Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the resurgence of interest in the consumption and production of donkey milk in Croatia as a result of its suggested health benefits. It explores how microbial risk is perceived and managed by both donkey milk farmers and its consumers.

Paper long abstract:

Recently in Croatia, there has been a resurgence of interest in the production and consumption of raw donkey milk. Its advocates say that it is effective as a complement to mainstream medical therapies, particularly for children with chronic pulmonary conditions. Bearing in mind that it is drunk in its raw form, and that potential consumers are often immuno-compromised persons, the question I want to ask in this paper is how is the microbial risk of drinking raw donkey milk both perceived and managed?

In order to explore this, I firstly offer a brief general overview of donkey milk farming where I set it within the context of other forms of dairy farming in Croatia. I then turn to explore how both donkey milk farmers perceive and manage microbial risk. I consider their practices of storing and transporting milk, and how they employ scientific discourses to manage microbial risk. I also focus on the consumers in detail. I ask who are the persons who drink this milk, how did they come to decide to drink it, and what effects they consider their consumption of donkey milk has had on either their own, or their child's, health.

Having done this, in the very last part of this paper I suggest that a repeated form of "appropriation" is visible, both in the milking of jennies whilst they are still feeding their foals, to employing humanness as a way of conceptually reducing microbial risk, to presenting donkey milk as a "natural antibiotic".