" The great state of Texas consumes 342,000,000 somatic cells in each glass of milk." TOTALLY YUM!

Totally sick. I've drank ONLY soy milk for the last ten years or so (before that it was skim). I have ALWAYS thought milk had a very sick aftertaste.

..but okay, I have another question.

I wouldn't think we'd have to worry about the bacteria as milk is pasteurized after the pus gets in there..right?

(But the idea is still sick. Thanks for ruining ice cream for me, Kev. Soy granita, anyone?)

Oh, good grief, just think of how much of your own snot you digest every day.

Yea and don't they say that in an average lifetime a person injests something like 20 spiders while sleeping? Can you imagine what those spiders have been walking around in??? Walking on disgusting floors and crawling on gross walls....ick! *shudder*
-MB

Hmmm. I like milk. correction, I LOVE milk...I suppose not being able to drink it until I was 12 may have made a difference....but, having milk with a nice, big hunk of double chocolate cake does go down well.

And I hate to break it to you, but most of the food we eat, vegan, or whatever, is contaminated with mold and bacteria of some sort....we DO have immune systems for a reason. Taking big risks? Not me, but I do know that once exposed to the environment, we all start going down hill....whether you're a gallon of milk or a kid.

Fortunately, spiders have microscopic feet. That doesn't make the idea any more palatable though.

I hate to break it to you but anything supposedly organic that was grown on the west coast and supposedly is still organic on the east coast... not a chance. As "organic" becomes more and more the rage, and as more and more large food producers want a piece of the pie, they legislate lesser restrictions when it comes to what can and can't be called "organic". If you don't buy it from a local co-op, you're only throwing away your money.

How many of us don't relish the "unprocessed" food we can get overseas? It tastes better, is healthier for us, and by God, it even naturally preserves better.

We can't live without mold and bacteria.

I don't think we start going downhill when we first ingest bacteria, what I'm afraid will happen is that our life span will decrease. Our parents are living for unprecedented long periods of time but they started out with fewer "regulations", can the same be said for the next generation, our generation? As an example the rate of breast cancer is growing exponentially among younger and younger women, so a longer life span isn't the mitigating factor.

Personally, I think being "healthy" is killing us.

We are actually too clean as a society. I agree with tueezday1, when we do get sick the smallest thing takes us out of commision. If our bodys were a little more use to figting things off, we would be more resistent to the common stuff. As far as the milk I don't care about the puss and blood in it, those words just have a bad sound to us, but are really no worse than anything else imo. But what dose concern me in milk is the anti-biotics again ruining our ability to defend ourself, and the hormons, that just can't be great for guys to be drinking.

All this said, I still drink milk, I guess I will trust the FDA to do their job, if not well hey you only live once.

um, I'm not about to click on that link, but I will say that I only platonically relish the less processed food in some other countries.... or at least, it's ok if someone else it doing the food prep. I don't like maggoty things in my rice (used to be common in Japan, was common in paris a few years ago - at least from the grains shops. makes washing rice fun), I don't want to share my salad with a caterpillar (which, anecdotally, also happened on a plate at a restaurant in Cambridge, MA - I had fun watching it munch away), I like my spinach without too many holes etc etc.

a relative of mine was complaining (bragging)about driving 25 miles to buy 'organic vegs, and breads. i will always remember the horrified expression on her face when i suggested that she plant a small garden of her own. alas she couldn't plant one... her property was tainted with chem lawn every month. go figure?

Ok...I finally clicked on the link...and I hate to tell you but it is HOGWASH. It is clearly designed as a scare tactic to get people to be milk free and part of the PETA movement.

Dairy cows with mastitis aren't milked at least not for general consumption. They carefully treated, and for another thing, when these glands get infected, you don't GET milk from them....Trust me on this...just like women who are nursing don't get milk from plugged ducts. Whether in a cow or a human, an infection in the mammary glands creates plugged ducts.Infection in mammary glands, regardless of WHICH mammal is mastitis.

