Quote Originally Posted by Bastian
My point was that if people have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years with probably few instances of illness (else why would we still be drinking milk today?), it is probably safe, unless the process is currently different. And I'm allowing for the fact that it could very well be. In which case it is possibly not safe.

The FDA has been wrong in the past. Many times. They are probably right that it CAN cause abdominal discomfort in some instances, but those are probably rare.
"Probably" few instances of illness... discomfort is "probably" rare. You are just outright making things up. These diseases caused by pathogens in raw milk were not rare (see the plethora of actual sources I linked to). People didn't stop drinking/using milk because 1) it was readily available if you owned cows, and 2) everything was subject to food-borne pathogens before modern technology. Raw milk may have indeed been safer than drinking water from the local pond, but it looks like there's a lot of evidence for the conclusion that it's not remotely as safe as pasteurized milk.

And while you have a dislike for alternative medicines (which you reiterate in many, many threads) that cannot discredit the millions of people (billions?) who swear by them. I have to admit, I'm not keen on alternative medicine; I'm more likely to go to a traditional doctor when I have an issue. But I do have friends who swear by acupuncture and various herbs which have cured ailments when modern science failed to do so.
I don't see myself getting anywhere on this issue, but I at least have to remark that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Some herbs certainly do work (aspirin was even derived from one, showing that "alternative" medicine that actually works is incorporated into actual medicine), but acupuncture has over-and-over consistently been proven bunk and no more effective than a placebo.