[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

The process of making potable water is complex, made in very sophisticated infrastructures. We can easily turn fresh water into something safely drinkable by simply adding a chlorine or iodine tablet.- incredibly useful if you're hiking, and don't want to fully rely on bottled water or whatever. Can we do this to milk with a simple, one-stage process, or is it too risky?

[Janus]

As someone who was basically raised on fresh (or raw) milk,  I'm a bit confused.  Why would you think that it is unsafe, in general, to drink?  As long as the animal that is milked is healthy and the milking conditions are clean, and the milk is refrigerated soon after milking, it is safe enough.
The big issue with raw milk is that, if left at ambient temp, it is a fertile breeding ground for pathogens.  If you are really worried about it, you can pasteurize it yourself, simply by heating it to ~100F for 20 minutes or so. 

[Petrochemicals]

If you try putting the milk in a container beneath the cow, far less stress on your neck I find.

[alancalverd]

AFAIK baby mammals drink milk direct from the source. This covers every species from laboratory mice to blue whales, including all apes. If you find the "fresh taste of the countryside" a bit overpowering, you could wipe the teat with alcohol.  Best get a friend to hold the head of the cow/sheep[/goat/horse if you are new to the game, and use a clean bucket.

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

Yes, OK, you could drink fresh milk and expect to be OK most of the time.   However, this is a science forum and someone needs to issue the government health warning and toe the party line on this one.

bTB  (Bovine Tuberculosis) is one example of a disease that has been studied in some detail.  The UK has experimented with things like culling badgers beacuse they could be one vector for spreading bTB.  As it happens, the evidence that badger culling makes any diference is far from conclusive.   In some cases, badger culling seems to have actually increased the spread of bTB.     One possible explanation for this is that badgers will travel further to find a mate when the population of badgers is small,  so that culling badgers can actually make an infected badger spread their disease over a larger area than they otherwise would.

bTB is caused by a bacterium  (Mycobacterium Bovis) which is most active in cattle but it can infect humans and cause symptoms similar or identical to TB  (human TB). 

As long as the animal that is milked is healthy.......

   Yes, but a cow can have bTB and appear healthy for a long time, quite possibly reaching old age and dying from unrelated conditions.

bTB is known to be found in mucus, puss and some other body fluids of cattle.   It is NOT usually directly produced in the milk but it only takes a minor injury (say an ulcer or infection in the mammary tissue of the cow) and some other body fluids can get into the milk.   

    One of the triumphs of the compulsory pasteurisation of milk in the UK is that (to the best of my knowledge when I studied this about 6 years ago) we have not seen ANY cases of TB in humans that seems to have been contracted by consuming milk.

   In conclusion, although it is very much a belt-and-braces approach and you probably could drink unpasteurised milk, it is very likely that the pasteurisation of milk has benefited public health and saved lives since it was made compulsory.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

Apropos unpastuerised milk: During a listeria scare in the 1990's I overhead a voice on a train saying "If listeria is all that dangerous, why aren't the streets full of dying Frenchmen?"

[Bored chemist]

Apropos unpastuerised milk: During a listeria scare in the 1990's I overhead a voice on a train saying "If listeria is all that dangerous, why aren't the streets full of dying Frenchmen?"

Oddly enough, in the 70s I heard the same about smoking.

[Petrochemicals]

The process of making potable water is complex, made in very sophisticated infrastructures. We can easily turn fresh water into something safely drinkable by simply adding a chlorine or iodine tablet.- incredibly useful if you're hiking, and don't want to fully rely on bottled water or whatever. Can we do this to milk with a simple, one-stage process, or is it too risky?

Chlorine in milk should work, chlorine in pretty much anything really.

The water tablets do not get rid of other matter though, if you have seen blue green algae kill dogs through the toxins they produce.

[alancalverd]

Oddly enough, in the 70s I heard the same about smoking.

eppur si moriebantur

[Bored chemist]

Chlorine in milk should work,

No it will not.
The chlorine will react with the first protein it comes across and after that it's useless.
Chlorine is only really good in nearly pure water.

Given PC's refusal to listen to me (because he didn't like having his errors pointed out), would someone please let him know that he shouldn't post dangerous nonsense

Back to the question.

If milk was not, in general, already safe to drink, mammals would be extinct.

If you want to get rid of TB, technically, you can pasteurise it but that's not an easy process to control if you are literally in a field.

More practically, you can boil it. That will kill the pathogens- possibly at the expense of the flavour.

[Janus]

AFAIK baby mammals drink milk direct from the source. This covers every species from laboratory mice to blue whales, including all apes. If you find the "fresh taste of the countryside" a bit overpowering, you could wipe the teat with alcohol.  Best get a friend to hold the head of the cow/sheep[/goat/horse if you are new to the game, and use a clean bucket.

Based on a fair amount of personal experience, it is generally not the head you need to worry about.

[Petrochemicals]

I thought they didn't pasturise with heat anymore, I thought the pressure of homogenisation did the heating/ cooling/ killing thing all in one. If so try a paint sprayer or jet washer, that ought to do it.

Milk is only made long term storable in the same methods as other foods, UHT milk is treated with heat to kill all bacteria so you can store it at room temperature. Evaporated milk uses sugar as a preservative, you could try salting smoking, drying.

[Bored chemist]

I thought they didn't pasturise with heat anymore, I thought the pressure of homogenisation did the heating/ cooling/ killing thing all in one. If so try a paint sprayer or jet washer, that ought to do it.

Could someone tell PC he has got it wrong again.

[alancalverd]

Based on a fair amount of personal experience, it is generally not the head you need to worry about.

True, but few people are capable of holding a cow's or horse's hind legs without getting injured. At least if someone holds her head she's less likely to walk away in mid-process.

[Bored chemist]

you could wipe the teat with alcohol. 

I suspect that would sting a bit, at which point, someone holding the cow's head isn't going to stop her kicking you into next week.

[alancalverd]

A standard teat spray used in commercial milking parlours consists of iodine in alcohol and doesn't seem to upset them much. They keep the other end occupied with a few pellets of  food, so sandwich in - milk out should be a fair exchange.

[Zer0]

I know this OP has reached it's Conclusion.
& Quite Nice suggestions & advices from Users.

Just wanted to add, if it's about hiking or going off to a remote far off place, keep Powdered Milk in mind.

ps - if no Water or Fire availability, Then Please Quit...
Planning the Trip..
It Simply ain't Worth it!
(& For heaven's sake, Inform someone before leaving.)