Maintenance Phase - Raw Milk

00:00:00.000 i'm so curious how you're gonna make a real episode out of this i know we were talking

00:00:15.940 yesterday and you were like i don't know how this is an episode and i was like yeah it's not just

00:00:22.800 an episode there's so much of it that i'm having a really hard time editing it down i was at uh

00:00:28.780 the Louvre with some people today and I was like I have to leave early because I'm I'm recording a

00:00:33.120 podcast they're like what's it about and I said raw milk and there's like this long sign so they

00:00:37.040 sort of cocked their heads like a golden retriever they're like you gotta leave for that you're

00:00:42.920 recording for like three hours on raw milk I'm here instead of the Louvre tonight Aubrey you better

00:00:48.860 make it you better he's a cultured masculine man all right you're probably gonna fact check this

00:00:53.940 one oh great welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that must be heated to 145 degrees for

00:00:59.700 30 minutes it's shorter than that now but yeah i'm michael hopps i'm aubrey gordon if you would

00:01:05.840 like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase or you can

00:01:10.180 subscribe through apple podcast it's the same audio stuff content michael aubrey i'm so amped

00:01:18.640 Just get into it.

00:01:19.640 Just start, start whatever you need to tell me.

00:01:22.180 Go.

00:01:22.840 So today we're talking about raw milk.

00:01:24.580 I was going to ask you if you've tracked the raw milk debate at all.

00:01:28.620 And you were like, I don't think there's an episode there.

00:01:31.860 So I think that might be my answer to how much you've tracked it. 0.99

00:01:35.420 Because, I mean, we talked about this with the honey, the like blue zones, honey shit

00:01:39.620 that like because pasteurization, like I think people think it's like a science word, but 0.98

00:01:44.640 all it means is like taking something up to a temperature and then like cooling it down to kill

00:01:49.220 the bacteria it's not it's not like a big scary like quote-unquote processing thing like the 0.93

00:01:54.560 ultra processed foods whatever it's like the most basic shit pasteurization is only heating a liquid 0.94

00:02:01.520 to well below boiling temperatures in order to kill germs that can make you very sick pasteurization 0.98

00:02:08.800 today lasts for less than a minute you're raising the temperature of milk for a matter of seconds 0.96

00:02:13.640 and it kills a ton of germs it kills e coli salmonella listeria diphtheria strep fucking

00:02:22.120 tuberculosis is in raw milk tuberculosis on top of killing all those germs it also extends shelf

00:02:30.900 life pretty considerably it's very funny to classify this as this like unnatural process

00:02:36.080 when it's like people like figured even if they didn't know the science people like kind of

00:02:39.400 figured this out like a long time ago right it's as unnatural as me like applying heat to other

00:02:45.520 foods to cook them i know and i also think a lot of people don't know that prior to pasteurization

00:02:50.380 it was like a common step in recipes to be like you using milk boil it first baby oh i didn't

00:02:55.900 know that actually people have been heating liquids to kill germs for like a thousand years

00:03:01.500 before pastures it really like really a long time it's not like a western concept no it's also not

00:03:07.400 a western concept the like earliest record that i found was in the 1100s in both china and japan 0.93

00:03:14.060 right it's like saying like uh don't give in to like western bullshit eat like raw chicken breast 0.91

00:03:19.240 so on top of those existing pathogens in milk we now have bird flu in milk oh god do we i didn't 0.99

00:03:28.040 even know that yep when cows contract avian flu their highest concentrations of the virus are in

00:03:34.500 their mammaries like the song from cats memories sorry i'm cutting that i'm cutting that that's

00:03:41.740 for you good thank you the good news is that we know that pasteurization is effective in killing

00:03:47.600 h5n1 which is the avian flu virus as of last november avian flu was in 505 herds of dairy

00:03:58.300 cows in 15 states okay the usda is no longer publicly reporting info on avian flu cows so

00:04:07.080 who the fuck knows where we're at now feels so good i feel so safe sale of infected milk has also

00:04:14.980 not been federally banned like bird flu infected milk has not been federally banned because they 0.98

00:04:20.840 are simply too busy firing everyone i'm saving my we live in hells for later in the episode but we

00:04:25.520 truly do live in hell when i started researching this i really thought we were talking about sort

00:04:30.380 of food poisoning level events that's part of it but there can also be long-term and permanent

00:04:37.400 effects from these pathogens according to the fda listeria which is one of the common pathogens in

00:04:44.540 raw milk listeria in pregnant people can lead to stillbirth and miscarriage yeah listeria is really

00:04:51.240 really rough stuff yeah e coli can lead to h us which can cause kidney failure and tuberculosis

00:04:59.840 so there's a book that i read for this called milk exclamation point that was a history of milk

00:05:05.980 that's such a good idea

00:05:06.960 jeb kudos

00:05:11.100 in that book the book was great and i really loved reading this history of milk and every time

00:05:19.960 someone was like what are you reading i was like this awesome history of milk people just like

00:05:24.980 glaze over so in this book they write quote bovine tuberculosis a disease found in cattle

00:05:32.380 is transmitted to humans through milk it attacks the glands intestines and bones children are

00:05:39.340 particularly susceptible and are often kept in braces for years to keep their spines from

00:05:45.360 becoming deformed it's one of those like destructive diseases of like humankind and

