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"Another attraction (to raw milk) is that when you heat something
like that you destroy vitamin content," she said.
Pasteurization is the process of killing bacteria in foods by
application of heat. Milk is rapidly heated to near boiling, then
quickly cooled.
Before pasteurization became standard practice in the middle of the
20th century, illness from raw milk was common.
According to Dr. Ned Calonge, the state's chief medical officer, the
biggest risk from raw milk is the spread of a bacteria called
campylobacter, which causes intestinal problems such as diarrhea
and vomiting. There also is a risk of salmonella-caused illness, he
said.
To the hundreds of people who packed the state health department
hearing room, and spilled over into the cafeteria, who listened in on
closed-circuit TV from Fort Collins and Durango and who set up an
information stand on the grass outside the health department
building, the issue was more fundamental than what kind of white
liquid they are allowed to mix with marshmallows and cocoa on cold
Colorado nights.
To many of them, the attempts to halt cow-sharing were tantamount
to aiming a stake at the heart of freedom and democracy.
"It's an American right to choose what I consume," said Grant Peck
of Boulder, who came to Wednesday's hearing armed with an
arsenal of pro-raw-milk information.
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