Ep 174 What’s the deal with raw milk: Part 1

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One frequently hears the remark, look at me, I am hail and a hearty at three score and ten and have always been fond of milk and taken it just as it comes, dirt, bacteria, and all.

Such persons forget three very important things.

The first is that the fruits of victory are not to be judged by the survivors alone.

We must have a role of the killed and wounded too.

The sanitarian so often hears the argument, look at me, it has not hurt me, that it is beginning to tax his patience.

If the health officer wants to close an infected well, the grandfather points with patriarchal pride to his hail old years and hearty health as proof that the water can do no harm.

I once heard a mother of four children, all that remained of ten, say, well, you cannot expect to raise them all.

But But we do expect to raise them all nowadays, especially if they can be nurtured upon fresh, clean, and safe milk.

The second important thing, which old folks seem to forget, is that conditions have greatly changed since they were young.

Then, the milk was wagon-hauled to town and used the same day while fresh.

Now it comes through many hands and is often about 48 hours old when it reaches the household.

Finally, in the old days, many a milkborne outbreak occurred.

Many an infant met an untimely death through impure milk, but the dangers were not known, and therefore not realized.

The affliction was attributed to sewer gas, to miasms from the soil, or to some mysterious agency, if not the will of divine providence.

The milk has not changed so much since the good old times, but our knowledge has.

I mean, that says it all, Aaron.

Episode's done.

Episode's done.

That's it.

Just need two episodes on this.

Or did we?

Or did we?

But no, like, that is what is so amazing about that.

I mean, there are so many things you could pick apart from that quote, but the fact that it is from 1912.

I can't believe that it's so old.

1912, yeah.

So that was from M.J.

Rosenau in his book, The Milk Question.

Wow.

And

it's like the same things that we're going to be saying in this episode and next episode.

Gosh.

But

it's amazing.

Yeah.

And I think that like that, there are so many parts, like you will, you cannot expect to raise them all.

Like how much things have changed.

I know.

Right.

Since that time.

Anyway, yeah.

Hi, I'm Erin Welsh.

And I'm Erin Ollman Updike.

And this is, this podcast will kill you.

Welcome to milk.

Milk.

Milk.

Yeah.

Today we're talking about milk.

We're talking today about pasteurization.

Yes.

And raw milk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, as we were sort of putting together ideas for this season, which we're trying to organize around this theme of combating myths and disinformation, raw milk kept coming up.

It really did.

And I feel like it's everywhere these days.

It really is.

Made us wonder, like, well, what, what's the deal?

Like, why, what's going on with raw milk?

Why is it?

I feel like Jerry Seinfeld.

I know.

What's the deal with raw milk?

This is hands down the best Seinfeld impersonation I have ever heard.

Thank you.

Me or you?

Were you complimenting yourself?

Okay.

Both of us.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

But no, like, seriously, what is, what's going on with raw milk?

Why is, why are people talking about it?

Is it good for you?

Is it bad for you?

We'll get into all of that.

But because, you know, we started to do these, this research and we were like, okay, raw milk, we'll do that as an episode.

Sure.

Yeah.

There is so much there.

It's so much deeper than we even realized, everyone.

We should learn this lesson.

It's the same thing we do.

We kind of learned it because this time we're splitting it into two episodes, Aaron.

we are yeah so this episode this week what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take us through sort of the history of milk like what milk was like before pasteurization

what who invented pasteurization and who did we don't know I mean no I'm kidding

and like what that what impact that had

and then tracing the roots of the modern day sort of raw milk movement to that past, sort of trying to draw the line through history.

Why are people talking about raw milk today and what is driving this?

Like, what are some of the drivers of this renewed interest in raw milk?

I cannot wait to learn everything that you're going to teach me this week, Erin.

And then next week, I will pick it up with like, where do we stand in terms of milk and the risks of milkborne disease today?

What does that risk landscape actually look like in raw milk versus pasteurized milk versus ultra high temperature pasteurized milk.

What does the legal landscape look like?

Can you even get raw milk?

How do people even get that in the U.S.

versus in other countries?

Is it just the FDA?

It's not.

Also, are there any differences between raw milk and pasteurized milk?

Are there?

I can't wait to tell you about it next week.

Getting good at the teasers here.

Thank you.

Yeah, we try.

There's a lot to get through this week.

And so we should probably start with.

Quarantini time.

Quarantini time.

What are we drinking this week?

We're drinking milk in it.

We did have a discussion: like, should we do a milk-based drink?

Should we not do a milk-based drink?

Should we do it milk?

Should we, I mean, ultimately, the bottom line is that there are so many amazing milk dairy-free substitutes out there these days.

Milk, mulk, mulk.

I think I'm just kidding.

I haven't seen mulk yet.

I'm a big fan of oat.

That's probably my preferred.

I'm not a fan of oat milk or any of the other milk products, if I'm being honest.

But it's fine.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, sorry.

I'm just telling you my feelings.

I appreciate that.

Thank you for being vulnerable.

You're welcome.

What is in

milk in it, Erin?

It is based off of a drink that some folks out there might know as the pink squirrel.

I certainly did not know that this drink existed before googling milk-based cocktail recipes.

I'm sorry.

I'm losing it today, Erin.

I love it.

I love it.

And in Milkin' It, aka, you know, based on the pink squirrel, it is

pink squirrel.

Yep.

Creme de noio.

Yep.

White creme de cacao.

Heavy cream or whatever dairy-free substitute you'd like to use.

Okay.

And some freshly grated nutmeg.

Ah, sounds, sounds,

I don't know.

It sounds similar to things we've done before, Erin.

Yeah.

I mean, it sounds like the grasshopper, which actually is

like minty.

And creme de cacao and cream.

Okay.

Listen, it's going to be delicious.

You can find the full recipe for that quarantini, as well as the non-alcoholic placebarita version.

It won't just be milk on our website, thispodcastwickille.com and on all of our social media channels.

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Website stuff is next.

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All right.

Well, anyways,

we can move on.

Yeah.

Please, Erin, tell me about milk and pasteurization.

I can't wait.

Let's take a quick break and get into it.

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Milk has long been a part of many humans' diets.

Not just cow milk, but also goat, horse, camel, and so on.

Humans started consuming milk probably around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

And at some point, maybe around 8,000 or 9,000 years ago, a genetic mutation popped up in a subset of these humans that allowed them to keep digesting milk, specifically lactose in milk as adults.

lactose tolerance, lactose intolerance.

