Raw Milk and the Collapse of Consensus Reality

Louis Pasteur didn’t set out to make milk safer. 

A scientific jack-of-all trades, born in 1822 in eastern France, Pasteur pioneered fields from stereochemistry to microbiology. He was also relentlessly practical, using his restless intellect to improve French beer and wine, which—far from the farmyard—is how pasteurization was born.

In 1857, while aiding an acquaintance who sought to create a commercially viable beetroot liquor, Pasteur discovered that fermentation was caused by microorganisms, rather than spontaneous generation or the alchemical transformation of sugar into alcohol. This was fortunate not just for the would-be beetroot-liquor mogul, but for all of France. In the aftermath of the nation’s crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, Pasteur launched a “revenge beer” campaign, proving that by flash-heating beer in an airless, sterile container he could prevent France’s finest brews from going cloudy over time, unlike their murky German counterparts. As a byproduct, he fundamentally changed the human race's relationship to food safety, and once the process migrated to milk, saved the lives of countless children around the world. But don't worry: in 2024, a cadre of the most militantly misinformed people you can possibly imagine are here to Make America Sick Again.

Despite the revenge-beer campaign, the principal champions of applying pasteurization to milk were Germans: in 1886, Franz von Soxhlet developed the first commercial milk-pasteurization apparatus. Two German Jews—Abraham Jacobi, considered the father of American pediatrics, and Nathan Straus, a businessman and philanthropist who had lost two children to milk-borne tuberculosis—set about spreading the miracle of pasteurized milk throughout America. A fatty, nutritious, and chemically complex substrate, milk can harbor some pretty gnarly diseases—though at the fin de siecle, it was the primary source of food for infants. In an industrial context, this was a recipe for disaster: thin and bluish “swill milk” from sickly cows in commercial dairies proliferated wildly, often adulterated with chalk and plaster of Paris by unscrupulous peddlers. Non-pasteurized milk can harbor human and bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis, streptococcal infections, diphtheria, and “summer diarrhea”—a major contributor to the wildly high rate of infant mortality during the Industrial Revolution. 

Pasteurization changed the dairy game. By 1911, Chicago and New York had mandated milk pasteurization in commercial operations, with other major cities quickly following suit; by 1936, 98% of milk in the United States was pasteurized. This coincided with lots of other medical discoveries and improvements in public hygiene, but the milk-pasteurization push had particularly drastic effects: between 1890 and 1915, infant mortality dropped by more than half. By midcentury, babies drinking swill milk and dying of diarrhea was largely a thing of the past. Most people would agree that this is, generally, a good thing. I personally drink milk daily with my coffee; I am glad it doesn’t come with a side of typhoid. 

But, of course, we live in a time, and in a society, where not everyone agrees. The movement for “raw” unpasteurized milk has been gathering steam for years, and is currently operating at a fever pitch, between social media influencers and right-wing figures actually affecting state laws. Which is… upsetting, to put it very mildly. Putting pasteurization in historical context makes the movement against it all the more stark: we’re talking about people who, wittingly or not, seek to bring back widespread diphtheria and babies shitting themselves to death. It’s not a good scene.

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And it’s not as if pasteurization hasn’t had skeptics all along; back in the 1890s, authorities wanted to clean up the dairies, rather than flash-boil milk (though in hindsight this seems like a classic both/and situation). Commercial pasteurization wasn’t standardized across the US until the mid-twentieth century, leading to both incidents of milk that promised safety but didn’t deliver it, or milk that was boiled too hot and too long and provided a burnt, bruleed flavor repugnant to its drinkers. 

It’s just that the contemporary opponents of pasteurization—the “raw milk” movement, as they call themselves—are so fucking dumb, and so knee-jerk about it. The movement is endorsed by such disparate grifters as Gwyneth Paltrow; RFK Jr.’s erstwhile running mate, Nicole Shanahan; Christian TikTokers; the existentially stifled Mormon tradwife that is the wanly smiling face of Ballerina Farm. The overwhelming number of recent raw-milk converts—and its loudest current evangelists—are on the far right: over in the raw milk aisle you’ll find an assortment of right-wing Fitness Guys with steroidal vasculation filming themselves chugging raw milk, alongside Alex Jones, QAnon influencers, the CEO of racist Twitter clone Gab, and a motley assortment of also-ran far-right Congressional candidates, plus organizations like the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.

The United States—in typical American fashion—currently has a patchwork of contradictory laws across different states permitting unpasteurized milk sales. Most are fairly keen on restricting mass marketing of the products, and some states have a “bring your own bucket” statute that stipulates that raw milk buyers must bring their own containers collect that sweet sweet unpasteurized udder juice. But the FDA bans interstate sales of raw milk. Naturally, in the current petri dish of bizarro right-wing thought, this translates into “government overreach” and “state-approved milk,” which clearly tastes worse and is less “nutritious” (proof pending) than pasteurized milk. Which, again, is milk that has been heated up for a bit. No chemicals added. Of all the fucked-up industrial processes happening to our food, this one is just so benign, and so obviously beneficial! It’s insane that this has become a point of contention. 

