September 3, 2010
Yes, Sicily has changed me. I hang out my wash, speak in pantomime, keep odd Sicilian hours, wear D&G spectacles, tolerate absurdity. And knock back raw milk.
Not quite straight from a cow, but almost. You situate your empty bottle just so under a teat-nozzle, deposit your cash (80 cents a liter), squeeze START, and out spurts a stream of pearly-whiteness. And this cow doesn’t kick!
"Just-milked (appena munto) Ragusan milk"
I glug the fat sweet stuff right from the bottle; it’s half gone by the time I get home.
Could this be dangerous? Am I really “playing Russian roulette with my health” as John Sheehan, director of dairy-food safety at the FDA claims? Was there a good reason for Pasteur’s discovery?
When I Googled “raw milk” a thousand things came up. I was surprised to find that only 6 US states allow it, that there’s a raging debate in the US, and a raw-milk campaign. “Why is it that in America it’s easier to buy drugs, guns, and political favors than it is to buy a gallon of raw milk?” asks one site.
“Americans are afraid of their own shadows,” someone in Italy said to me recently. Is he right?
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