Raw Milk Safe Handling
If you’re new to the world of raw milk, there’s generally two sides to the ideology of raw milk safety: it’s always bad or it’s always safe.
The truth is it is a little more nuanced than that.
In pervious blogs, we’ve been over the history of pasteurization and why it became necessary to keep people from getting sick. I highly recommend you read the article if you have the time. In essence, there is a time and place for pasteurized milk. That is when cows are dirty or sick, who are milking the cows are ill or unclean, and/or when barns and equipment aren’t clean or sanitized.
Well produced raw milk should come from clean, healthy cows who consume a good diet. Barns and pastures should be cleaned or changed regularly and shouldn’t have excess mud and manure. Milking equipment should be sanitized properly. Ideally, raw milk farmers will test regularly to assure quality in their milk.
In this well produced raw milk, harmful pathogens should be rare. If there are harmful pathogens, the pathogen load should be low enough that it won’t cause illness. Safe handling of milk is key to keeping both good bacteria, like probiotics, and bad bacteria, listeria or E. coli, to a healthy level.
On farm handling
Here at MarGro Farms, we take very seriously our role in safe milk handling. We want to bring our herdshare owners high quality, low risk milk. We know that some of the people we serve are immunocompromised, pregnant, or extremely young. We know the risks of poorly produced raw milk, and the benefits of well produced raw milk. We are constantly seeking what we can improve upon to bring our owners our very best.
Some of the things we do include the following:
Maintain a healthy herd. Sick cows will produce milk that could make you sick. While we don’t vaccinate, we also don’t bring any new cows into the area and keep our pigs and any other animals we get far from the milk cows so that they don’t spread any illness or harmful bacteria via their manure. We also feed our animals a robust diet of grass and supplemental feed that we grow here on the farm. They are regularly check to assure that their diet is fitting their needs.
Rotationally graze and regularly clean. We have lots of pasture for our cows, but it’s not all one big field. We rotate our cows throughout different pastures so that they not only get fresh grass in the growing season, but also stay clean from excess manure or mud that may build up in the pasture. We also clean the manure out of the barn and barnyard so that they aren’t in an excess of their own poop. We rake out and bed their free stalls with sand which discourages bacteria growth.
Clean and replace milker parts. We wash all the milkers and pipeline through a three step process after every milking and sanitize everything again prior to milking. In addition to this, we do special weekly cleanings with different cleaners than our normal so that no bacteria may become resistant to the cleaners. We also bread apart the milkers once a week to clean and check any sticky areas for biofilm build ups. As parts grow old or maybe accidently break, we replace with new.
Rapid milk chilling. Our milk is cooled to around 36-38 degrees in about 30 minutes of the last milkers coming off. It stays at this temperature thanks to our bulk tank that continually cools it. When it is bottled, it is quickly transferred to our refrigerator which keeps it below 40 degrees.
Glass bottles. We chose glass bottles for a couple reasons. First, they’re reusable. Second, milk tastes better out of glass! Third, they better than plastic for staying cool and for overall health. They also clean really well. While we require that our owners do return clean bottles, we do rewash and sanitize them prior to filling. This is not an excuse to bring back a loosely cleaned bottle! The first cleaning does the most to keep the bottles from growing and biofilms that could add bacteria into otherwise healthy milk. But to assure that all our owners are getting in their milk bottle is milk, we do wash and sanitize the bottles and new lids with seals every time prior to bottling.
On farm and third party testing. We want to assure that we are giving our owners our best and testing is one way we check in on ourselves that we are doing just that. We have third party DHI (dairy herd information) testing. This gives us nitty gritty details on each individual cow. It helps us know better how to help a cow who may be unwell and which cows are are doing the best. We also test every batch of milk we bottle in our home lab. In that, I test the collected milk for coliforms and aerobic bacteria count. This helps us know how well we are doing with our cleaning and how healthy our milk is. I share this information with our herdshare owners each month.
Herdshare owner handing
In the previous section, I shared all what we do to keep our owners milk as low risk as possible. But in reality, for the milk to stay healthy and last a long time, it’s a group effort between us and our owners. We cannot do this without you in more ways than one!
The following are things herdshare owners can do to keep their milk high quality and low risk:
Bring a cooler to transport your milk home. Bacteria in milk can double their count in as little as 20 minutes at warm temperatures! Keeping milk cool in the trip home, especially if you have a drive that is over 10 minutes from the farm or if you plan on making a stop on your way home. This is pivotal in keeping your milk fresh and good.
Maintain a refrigerator temperature of 40 degrees or less. This is huge! Foods that maintain a temperature of 40-140 degrees are more likely to spoil. So keep cold food cold, below 40 degrees, and hot foods hot, above 140 degrees. Throw a thermometer in your fridge to assure it’s staying cool enough without freezing. Shoot for 34-38 degrees in your fridge. Try to keep your milk in the back of the fridge or on the top shelf. Avoid storing it in the door!
Put your milk jug away! We see in commercial that people leave their milk out the entire time they eat breakfast. Don’t be like that. Put your jug away after pouring it. You can always go back for more if you need it!
Keep your child’s milk cup in the fridge as much as possible. As a mom, I know this is hard. They run off with those things! But sure enough, if my daughter leaves her cup out then puts it back, it won’t be long before it starts smelling and tasting off. We’re trying to teach our one year old that when you want milk, you go to the fridge, take a drink, and put your cup right back. It takes some time for all of us to get used to this!
Keep food products made with raw milk in the fridge. Yes, your butter won’t go bad as quickly if you get all the whey out. But it’s still a good idea to store it in the fridge. It’ll keep longer and discourage any bacteria growth.
Raw milk is an incredible food. It can be so very good for us if it is well produced and the pathogen load is low. To have high quality, low risk milk, you need a farmer who puts in the work. To keep this good milk safe and lasting a long time, you need to do your part too. Both herdshare farmer and herdshare owner work together to have the best milk possible. This is a team effort and we couldn’t do it without our amazing herdshare owners. We want you to thrive on our milk! Everyone can thrive on raw milk if we all work together!