I just want to remind you that infant mortality from diarrhea dropped 83% between 1910 and 1930—from 21,100 in 1910 to 3,500 in 1930; since then, the phenomenon once known as “cholera infantum” has largely disappeared. But hey, what are 17,600 dead children in the face of individual freedom? The freedom to shit yourself to death is a beautiful American freedom and it’s a parent’s inalienable right to feed their child tubercular freedom milk. (I can’t even really joke about this because it makes me so fucking angry.)  

Naturally, the explosion in right-wing promotion of raw milk coincided with the covid-19 pandemic—that’s according to the absolute asshole in charge of Raw Farm, which produces a wide variety of bacteria-friendly lactose-based products in Fresno, California. Amid a wave of skepticism of other public health initiatives, dairy ghoul Mark McAfee cashed in, growing his business to about $30 million a year as the largest raw milk provider in California. The overlap between anti-vaxxers and raw-milk enthusiasts is vast; it’s part of the long, slippery slope from crunchy-granola hippie-flavored questioning of The System to mainlining QAnon-style far-right propaganda, and in either case the winner in this equation is Big Disease. Cholera infantum here we come!

Of course, before I get entirely too carried away on my raw-milk rant, it’s important to recall that this is a relatively small segment of the population. Consumption is on the rise—Louisiana, for example, passed a law this very summer legalizing raw milk sales statewide—but a study published in the journal Emerging and Infectious Diseases put the percentage of US consumers who drink raw milk at 3.5%, as of 2014, so roughly ten million people. 

What’s amazing, though, as demonstrated by that same study, is that unpasteurized dairy products is responsible for 96% of illnesses caused by contaminated dairy products over the five-year period surveyed, making you 840 times more likely to get sick from raw milk versus pasteurized milk. That is a wild risk assessment to eyeball and blithely take on for yourself, let alone your family.

I should also note, as someone who once drank directly from a cow’s udder and has in fact consumed raw milk more than once (while working on organic farms that had cows like ten feet from where I was sleeping), that there are circumstances where it’s probably OK—like if you live on a farm and your cows are healthy, or your neighbor across the street gives you a fresh pint still warm from Bessie, or whatever. It’s also important to note that modern commercial dairies do not resemble this scenario whatsoever. Commercial dairies pool milk from lots of sources with varying levels of cleanliness and exposure to bacteria, store it over relatively long periods of time, ship it across state lines, and lots of other stuff that would cause raw milk to absolutely seethe with a veritable microbe rave ready to give you instant megatyphoid. The prospect of a Trumpian FDA allowing interstate raw milk sales is pretty goddamn grim (particularly if Trump’s new bosom buddy RFK Jr. gets his weird roadkill-skinnin’ hands on any kind of regulatory agency). 

As it is, increased raw milk consumption has already led to a rise in foodborne illness—including stillbirths, miscarriages and deaths, albeit in very small numbers. The point is, do you want your morning latte to become a game of Russian roulette? I would hope not! I hope we can want better things for ourselves and our country! I’ve seen the misinformation about raw milk floating around like sour curd—recently, racist far-right asshole and self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh felt the need to dress down his three million Twitter followers about it (“Pasteurization is not some evil sorcery. It just kills the dangerous bacteria you morons”), leading to nuclear levels of indignation and betrayal among his dirty-dairy-demanding disciples. It’s “better for you!” Getting diphtheria will trigger the libs! It’s got super special vitamins! Pasteurization is a Communist plot! 

It’s not. It was invented by a guy who wanted to make French booze more awesome, and was then transposed to the dairy-sphere by Germans who wanted fewer children to die, and who succeeded in ways that bring tears to my eyes when I consider how many babies were saved because of their relentless efforts. It’s unambiguously a good thing. The fact that this “debate,” such as it is, even exists speaks to the kind of yawning gulf between realities that puts us at this grim precipice of an election. If we can’t even agree that boiling milk for ten seconds or so to kill germs and save kids is a good thing—what the fuck is consensus reality even about anymore? 

Back in the 1800s, Louis Pasteur was busy bending light around crystals no one else had bothered to examine; he made good beer, cured chicken cholera and cattle anthrax, and is a national hero buried in a magnificent crypt in a Paris institute that bears his name. I’d go with Louis on this one. Don’t listen to reflexive contrarians and people who are more than willing to see you die for a dollar. Drink clear wine and healthy milk, keep your kids safe, and remember there is better food than anger. The best revenge beer is living well.