Raw Milk: Health Food Or Hazard?

Conradine Sanborn of St. Paul refers to supermarket milk as "dead milk."

She avoids it, preferring raw milk from a farm in Gibbon, Minn. She also regularly buys ice cream, meat and eggs from the Gibbon farmer, Michael Hartmann.

Hartmann's farm has become the center of a controversy over raw milk — that is, milk that hasn't undergone the usual pasteurization treatment to kill illness-causing bacteria.

Last week, regulators said they believed four cases of E. coli O157:H7 were linked to raw milk from the farm. One outbreak victim, a toddler, is hospitalized with a life-threatening condition. Agriculture regulators are also investigating whether Hartmann violated state restrictions on selling raw milk — something they found him culpable of in 2004.

To read the rest of this story please go to: Minnesota Star Tribune