> Just as a question for someone from dairy country,  (and I ask this
> sincerely, not as a rude snipe) how long would a farmer be comfortable
> holding fresh cow milk at 77 degrees?

Well, I think to get a more analogous answer to that, you need to go back in
time a bit and find conditions different than today's dairy farms.

My parents raised us on a kind of hobby farm, with various animals,
including a milk cow or two at various times. The cows ate grass and grain,
and to tell you the truth we didn't worry much about keeping the fresh milk
cold. My mother had a little "separator" machine that would skim off the
cream to use in baking, etc., and often the milk would sit around in a metal
container in the kitchen most of the day until she got around to running it
through the machine. We would chill it before we drank it, of course,
because we preferred the taste that way.

It seems to me there have been tribal societies who drank goat's milk and
lived in very warm conditions - and they often carried the milk in skin bags
and other containers, without any refrigeration because there was none
available.

Teresa Pitman
Guelph, Ontario

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