There was another wonderful, informative broadcast on Arte-TV (German/French). This time about the phenomenon of mega-forest fires. They are devastating and ultimately threaten the survival of humans and animals on earth. The reason is, there is a flywheel, the impact is getting stronger, due to climate change, drought and heat, and the huge CO2 -production at the time of the fire. The broadcast is inspiring to also look differently at our handling of raw milk; if you know how to dance with the ‘wild animal’, only the benefits remain, namely the enrichment of your life.
Devastating forest fires
A spark or cigarette in parched forest vegetation can cause an ecological disaster. Drivers like dry, strong winds lead to an all-destructive mega-fire. Year after year, mega-fires are increasing. Every fire needs ammunition, in this case combustible carbon in the form of wood, dead wood, a desiccated humus layer or in the case of peat fires, the peat. The principle of control lies in the ecological knowledge around fire, forest structure and how fires develop. This allows you to contain the risks and puts extinguishing in 2nd place. The ancient Indians of Canada and North America already knew, make fire your friend to prevent it from becoming your enemy. You have to know how to handle fire, an ecological learning process from father to son. Fire as a tool for living and producing. You can prevent fire with fire, as in controlled forest fires.
Living with nature
If we want to live a life connected to nature, we must learn to protect ourselves. You have to have ecological knowledge and know what to do or not to do. In forest fires, for example, the presence of firebreaks is important, strips, where the fire stops. By targeted arson in transitional areas, you take away the fuel that comes from letting an area go wild unchecked. You have to change your outlook and not just be the extinguisher of fires (as a firefighter), but you also have to look at landscaping. How can we (re)learn to live with fire?
What is ‘the beast’ in raw milk?
In the late 19th century, people looked at raw milk as a ‘beast’. There school danger in raw milk. You could get sick from it and young children in particular could die from consuming unsafe milk. The ‘beast’ was in the zoonotic bacteria, the Tuberculosis causing bacteria that went around among people and was spread through milk by sick, coughing milkers. To combat the beast, you had to kill it: heating, pasteurisation and sterilisation.
Now, at the beginning of the 21th century, knowledge around the positives of unprocessed foods like raw milk and controlling the negatives of raw milk has increased enormously. We can screen livestock farms and cows for dangerous bacteria, we know through which routes bacteria can spread or enter a farm, technologically we have developed a cold chain, which greatly inhibits bacterial growth, dairy farmers can be trained, how to produce raw milk in the safest possible way. In short, ecological knowledge leads to controlling the ‘beast’.
This does not mean that fires will never break out again, but it does mean that they can be brought under control quickly, and remain local. Mega-fires, such as those at the end of the 19th century, in which children died in bunches, have long since disappeared. With the local-to-local marketing of raw milk, the customer base is often known and mostly limited. Major fires such as the major food scandals do not occur in this concept of raw milk sales.
Fermentation of raw milk
By immediately putting fresh, warm raw milk into fermentation with a starter culture (frozen or via kefir grains), you steer the raw milk in a zoonotically safe direction. Here, the added bacteria are not so much an uncontrolled ‘beast’, but rather you are dealing with a mixture of live bacteria and fungi, which further support our health. The ‘beast’ has lost its teeth, and indeed the product we thus make becomes a support in a world increasingly poor in germs, both in our immediate environment and in our guts.
Sources used
https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/083971-000-A/megafeuer-der-planet-brennt/
