Across the country, the thirst for an illicit beverage is growing. Raw milk can’t be sold legally for human consumption in many states, but some 11 million Americans drink it anyway as wellness influencers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., extol its benefits. They do so despite a well-established risk of disease and death: E. coli, salmonella, and listeria have all been found in unpasteurized milk.
This year, a new pathogen has been added to the list. Bird flu was first detected in American dairy cows in March, and in June, an FDA study found infectious viral particles in dozens of raw-milk samples. Previous bird-flu outbreaks have collectively killed more than half of people who get infected. This week, California health officials temporarily shut down production at Raw Farm, a raw-milk dairy, because they detected bird-flu virus in its products. Mark McAfee, who runs Raw Farm, told me that “our consumers are freaking out”—not because they fear being exposed to a potentially deadly virus, but because their supply is at stake. According to McAfee, concerns about further shutdowns have led raw-milk drinkers nationwide to “try to get what they can.”
Stocking up on bird-flu juice may seem senseless to most Americans, and yet it’s a logical extension of the ideology that drives raw-milk enthusiasts. The fundamental appeal of raw milk is that its rawness—which includes all of the biologically active molecules passed down from udder to glass, be they strengthening or sickening—makes it both healthy and safe. To the people who drink it, the perceived health benefits of raw milk outweigh, or even negate, the risks.
Health agencies maintain that pasteurized milk is the healthiest and safest choice. From 1998 to 2018, 202 foodborne-illness outbreaks were linked to raw milk; only nine were linked to pasteurized milk. When bird flu first showed up in dairy cows, the CDC and FDA assured the public that the virus was inactivated by pasteurization, rendering conventional milk safe (albeit full of harmless virus particles). The milk industry echoes these points. “There are no demonstrated benefits to consuming raw milk compared to pasteurized milk,” a National Dairy Council spokesperson told me. “Some people have a strong emotional investment in believing so, but scientific research does not validate this.”
Even though enthusiasm for raw milk isn’t backed up by research, the arguments in favor of the beverage are couched in scientific terms. The main health argument in favor of the drink is that it contains biologically active compounds, or bioactives—chemicals whose actions in the body may provide a health benefit—that are present in foods such as fruits, whole grains, and red wine and can be inactivated by pasteurization. McAfee cited a 2021 study, led by Tiantian Lin at Cornell University, that showed raw milk can contain bioactives that are known to work against hypertension, cancer, inflammation, and viruses. When I called Lin this week, she told me that these bioactives are indeed present at low concentrations in raw milk, but to reach the daily recommended intake of any particular bioactive, you’d have to drink a lot of raw milk—up to four liters a day for the protein lactoferrin, for example. Pasteurized milk is sometimes fortified with additional bioactives, such as calcium and vitamin D, to add health benefits. No matter what benefits may be reaped from the bioactives in raw milk, Lin said, drinking it is simply too unsafe to recommend.
Raw-milk drinkers also assert that unpasteurized milk boosts immunity, so drinking it is not harmful but protective. The basic idea, according to the trade and advocacy organization Raw Milk Institute, is that exposure to the “active immune factors, biodiversity, prebiotics, intact protective proteins and other elements” in raw milk builds up the immune system, helping to defend against infectious disease and lower rates of asthma, eczema, and allergies. Raw milk is also thought to support the health of the gut microbiome, much like yogurt. These arguments date back more than a century; in 1910, at New York’s Conference on Milk Problems, “raw milk supporters argued that heating destroyed many of the nutritious properties of milk, as well as the beneficial bacteria,” the Pace University sociologist E. Melanie Dupuis wrote in her book Milk: Nature’s Perfect Food. McAfee told me that bird flu doesn’t worry him because the virus is “inactivated by the bioactives and the antibodies in raw milk.” Some bioactives have antiviral activity, but raw milk has not been shown to neutralize bird flu. Earlier this year, wellness devotees largely hailing from California sought out raw milk contaminated with bird flu in the hopes that drinking it would give them antibodies. Drinking raw milk, in this view, is like bringing kids to a measles party: Immunity may result, as long as everyone survives.
The other key piece of the raw-milk claim is that it is held to higher safety standards than pasteurized milk. This, too, is an old argument. Dupuis told me that when pasteurization was first introduced to major American dairies in the 1890s, raw-milk supporters argued that America’s dairies could simply be kept so clean that the milk they produced would be as safe as pasteurized milk. Certifying raw-milk dairies was a nice idea, but maintaining those high standards was so costly that the resulting milk was wildly unaffordable, Dupuis wrote in Milk. This week, McAfee told me that his farm maintains the production standards of the Raw Milk Institute, which he founded. These include testing regularly for pathogens in milk and screening for diseases in cattle, and maintaining the same maximum level of bacteria as pasteurized milk. Of course, this point doesn’t fit into the argument that raw milk isn’t risky in the first place.
So far, no other raw-milk farms in the United States have been shut down because of bird flu. But nationwide, 695 dairy herds in 15 states have tested positive for bird flu; the idea that Raw Farm is the only raw-dairy provider with bird flu in its product seems far-fetched. The exact risk that poses to people who drink it remains unclear. There are no reports of people becoming infected with bird flu after drinking tainted raw milk, but cats that did so have died.
Amid this uncertain risk and rising bird-flu rates in cattle, raw milk is becoming ever more politicized. In Arkansas, a “Raw Milk Revolution” rally in October preceded the proposal of a bill to deregulate sales. The Texas agricultural commissioner, arguing to legalize raw milk in a recent editorial, wrote, “There’s nothing more American than the freedom to choose what kind of food you eat.” Several weeks ago, Kennedy, who could soon lead the Department of Health and Human Services, promised to end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of raw milk.
The foundation of Kennedy’s crusade is defying establishment views, not just on raw milk but also on beef tallow, fluoride, and vaccines. Among his followers, the action against Raw Farm by California public-health officials can only add to raw milk’s edgy appeal. All of this is happening just as the danger raw milk poses could skyrocket thanks to bird flu, the very reason Raw Farm was put on ice. Even if bird flu is found in more raw-dairy products—and more farms are shut down by the government—the thirst for raw milk will only grow.
About the Author
Yasmin Tayag is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
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