients in milk. It’s much more nuanced than ‘raw milk is bad’.
CrzyLngPwd: We buy 1L bottles of fresh whole milk from the local dairy, and there is always a thick layer of cream on the top, unlike store-bought whole milk that seems to be missing the cream.
comrade1234: You can do some of this at home too. I buy raw milk (it's common here in Switzerland) and make paneer or ricotta. Then I boil down the whey and make a fudge-like Norwegian cheese.Another pathway is to start with 35% fat cream or crème fraiche and make butter. Then you use the buttermilk to make cheese. Then you use the whey to make Norwegian cheese OR if you started with crème fraiche you take the sour whey and make sorbet by mixing it with some fruit juice and shaking the container every hour or so as it freezes in the freezer.It's not nearly as time-consuming as it sounds and the rewards are better than anything you'd buy. The butter is better (less water within), the paneer and ricotta are so much better than factory-made, and the sorbet is... well probably about equal to sour cream sorbet you'd buy (assuming you buy movenpick :).
kenty: where do you get the bacteria/ yeast from?
cogman10: Easiest place to get it is from the product you want to produce.For example, if you want to make yogurt then grab a little bit of the leftover yogurt in your fridge, drop a dollop of it in, and viola, it'll start the yogurtification process.You can also rely on the open-air bacteria for some culturing, but the results can be all over the place. This is how a lot of sites suggest starting sour dough.
Sharlin: A cow must have been pregnant to produce milk. So it's artificially inseminated and the calf separated (so as not to steal valuable milk) which is arguably traumatic to both the mother and the calf. Most modern people, if they've ever even thought about it at all, likely think that cows are bred to (or naturally do) produce milk without pregnancy being involved, like sheeps are bred to grow wool around the year.
tristor: You don't actually need raw milk to make yogurt. I use Fairlife brand which is ultra-filtered milk, and combine it with a container of plain Fage (active culture Greek yogurt) in a pressure cooker. This is a very common way to make yogurt at home here in the US.I also grew up on a cattle farm and have made many other products when I was younger from raw milk. There are /some/ things that require raw milk because they are wild cultured, but most food products are not wild cultured when made at home so you can pitch the correct yeast or bacteria with pasteurized milk just fine. One thing that is hard to find in the US and impossible to make without raw milk is Serbian/Turkish kajmak/kaymak.I even make my own butter at home using ultra processed heavy whipping cream. Raw milk is a great thing in some ways, but it is not in others and in any case not really a requirement to make milk products at home.
9rx: > Most people think that cows are simply bred to produce milk without pregnancyAm I misinterpreting you here? You're saying most people think cows are bred (you know, what causes pregnancy), and presumably think that that calves are born — I've never met anyone who didn't know what a calf is, but somehow don't realize that pregnancy happens inbetween?
Sharlin: Yes, you're misinterpreting me. Breeding involves making calves, obviously. But once you get the hypothetical continuously-milk-producing cows, they don't have to make calves. Making more cows can be delegated to cows specialized to making more cows, so cows producing milk for humans can do that without inconvenient pregnancies.But that's not how it works. Every single milk-producing cow must have been pregnant at least once, and typically several times in its life to keep producing desired amounts of milk. And the calves are an unwanted byproduct that must be taken away.
Kerrick: I think there's a linguistically-driven temporal misunderstanding happening here. A cow couldn't have a calf if it hadn't become pregnant.But there's so much to the linguistics of animal husbandry and dairy that many folks don't know. It goes way deeper than just the milk-oriented terms in the article: Heifer versus cow, freshening and calving, steer versus ox versus bull, AI (not the LLM kind) versus natural service, the barn, parlor, and pasture, and more. Plus plenty of technical knowledge. If you're not hand milking, how many mmHg of negative pressure should you use? Do you use a surcingle, or a claw, or a robot?Even in the milk-oriented terms, there are others not covered by the article. HTST and UHT aren't the only options, there's also LTLT. Pasteurization can be done in a pipeline, or in a vat. Smaller vats for home and small farm usage can be multi-purpose: I pasteurized milk and cultured yogurt in mine. Some folks even care about the specific proteins (A1 beta-casein versus A2), which is genetically determined by the cow (and can be bred for).I got a cow in 2020 and there was a lot to learn.
9rx: > A cow couldn't have a calf if it hadn't become pregnant.Not just that. A cow couldn't be a cow if she hadn't become pregnant.
nutjob2: At that age you've mostly got your mother's immune system, so it's a little different.
guyzero: I expect the average human mother maintains a higher level of sanitation than the average cow.
aziaziazi: I’m curious curious, what’s the English term for a female calf that lived more that two years and didn’t experience pregnancy? Never heard such a term in any language.
