Milk and dairy products support good health. Drinking farm milk can protect children against asthma and hayfever. However, if those products are consumed unpasteurised, they can present a serious health hazard because of possible contamination with disease causing germs.
Contamination can occur at the time of collection, processing, distribution, or storage of milk. Many disease-causing germs can be found in the dairy farm environment, which can contaminate the teat skin of dairy cows and consequently the milk at the time when cows are milked. For example, Salmonella and E. coli have been reported in pooled milk collected from farms. Outbreaks of salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, and E. coli related to raw milk consumption have been reported since 2005.
In many countries, for instance, the United States of America, raw milk and raw cheeses were linked to disease outbreaks stated a review published in the January 1, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases which examined the dangers of drinking raw milk.
Raw or farm milk is milk from cows, goats, sheep, or other animals that has not been pasteurized.
How safe is it drinking raw milk from the teat of dairy cows? Is it too healthy eating local milk dishes such as fura de nunu which is popularly served in many parts of the country with herdsmen? Fura de nunu is made from unpasteurised milk. Drinking of unpasteurised milk, for example, is also common among nomadic herbs men who also live in close contact with their herd.
What are the risks associated with drinking raw milk? Does drinking raw milk prevent or cure diseases, such as asthma, allergies, heart disease, or cancer? Reseachers in a study published in the 2007 issue of Clinical and Experimental Allergy indicated that drinking farm milk can protect children against asthma and hayfever.
The researchers from Europe and the USA studied 14,893 children aged between five and 13 in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. The children were drawn from farm children, rural and suburban communities and Rudolph Steiner schools, which primarily cater for families with anthroposcopic lifestyles, who restrict their use of antibiotics, vaccinations, fever-reducing drugs and often follow a biodynamic diet.
Parents were asked to complete detailed questionnaires about their child’s consumption of milk, butter, yoghurt, eggs and fruit and vegetables and whether they were farm-produced or shop-bought. In addition, they were asked about their child’s height and weight, whether they were breastfed and any allergies or asthma problems affecting the child or their family.
But consuming farm milk that hasn’t been pasteurised poses serious health risks. Dr Akinbowale Olajide in his dissertation for a masters’ degree at the Department of Veterinary Tropical Disease, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa cautioned on consumption of raw milk,including “fura de nunu”, stating that it could predispose to tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis).
While it is possible to get food-borne illnesses from many different foods, raw milk is one of the riskiest of all. Raw milk can carry harmful germs that can make an individual very sick or die. For example, a person can develop severe or even life-threatening diseases, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis, and hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can result in kidney failure and stroke.
“If you have being in a place where they are milking a cow, at times the cow may get irritated and use its leg to raise dust or dirt, which could find its way into the milk being expressed,” Mr Tunde Ajobo, a dietician, at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State stated.
Mr Ajobo declared: “when cows are being grazed in the open field, many germs and paratites can get attached to their skins. This, during milking, can find their way later into the milk as well.”
Basically, milk contamination may occur from cow faeces coming into direct contact with the milk, infection of the cow’s udder (mastitis), cow diseases (e.g., bovine tuberculosis), bacteria that live on the skin of cows, environment (e.g., faeces, dirt, processing equipment) and insects, rodents, and other animal vectors.
Germs such as Escherichia coli O157, Campylobacter, and Salmonella can contaminate milk during the process of milking dairy animals, including cows and goats. Still, animals that carry these germs are usually healthy.
Conversely, small groups of disease-causing germ might multiply and grow in the milk before someone drinks it if it is raw.
Mr Ajobo questioned: “How many cows are regularly seen by a veterinarian to ensure they are vaccinated and in good health. That is one reason people that drink raw milk or buy fura de nunu must be more careful.”
“When taking milk, it is with the purpose that it would support or boost one’s health. So, it is not worth sacrificing one’s health for a mere cup of fresh milk or other dairy products such fura de nunu.
“All the germs that the milk may contain have to be neutralised by pasteurisation. It is also for this reason people that consume fura de nunu need to be more careful. Many at times, when individuals contact any illness from contaminated milk, they would never trace it to fura de nunu.”
Pasteurisation is the process of heating milk to a high enough temperature for a long enough time to kill illness-causing bacteria contained in the milk. As most commonly applied, pasteurisation heats milk to a high temperature for a short time, which kills the bacteria that cause illness.
It was invented in a time when millions of people became sick and died of diseases like tuberculosis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and other infections that were transmitted through raw milk.
Getting sick from raw milk can mean many days of diarrhoea, stomach cramping, and vomiting. Less commonly, it can mean kidney failure, paralysis, chronic disorders, and even death. Each person’s symptoms will however be varied, depending on the type of germ, the amount of contamination, and the person’s immune defences.
The number of disease-causing germs in the raw milk may be too low to make a person sick for a long time, and later high enough to make the same person seriously ill. For some people, drinking contaminated raw milk just once could make them really sick.
Although healthy people of any age can get very sick or even die if they drink raw milk contaminated with harmful germs, the risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk is greater for infants and young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, such as people with cancer, an organ transplant, or HIV/AIDS, than it is for healthy school-aged children and adults.
Source:tribune
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