Edit: The title and link of this HN article have changed. The link changed from a BoingBoing article to the original German article, and the headline used to be a question ("Who is the NSA spying on..." or similar) that gave the GP comment more context.
It's a conservative meme that raw milk producers are being unfairly persecuted, in those circles it's supposed to be a paradigm case of the overly intrusive nanny state.
In reality, there is hard epidemiological data showing that selling raw milk (edit: e.g. through the normal store channels) can lead to serious harm including deaths. So FDA bans it for interstate sales, but it's up to the state to decide how to regulate in-state sales. Just like any other food safety issue.
NSA is extremely unlikely to be involved in enforcing regulations against raw milk in reality, but in the mind of the conservative conspiracy theorist it's all of one totalitarian piece.
> selling raw milk ... can lead to serious harm including deaths.
Please STOP spreading misinformation. The only two deaths from raw milk in the last 20 years were traced back to bad queso fresco. In fact, over the same time period, there were more deaths attributed to pasteurized liquid milk than to raw liquid milk[1].
It's pretty obvious it can cause deaths, since raw milk is causes listeriosis disproportionately and risks from that (including death) are very well known.
Even your quoted web page lists 2 deaths from raw milk products and 3 deaths from pasteurized milk products. Considering the relative rarity of raw milk product consumption, that's a pretty obvious sign.
Arguing that the contamination isn't significant since it's specific to one milk product doesn't pass muster. With such a small sample you can't deduce anything about how the risk is distributed accross types of milk products.
> specific to one milk product doesn't pass muster
No it's not obvious. That's the point. The CDC has admitted those deaths were caused by a product (queso fresco) that is commonly contaminated after production. There are ZERO deaths attributed to consuming raw liquid milk.
> such a small sample you can't deduce anything
Apparently all data from 1998-2011 on all reported illness and deaths from raw milk products is too small for Chicken Little.
And if this data set is too "small" why are the conclusions drawn by the CDC ("raw milk is deadly!") valid? Shouldn't the paucity of data preclude judgement one way or the other?
> Shouldn't the paucity of data preclude judgement one way or the other?
There is no paucity of data. There are very small numbers of people who drink raw milk. And thus there are small numbers of people harmed by raw milk. But it's pretty clear that raw milk is considerably riskier than pasteurised milk.
Whether adults should be allowed to make stupid choices is another topic. I'd suggest that adults should not be allowed to inflict those stupid choices onto children - who are going to be at even greater risk from harm.
You keep talking about death. Having to have kidneys transplanted because e coli has destroyed them is not death, but I hope you agree it's a severe consequence from eating food.
> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that of 239 hospitalizations caused by tainted dairy products from 1993 through 2006, 202 involved raw milk or raw-milk cheese. Nearly two-thirds of the patients were younger than 20. "Parents go to raw milk because they hear it's good for kids' allergies," says Michele Jay-Russell, a veterinarian and food safety specialist at the University of California-Davis who has studied the outbreaks. But children's developing immune systems are more vulnerable than those of adults. "They end up sickening their kids," Jay-Russell adds.
"Harmful" is a meaningless term and contributes nothing to the discussion. Cars are harmful. Alcohol is harmful. Freedom is harmful. So what's your fucking point?
I bring up death because that's the canard trotted out by raw milk haters. And it doesn't happen with any appreciable frequency despite the large numbers of people consuming raw milk.
I'm not disagreeing that both raw and pasteurized milk can potentially cause serious illness, however I do not believe the numbers are large enough to be cause for concern or excessive regulation by control freaks who need to dictate what people put in their bodies. Perhaps you disagree and that's fine.
My fucking point is a very simple point about risk. There are no rewards to drinking raw milk, but there is high risk of significant harm.
The ratio of people drinking raw milk to suffering severe harm from it is much worse than for cars, alcohol, or freedom.
> control freaks who need to dictate what people put in their bodies.
Do you agree that parents should not feed their children a dangerous product that has no benefit? Or is that a bit of control freakery that you don't care about because bias?
You are being a troll. You don't know you're talking about [1]. You can do the math to figure out that you're wrong. I already have. If you can contribute anything remotely productive I will respond otherwise have fun building regulation castles in the sky.
It's probably misplaced to focus only on NSA in this respect, but if we talk about government electronic surveillance capabilities generally, they've been expanding through many agencies and parts of government. ACLU's recent focus on local police use of IMSI catchers is just one example; they started out as super-secret high-tech spy stuff and now local cops think they're super-awesome and are afraid they may to have to give them up if word gets out and the courts or legislators start taking a closer look.
