Milk | Photo: fdecomite, CC BY 2.0
Today in “things I wish I hadn’t heard” comes a story out of Australia about the consumption of unpasteurized “bath milk.” Oh yeah.
So the events in question actually took place in 2014, but it took some time for the coroner’s report to come out, which it did this week. It turns out that some organic woo raw-milk purveyors were getting around the Australian laws against selling unpasteurized milk by labeling it “for baths” and selling it as a cosmetic product. To their credit (legally at least) they did write “not for human consumption” on the side, but that didn’t stop the parents of a now-deceased child from drinking it themselves and putting it in their child’s food.
This, ruled the coroner, was the most likely cause for their child’s illness and resulting death.
After the story broke, the state of Victoria had a fairly public row over the whole issue, and while it still allows the product to be sold, it now at least requires it to have a “bitterant” added to it, so that it tastes as nasty as it is for you.
Anyway, just add this to the list of “things you shouldn’t have to tell people”: when something says “not for human consumption” and you’re a human? Yeah, you probably shouldn’t consume it.
Happy Monday, everyone.
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Richard Ford Burley is a human, writer, and doctoral candidate at Boston College, as well as an editor at Ledger, the first academic journal devoted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, feminism, and futurism here at This Week In Tomorrow.