Ropy milk! Please help!

[Laurie]

Yesterday I discovered there was something weird about the milk as I poured it into a bowl to make pudding.  I didn't know the term ropy until later, but I could pull up stringy milk with my whisk before I added the pudding mix.  My son was already eating his cereal and I told him not to eat anymore.   He has been fine so far...can I assume that if he hasn't gotten sick from eating it yesterday morning that he'll be alright?   

I called the number on the carton and gave the sell by date and other information to the man on the phone.   We have another carton with the same date, etc. and this morning I opened it and poured it into a glass pitcher.  It looks normal to me, but I want to dump it and my husband thinks it's safe to use.  My view is that something is probably lurking in this milk as well.  It makes me feel sick just to think about giving it to my kids so I plan to dump it now that dh has left for work! 

I'm already upset with my Ritz cracker scare from a few weeks ago...the brown stuff smeared all along the crackers that looks like peanut butter but isn't...and now I've got to worry about ropy milk.

 

 

[Melissa in Australia]

Could be that a cow had mastitis?

or the milk hasn’t been stored at the correct temperature 

 

[fairfarmhand]

what kind of milk is this? I assume milk from a commercial dairy? What did the strings or ropes look like? Yogurt? Mucus? 
 

remember that a dairy only knows what happens to their product as far as when it leaves to go to the stores or distribution centers. So if your grocery has a cooler go out or a rack of milk is left out and gets warm, that will effect the milk quality and it’s not the dairy’s fault.

I have home milk cows and stringy milk is a dead giveaway for mastitis. But commercial dairies test and filter and pasteurize and homogenize so I would be surprised if mastitis milk managed to get through a commercial supply chain to you.

[Katy]

If it’s pasteurized no one will get sick. The other carton is likely fine. Unless you bought it from a farmer you know with only one cow it’s very unlikely to have come from the same cow. 

[Laurie]

1 minute ago, fairfarmhand said:

what kind of milk is this? I assume milk from a commercial dairy? What did the strings or ropes look like? Yogurt? Mucus? 
 

remember that a dairy only knows what happens to their product as far as when it leaves to go to the stores or distribution centers. So if your grocery has a cooler go out or a rack of milk is left out and gets warm, that will effect the milk quality and it’s not the dairy’s fault.

I have home milk cows and stringy milk is a dead giveaway for mastitis. But commercial dairies test and filter and pasteurize and homogenize so I would be surprised if mastitis milk managed to get through a commercial supply chain to you.

This is a carton of lactose-free 2% milk that I bought at the grocery store.  The strings looked like mucus.

[Laurie]

5 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

 

or the milk hasn’t been stored at the correct temperature 

 

I don't know what happened to the carton before I brought it home, but I know it was stored at the right temp. in our refrigerator because I have a thermometer in the fridge in addition to the built-in temp controls and I check it.  (I'm definitely a fanatic about food safety.)

[Laurie]

4 minutes ago, Katy said:

If it’s pasteurized no one will get sick. The other carton is likely fine. Unless you bought it from a farmer you know with only one cow it’s very unlikely to have come from the same cow. 

Thank you!  Yes, it's pasteurized.  

[Forget-Me-Not]

A quick Google search says that it’s caused by gram-negative bacteria introduced after pasteurization. It’s a form of spoilage. I’d toss it for sure. 

[Laurie]

10 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

 
 

remember that a dairy only knows what happens to their product as far as when it leaves to go to the stores or distribution centers. So if your grocery has a cooler go out or a rack of milk is left out and gets warm, that will effect the milk quality and it’s not the dairy’s fault.
 

This is a big concern of mine.  I shop really early in the morning, and it always bothers me to find random foods that require refrigeration left out on shelves next the pasta or something.  It happens a lot, and when I see something like this I always give it to someone working at the store so they can throw it away, but it does make me paranoid about the cold stuff that I buy.  When I take things from the cold and freezer sections I usually take the package or carton that is behind the one of front, just in case someone has just put the one in front back in the cold after it sat out all night.  (I know this doesn't guarantee anything, but I do it anyway.)    I know that they have problems at the store where I shop with people coming into the store at night and they hang around, put things into shopping carts so they look like they're legitimate shoppers,  but then walk out later saying they don't have any money.  

 

[Laurie]

5 minutes ago, Forget-Me-Not said:

A quick Google search says that it’s caused by gram-negative bacteria introduced after pasteurization. It’s a form of spoilage. I’d toss it for sure. 