You've heard about this before.

And if you want even more details on the biology and the evolutionary history of this, check out our episode from all the way back in 2020.

Wow.

I know.

Throwback.

Also featuring one of my favorite first-hand accounts.

Probably one of the best first-hand accounts of all time.

Thank you so much, Katie.

Truly.

Yeah, truly.

But the key thing to know about lactose tolerance, the ability to digest most dairy products, the ability to digest lactose, is that around one-third of the global population has this mutation and that it is not evenly distributed across the globe.

Regions with the highest rates of lactose tolerance include Northern Europe, parts of North America, Australia, and certain parts of Africa.

But what this means is that heading into the 19th century, milk was a diet staple in certain parts of the world where it was in high and constant demand.

And it remained a staple even when people began moving from the country to the city, which posed a challenge to milk production and access.

Yes.

Before the Industrial Revolution, which is the period that we're now entering in this story, milk didn't travel long distances, kind of like in our first-hand account, right?

You could mostly just get it from a local farm,

which, of course, I feel like I need to say, did not mean that the milk was completely safe or free of pathogens or just did not spoil at all.

It was just perfect pure milk, right?

Like, no.

It just was like, no, that's where you got it.

That's where you got it.

Yeah.

But with the growth of cities, these problems of spoilage and freshness intensified.

Right, of course.

In his 1771 novel, The Expedition of Humphrey clinker which by the way has a 3.4 on goodreads and i don't know why i find that so funny but it makes me because it's like from the late 1800s or sorry the late the late 1700s oh is that like a high rating though or i don't know but it's just i think the concept of rating a book from 250 years ago And being like,

I don't know.

I liked it.

It was fine.

Two stars.

And it's just like an account of his expedition, too?

Oh, no.

Sorry.

I'll keep talking.

It's a novel.

Oh, okay.

And from this novel,

there's a passage where the author, Tobias Smollett, paints a lovely picture of the journey that a pail of milk might take from cow to cup.

Ready after this?

All right.

Quote.

Carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul refuse, discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco quids, from foot passengers, from mud, carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the joy's sake, the spewings of the infant, and finally the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that rends this precious mixture under the respectable denomination of the milkmaid.

Oh,

not.

Not the nicest of images?

No.

I don't want that milkmaid.

Especially not for milkmaids.

No, I know.

Poor thing.

I know.

They're working hard.

I mean, but people didn't really have much of a choice.

Right.

As cities grew, the dairy industry had to come up with solutions to meet the constant demand for milk.

And in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, this was maybe to keep...

small dairy herds housed either in open areas of cities or like just outside the city.

Okay.

Like 70 cows or so.

And then as the city populations grew, these small herds grew to like 2,000 a head.

Whoa.

Yep.

And then you're not going to find more area.

Like you have to figure out how you're going to house all these.

It's just increasingly cramped quarters.

Right, right.

Like too many cows in a small space.

Yep, exactly.

Okay.

And when these larger herds were still not sufficient to produce enough milk for a city, milk began to be transported via rail.

Keep in mind, refrigeration was not yet a thing.

I was just going to ask, when did refrigeration become a thing?

That I don't know.

I can't believe I don't have this in here, but I don't know.

Yeah.

That's okay.

But it wasn't a thing.

It wasn't a thing.

Yeah.

And so milk spoilage was a real concern, especially for the producers who introduced some nasty ways of dealing with it, right?

Because like you're going to send a whole shipment of milk.

You want people to actually buy it instead of having to throw it all away because it's spoiled.

Right.

Right.

So maybe you add some formaldehyde.

Maybe you do.

Maybe you do.

That actually did happen.

That's a great plan.

That is sarcasm.

Yeah.

Just in case.

In case that doesn't come true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Milk formaldehyde and milk adulteration period was

really a big problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, to bring it all together, by the mid-1800s, we've got no refrigeration.

milk being transported long distances, harmful milk processing practices like embalming it with formaldehyde, cows housed in crowded and filthy conditions, humans basically living the same way in cities,

and a lack of knowledge about how infectious disease spreads.

Okay, really great setup for people to get super sick.

Yep, sarcasm again.

I have written a recipe for disaster.

But it truly was a disaster, and I can demonstrate that with some numbers.

So

most European cities around this time had infant mortality rates of 150 to 300 per 1,000 live births.

Oh dear.

In New York City in 1880, infant mortality reached 400 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

Compare that to today, the U.S., it's around 5.6 per 1,000 live births.

Wow.

It's just

the world's different.

Yeah.

The world's different.

Yeah.

Infant mortality, like you heard in our first-hand account, was a way of life.

These high infant mortality rates were not solely attributable to milk, of course.

You know, there was a lot of things going on.

If you listen to our last couple of episodes on childhood vaccines and the schedule, you'll know.

Yeah.

But milk did play a huge role.

And it was a lot huger of a role than I realized.

Okay.

Actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for example, in Toronto in the early 1900s, spoiled milk was responsible for half of the 30,000 deaths in children.

What?

Yeah.

Wow.

Huge.

Like, I think I've also seen estimates from one-third to a half of infant mortality.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

But like,

what does spoiled mean?

Right.

Like, how was milk causing so much illness and death?

Yeah.

Well, pathogens.

It's bottom line.

Yeah.

But cow's milk harbored pathogens.

And so when that milk was not safely treated to prevent the growth of pathogens, people who drank this milk could get very, very sick.

The sugars, fats, and protein in milk provides a substrate.

It provides food

for these pathogens to grow, right?

You think about like a glass of water.

And it's why, I mean, of course, water is

a huge route of transmission for many different pathogens.

Right.

But milk, the pathogens can grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

milk is like a beautiful growing medium.

Yes.

It's like what you would want to culture bacteria in.

Yeah.

So it's not just like the ones that get put there, you know, from the milking process or from the storage process or from the handling process.

It's like once they're there, they will just exponentially continue to grow because they love all the nutrients in milk as much as our bodies do.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And among the most vulnerable to these pathogens, of course, infants.

Yeah.

Babies.

Why were infants drinking so much milk?

I'm guessing we didn't have formula?

Well, we did have some early formulas, but it comes back again to the Industrial Revolution.

So women increasingly had to work in factories to help provide for their families, which meant that they would be gone for long, long stretches of time.

They couldn't bring their babies with them and they couldn't breastfeed their infants.