Electronic surveillance used to be more stigmatized in some ways, but it's becoming more culturally normalized as a basic government tool (at least in the culture of government agencies -- I hope not as much elsewhere). So you see it used in more and more contexts.
I'm totally unfamiliar with the raw milk regulations, but I think that people who are concerned about them could reasonably worry that electronic communications surveillance will be used to enforce them in the future. Likely not by NSA itself, but perhaps through something that's in part technological trickle-down from NSA development or procurement.
> In reality, there is hard epidemiological data showing that selling raw milk (edit: e.g. through the normal store channels) can lead to serious harm including deaths.
I'd love to see the evidence, and see it compared to other food sources.
I grew up in India. There all we got was raw milk from the cowherd; in fact, even today, my parents send the helper to get milk in a pail from the cowherd. It's always been raw milk, warm and fresh from the udder. And the first thing they do is to boil it.
If I were to conjecture, it's that the "no raw milk" diktat forces farmers to go to big distribution companies with the requisite facilities for pasteurization.
> It's always been raw milk, warm and fresh from the udder. And the first thing they do is to boil it.
Two things: Firstly, it's not raw if they boil it. Most store-bought milk has gone through two processes: Pasteurisation and homogenisation. Pasteurisation is simply heating the milk. If your family boiled it before drinking, you've actually heated the milk more than commercial pasteurisation does. Normally pasteurised milk is heated to only 72 degrees celsius for only 15 seconds. Homogenisation is essentially forcing the milk through filters that breaks up the globs of fat. Only pasteurisation is necessary for food safety.
And secondly, pasteurisation is most necessary if you intend to store the milk. If, as you say, it's "warm and fresh from the udder", there's little risk from drinking raw milk.
The parent of your post specifically said selling raw milk through the normal store channels. The issue is not raw milk, but selling raw milk, which when you combine storage and transport, and the consumer storing it, means plenty of time for massive amounts of bacteria growth. As I'm sure you know, even with normal pasteurisation milk spoils relatively quickly.
> If I were to conjecture, it's that the "no raw milk" diktat forces farmers to go to big distribution companies with the requisite facilities for pasteurization.
Health authorities first started to push for pasteurisation after its extensive success in massively reducing illnesses - and deaths - due to spoiled milk.
Boiling milk? No thanks, boiled milk tastes funny.
You should remember that not everyone live in the same hot climate as you where milk generally don't go bad immediately, and that there are plenty of people around in cooler climates that have stomachs that usually can handle milk without problem.
> Boiling milk? No thanks, boiled milk tastes funny.
Boiled milk, yes. But unless you get milk straight from a farm, it's likely pasteurised: Heated to 72 degrees celsius for 15 seconds. [EDIT: I didn't realise how many places allow sales of unpasteurised milk; yikes - I'll be careful about reading labels next time I'm travelling]
> and that there are plenty of people around in cooler climates that have stomachs that usually can handle milk without problem.
The "stomachs that usually can handle milk without a problem" is entirely unrelated from why we pasteurise milk. Pasteurisation does not affect the lactose content in the milk, and that, combined with whether or not your genes makes you lactose intolerant or not is what determines whether or not you handle milk well.
I agree totally on your points when it comes to pasteurized milk - I was commenting on a comment that claimed regulation wasn't necessary because farmers would boil the milk anyhow, which is simply not the case.
I would love to see the data with comparison to baseline too. and it is an example of a nanny state (the FDA is literally saying, we have to protect you from this) rather than acting as a licensed-milk-producer-seal issuer.
It's the same nanny state issue when the FDA shut down more beneficial AIDS treatments in the 80s and 90s when the only drugs on the market, that the FDA approved of (AZT), were essentially toxic and killed about the same number of people that they "helped". Why should the FDA decide what goes into the bodies of supposedly "free" people? They should only act to say, "This is the only type of drugs or milk the FDA approves of"
You could take a look at the Centre for Disease Control's page about the issue, which includes a PDF with detailed breakdown of disease outbreaks linked to raw milk:
> They should only act to say, "This is the only type of drugs or milk the FDA approves of"
The same CDC report mentioned above, specifically address labelling, and points out that the numbers show that labelling is not shown to have significant effect.
If it was only your body you put at risk, you might have a point, but this also includes parents putting their children at substantial risk, and people putting others at risk whenever they serve non-pasteurised dairy products and people are not themselves aware of the risk.
Anyone can easily buy raw milk here and so far no diseases happened. That being said, raw milk manufacturing and transportation are heavily regulated and checked by inspectors. They are also regularly tested for possible infections.
