It seems raw milk will take a permanent holiday in the state of Victoria. Following the child fatality caused by a raw milk product – bath milk (click here for our post on that story), Victoria has come up with new regulations in order to prevent this from occurring again.
The new regulation proposed by the Victorian state government is that all raw milk products must contain a gag-inducing chemical in all batches of raw milk sold within the state. This will hopefully prevent the raw milk product to be ingested by the consumer.
Although raw drinking milk is banned from sale in Australia, raw milk products are still allowed to be sold – products like bath milk. After the incident a few weeks ago, authorities have begun considering banning raw milk sales altogether. In order to be legally sold for drinking purposes, milk has to be pasteurised – it is heated at 72 degrees for 15 seconds. This gives it enough time to kill the harmful bacteria and parasites in the milk, for example, E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella.
The Raw Milk Opinion
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Rosemary Lester, believes that drinking raw milk has caused several hospital admissions. Raw milk causes problems for many consumers but it leaves children and the elderly extremely vulnerable. The gag-inducing chemicals are bittering agents, the most commonly used of which is Denatonium, are non-toxic additives. They’re commonly used and widely available, and the government believes producers can easily add the agent to their product.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) recently conducted a survey that inquired about raw milk food safety regulations (for this story on our blog, please click here) and it seems the general consensus was that raw milk should be allowed to help produce cheese in Australia…
…the various opinions might cause a bit of a problem.
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