Topic: Could Bitcoin be a solution for the raw milk market? - page 4. (Read 6313 times)

to my knowledge, the laws do not say sale and distribution.  They specifically prohibit "sales".  Each state is different, though

It is important to note that the FDA has banned "interstate sales" of raw milk.  So, if you sell within your own state, you are fine, as far as Federal Law.

Come on, don't be ridiculous. I've drunk raw milk all my childhood and I never had "food poisoning". You just boil it before drinking and you're good to go. You should also consider that it spoils much faster, like bread (when I was a child, we used to buy bread and milk at the same time at the bakery, for the day).
I've actually drunk milk that had just left the cow directly to my glass a couple times and didn't have any issues either.


Impressive.
You know what I just found out? If you buy 10 lottery tickets, you're 10x more likely to win the prize!! 


 

Food safety is relative.  For example, nearly all salt for human consumption in the industrilized world contains iodine, because lack of iodine goitre in adults, and some types of mental retardation in infants.  Is the sale of tablesalt without added iodine illegal in the US?  No, it's not.  It simply has to be marked so that it cannot be confused with "regular" tablesalt.  I can buy it at Kroger or Wal-Mart under the names "Sea Salt", "Kosher Salt" or "Pickling Salt"; but it just never says just "Salt"unless it contains iodine.  Which is more dangerous, consuming raw milk (quickly enough to be reasonable) or consuming Kosher Salt?  Almost certainly the latter, but that point is moot.  Unpasterized milk should not be illegal in the United States, the idea is as Un-American as the table salt ban in NY city.

EDIT:  Additionally, consuming raw milk is as safe as pasturized, if the milk is consumed within a 24 hour period.  This was the economic motivation of the daily "milk man" deliveries of yesteryear.  They didn't even bother to refigerate it even after refrigerators were common.  To additionally reduce risk and impede bacterial growth, the milk man would usually add a silver dime to each bottle.  The silver in the dime would give off silver ions into the milk, which would not harm people but was toxic to bacteria.

This shows how powerful the propaganda of the "processed food" lobby is: their FUD make you think that it can be dangerous  not to buy their shit..
Same mechanism is used by banks to denigrate bitcoin.

Does raw milk go better with raw cookie dough? 

The legal argument is sound, and this would be a good market for Bitcoin.  But I kind of doubt that the market is that large.

Why, yes! There is a such a study!

From the CDC's nice little wrap-up on it

• During 1993–2006, 121 outbreaks reported to CDC were caused by dairy products where the investigators could determine if the dairy product was pasteurized or unpasteurized (raw). These outbreaks included 4,413 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations, and 3 deaths.
• 73 outbreaks (46 from fluid milk and 27 from cheese) were caused by raw milk, and 48 outbreaks (10 from fluid milk and 38 from cheese) were caused by pasteurized milk.
• Probably no more than 1% of the milk consumed in the United States is raw, yet more outbreaks were caused by raw milk than by pasteurized milk.
• If you consider the number of outbreaks caused by raw milk in light of the very small amount of milk that is consumed raw, the risk of outbreaks caused by raw milk is at least 150 times greater than the risk of outbreaks caused by pasteurized milk.[/li

If you want to go by outbreak count, it means you are 150 times more likely to become sick.

Not good enough?  Then let's go by illnesses count(sick/hospital/death) The study (which you can read in full here http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/pdfs/11-1370.pdf ) says

Source	Illnesses	hospitalizations	Deaths
Raw	1,571	202	2
Pasteurized	2,842	37	1

First thought? "See! Pasteurized milk is more dangerous! More people got sick!" Wrong. More got sick in the same sense that three people got sick at a high school and two got sick at home for home school, does that make home school safer? Hell no. But back to numbers. For the sake of simplicity let's say everyone drinks milk in the US(US pop 313,914,040), 99% drink pasteurized milk, 1% drinks raw. The percent of people who have been harmed by pasteurized milk is 0.00089629% or about 9 per million users, but at the same time, the percent of those who have been harmed by raw milk is 0.0500455% or about 500.4 per million users

If you go by illness count, drinking raw milk means you are 55 times more likely to become sick

Want to go by hospitalizations next? 540 times more likely to end up in the hostipal

How about deaths, surely you don't want to die, becuase you are 198 times more likely to die

This study was conducted by a group who are accredited by the ACCME ("ACCME? who the hell are they?!") which is a council who set the standard for continuing medication education Founded by the lovely people at the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Association for Hospital Medical Education (AHME), the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB)

You're turn. You have a study saying it's safer?

"sale or distribution"

Yes drinking from your own cow is ok. Getting it free from someone else is distribution.