And so as a result, breastfeeding declined around 50 to 70 percent during this time.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Huge decline.

And babies were instead fed like cow's milk alone or cow's milk supplemented with early formula.

Okay.

Or they were supplemented with cow's milk.

But

this cow's milk had not undergone any treatment for disease prevention.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So there was a 1905 epidemiological study of infant mortality between breastfed and cow's milk-fed infant, and they found dramatic differences.

In babies that were zero to three months old, infant mortality was 1.9% in breastfed babies and 92% in cow's milk-fed babies.

I mean, that makes sense too, just in terms of like nutritional differences in cow's milk versus human breast milk in a baby that young.

Yeah.

At one year old, just to carry this further, 6.2% of breastfed babies died compared to 36% of cow's milk only.

Wow.

Huge.

I I mean, these are huge differences.

Yeah.

Babies fed cow's milk were 15 times more likely to die than breastfed babies alone.

Wow.

And again, you know, this was pre-modern day formula.

Right.

This is a very different time.

Right.

Very different.

They didn't have other options.

They didn't know as much about the nutritional differences, but it was like, this is all we've got.

It's one or the other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And of course, this was used to shame working women.

Oh, of course.

Or women who had no other option to, than, than to feed their baby baby cow's milk.

Like it was, it's always used to shame.

Yeah.

Anyway, but these differences in infant mortality were not due solely to nutrition.

Mostly they were due to pathogens.

Wow.

A number of different outbreaks were tied to milk.

Typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, septic sore throat, and of course, tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis.

Also, diphtheria.

What?

I know.

I know.

But yes.

Okay.

Diphtheria.

Awful.

Yeah.

So tuberculosis was a huge killer during this period and it was greatly, greatly feared.

In the late 1880s in the northeastern U.S., tuberculosis infected 20% of all cattle.

Whoa.

Yeah.

And I'm assuming they didn't mention this specifically.

I'm assuming this is bovine tuberculosis.

Yeah, probably.

Which can still cause infections in humans.

Yes, absolutely.

And I know that you'll talk more about that probably next week.

It's a little bit different.

Okay.

Okay.

But anyway, from the same time period, late 1880s, 15% of all cans of milk were contaminated with the tuberculosis bacterium.

No, thank you.

Okay, but believe it or not, like those are some, those are some decent numbers.

Like those are okay, not bad, right?

I mean.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

I know.

I know.

Because in 1893, around 50% of the milk that was supplied to the city and county hospitals of San Francisco contained active tuberculosis bacteria.

50%.

Why?

Because it was rampant in the cattle.

Oh my goodness gracious.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

In 1900, I'm going to keep going.

10% of all cases of tuberculosis in humans were attributable to infection from bovine tuberculosis.

Wow.

And I mean, in 1900, tuberculosis, everyone had tuberculosis.

Right.

It was everywhere.

It's a huge number of cases, right?

Yeah.

Spoiled milk milk in general, just to give you some, you know, to harken back to what we were talking about as milk being a food for bacteria also.

Uh-huh.

Spoiled milk was found to have 500 million bacteria per cubic centimeter.

I don't know if I'll ever drink milk again, Erin.

I mean, you can always oat milk, Erin.

You can, I guess.

But like,

how is this happening?

Yeah,

let me paint you a picture, please.

Okay, so you remember how I said that herds were kept in cities in really crowded and filthy conditions?

Yeah, so these herds often went hand in hand with distilleries,

like whiskey distilleries, alcohol distilleries, right?

The leftover mash from making whiskey would be fed to the cows.

Okay.

All right.

So it was just like a, okay, here's like a, you know, a little cycle there.

Yeah.

The resulting milk from cows that were fed this, um,

you know, the old grain was called swill or slop.

Love that.

Yeah, swill milk.

Swill milk.

And so a lot of distilleries actually housed cows on site, like Johnson's Grain Distillers of Manhattan, which had up to 2,000 cows in Manhattan.

Manhattan.

Isn't that wild to think about?

I can't imagine it.

I know, I know.

The life of these cows and the milk that they produced is best illustrated by this quote from a 1980 paper by Frederick Stenn.

You ready for this?

I'm ready.

Quote,

the cattle stood in a huge building in rows of seven to ten, head to head, in stalls three feet wide.

The cow consumed 32 gallons of slop and three pounds of hay.

In such surroundings, the cow was rarely washed.

Its excrement clung to its tail and hindquarters.

It was reported that the people of Berlin consumed 300 pounds of cow dung in their milk daily.

Ulcer.

I know, I know.

Ulcers developed in the mouths of the cows.

Their tails often fell off.

Tuberculosis of the glands, lungs, and intestines followed.

The stall became a cesspool.

One Brooklyn distillery indicated that out of 1,811 cows, 230 died in 10 weeks.

No.

Oh, no.

Milk obtained was pale blue, often turbid and melodorous.

Peculating dairymen concealed their wickedness not so much as by diluting the milk with water as by adulterating the swill milk with plaster of Paris, charcoal, starch, sugar, flour, and egg, making bad matters worse.

Oh, dear.

I feel like I remember you talking about this in another episode.

Yeah, the poison scod episode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we talked about it in something else, too.

Arsenic, maybe?

Because you talked a lot about just like the contamination of things in that episode.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It was something else.

But yeah, yeah.

And this, just to remind myself, this is like mid to late 1800s.

This is, I would say late 1800s.

Late 1800s.

Okay.

Yeah.

Gross.

So glad I don't live then.

Most city milk came from distillery cows.

Okay.

Like that is, if you lived in the the city,

what I just described, that's where your milk is coming from.

This was not sustainable.

They were basically killing off their customers.

Something had to be done to improve milk safety.

Yeah.

Fortunately, the solution already existed.

Did it?

It did.

Louis Pasteur.

You know, we've talked about him a million times before on this podcast, his role in developing germ theory, his rabies vaccine, his work on tuberculosis.

Needless to say, we all know this dude's name.

We do.

I hope so.

We know it.

Yeah.

But we haven't, at least as far as I can remember, ever talked about the process that bears his name.

I don't think so.

Pasteurization.

I don't think we have.

Maybe in lactose and horns, but if that, minimally.

Yeah, I really don't remember.

I think we did.

Yeah.

Okay.

So broadly speaking, what is pasteurization?

It's a process, right?

It involves heating up a product such as milk to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time to destroy pathogenic microorganisms.

There are many different, like,

you know, subtypes of pasteurization.

