I run a farm, homeschool, garden, bake bread, raise chickens, and make my own yogurt. I seem to be following the trend of farm hobbies. However, I am not completely converted yet. I reject the principle of drinking raw milk.
I’ve been known to lecture friends and strangers when they ask me if my family drinks raw milk. I’m the person who interrupts other moms when they talk about raw milk. And when it came to loosening regulations on raw milk, I told several people to give up on the idea. Why? Because it’s dangerous, because people are misinformed, and because labels DO NOT work.
A recent outbreak of foodborne illness in Idaho has highlighted the dangers of raw milk consumption. In early August, 18 people became infected with the Campylobacter pathogen. 17 of the 18 people drank raw milk from an Idaho dairy. A difficult time for the families affected by this outbreak and a challenge for the dairy farmer, who carefully searched for the source of the pathogen in a water heater, but had already consumed the contaminated product by that time.
Link between raw milk and outbreak in Idaho is being investigated
On the positive side, Idaho has a lower regulatory burden, but in the case of raw milk, the labeling requirement may not be sufficient.
My father was a veterinarian and I spent years visiting farms. I was in the dirt, playing with calves, herding cows, playing in the cottonseed piles. I was never allowed to drink raw milk. When a family friend’s young granddaughter suffered kidney failure from consuming raw milk in 2012, our family’s caution became understandable.
But maybe you’ve heard that raw milk is good for your health and strengthens your immune system? That sounds great. Did you know that you can also get infected with E. coli and that it increases the risk of your children developing serious, life-threatening kidney problems?
If you drink raw milk, your risk is significantly higher than with pasteurized milk. Raw milk drinkers are 840 times more likely to get sick than pasteurized milk, are 45 times more likely to be hospitalized, and account for 96% of all illnesses caused by contaminated dairy products. Raw milk regulations have historically taken this risk into account and made it difficult to purchase in many states.
Depending on the state, the sale of raw milk was completely illegal, available only as animal feed, or required consumers to own cows. Over the past two decades, these regulations have been relaxed across the country and are disappearing, to the detriment of consumers.
Barriers or obstacles should be placed in the way of purchasing certain dangerous or high-risk goods. These barriers create a natural barrier that consumers must overcome in order to obtain a certain level of information before consuming the dangerous product. This caution is necessary because people may be misinformed and children and the elderly are most vulnerable to these diseases.
Despite knowing the dangers, many states have recently lifted regulations on the purchase of raw milk, and more states are relying on health warnings to deter consumers. One Louisiana congressman said, “I think free people drink what free people want to drink. That’s still America.”
Loosening raw milk regulations ignores the risk and relies on ineffective safety warnings. In a world where California’s Proposition 65 requires the labeling of over 800 chemicals and ingredients as known carcinogens, any safety warning seems pointless. To make matters worse, some people are more likely to consume a product or engage in a particular practice if a safety warning is issued.
Think of labels as wolves versus puppies. Wolves may be rare, but they would eat you if given the chance. Puppies are common, but their bite is rarely, if ever, harmful. Labeling practices should focus on identifying wolves, but our current practices identify everything as wolf. This generalization leads to useless labels and makes dangerous products even more threatening.
Unfortunately for us, politicians have warned too much and educated too little, leaving us vulnerable to wolves hiding among the pups. Raw milk has the potential to be a wolf. Consumer safety would be better protected by discretionary labeling rather than a blanket approach, but that option no longer exists.
In general, we support reducing regulations, but in the interest of public safety, targeted and specific protections may make sense. It is time to rip the label off the raw milk situation and recognize that labels will prove ineffective in informing consumers. However, health risks remain, and consumers need a barrier to purchase that encourages them to seek out important information before taking advantage of a potentially dangerous trend.
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