Raw milk in a not-so-clean area?

[SAmama]

We live in Asia in a rural area. I have been reading a little bit about raw milk and realise that it is helpful with a lot of things. I don't worry too much about bacteria, seeing that we would use it to make yogurt and I think the good stuff will "out-culture" the bad stuff. I do wonder about parasites (worms, amoebas, giardia). The conditions in which the cows are kept and milked are not clean. Is this just not a wise idea? Does anyone know if culturing milk would kill the worm eggs and other badies? Giardia is quite common here and the last thing I would want is to get Giardia from something I thought would keep us healthy? DH read somewhere that breast milk keeps kids from getting infected with giardia. Would the same things in breast milk that does that be in cows milk? Does anyone know anything about this or where I can get info.

[saratc]

I wouldn't drink raw milk from an unclean source. But it's still better than homogenized milk, so I would get it and cook it to get any bad stuff out. Yogurt bacteria is not that strong so it would not out-culture the bad stuff. This is why it's usually recommended to heat up the milk to 180 or so when making yogurt.

[wagamama]

I'm in a similar boat. We are in Nigeria, and there is no clean, safe source of raw milk. : I make do with yogurt made from pasteurized milk.

I did a bit of Internet "research" when we moved to Nigeria, and read that two of the biggest concerns with untested raw milk are tuberculosis and something scary called brucellus (I've got that wrong, sorry can't recall the exact name).

I think the suggestion to boil the milk is a good one. I've read (on this forum) that boiling is better than pasteurizing.

At least I know enough to avoid the UHT milk that all the expats here drink, and the powdered milk that, sadly, many locals use and give to their children.

[SAmama]

Thanks for replying. Most of the expats here use the UHT stuff as well. DH hates the taste and I can't have milk right now anyway. I guess we will just go with the raw milk and boil it ourselves. I am pretty sure that the cows here are often sick and the process of handling the cows are not clean at all. So we will not risk it.
I just heard from someone else who cannot have pasteurised milk but can have the local milk after it is boiled. Interesting.