I know you'll talk a little bit more about that.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It does not kill all of the microbes.

It's not sterilization, which is why pasteurized milk can still eventually spoil.

But it does kill off a great number of them, making the milk safer and last longer while also preserving nutritional qualities and taste.

That's it.

That's pretty simple, Erin.

Pretty simple.

Pasteurization, though, it works on the knowledge that pathogenic microbes cause foods such as milk to spoil.

In the mid-1800s, this knowledge wasn't really widely known or accepted.

So people had observed microbial life since at least Van Leeuwenhoek and his microscope, but the jury was still out on what role these microbes played.

Most scientists thought that the microbes seen in spoiled milk or fermented wine were a byproduct of spoilage or fermentation, not the cause of it.

But Louis Pasteur wasn't so sure.

Did not intend for that to rhyme, but I did.

In 1854, Pasteur began studying fermentation specifically in beer and wine to try to understand what the microbes that he observed were doing.

And he demonstrated that grape juice would not ferment into wine if you prevented environmental yeast from depositing on grapes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And he also demonstrated that broth would only turn cloudy and thus teeming with microbial life, as you could see under the scope, if you exposed it to air.

Okay.

Right.

So he showed that these two products, these two, the result of this was microbes, right?

Like they, they caused it.

They caused fermentation.

They caused spoilage.

Right.

Those didn't happen without those present.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And they also weren't.

the product of that.

Right.

Exactly.

Right.

And so he, and this was also, I think, integral in the, in germ theory itself, right?

Basically connecting exposure to pathogens and disease.

Yeah.

And so with this knowledge, he connected the dots between microbes and food products like wine and eventual spoilage.

And this was a huge deal for the wine industry and the beer industry, for sure.

Because he saw that, you know, if there was a way to kill off those putrefying microbes, you could preserve the wine.

So science had known for decades, this part I did not know, and the general public for likely much, much longer that heat treating food would help to keep it from spoiling.

Like people knew to heat up milk for them.

People did that.

They heated their milk or heated their water or heated their whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And even like heat canning for vinegar and stuff

had been around.

Yeah.

There was a text from 1702 that recommended boiled milk for infants.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also it was just like, it was daily, it was known much, much longer, like in daily life for, you know, in common knowledge for centuries but louis pasture was the first to really formalize the practice and explain why it worked like what what was the heating actually doing to these microbes right

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So he did it first with wine in 1868 in a public demonstration.

He loved public demonstrations, where he shipped a cargo of pasteurized wine around the world without a single bottle spoiling, which was unheard of.

And he later applied it to beer.

But it doesn't seem like he ever tried it with milk.

Okay.

That's still interesting because he he didn't do it.

Yeah.

We, I mean, so many things like that we eat and drink today are pasteurized, but like

the thing that I think most people think of is milk and milk products.

Yeah.

So that's so interesting.

It wasn't pasteur who did, who applied it to milk.

Wow, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That instead fell to a number of doctors, researchers, and passionate civilians around the world.

And it started kind of slowly, right?

Just a few people trying it out, but it grew more and more popular over the 1870s.

And so that in 1882, the first commercial pasteurization process was developed in Germany for milk.

For milk.

And from there, the practice spread to Sweden and Denmark with pediatricians recommending home treating your milk, as well as commercial producers incorporating it into their processing.

Okay.

But perhaps the most outspoken and well-known advocates for pasteurized milk were Lena and Nathan Strauss.

Nathan, does this name sound familiar to you?

Are they related to Levi Strauss of the Jeans or of the Strauss Dairy?

I'm guessing.

No.

Neither?

They're the Macy's Strauss's.

I don't know.

Macy's.

Like Macy's.

The store?

The department store.

They're also Strauss's.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Okay.

Okay.

I have some fun trivia for you.

Okay.

Give it to me.

Well, maybe not fun.

I have some trivia for you.

So Nathan, along with his brother Isidore, were the co-owners of Macy's, the department store.

Isidore and his wife died in 1912 on the Titanic.

Oh, sinking.

Uh-huh.

You know the movie, The Old Couple Lying in Bed?

Uh-huh.

That's them.

Oh.

That's so sad.

Isn't that really sad?

That was always like the most, I mean, I sob at that movie.

But anyway, so that's my trivia.

Okay.

Back to Nathan and Lena Strauss, the other Strauss couple.

I think there was a third brother, but I'm not going to talk about him.

In the 1890s, the Strausses became very vocal supporters of pasteurization because they had lost two of their children to milk-borne tuberculosis.

And they learned about pasteurization.

They learned about it extensively from a very prominent American pediatrician named Abraham Jacobi,

and who was also a huge proponent of pasteurized milk.

And so they were like, we need to tell everyone about this.

We need to do something about this.

And so they were like, let's spread the word.

They would visit different cities and they set up milk stations in New York City where pasteurized milk was distributed.

And they only charged those who could afford to pay at the low price of a penny a pint.

And everyone else would just get it for free.

They also established a pasteurization unit in 1897 on Randall's Island at the city's free hospital for children where the mortality rate was 44%.

44.

Yeah.

After pasteurized milk was introduced, it dropped within a year to 20%.

Oh my goodness, Erin.

Yeah.

And it continued to decline in subsequent years.

Wow.

By 1900, they had distributed half a million bottles of pasteurized milk.

And by 1906, they had opened 17 philanthropic milk stations in the city.

Wow.

Philanthropic milk station.

I know.

Not a phrase I have ever said before.

Yeah.

But it's great.

Yeah.

Wow.

And they were intent on launching similar programs and passing pasteurization policy across the nation.

But with this, with this goal, they were at least initially in the minority.

Huh.

Yeah, early 1900s.

So while other countries much more readily adopted pasteurization beginning in the 1880s, including pasteurized home country of France, the U.S.

was much more reluctant, as was the UK, which only required pasteurization starting in 1922, I think.

Even then, it was really slow to catch on.

People were just like, no, I'm not going to do this to my milk.

In 1908, Chicago became the first U.S.

city to require pasteurization.

Unless a farm, 1908, yeah.

But there was an asterisk there, which was unless the farm could prove that it was tuberculosis-free, and then that farm could sell what they called certified milk.

Okay.

And after Chicago, other cities followed.

So, you know, New York passed an ordinance requiring full pasteurization in 1910.

And then Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Boston, San Francisco introduced laws in like 1914, 1915.