If anyone ever watched the reality TV where they put the CAlifornia swingers together with some Amish, you might recall the granola girl who said that she wouldn't drink milk because milking was cruel. Her reasoning? The milking machines (literally big suction cups) were put on and left on a cow until the cow bled because she didn't have enough milk. Reality? The milking machines rubber suction cups drop off when the cow has been milked.

In addition, most milk produced in the US goes to a broker who collects it. It is then combined with milk from lots of other farms. The milk is treated with chlorine bleach to kill off any bacteria which might be a problem and also to modify the taste. Cow milk picks up taste from whatever the cow is eating...clover is fine, but onion grass, which commonly grows in the pasture, changes the flavor and the dairyman is docked (not given the total value of the milk) for it and the mixing/bleaching helps in removing the unwanted flavors as well as getting rid of nastys.

This is a non-issue.

Somatic cells are hardly pus. Yogurt is more like pus than plain milk and people gobble it up by the ton. Sheesh! PETA knows no limits to hysterical distortions. They've completely lost touch with all reality. Are they going to start fighting against breast feeding babies now because mom's somatic cells are getting into junior (who has a functioning immune system thanks to all his exposure to the nasties that surround us)?

I buy organic milk because, at least at the moment, the farmers that produce it are making twice as much money as conventional farmers.

(Mark saunters off happily sipping his skim latte)

I bought a loaf of Kroger brand bread about a month ago, opened it, haven't kept it in the fridge, and have had it partially open the entire time...and it shows no signs of decompensation. It is even whole wheat. I'm curios as to whether it has no nutrition or is so chemically saturated that nothing can grow on it. I'm keeping it until it molds.

Just...a break from the milk.

What a crock... PETA. will try anything .
Liz is right on . I have chickens that free range, no medicated feed , organic eggs ..Organic alright! Ya ought to see what some of the biddies eat when outside Yuck! bugs not to bad, but mice! (gag) Gin

Oh I got a rise from you folks. Wonderful! I have no idea how much of this is true or not. Just passing time I guess. Here's something from Google Answers:

The Somatic Cell Count and Milk Quality
"The somatic cell count (SCC) is commonly used as a measure of milk
quality. Somatic cells are simply animal body cells present at low
levels in normal milk. High levels of these cells in milk indicate
abnormal, reduced-quality milk that is caused by an intramammary
bacterial infection (mastitis).
The majority of the cells in a somatic cell count are leukocytes
(white blood cells), and some are cells from the udder secretory
tissue (epithelial cells). The epithelial cells are part of the normal
body function and are shed and renewed in normal body processes. The
white blood cells serve as a defense mechanism to fight disease
(infection), and assist in repairing damaged tissue.
Milk markets routinely rely on somatic cell counts to help ensure a
quality product. SCC levels are monitored to assure compliance with
state and federal milk quality standards. Today, most markets pay a
premium for low SCC, good-quality milk."
http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/dairy/g1151.htm

As far as trusting the FDA to monitor what is safe or not, I canÂt say I entirely do trust them. After all they are a Washington bureaucracy. Don't you think there just might be a bit of influence going on there? I've also never trusted the guidelines they set for various preservatives, additives and whatnot. Have they ever figured out the cumulative affect of eating that crap over a lifetime or do take into account that a significant portion of the population only consumes processed foods loaded with that stuff? I don't know.

I once worked with a woman who was a total germaphobic. She washed her hands constantly. As I remember they were always red and swollen. People in that office often brought in goodies from home to eat. She wouldn't touch them unless they came from a grocery store or restaurant and she was the first one to open the box or pkg. If someone else beat her to it, she wouldn't touch the food. Oh yes, she ate every single meal in a restaurant. She was also sick a lot.

