Daylight Savings Time - a good thing?

[SloopJonB]

The cream on top means it's unhomogenized.

Real raw milk is coming back. The cream is the best part, and good for you if the cows are healthy.

The highlight is the important bit.

The people pushing for unpasteurized milk are right up there with the anti-vax crowd IMO - just plain stupid Darwinism. What will it take to wake them up? A big outbreak of TB? If you have a pet cow and want to drink it straight from the teat, fine but that's where it must end.

[Olaf Hart]

Milk crates?

My whole family, including my ten brothers and sisters, lived in a milk crate....

Actually, my father was a milkman and I was out there from the age of nine at 3am delivering milk before I went to school.

My grandfather was also a dairyman and a milkman, when horses pulled sulkys and the milk was in metal churns.

To prove the milk was fresh they used to dip the horses tail in the milk so the housewives would see some hair and think it had come straight from the cow.

image.jpeg

Interesting architecture for the house on the left. What year was the photo taken?

It would be nearly 100 years old.
That style was common, but usually in attached row houses, not sure why it is stand alone.

[Olaf Hart]

The cream on top means it's unhomogenized.

Real raw milk is coming back. The cream is the best part, and good for you if the cows are healthy.

The highlight is the important bit.

The people pushing for unpasteurized milk are right up there with the anti-vax crowd IMO - just plain stupid Darwinism. What will it take to wake them up? A big outbreak of TB? If you have a pet cow and want to drink it straight from the teat, fine but that's where it must end.

It's mainly an issue here for the artisan cheese makers, there is a herd on Bruny island that is certified safe for cheese.

Their cheese is amazing, I have to admit.

[kdh]

The cream on top means it's unhomogenized.

Real raw milk is coming back. The cream is the best part, and good for you if the cows are healthy.

The highlight is the important bit.

The people pushing for unpasteurized milk are right up there with the anti-vax crowd IMO - just plain stupid Darwinism. What will it take to wake them up? A big outbreak of TB? If you have a pet cow and want to drink it straight from the teat, fine but that's where it must end.

We keep chickens here and we make a lot of ice cream with two of their raw egg yolks in the recipe. We're making some as I write. Mint chip. I have to remember to put the chocolate in, which is just a chopped up dark chocolate bar.

Ours have great lives compared to most chickens. They're great girls, part of the family. They peck for worms and bugs when we let them out of their run if we're out and about, and eat a lot of kitchen scraps that we'd otherwise have to compost. I've seen one eat a small toad.

I wonder what they'll think of the Ferrari. They'll certainly hear it.

[kdh]

The cream on top means it's unhomogenized.

Real raw milk is coming back. The cream is the best part, and good for you if the cows are healthy.

The highlight is the important bit.

The people pushing for unpasteurized milk are right up there with the anti-vax crowd IMO - just plain stupid Darwinism. What will it take to wake them up? A big outbreak of TB? If you have a pet cow and want to drink it straight from the teat, fine but that's where it must end.

It's mainly an issue here for the artisan cheese makers, there is a herd on Bruny island that is certified safe for cheese.

Their cheese is amazing, I have to admit.

Cheese depends on a bacteria culture, so to start by killing all bacteria in the milk is ridiculous. The art of cheese making is managing the bacteria colony through what the cows eat to how healthy their guts are, to maybe even how well loved they are.

No mammal can survive without bacteria. We should know and appreciate this.

[SloopJonB]

My father was a bacteriologist who earned his PhD by cataloguing bacteria. That was in the early 60's and I remember being surprised that was a suitable or rather an available topic - I figured that was such basic science that it would have been done a hundred years or more earlier.

You should have heard what he had to say about the fans of unpasteurized milk, not to mention the anti-vax stupids.

[Orestes Munn]

My father was a microbiologist, too. Raw milk, especially in great cheese, didn't bother him if it came from clean, healthy, carefully inspected, animals in a boutique operation. I'm down with that. TB is the classic risk, but listeria, staph, and brucella are biggies today.

[Olaf Hart]

I suspect that, apart from the soft cheeses like Camembert, the key is using fresh milk, not whether it is pasteurised or not.

Most of the great hard cheeses around here are pasteurised, but made on the farm so the milk is less than a day old.

We have had a few listeria scares with unpasteurised cheese as well.

I am kind of confused about this stuff about good bacteria in the milk, the only bugs getting into milk would be blood borne, and potentially pathogenic.

You wouldn't expect to have gut organisms in milk if it is a hygienic operation.

Are farmers dipping the cows tail in the milk like my grandfather did?

[Ish]

Hopefully they aren't milking the bulls into the same can.

[Orestes Munn]

I suspect that, apart from the soft cheeses like Camembert, the key is using fresh milk, not whether it is pasteurised or not.

Most of the great hard cheeses around here are pasteurised, but made on the farm so the milk is less than a day old.

We have had a few listeria scares with unpasteurised cheese as well.

I am kind of confused about this stuff about good bacteria in the milk, the only bugs getting into milk would be blood borne, and potentially pathogenic.

You wouldn't expect to have gut organisms in milk if it is a hygienic operation.

Are farmers dipping the cows tail in the milk like my grandfather did?

Soft cheeses are the ones. Yum. Yeah, milk should be sterile when it comes out of a healthy cow, but who knows what it picks up in the barn or what makes stinky cheese tastes good. I thought the issue was the heat changing the mollycules. Cooking milk definitely changes the taste.

[kdh]

Just did some reading, and as OM writes milk from a healthy cow is theoretically sterile, which is news to me.

[Orestes Munn]

Just did some reading, and as OM writes milk from a healthy cow is theoretically sterile, which is news to me.

The entire inside of a healthy animal is sterile. Animals develop as tubes around the gut, which is outside and is sealed off from the inside from the very beginning. The respiratory tract is an outpouching of the gut.

