Do not fucking drink raw milk. I know a lot of smaller farmers will sell it but look at me, DO NOT FUCKING DRINK RAW MILK. There are NO health benefits to this, anyone claiming there are is, regardless of intention, spreading pseudoscience wellness culture bullshit. Raw milk is not safe and will get you VERY sick, especially with the current H5N1 outbreak, you should be avoiding unpasteurized milk at all costs. Pasteurization does not do anything/add anything to milk that makes it bad for you, it's legit just heating to a high temperature up for a couple of seconds to kill germs or viruses or bacteria, which I cannot stress enough, is a good thing that has saved millions of lives. For the love of god, avoid raw milk.
Cook your eggs all the way through. This hurts, believe me it hurts I fucking love runny eggs, but between the likely relax in food safety regulations and the unknowns around H5N1 consuming under-cooked eggs turning into a huge risk.
Wash your veggies!! I always see people say produce can't cause food-borne illnesses but that's not true, and rn it's gonna be a really fucking good idea to properly clean produce, EVEN if it comes from a local small farm.
This is also a great time to familiarize yourself with food safety rules and how to prepare meat, fish, eggs, and even vegetables in a way that kills anything harmful that might be lingering in or on them. Wash your veggies. Cook chicken and pork and fish to the correct temperature. I would honestly probably avoid rare steak, and don't do burgers rare either. Learn the signs of botulism contamination as well. Don't get so panicked that you never eat anything but most people are not taught how to safely prepare food unless they end up working in a professional kitchen and rn it's gonna be important for you to know this shit.
I don't think telling people they have to avoid pre-cooked food is helpful given how many poor, elderly, and disabled people rely on that stuff. The best bet if you're worried about it is to keep an eye on recall lists and make sure you cook anything frozen or pre-packaged correctly, or even cook it extra or again if you want. Like don't just re-heat the jarred pasta sauce, heat it to a temperature that will kill anything lingering in there, habits like that can help a lot especially if you know the correct temperatures needed to make the food safe. If you can cook and have disabled friends or family who can't, offer to help. Batch cook stuff that can be frozen, offer to take them to farmer's markets or the store, keep an eye on that recall list and notify them or even help them go through their food and throw out things. All of this takes time and energy and resources a lot of poor, elderly, and disabled people just don't have. So if you can help them, help them.
Also while yes local farms are less likely to be completely fucking evil, they are not immune to bad habits and disease and outright idiocy. Right now we are dealing with a truly MASSIVE bird flu(H5N1) outbreak in chickens and cows as well as wild birds and a lot of other mammals, and that includes livestock on small farms. The first H5N1 infections found in pigs were on a backyard farm that let it's livestock mingle and share water/feed. And again, local farmers will absolutely sell raw milk and swear up and down that it's fine and healthy and not a problem at all. You cannot just blindly trust small/local farms to protect you, you must back it up with proper food safety and common sense. Also if you're going to a farmer's market or to tour a small farm you should mask, frequently wash your hands, and avoid touching any animals you don't know 100% for sure aren't sick. I don't think H5N1 is going to go H2H but every new infection increases the risk of mutation and you need to be aware of it.
On the subject of H5N1, start paying attention to it. The Biden Administration is dropping the ball on this shit so hard it's genuinely scary, and I know for a fact if it does go H2H Trump will not handle it at all. Covid was the warm up, we do NOT want to see a bird flu pandemic in humans, especially with Trump in charge.
Buy and wear masks, learn the signs of illness in wild animals and honestly unless you really know what you're doing you should probably avoid touching wild animals at all right now, especially wild birds. If you go to a farm or farmer's market or fair mask up, wash your hands, and avoid direct contact with animals if you can. Also bring your fucking cats inside, bird flu is lethal in cats and they will drag it into your house and probably get you sick too, and again, that's one more chance for H5N1 to mutate. And if you won't by god at least get your pets vaccinated, there are low-cost clinics and I think even PetSmart will do them for cheap, it's important for not just us but our pets as well to avoid catching and spreading preventable illnesses.
Disabled people have been screaming for years now about public health being completely destroyed and covid has done irreparable damage to the way we as a society see health and safety, even amongst leftists and progressives, which is very fucking bad. Learn to protect yourself and others, please, it's on us now.
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