My googling left me confused.  It sounded to me like there are different causes for this ropiness.   We won't be using the rest of the carton, but I've been  worried about whether my son can still get sick from it.  

[fairfarmhand]

I think if your kid was going to get sick from it, he would already be feeling the results.

 

Also, is there another store where you can shop? Because I would be nervous about this place.

[Laurie]

7 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

I think if your kid was going to get sick from it, he would already be feeling the results.

 

Also, is there another store where you can shop? Because I would be nervous about this place.

Thank you.  I've been so worried about my son.  

The city where I live is doomed.  All the stores around here have the same problems, and sadly from what I've experienced this one is one of the better places.  

[Katy]

It’s revolting but the kind of bacteria that causes it after pasteurization isn’t dangerous to humans. Maybe try soy milk for a while.  

[Selkie]

Ugh, that sounds so disgusting.🤢 I'm glad your ds is feeling okay.

[mathnerd]

2 hours ago, Laurie said:

Thank you.  I've been so worried about my son.  

The city where I live is doomed.  All the stores around here have the same problems, and sadly from what I've experienced this one is one of the better places.  

If it helps, I had spoilage of 2 gallons of organic milk that I bought from a highly reputable chain (which everyone is familiar with 😉 ) in the last month. This week, I bought 4 pounds of mozzarella with a "use by" date of Feb 2021 and came home and tried to open it to portion it into containers and it was full of black mold inside though it was invisible from the outside of the packaging. All this to say that due to Covid, SIP, employee shortages, erratic buying behaviors of people who either stock up or never go out, the dairy products in my local area are probably lying in the warehouses or are not flying off the shelves as they normally do and are sitting there for longer in not-ideal conditions etc. I ended up making paneer cheese with the stringy milk that had white blobs floating in it. I drove back to the store and retuned the mozzarella cheese after complaining to them about how poorly refrigerated the item was and that the whole lot in their display was probably riddled with mold and they should throw it out.

Edited December 22, 2020 by mathnerd

[YaelAldrich]

There is a type of bacteria and yeast that makes ropy yogurt.  So it likely isn't dangerous but definitely unappealing if that's not what you're expecting.

[MercyA]

I'd say it's just a type of spoilage. A little bit of sour milk generally doesn't make people sick.

[Soror]

I hope your son continues to stay well, I'm guessing as pp said that if he is fine now he will continue to be so.

I'm not easily grossed out and not very paranoid on food safety BUT no way I'd use the rest of it. Even using that would make me feel sick. Milk grosses me out anyway, I'd thrown it out as soon as I seen it was all ropy. ick.

[Ausmumof3]

4 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

Could be that a cow had mastitis?

or the milk hasn’t been stored at the correct temperature 

 

Yep that was my first thought 

followed by Ewww yuck.  Hope ur kids ok.

[kbutton]

4 hours ago, Laurie said:

This is a carton of lactose-free 2% milk that I bought at the grocery store.  The strings looked like mucus.

I don’t remember if the texture was stringy, but I stopped buying lactose free milk because of texture issues with thickeners. I also never particularly liked soy, rice, or nut milks, but the texture thing always popped up with those too. 

[Selkie]

54 minutes ago, kbutton said:

I don’t remember if the texture was stringy, but I stopped buying lactose free milk because of texture issues with thickeners. I also never particularly liked soy, rice, or nut milks, but the texture thing always popped up with those too. 

The Elmhurst brand of nut milks is really good because they don’t use thickeners or other ingredients, just nuts and filtered water.

[Laurie]

20 hours ago, YaelAldrich said:

There is a type of bacteria and yeast that makes ropy yogurt.  So it likely isn't dangerous but definitely unappealing if that's not what you're expecting.

This is so interesting, now that I know that my son probably won't die from the carton of milk I bought. 

I just searched for ropy yogurt and found instructions from someone who makes and eats what he called his heirloom yogurt called viili.  He admits it looks like Nickelodeon gak, but he eats it and lives to tell about it.  I'll take his word for it that it's delicious since I'm not an adventurous eater!

 

[YaelAldrich]

7 hours ago, Laurie said:

This is so interesting, now that I know that my son probably won't die from the carton of milk I bought. 

I just searched for ropy yogurt and found instructions from someone who makes and eats what he called his heirloom yogurt called viili.  He admits it looks like Nickelodeon gak, but he eats it and lives to tell about it.  I'll take his word for it that it's delicious since I'm not an adventurous eater!

 

I've had filmjolk which is also kind of ropy and liquidy. No death!