These pasteurization laws began in the cities and gradually made their way into more rural areas with the passage of many laws prompted by various cattle epidemics or outbreaks in humans tied to raw milk.

So it was just sort of like a

it was it was a strange thing because it was a lot of people dragging their feet.

There were a few very prominent outspoken supporters of pasteurization

and a few very prominent detractors.

But for the most part, people were like, I don't really know how to think about it.

The technology is so new.

And this has a lot of parallels with other food technologies that have been introduced,

like food irradiation, GMOs, which we should do an episode on.

But like this sort of thing, the slow like, oh, I don't know, it's a little early to say.

This person says this.

There's a fascinating article that I read for this about New York Times coverage of these three different technologies: pasteurization, food, irradiation, and GMOs, and sort of the rhetoric used

like over time as these technologies become more accepted.

Yeah.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, interesting.

History echoes.

It's almost like we can learn from it, huh?

What about that?

Wow.

Anyway, okay.

So,

in just to give you a sense of like timing for pasteurization in the U.S., so by 1926, 100% of the milk in cities with over half a million people was pasteurized, but only 45% of milk was pasteurized in American cities with fewer than 25,000 people.

Okay.

So it was like still a very urban-rural divide.

Right, right, right.

Did you know that my grandma grew up on a dairy farm in northern Michigan?

I don't know if I did know that, Erin.

And I was talking to my mom and I was like, mom, would, would she have, would Ama have drank raw milk or like pasteurized milk?

Did they, my mom was like, I don't know, it was a huge, she visited, my mom visited there like much, much later.

But I don't know when they would have started

pasteurization.

Pasteurization.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How interesting.

I know.

I know.

Anyway,

but pasteurization, when it was introduced, even if it was like a little bit staggered, it was clear what a huge impact that it made.

Right.

And it's hard today to quantify that, but we do have a few different figures that we can look at

because there were other things going on at the time, right, that contributed to the decline in infant mortality.

Yeah.

Vaccines.

Vaccines.

General sanitation and other ways.

With sanitation, especially.

Yeah.

But in New York City, for example, the Commissioner of Health attributed the drop in infant mortality from 12 per 1,000 births in 1893 to 3.8 in 1916 to the compulsory pasteurization of milk.

Wow.

A huge huge drop.

They said that just from

pasteurization.

Wow.

Undoubtedly, other medical and public health improvements played a role, but there's no denying that pasteurization was saving the lives of some of the most vulnerable members of society.

Yeah.

And despite this, pasteurization continued to be a contentious issue, especially in the U.S.

Yeah.

And continues to be.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Okay, that's a great question.

I have so many thoughts and questions about this, Aaron.

Please tell me.

I know.

Okay.

So historically, at the time, so let's say, let's frame this into 1910s to 1930s or so, there were four basic arguments against pasteurization in the early 20th century.

The first three were more dairy industry-based.

Okay.

Number one, expense.

Pasteurization required additional equipment, which might be prohibitively expensive for small farms, putting them out of business and letting the big farms take over.

And they claimed that this cost would also trickle down to the consumer who may be priced out of buying milk.

Okay.

All right.

That's so interesting in the context of today, but anyways, continue.

There was also a, if they want to drink raw milk, let them.

Uh-huh.

Like, just let them have it kind of a sentiment.

Like,

what are you requiring these laws?

Who are you to tell me what I can and can't drink?

Yep.

Then number two, necessity.

Many people claimed that pasteurization didn't ultimately solve the issue of a dirty farm, that all it was doing was allowing the farmer to sell dirty milk under a false promise.

Okay.

And they argued that enforcing pasteurization would just make farms even more disease-ridden.

And that since it was such a new science, you couldn't even be sure that pasteurization was doing what it was supposed to be doing.

I mean, new science is a stretch because it was, you know, 1868 was when it was like really used.

Okay, sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

Number three, taste.

Pasteurization was said to ruin the taste of milk, to take the life out of milk, quote unquote.

And farmers worried that people would stop buying milk because of this changed taste.

Okay.

This alleged changed taste.

Okay.

The fourth argument against pasteurization is kind of an extension of this, and it came from the medical community, actually.

Nutrients.

So some doctors believed that pasteurization destroyed the nutrients in milk and would ultimately harm the infants consuming it.

And I think it's important to place this in context, right?

So the pasteurization debate was happening as researchers were finally beginning to piece together the components of nutrition, like proteins, fats, amino acids, vitamins, and so on.

And so there was extra sensitivity there.

People were like, well, what happens?

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Now we know there's a lot in this milk.

It's not just milk.

It's a bunch of stuff in there.

And what happens if you heat it up?

Do you mess up all the stuff?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like scurvy scurvy was one special fear, especially.

It was like, people are going to get scurvy with pasteurized milk.

By the way, milk is a terrible source of vitamin C.

Exactly.

But they didn't know that at the time.

Okay.

They didn't know that at the time.

Or maybe they did because they knew about scurvy and they knew about vitamin C.

So I mean, there is vitamin C in milk,

but it is a very small amount and it is quickly oxidized just from exposure to air.

And so it is not stable.

Sorry, I could go on because I went too deep of a dive on like the nutrient profiles of milk pasteurized versus raw.

Yeah.

Don't get your vitamin C from milk, raw or pasteurized.

I mean, you won't be able to, like you, you will get scurvy.

You will get scurvy.

No matter if your milk is pasteurized or not.

But yeah, that was a big sticking point for them.

Okay.

Interesting.

And, you know, also on top of this, some doctors just doubted the milk-disease connection entirely,

which was really frustrating to proponents of pasteurization who pointed out: number one, disease outbreaks are linked to specific milk, like that came from that batch of milk, right?

Two, outbreaks are explosive, which point towards a common exposure.

Number three, populations that drink more milk tend to have more milk-related disease.

And number four, within households, milk drinkers have more milk-related disease.

The evidence was there, right?

Like they were like, It's always been there.

It's here.

It's here you go on a platter with pasteurized milk.

But the other arguments could also be refuted, right?

Producing certified raw milk was, which was like, okay, your farm is tuberculosis-free, blah, blah, blah, was actually more expensive than pasteurization given the frequent inspections that had to happen.

It also didn't really prevent.

tuberculosis because you could you if you go through you know if you're inspecting only every three months right you're you could be selling tuberculosis what anyway yeah

uh taste i i can't speak to that but when weighing potentially deadly diseases on one hand and taste on the other i think it's reasonable to sacrifice a little bit of taste for safe food i mean my feeling can i also can i i'm sorry because i feel like this is jumping ahead to what i'm going to talk about next week but like you also have to take into consideration

What types of farms are you talking about?

