Raw Milk Victories
- Thread starter dumpthemonarchy
- Start date
I think that's good in theory, except it's not applied equally...think junk food, stupid drivers, alcohol abuse, and a great number of other things that "should never have happened in the first place."
Seriously countryboy, you have no idea how funny I find it that you're going on about raw milk and how people are too paranoid and don't get enough good bacterias, etc... and then you're all stressed about mold. lol. You do know that pretty much everything the wrong mold can do to your cheese, the wrong bacteria can do to your raw milk too, right?
Eat a balanced diet rich in anti-oxidants and a spot or two of mold on your cheese won't make you keel over from cancer. :lol:
Couldn't agree with you more on the anti-oxidant diet, Karrie. However, I'm not stressed out about the blue (or green) cheese...the Health Depts. are though...they made a big deal of it when inspecting restaurants and their cheese supplies here in BC. They specifically mentioned carcinogens as being "dangerous" to health.
Now, you wouldn't want to ignore such a stern warning from an official representative of the government, would you? ;-)
Well, I guess a little surprise now and then is good for the discussion, eh? At least it provides opportunities for sarcasm. ;-)
Time and context countryboy. Am I getting the cheese for less money? How moldy is it? Is the risk a theoretical risk (might make me sick one day years down the road from cumulative consumption), or an imminent risk (could make me deathly ill right the heck now).
If a meal came to me at a restaurant with a spot of mold on the cheese you can bet I'll be sending it back and likely finding a different place to eat. lol. Double standards are funny like that. And, much like dealing with a farmer, having to worry about what I CAN'T see doesn't sit well with me (thus I love those pesky government rules).
Also agree with you on that, Karrie...the brains are up there to be utilized!
The "government" does have a lot of rules, and many of them are good...especially in the Health Inspection area (restaurants). When we owned a restaurant, I found that they can be quite helpful if an operator wants to cooperate. I think we had 7 different inspectors throughout those years, and each one of them was a bit different, but all quite helpful. Some of the older, more experienced ones were a lot of fun...one of them was a big believer in sanitizing countertops with plain vinegar, while the next one insisted on bleach, and so on...but hey, they're human too. Even though we never had any in stock, none of them would tolerate moldy cheese. :lol:
The biggest compliment to us was that most of them ended up becoming customers, bringing friends and family out for dinners...that's probably the best "word of mouth" advertising there is!
Well, it makes sense on numerous levels from a food safe viewpoint. I've known people who will go into anaphylactic (sp?) shock from eating cheese that had mold on it. Plus you don't want to give anyone a green light to make that their exclusive source of cheese... lol.
I'm assuming that the restriction on moldy cheese is on cheese that isn't supposed to be moldy....my father loved blue cheese. Ugh.
I'm not an expert on cheese, but I suspect the problem lies somewhere in the "good bacteria" and "bad bacteria" categories.
I had some Italian friends down in Toronto that would indulge in "maggot cheese" whenever someone could sneak it in from Italy. They would sit around a table with lots of wine and Italian bread, cut the cheese (excuse the expression) open, let it begin to ooze out, find the parts that were moving (the maggots), and proceed to sop them up with the bread and eat them. Mm-mm good...to them. I tried, but couldn't consume enough wine to give it a try. :lol:
I remember my brother talking about how he stopped at a cheese shop in Kensington, to buy his favorite cheese. Then he and his wife took the train to Kingston. They noticed that over the trip, other passengers moved down to the other end of the car. It was the horrendous smell of the cheese...
What's that old saying? "One you get past the smell, you've got it licked!"
(It probably tasted better than it smelled...) :lol:
You got a point... so the best thing to do is not to add anything more to that list... one less burden to worry about.
Perhaps in a perfect world unsafe things shouldn't happen or be created, but the govt need not be our nanny and be telling us what we want to put in our bodies. Drugs, explosives, alcohol, and milk are potentially dangerous substances and require regulation, not prohibition. Come on, let's grow up here. The world is not always a safe place. What is good for me, may not be good for you, and we live in such a world.
In the case of Raw Milk, whether it's good for you or not, if the distribution channel has the potential to harm hundreds of Canadians, the govt needs to be involved. If you don't agree, I suggest you buy your food directly from China and see (and possibly feel) the difference regulation makes.
The govt has applied regulations to protect the public in general. If you think otherwise, then there is nothing stopping you from milking your own cow, however, the burden of your mistake when you become ill should not fall upon the taxpayer.
Again, if you don't believe me, you can always take a trip down to some third world country and buy some dinner at a makeshift stand on the side of the road where the water used to make your noodles is the same water they used to wash the dishes with. I'm not joking about that last part. To hell with the govt nannies!
I have no problems with some basic sanitation and health regulations on food. But, I think you're going a bit overboard on the "burden of your mistake..." statement.
If everything was so perfect, it's doubtful we'd be seeing the epidemic of obesity and diabetes these days. I believe that burden is indeed food-related and it is falling on the shoulders of the taxpayers, is it not? Now how on earth did that happen?
I'm not advocating a free-for-all on these things...I'm looking for a choice in milk.