dear mechell and all,

the subject of the "stinky milk" has been covered before, and should be in the
archives. it is the action of  lipase on the milk, and the milk is not
spoiled.

i am also a home canner, and i mean, this year i have broken all my previous
records. should those Y2K end-of-the-world types be right, we won't starve
until well after most other people. today i picked enough grapes to make 200
bottles of wine (hey, i could invite everybody on lactnet to come over and
drink it . . .) however, the point of this is not to brag (okay, well, it IS),
but to point out that milk banks use a process called Holder Pasteurization,
and it bears no resemblance to pressure canning. For one thing, after
pasteurization, the donor milk is frozen. The purpose of the pasteurization is
to kill any possibly infectious agents. Pressure canning is to preserve the
contents of a jar without further refrigeration or freezing. Although I would
expect breastmilk to withstand a lot of things, and still be better than some
other stuff, I wouldn't expect breastmilk that has been pressure canned to
still contain much of anything in the way of the living ingredients that make
it so special.

Freezing destroys a small part of what is good about breastmilk; Holder
pasteurization only affects the milk slightly. I can't imagine that breast
milk is going to "survive" twenty minutes at 5 pounds pressure (the usual
smallest amount of time/pressure used in home canning). I would throw out the
broccoli in the freezer first; what else do most of us have in the freezer
that costs at least $2 an ounce? Sorry, Mechell, i don't mean to be flaming
(freezing?). Just my impression contrasting the two methods, and i want to be
sure nobody thinks the milk bank is firing up the canner every day.

carol brussel IBCLC
milk bank donor and volunteer
food preservation specialist (and a certificate for THAT, too)