You should all watch this movie:

http://farmageddonmovie.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1609113/

I live in New Hampshire and purchase raw milk from my coop. It's legal here in the home of the Free State Project.

Some may say it's more dangerous than pasteurized milk. I say fooey.

I suspect that the reason the dairy cartel pushed for pasteurization laws so long ago is because their dairy practices were so bad, and so unhealthy that the milk WAS dangerous and needed to be pasteurized just to keep people from getting sick. Problem was the bad companies didn't want to be the ONLY ones pasteurizing their milk, because it was a sign to the customers that their milk was unsanitary. So, they pushed for laws to force EVERY dairy farmer to pasteurize so that the bad companies wouldn't stick out like sore thumbs. It's also no coincidence that only big corporate farms could feasibly absorb the cost of milk pasteurization, whereas the little organic dairy down the road couldn't. So, the little guy down the road went out of business and corporate dairy rules the day.

I think PASTEURIZED milk is unhealthier than RAW milk, because in order to sell RAW milk you've got to have good clean, safe and sanitary dairy practices. Those that pasteurize can afford to get blood and puss and feces contaminating their milk because it's all going to get pasteurized anyways.

Oh, and by the way, anybody who thinks government regulations are about safety need to pull their heads out of their asses. Government regulations are NEVER about safety and ALWAYS about stifling innovation and squishing competition!

so, the question then becomes, what is the definition of commerce, and by what time scale?  If someone sends you a bitcoin payment today, and you give them raw milk next month in person while you are just chatting in the parking lot, have you committed a crime?  Or, if someone gave you a piece of paper, and you gave them raw milk, is that commerce?

I think there might be a gray area here that could be exploited, but it would have to be done in just the right way to have legal protection. 

yeah the point is noone here actually bathes with bath milk either... that's just what goes on the label to make it legit

This is generally not true in the United States.  Since the consumption of raw milk isn't actually something that can be banned under US law, for a variety of historical reasons, it's actually the act of engaging in commerce that is prohibited with raw milk.  It's actually a law that exists to favor major dairy producers & grocery stores, since raw milk wouldn't safely survive the lengthy trip from factory farm to the grocery store to the average home refrigerator reliablely enough to compete with the small farmer who simply offers the day's raw milk for purchase.  Raw milk, kept refrigerated and consumed quickly, isn't dangerous.  It's the delay that the modern food industry adds to the mix that is risky.  Bear in mind, milk was designed to be consumed immediately; yet well before the age of refrigeration, the early production of cheese was a process that took days.

First of all, bathing in milk is very uncommon in the US, and usually only happens in spas.  But the answer to your question is no, not legally.

yes, the laws speak specifically to the sale of raw milk.  I am not sure about giving away for free, and consumption is legal (you can drink the milk from your own animals).

This thread wasn't meant to start a discussion about the virtues or dangers of raw milk. 

Having said that, when we had dairy goats, we drank raw milk all the time.  We weren't making any kind of health or political statement about it, we just didn't know you were supposed to pasteurize it.  We just drank it fresh, cause we never thought about it, really.  Over a decade drinking it, our neighbors drinking it, etc, no one ever got sick.  So, I guess it is possible to get sick from it, and I know it is possible to get sick from pasteurized milk, too (people do every single year), but I've never had that issue with it.

This was more of a thought experiment about an obviously huge market in the US that is currently illegal.

From what I can tell, the laws state that you can't sell the the milk (it is not against the law to purchase raw milk, from my understanding).  But, as bitcoin is not a real currency (wink, wink) and no exchange of currency happens when you exchange the milk, would that be legal?  Is gifting raw milk legal?  And if gifting is legal, is bartering legal?

I don't know.  I just know that there is a huge market out there and the current situation doesn't seem to be getting better.  To me, huge demand + huge supply = opportunity.

i think it might be legal for pet food, but for human consumption, not legal.

All things being equal, that might be true, but they're not. Consider that store-bought milk is mixed together from many different suppliers.

How can you say its 10x more dangerous? Got any peer-reviewed studies to prove that? By what basis is it considered more dangerous? Bacteria count? What about beneficial bacteria in raw milk? The human body is a veritable petri dish, and the more variety of bacteria in your body, typically is more healthy overall. You're more resistant to infections, stomach ailments such as ulcers, and colon disorders. Its a big mistake to destroy the bacteria colonies in the human body with antibiotics, and then boil them out of milk, juice, and other healthy sources that we should be using to replenish the good bacteria count.

I've drank some when I was younger. Pasteurised milk they sale at the grocery taste like it's diluted with water. Now I'm only drinking almond milk. 

Don't most of us consume raw milk when we're babies anyway