Are you still talking about grody farms in the middle of New York City with 2,000 cows standing on top of their own poop?

Okay.

If you pasteurize that milk, yeah, it's probably still going to taste bad.

Well, but that's the thing too, is that that is what I think the proponents of

raw milk were saying is that they were like, oh, well, you're just making this dirty milk.

No, there were still quality cleanliness.

Other standards that were going into place.

Clean milk was being pasteurized.

Yeah.

Like that was the bottom line.

You couldn't, you could not pasteurize dirty milk.

You can't keep doing what they were doing.

It was like other things have to change.

And hey, guess what?

Even your supposed clean, certified farm is still getting people sick.

So you still have to pasteurize it.

And there were still safety standards across the board.

Right.

Whether your farm was selling certified milk or pasteurized milk, you still had to meet the same safety standards.

Right.

Yep.

Still choosing.

Okay.

At the end of his book, The Milk Question, Rosinao, who we heard from in our first-hand account, summarized what he viewed as the answer to the milk problem.

Quote, to keep milk clean, we need inspection.

To render milk safe, we need pasteurization.

Inspection goes to the root of the problem.

Through an efficient system of inspection, the milk supply should be cleaner, better, fresher, and safer.

Inspection, however, has limitations.

These limitations may be guarded against by pasteurization.

A milk supply, therefore, that is both supervised and pasteurized is the only satisfactory solution of the problem.

Love it.

End quote.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Done.

And yet.

And yet, this debate continued long after pasteurization laws were widespread across the U.S.

I mean, those four arguments for raw milk and against pasteurization are essentially the same exact talking points of raw milk proponents today.

Yeah.

Just a little bit.

There are a few extra ones thrown in there.

I know you'll talk about it.

Yeah.

Raw milk has never really disappeared.

Yeah.

In fact, it's grown in supporters over the years.

So like, what gives?

Why is this such a sticky idea in the face of all of this evidence that pasteurized milk is safe and healthy?

Yeah.

Who are the people pushing raw milk?

Like what, what is what is happening there?

And why?

Yeah, well, okay, first of all, they're not a monolith, right?

Like there were and continue to be many different drivers for why people buy raw milk or attack pasteurization laws.

So for instance, many pro-raw milk folks argue that raw milk sales help small farms and local economies.

The price of a gallon of raw milk is typically two to three times that of a gallon of pasteurized milk.

I feel like that's an underestimate based on things I've seen.

It is.

And it also, it uses that,

it uses that tried and true psychological link where you think that because something costs more, it must be higher.

It must be better.

And they say that the direct farm to consumer sales helps the farm cut back on processing costs.

Okay.

I mean, I believe that.

Yeah.

I have not read through any economic analyses comparing raw to pasteurized milk.

I don't doubt that there's some basis to this, especially considering how popular of an argument it is.

But I have to wonder, and I guess you'll talk about it next week, what the legal and financial repercussions are if you sell a batch of raw milk that makes people sick or die.

Then you, yeah.

Yep.

I don't have an answer to that next week either, Erin, just so you know.

And I think that like raw milk does sort of signify a an overall desire to have better health so like what does that mean in the society right like

micro-tuning every part of your life uh-huh right but we're not I'm not really gonna get into that aspect of it

what I want to talk about for the rest of this episode is not economic claims not sort of the general sense of dissatisfaction and and all of that but rather the ideological arguments that people make for raw milk, what underpins them and the dangers in this rhetoric.

Yeah.

Before doing this episode, I thought of raw milk in the U.S.

as like this fringe idea, like a fad carried over from the hippies of the 1970s, like kind of a misguided, crunchy granola type of alternative health interest.

Like that was, that was my perception of the vibe of raw milk.

Yeah.

I had no idea just how much raw milk is used today by the far right and white supremacists as a dog whistle.

I didn't know.

Maybe that means that I just am not online enough or I'm not, I don't know, I'm not paying enough attention.

I don't know.

But I think it's it's so fascinating because it kind of shares so many parallels with anti-vaccine sentiment.

Yeah.

And it kind of reveals that the spectrum or what we think of or what I was thinking of as a political spectrum is really a circle.

And I don't know what that means.

But anyway, yeah.

So,

but as I started to research for this episode, I found traces of this link between raw milk and fascism going all the way back to the early 20th century eugenics and Nazis.

And so how did this trend in the US go from eugenics to its crunchy granola era to now it's the links to the far right and white supremacy?

Yeah.

That's a great question.

Let's see if we can connect some of these dots.

Yeah.

So from the very beginning of the 20th century, there was considerable pushback against pasteurization, as we just talked about.

And one of the key medical objections was that pasteurized milk was viewed as less nutritious than pasteurized milk.

And Erin, I know that you'll talk more about this next week.

But yes, there are some nutritional differences between the two, but they are very minor and would be addressed with other foods.

Very minor.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But these differences were exaggerated by some vocal anti-pasteurizers throughout throughout the first decades of the 1900s.

While most pro-pasteurizers felt that a minor, nearly undetectable loss of nutrients was an acceptable trade-off for not dying of a deadly disease, others, like Halliday Sutherland, were more concerned with what that nutrient loss meant for future fertility.

In a 1938 correspondence to the British Medical Journal, he wrote, quote, the shadow of depopulation and national decline is looming in the near future.

Milk is a staple food.

And before pasteurization is adopted as a national policy, I suggest that it would be wise to test the effects of pasteurization on the fertility vitamins.

Let us experiment on animals before experimenting on the nation.

Oh, dear.

Okay.

At least he said animals, I guess.

Yeah,

I guess.

And people had done experiments and there was no detectable difference, but he misreported

the results of those, of course.

But this view didn't come out of nowhere.

The implication that pasteurization would accelerate depopulation was tied to the general belief held by eugenicists that whole, unprocessed, unpreserved foods were fundamental to the fertility and overall health of the desirable subset of a population.

Just the desirable subset.

Does that mean that?

Of course.

Right.

Like,

yeah,

the implications, read between the lines kind of a thing.

Yeah.

Some anti-pasteurizers loosened their stance to allow exceptions, like, oh yeah, okay, we can pasteurize maybe for those who are impoverished or we can pasteurize for in cities specifically, which is, of course, you know, where you're going to see the highest population of impoverished individuals.

