Unpasteurized dairy is having a mo(o)ment.
Raw milk has earned quite a bit of buzz in the past month thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has railed against the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of it and is expected to push for federal legalization as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Meanwhile, sales spiked by as much as 65% earlier this year, with raw milk proponents on social media claiming it’s a nutritional powerhouse packed with probiotics and can aid digestion, clear skin, balance hormones and repair muscles.
The Post talked to two of them, one of whom says she and her husband drink four gallons a week. Both say they’ve never experienced any negative side effects and insist there are safe ways to source the raw stuff — if you know where to go and ask the right questions.
Still, an infectious disease doctor warns that skipping pasteurization still very much puts people at risk for serious health issues, including vomiting, diarrhea and even death. And those probiotics? The doc says they’re only in your milk if something very, very gross happened.
Humans have been drinking animal milk for roughly 10,000 years, and the vast majority of it has been raw — meaning not pasteurized. Pasteurization, a process that kills bacteria and harmful organisms by heating milk to a specific temperature for a designated period, was implemented in the US in the early 20th century.
In a 2023 study, 4.4% of Americans reported drinking raw milk in the past year, while 1% said they drink it weekly.
Raw milk acolytes say that in the process of eliminating harmful bacteria, pasteurization also kills off many of the existing beneficial bacteria and exacerbates issues like lactose intolerance and eczema.
Meet the raw milk super fans
One of those raw dairy devotee is Lisa Clark, a nutritional therapy practitioner in Texas who started drinking it at age 15.
“I do it for the health benefits; raw milk is teeming with beneficial bioactives, enzymes and probiotics which would be destroyed by pasteurization,” she told The Post. She and her husband go through about four gallons per week, drinking it fresh — “it’s so sweet and creamy” — and using it to make homemade kefir.
“Raw milk is extremely easy on my digestion,” she said. “I was lactose intolerant as a child and would frequently suffer adverse reactions to pasteurized dairy. Meanwhile, I thrive on raw dairy.”
She likes the “enzymes, bioactives and probiotics,” noting that probiotics are great for gut health.
Annemarie Sullivan, a Texas-based sustainable farmer and raw milk distributor, has also been drinking raw milk since she was a teen.
“I find it to be a great source of balanced energy,” she told The Post, adding that others tell her it healed their skin issues and helps with workout recovery. “It provides a much healthier and smoother boost of energy than an energy drink or a coffee.
“It’s nutritional profile is a great blend of hydration, fats, protein and a little bit of sugar, which is an amazing way for me to start a day or get through a long day of farm work without a crazy crash like caffeine can leave.”
Neither she nor Clark say they’ve ever gotten sick from drinking it.
“In 12+ years of almost daily raw milk consumption, I can’t say I’ve ever been negatively impacted,” Sullivan said. “Definitely nothing I’ve ever required treatment for or even remotely made me reconsider my consumption.”
Sullivan, who distributes hundreds of gallons of raw milk a month from a licensed source to her local community, has “never had a single reported issue or health complaint in connection to it.”
“However, I can tell you about plenty of people I know that suffered with daily health issues drinking high-temp pasteurized milk from the store, that disappeared once they switched to local raw milk.”
Pasteurization out to pasture?
Clark and Sullivan assert that while pasteurizing made sense a hundred or more years ago, it doesn’t anymore.
“Pasteurization is an 1800s solution to an 1800s problem,” Clark said. “We’ve consumed raw milk for thousands of years. It didn’t become an issue until we industrialized and moved cows into confinement with filthy conditions, inappropriate diets and no knowledge of sanitation. Humanity has come a long way since then.
“I believe the benefits of quality raw milk far outweigh any risks. With our modern knowledge and equipment, we are more than capable of producing quality raw milk. You just need to find a good producer.”
Sullivan agrees, arguing that dairy products “weren’t being produced to very high standards” in the early to mid-1900s.
“They discovered that you could cook the milk and kill the bacteria, and I suppose that was easier than addressing root issues like diseases in dairy cattle, unsanitary conditions, strict cleanliness protocols and the systemic health of land and animal,” she said. “Our scientists know a lot more about microbial life now than we did one hundred years ago, and we can use that to our advantage to produce a food that is safer than ever.”
Is raw milk safe? What the doctors say
Though Clark and Sullivan have been fortunate enough to not get sick, unpasteurized milk can harbor bacteria that cause common food-borne illnesses such as salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, and E. coli.
“There are many risks of consuming raw milk,” Dr. Uzma Syed, a board-certified infectious disease specialist and Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told The Post. “Pasteurization has enabled safe consumption of milk for decades.”
Serious illness and hospitalization can occur, she added, including everything from from mild abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea to severe persisting diarrhea and dehydration, kidney failure and death.
Syed said the risk of getting sick from disease-causing bacteria in raw milk is “very high” and you’ll only get probiotics if there’s something extra mixed in.
“There are no probiotics present in raw milk unless there is fecal contamination of the milk,” she said. “There are no additional enzymes in raw milk that aid digestion or immune response.”
Contamination can occur at various points throughout the milking process, as bacteria lingers everywhere from the cow’s udders to the farmer’s hands.
Syed noted that given the recent bird flu outbreak in dairy cows, raw milk poses a timely threat as the CDC has warned that it might be possible to contract the disease from drinking unpasteurized milk.
What’s the future for raw milk?
As of 1973, the federal government has required that all milk sold across state lines be pasteurized.
But RFK Jr., expected to be appointed Health and Human Services Secretary under the new Trump administration, is among the growing contingent of raw milk advocates, proclaiming in 2022 that it’s the only kind he drinks.
If appointed, the former environmental attorney is expected to push for federal legalization of raw milk. Presently, as many as 30 states allow raw milk to be sold. While the remaining 20 states prohibit raw milk sales in some form, a growing number of state legislations are revisiting the raw milk debate — Iowa legalized the sale of raw milk in 2023, while Illinois re-upped a bill to expand sales earlier this year.
Safety first? How the fans source their milk
Both Clark and Sullivan maintain that caution should be exercised when sourcing and consuming raw dairy.
“To make a blanket statement and say raw milk is risk-free is irresponsible and not true!” Sullivan said. “Like any raw food, raw milk is susceptible to bacterial contamination and holds the potential to make the consumer sick.”
Clark emphasized the importance of quality sourcing, encouraging consumers to vet producers by posing questions about sanitation precautions, whether they test for bacteria count, and how fast they let the milk cool below 40 degrees.
Good signs, she said, are handwashing before milking or bottling, pre-washing the udders, using an iodine teat dip, and sanitizing the milking equipment with bleach and acid rinse.
Clark added that the most critical question she thinks consumers can ask producers is the shelf life of raw milk: Less than two weeks is a bad sign, and Clark personally expects that it should last three weeks or more.
For Syed, however, there is no situation in which raw milk should be recommended or ingested.
“Prior to pasteurization, there was significant illness from consumption of raw milk,” she said. “We have been fortunate to have a significant decline in these infections and illnesses in the general population due to safer milk production and consumption.”
Sullivan maintains that risk assessment should be left to the consumer’s discretion, a bit of let freedom ring and udders swing, if you will.
“I certainly don’t think we should immediately jump into putting raw milk into every store fridge. Conversations need to be held around the balance of food freedom and food safety,” she said.
“Most can agree that nicotine, alcohol and sugar are not very good for human health, and yet those items are readily available to purchase. That same freedom of choice is not nearly as available when it comes to raw milk, a product many people experience improved health with.”
