Raw milk: Savings vs. safety

The province of Las Tunas has saved nearly US$2 million in one year by selling raw milk at grocery stores near each dairy farm, rather than having it pasteurized, the daily Granma reported on Thursday. Transporting raw milk to pasteurization plants uses up expensive fuel, hence the savings. Also, the government saves by not importing powdered milk, which, Granma says, costs more than US$5,000 per ton. But drinking raw milk "is like playing Russian roulette with your health," says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Consumer magazine. "Raw milk may harbor a host of disease-causing organisms" and the diseases "may have symptoms that are chronic, severe, or life-threatening." The article in Granma does not address the issue of potential disease. For an FDA report on milk safety, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro

Comments

[RuyDiaz]

Savings, to whom?

The fuel saved by not pasteurizing the milk could result in vulnerable people--only children under seven and elderly men and women have access to milk from their ration cards--drinking raw milk. It could also result in people using fuel to boil milk before drinking it, instead of drinking it without boiling it.

It may well be that, by not pasteurizing the milk, the province of Las Tunas has saved itself fuel, but at the cost of making the people of Las Tunas waste what little fuel they have in boiling their milk.