But this eugenic perspective wasn't limited to human consumers of milk, but it also extended to the bovine producers themselves.

Certain breeds were hailed as producing the best tasting milk, which is also echoed today.

You can see that.

And it's no wonder that this rhetoric of superiority and inferiority carried into the debate about pasteurization.

Like, you are what you drink.

Right.

Right.

That's sort of the thought.

It's like my, I'm better than you because I'm drinking raw milk.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah.

I mean, that is 100% the TikTok vibes today.

So.

Yep.

In 1941, British physician Lionel Picton wrote, quote, much of modern food is processed, preserved, refined, sterilized, dead.

Contrast the insipid, pasteurized fluid of today to the milk of our forefathers.

End quote.

Sorry, I can't.

I'm getting so annoyed, Erin.

I'm sorry.

But especially because I should just keep my mouth so much more.

I know.

I'm going to talk about the things that are annoying me about this rhetoric a lot next week, but it's just, it is so incredibly misguided to put the types of rhetoric that they are saying on pasteurization itself.

Yeah.

Like, say what you want about the U.S.

food system.

We're kind of broken.

Pasteurization is not the broken part.

Pasteurization is the part that's saving babies' lives.

I'm sorry.

I'm getting too.

No, that is the bottom line.

That period.

That is it.

Yeah.

They're just picking, why pick pasteur?

Why pasteurization?

Why is that the thing they picked?

Well, let's keep going because maybe we'll get some clarity.

I don't know.

I can't promise that, but we can try.

This way of talking about food, this call for natural unprocessed foods, subsistence farming, making food great again, it was also how Nazi officials discussed food and nutrition.

Okay.

They pushed for a diet consisting of food grown on national soil,

foods that they had evolved eating.

Franz Wurz, a professor of medicine and leader in the life reform movement, said in 1939:

Diet must be in the position not only to preserve the continued existence of the nation and race, but also to make them more fertile and fit.

End quote.

Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

And the group that was instructed to lead the charge, housewives through a return to a traditional lifestyle.

Oh my gosh, Sharon.

I'm sorry.

Oh,

okay.

And this

focus on healthy eating on unprocessed natural foods was not counter to their goals of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

It was part of it, right?

They viewed diet and nutrition through whole natural foods as essential to the ultimate goal of increasing the fertility and health of what they viewed as a desirable race.

Yeah.

The call for whole natural foods, subsistence farming, and a return to traditional lifestyles it kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?

If you've been reading the news.

Too familiar, Aaron.

Too familiar?

I mean, that is the rhetoric that the far right uses today.

Yeah.

Just a few days ago, on March 9th, 2025, we're recording this on March 12th, Trump called for a return to subsistence farming as a solution to rising egg prices.

RFK Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services,

has called repeatedly for the elimination of ultra-processed foods and GMOs and a return to whole unprocessed natural foods.

He's also a big raw milk fan.

Yeah.

And of course, in addition to being anti-vax.

Tradwives are all over TikTok spouting the supposed benefits of raw milk.

White supremacists use milk imagery as a dog whistle for racial purity.

The neo-Nazi anti-Semitic white supremacist who coined the term alt-right used a milk emoji in his Twitter profile and wrote, I'm very tolerant, lactose tolerant.

Starting to come together, right?

Uh-huh.

He and other neo-Nazis use their lactase persistence to claim genetic superiority.

Oh my goodness.

Because if you're

just so

depressed, I know.

I hate everything.

Like, that's just so incredibly ridiculous.

I know.

But you can't, like, you can't, there's no logic to it.

Say,

it's just argue it.

Yeah.

A bunch of weirdos.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that.

But like, we could say that.

I'm better than you because I can continue to digest lactose.

I drink another mammal's milk into adulthood.

It's a weird thing to do, to drink a cow's milk.

I know.

It's a weird thing that we do.

It is.

It is.

Oh, my gosh.

We're the weirdos if you can do it.

It's not normal.

But But

that's the thing.

So, just in case people don't remember from earlier on in the episode or don't know this, this mutation, the lactase persistence, occurs at higher frequencies in people with Northern European descent.

And so, this is them directly calling that out and saying, oh, I'm genetically superior because 70% of the global population cannot digest lactose into adulthood.

But that's their point.

I know.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

So, I know.

Okay.

But this is not, this is why milk is not a random thing, right?

Like they chose.

It's intentionally chosen because of that.

It's a way to distinguish yourself

as people

and better.

And this, in fact, this type of dietary racism dates back to the 19th century.

Wow.

In the late 1800s, another period of time where perceived threats to traditional masculinity were high and fears of immigration loomed large.

The medical researcher J.

Leonard Corning wrote that Western meat and dairy products were directly responsible for the quote-unquote intellectual vigor and superior moral courage of the English that allowed them to, quote, extend their empire throughout the world.

Oh my goodness.

Uh-huh.

He described non-Westerners as quote-unquote effeminate rice eaters.

Sounds a lot like the soy boy insults that the alt-right hurls at people today, right?

Like, wow.

It's the parallels are so clear.

Yeah.

It's, yes.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, both of these, both of these things incorporate attacks on diet and masculinity.

And race.

And race, yeah.

An agricultural history of New York from the 1930s kept with this theme, quote,

a casual look at the races of people seems to show that those using much milk are the strongest physically and mentally and the most enduring of all the people in the world.

Of all races, the Aryans seem to have been the heaviest drinkers of milk and the greatest users of butter and cheese.

A fact that may in part account for the quick and high development of this division of human beings,

end quote, and gross.

I don't think I had any idea, Erin, that it was A, so

like, that it went so far back.

Yeah.

And that, that milk and raw milk has always been so tied into this like white racial superiority situation.

Like that's, I did not

know.

I know.

I just kept falling down the rabbit hole.

Yeah.

And like, what do you mean?

And then just like everything, how history is

not quite repeating, but yeah.

Kind of, yeah.

Kind of, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

So,

no, present day white supremacists using milk as a symbol for racial purity.

It's not a coincidence.

But where does the raw milk aspect fit into this?

Like, why?

Why raw?

Right.

How did raw milk go from being a crunchy granola alternative health item to an alt-right symbol?

It followed the same path as the anti-vaccine movement.

Again, the spectrum is a circle.

The commonality between these two groups, the like alt-right and alternative health, I guess, I'm not really sure the labels, is rejection of the traditional expertise and government regulation.