I guess I've never had a thing for germs or critters in food as long as I wasn't aware of them. I just doesn't bother me that much. With that said, until last year I could not eat watermelon. Whenever I looked at those seeds I thought of woodticks. I hate woodticks; especially the big bloated ones. As a kid, I picked enough of them off myself. Then I discovered seedless watermelon. Love it.

Stacy (aka turkeytaker): bread from the grocery store is heavily treated with preservatives. Make a loaf of bread by hand, and you'll see that it starts getting stale within 24 hours (hence bakeries selling day old bread). By three or 4 days in the summer, youll have really stale bread and depending on your environmnent (dry or humid) you'll have a lovely growth of mold as well.

Since groceries have to have the bread shipped to them from a baker, and there has to be a reasonable shelf life, preservatives are put in. The same thing goes for preservatives (aka nitrates) in sausage. What we buy which is commercially produced on a large scale is lightyears away from what we can make at home on a smaller scale with less chemies. Now, if only I can learn how to use the gosh darned bread machine. I'm really paying for not getting an expensive model....of course, I've gone years just using my two hands, I suppose I could go back to that ;)

Figure out your bread machine. I've been using mine for years and couldn't be without it. A great little invention IMO.

rofl..Kev, the LAST time I tried it, I made a 50/50 wholewheat/white door stop.

I swear I'm going to go back to baking my own. I've always prefered to do it by hand, but one of these days, I may relent.

My local bread source has bread that goes moldy in 2 days in the summer, 2 weeks in the fridge. Only problem is that it's not as good as it used to be.

Day old bread is best sliced thick and grilled. The toaster is gradually getting pushed off the counter.

You're not using bread mixes are you? I think they tend to give you the door stop type of loaves.

Lisa pretty much said everything I was going to. Thanks, Lis! I owned dairy animals for many years (goats & one cow) and I can tell you from experience that an animal with mastitis is milked and their milk is tossed. Depending on what anitbiotic is used to treat it, the milk toss time can be up to 180 days. Dairy farmers work really hard to maintain a herd that doesn't get mastits often. It costs them big $$ if they have to treat their cows and toss the milk.

And the cow in the pic doen't look like she has mastitis. She looks like she's full and ready to be milked. You can't see mastitis from looking at an udder. Sometimes you can see that the milk looks a little funky, so you test it. Most times, you notice that the milk production is down or the udder is uneven.

When I had my herd, I used to show them at the fair. Every year, the barn superintendent would come through and warn us that PETA representatives were there and to be on our toes. They would stop people on their way into the dairy barns and tell them that the animals were all being tortured. When you show dairy animals, 50% of the score is based on the udder. How well it's attached, teat size and placement, capacity, etc. The udder has to be full in order to be properly judged. But if it's too full, the judge can't make a good assessment, and you lose points. The dumba$$ PETA people have no clue what a full udder looks like and take it upon themselves to decide that the animals are all in horrible pain. If they'd educate themselves, they'd learn that some of those cows can produce over 100 pounds of milk a day and their udders are enormous when they're full. I had goats that weighed less than 150 pounds that milked 12 pounds a day. That's a gallon and a half of milk for a relatively small animal. They weren't in pain or being tortured, they were hard workers! And, milk is a supply and demand thing. If you don't milk them, they produce less. Dairy farmers aren't about to lose production by not milking their animals. Stepping off my soap box now.....................

I haven't had dairy animals for 11 years. But it still gets my knickers in a knot when I see or hear uninformed people spewing nonsense.

Laurie

Nope. No bread mixes here. I wouldn't stoop that low! lol. But the concept of putting the stuff in and waking up to fresh bread in the morning sounds heavenly....My husband made it a couple of times and he looked at me like I had a rock for a brain when I said I needed to have him show me again.....but then, he never saw the doorstop.

You know Laurie, one of the things which blows my mind is how these people can think that farmers are going to intentionally harm an animal which represents several thousands of dollars of investment....and OBVIOUSLY they have never ever breast fed a child.