Of course it gets much more complicated if you want to discuss viruses, which hide inside cells and can end up in milk, blood, etc., and many of which have inserted themselves into our genetic material and get passed on from generation to generation.

[Rob McAlpine]

It's tidbits like this which make you so fun to have aboard.

[Tim Ford]

Back when I was a kid, we didn't have DST. We only had: Time. And even that was uncertain, as so many things were, back then.

Sigh....I miss those days.

I don't miss scraping the cream off the chickens though, tell you one thing.

[BeauV]

It's tidbits like this which make you so fun to have aboard.

I agree! I'm now sitting here looking at my sour cream thinking: "I'm a tube, and I wonder if the bugs that live on the inside of my tube will like this?" Of course, the answer is hell yes.

Nice way to think about our bodies!

[Orestes Munn]

It's tidbits like this which make you so fun to have aboard.

I agree! I'm now sitting here looking at my sour cream thinking: "I'm a tube, and I wonder if the bugs that live on the inside of my tube will like this?" Of course, the answer is hell yes.

Nice way to think about our bodies!

Wondering tubes is what we are.

[JoeP]

Tubular dude!

[LarryHoward]

Totally Tubular.

[Tim Ford]

"Wondering?" or wandering?

I guess it depends.

My wife still refuses to believe pee is sterile (most of the time-- at least, if you're doing it right)

BTW, (one of) our journal club is examining the effect of microbiota (gut flora) on behavior, for example anxiety and depression. Studies look pretty convincing. Not only are we what we eat, but it's how the critters inside us (who grossly out-number our human cells) feel about what we eat.

Throwing off one of our resident populations can ruin our whole day...or decade.

[Orestes Munn]

"Wondering?" or wandering?

I guess it depends.

My wife still refuses to believe pee is sterile (most of the time-- at least, if you're doing it right)

Both, but Beau was wondering.

[Tim Ford]

Not only are we what we eat, but it's how the critters inside us (who grossly out-number our human cells) feel about what we eat.

^ my bad, the critters topologically OUTSIDE of us.

Man, talk about thread drift....

[Anomaly]

You can lead a horse to water..... or in this case raw milk cheese...

To those of you sounding alarm bells, I suggest a trip to the next "Cheese"-- held every two years in Bra, Italy (home of Slow Food International). I think most of us (myself included) have no idea how really good natural cheeses are made. These photos are from this past September's event (250,000 people come to a town of 30,000 over a four-day period to sample/buy cheeses from around the world, most made from raw milk). The Epoisses pictured below isn't as good as sex, but it sure beats a pair of Dubarrys (trying to tie some threads together here). And on the trade policy/globalization front (see? another thread...), the EU is trying to force Italy to allow "cheese" made from powdered milk to be sold in Italy as cheese. 'The Italian position is that such a thing is not "cheese"" but under EU trade rules the Italian government may be forced to concede. Ordinary citizens, at least the ones I know, feel disenfranchised by this sort of result.

SignForCheese.jpg

Epoisses.jpg

Cheese2015.jpg

[Orestes Munn]

Oh, that last picture. Drool.

[kdh]

I see what you did there, Seth. Good work.

[SloopJonB]

I wish my dad was still around to ask about cheese made from unpasteurized milk. His first job was making cheese at the feet of an old time cheese maker in Sardis - I don't know if the process reduces or eliminates the harmful bacterial content of raw milk. I've never heard of anyone getting TB or the other horrors from cheese.

[Olaf Hart]

http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/fact ... mbovis.pdf

Most of the disease scares around here have been Listeriosis.

http://www.cdc.gov/listeria/sources.html

[Orestes Munn]

I wish my dad was still around to ask about cheese made from unpasteurized milk. His first job was making cheese at the feet of an old time cheese maker in Sardis - I don't know if the process reduces or eliminates the harmful bacterial content of raw milk. I've never heard of anyone getting TB or the other horrors from cheese.

I'm certainly no expert on any of this, but I think the acid in cheese eventually kills the dangerous bacteria. I looked into this briefly last night and I think the FDA will allow import of raw milk cheese aged > 60 days, which they think is long enough.

I also think you're right that pasteurization reduces, but does not eliminate bacteria. I think most of the pathogens in question are pretty heat sensitive.

[Olaf Hart]

Not on topic, but didn't want to start a new thread.

This looks like a big deal ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-05/s ... ue/7299116

[Orestes Munn]

Not on topic, but didn't want to start a new thread.

This looks like a big deal ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-05/s ... ue/7299116

Good a place as any.

Very exciting. So, what's the difference between these "IMSCs" and the IPSCs that everyone is playing with?

In other regenerative medicine news, you can now 3-D print tissues, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/science/its-possible-to-grow-a-3-d-printed-ear-on-a-mouses-back.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

We just recruited a young MD PhD from that lab as a clinical fellow, who will be using the technique here to create disease models and test interventions.

[kdh]

I wish my dad was still around to ask about cheese made from unpasteurized milk. His first job was making cheese at the feet of an old time cheese maker in Sardis - I don't know if the process reduces or eliminates the harmful bacterial content of raw milk. I've never heard of anyone getting TB or the other horrors from cheese.

I'm certainly no expert on any of this, but I think the acid in cheese eventually kills the dangerous bacteria. I looked into this briefly last night and I think the FDA will allow import of raw milk cheese aged > 60 days, which they think is long enough.

I also think you're right that pasteurization reduces, but does not eliminate bacteria. I think most of the pathogens in question are pretty heat sensitive.

Isn't cheese started with a "good bacteria" culture? Do the good bacteria compete with any bad bacteria present in the milk? If the acid kills the bad bacteria does it also kill the good?