Yeah.

At least on the surface.

Right.

For them, for many of these people, raw milk and quote-unquote vaccine choice represents deregulation.

It represents a rejection of government oversight.

It represents a return to a traditional lifestyle.

It's not really about raw milk at all.

It's about redefining expertise, about instilling mistrust in scientists and their research, nor is it about deregulation and less government oversight.

That's just a facade, right?

Like this becomes clear when you consider that many of these people in the alt-right seem to be just fine with government regulation when it comes to women's bodies and trans people's bodies.

Well, hands off my raw milk.

Right.

Also, like farms that produce raw milk also have to be like very strictly regulated and inspected.

And there's all kinds of rules and regulations that go into that also.

So that doesn't track.

It doesn't track.

And, you know, I think that one thing that I want to make very clear is that I am not saying that everyone who loves raw milk or is even curious about raw milk subscribes to these alt-right or racist beliefs at all.

That's not what I'm saying.

Just like you said, Erin, there are many different reasons that people might be interested in raw milk in part because our food industry is broken.

But deregulation is only going to make it more broken in the sense that like the companies, the big companies then will have fewer guardrails to actually prevent them from hurting people.

Right.

Well, and like we talked about last week, like I was on TikTok looking at raw milk info to kind of understand like, what are people even talking about when it comes to raw milk today, like for real on social media?

And I don't think that the vast majority, I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are sort of in the know, wink, wink, about the kind of where this came from or what this signifies.

But I think there's a lot of people who are just like, is it going to be better for me?

Is it going to be, is it a better nutrient profile?

Is it going to be a healthier choice for me?

Like, and it's really hard to sort through this mis and disinformation because the aesthetics are beautiful.

They are.

I mean, yeah, you're right.

No, it's, it is understandable to go, what, but what about this?

I've been hearing a lot about this lately and not knowing.

why we have raw milk, why we have pasteurized milk when most of the stuff that you're hearing on social media is about the purported benefits of raw milk.

Right.

Right.

Like that is, it's, it's our algorithms and it's, it's all of this.

Yeah.

Right.

But yeah, my, I, I, I do want to make a very clear distinction that there is a big difference between the, you know, some of these ideological drivers and some of the reasons that people might be like, I'm interested in raw milk.

I want to learn more about it.

I had no idea about all of these connections and how and how deep it went.

And so my, my main point here with this, with this episode or with this part of the episode, is just to try to understand some of the drivers of this movement, especially in the past few years.

And a large part of that seems to be the alt-right, or at least they're using it as the symbolic way, right?

As this opportunity.

Many people stand to profit off of deregulation.

Yeah.

And raw milk is just one minor facet of this.

And it's, it's, I think it's fascinating.

I think it's important to examine its use as a political symbol.

Right.

100%.

Raw milk carries with it a lot of baggage.

And that baggage is rarely acknowledged.

Like, you know, the calls that RFK Jr.

makes for natural unprocessed foods.

It's hard to disagree with that.

Like, what's the real harm in letting someone drink raw milk if they want to?

But that is the point, right?

Like, that is the point of these claims, the lack of any nuance or any real substance in these demands, in these health claims, that leaves no room for argument.

Right.

Because what does natural mean?

Right.

What does unprocessed mean?

What does it actually mean to have unprocessed foods?

How are you going to do that?

How are you going to make those affordable and accessible?

What's the plan there?

What's the concept of a plan there?

Does pasteurized milk count as a processed food?

Silence.

on these fronts, right?

Silence.

And I'm in no way saying that ultra-processed foods are great for you and that food regulation and accessibility needs no changes whatsoever.

But there's a huge difference between the processing that happens with Cheetos or jelly beans to make food taste better, like last longer, be cheaper to make, et cetera, and the processing that helps with pasteurization, which is solely to prevent disease, right?

Like pasteurization prevents disease.

Boop.

The end.

But again, these distinctions are not made.

Yeah.

Because it's not about food.

It's not about raw milk at all.

It's not about vaccines even.

It's about redefining expertise.

Who makes these judgments?

Historically, it has been actual experts, scientists with extensive training who use mountains of data to make decisions.

These experts are being replaced with hand-picked individuals who have little to no background in that subject, but are willing to carry out an agenda no matter how harmful that agenda may be to the general public.

To me, the danger represented by raw milk is not restricted to E.

coli or listeria, but what it means for science and expertise in this country.

And the harm that raw milk can cause is similarly far-reaching.

Just like the anti-vaccine movement, raw milk preys on those who want to make the best choices for themselves and their families.

They are being sold false promises that raw milk is a miracle food, that it is entirely safe to drink, and that as long as you know your farmer, you're good.

Your milk is safe.

But that's not the whole truth or even the truth at all.

And people have lost their lives or suffered long-term consequences as a result of being fed these lies.

Yeah.

And so I think that's maybe where I'll leave it for this episode.

But

I am really looking forward to next week, Erin, when you get to talk about all of the nitty-gritty of raw milk.

Is there actually a harm?

Are there nutritional differences?

Yeah, I'm going to really, really

too deep of a deep dive on it, honestly.

And I'm really, really excited about it to like kind of go nitty-gritty on what's up with milk.

Like what?

What?

What is up with milk?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Next week, though.

Next week.

For now.

For now, sources?

Sources.

Please tell me where I can learn more.

Is there a book that I should read?

I didn't.

There are.

There are some books.

I didn't read a book for this.

Shocking.

Will you write a book for this?

I feel like you could write a book out of what you just said, and I would really like to read it.

Maybe, maybe, with all the time that I have.

Yeah.

There's a book actually, I read a couple chapters from this by Peter Atkins called Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science, and the Law.

There's so much by Bohr, 100-year-year review, Microbiology and the Safety of Milk Handling.

That's from 2017.

Oh, one that I actually really appreciated was by Courier and Widness from 2018 titled A Brief History of Milk Hygiene and Its Impact on Infant Mortality from 1875 to 1925 and Implications for Today.

Wow, that's a very thorough title.

Great paper, though.

Yeah.

And there are a bunch more out there.

Like, honestly,

read away.

Okay.

I will.

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I was like, what do I talk about now?

Thank you to Tom Bryfogel, Liana Scolacci, and all of our video editing team as well for all of the mixing.

We love it.

Thank you.

We love it.

Yes.

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Well, until next time, wash your hands.

You filthy animals.