00:05:49.780 it's like such a miracle that it's not a live issue anymore it's such a huge advancement for 1.00

00:05:55.200 humankind and yet we have all these grifters just being like was that really good let's bring it

00:06:00.100 back i mean i think in this way a lot of the raw milk stuff kind of follows a similar path to a

00:06:05.700 lot of the anti-vax stuff which is just like i haven't personally seen a child with tuberculosis

00:06:11.680 how bad can it be? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The CDC has conducted a number of reviews on foodborne

00:06:17.120 illness outbreaks linked to dairy products. One of those covered a 13 year period. This was from

00:06:23.140 1993 to 2006. They covered all 50 states. The study's authors concluded that raw milk was linked

00:06:32.100 to 150 times more outbreaks than pasteurized milk. No way. They also found that states where raw milk

00:06:41.000 sale was legal, had twice the incidence of foodborne illness outbreaks related to dairy

00:06:48.480 versus states where raw milk is restricted or banned.

00:06:52.100 That's crazy because also raw milk is not that big of a market.

00:06:55.300 So if they're having these like huge outbreaks, that means that it's a small number of people,

00:06:58.140 but much more likely to get sick.

00:06:59.700 That's exactly right.

00:07:01.340 Milk consumption overall has been trending downward in the U.S. since like the 70s,

00:07:08.380 right?

00:07:09.320 People are no longer.

00:07:10.180 i mean you can sort of see it culturally right like when we were kids there would be like families

00:07:15.020 where you'd be like your drink to go with dinner is a glass of milk is that not true anymore i don't

00:07:20.180 think so is it all like monster energy now is that what the kids are drinking it's all oat milk for

00:07:25.820 these soy boys so milk consumption overall has been trending downward for like 50 years but raw

00:07:33.240 milk consumption appears to be on the rise. According to analysis from the University of

00:07:40.600 Delaware, consumer data showed a 21% increase in raw milk sales from 2023 to 2024. Since that's a

00:07:48.680 relative statistic, I'm assuming that's from like a very low baseline. Yes, it is a low baseline. So

00:07:52.940 an analysis of two pretty large scale and nationally representative FDA surveys in 2016

00:08:02.500 and 2019 gave us a pretty good window into what raw milk consumption looks like 4.4 percent of

00:08:11.400 american adults said that they had consumed raw milk in the last year and one percent reported

00:08:16.620 consuming raw milk weekly okay that is like thank god like blessedly small totally it's a small

00:08:22.780 number of people but then when you're like 150 times the likelihood of illness outbreak like

00:08:28.500 on the thing about like milk consumption falling in general i do a thing where if i'm getting like

00:08:34.000 a brownie or a cookie at like a cafe i will order like a glass of milk with it because like a cookie

00:08:39.120 and milk is hella good it used to be that that cafes and stuff would have like listed on the

00:08:43.800 menu a glass of milk but now they don't even know like what to charge me oftentimes they'll just

00:08:48.480 like give me a glass of milk wokeness has gone too far michael i love it i'll take some free

00:08:54.920 milk with my cookie there are a lot of claims from maha types currently about pasteurization

00:09:02.240 making milk less nutritious but the science just doesn't bear that out also how much nutrition do 0.98

00:09:09.820 you fucking need from milk right surely losing out on some b12 is like worth it to not get sick

00:09:15.740 so a 2011 systematic review looked at 40 studies pasteurization decreased the amount of vitamins 0.99

00:09:26.680 e c and some b vitamins and folate and it increased the concentration of vitamin a so

00:09:35.200 okay on its face it looks like it's true that pasteurization can reduce the amount of some

00:09:42.180 vitamins in milk however those vitamins exist in raw milk in very small quantities exactly

00:09:50.420 a couple of four examples pasteurization reduces the amount of vitamin c in milk okay but a full

00:09:57.920 pint of raw milk contains zero percent of your vitamin c for the day oh wow okay vitamin e that

00:10:04.320 same full pint of raw milk gets you to three percent of your recommended daily allowance

00:10:09.100 pasteurized milk gets you to two percent also you know this from the last episode that i'm a vitamin 0.98

00:10:13.760 e truther you should be worrying less about vitamin e than you should about fucking tuberculosis and 0.82

00:10:18.380 like listeria like bugs in your juice maha types also argue that pasteurization kills off like 0.95

00:10:25.180 enzymes and probiotics and all kinds of stuff overwhelmingly those things are pathogens the

00:10:31.520 things that they're like oh no it's killing this off right those are things that will make you sick

00:10:36.160 i'm so sorry by probiotics i mean tuberculosis diphtheria most things you eat don't have like

00:10:41.160 live probiotics in them again like the probiotics thing is also kind of weird it's like you just

00:10:45.560 don't need to think about this that much and now michael opry we're gonna get in the wayback

00:10:51.700 machine and we're gonna talk through the history of the raw milk debate particularly in the u.s

00:10:58.640 we're gonna start with the birth of a man named louis pasteur we sure are wait are we actually

00:11:02.740 we're going to talk about pasteur for a minute i'm kind of an expert because like i'm in france

00:11:06.120 right now so like i can just i'll just walk us through this part do you want me to like i'll

00:11:09.220 just close my notes you tell me about pasteurization and about louis pasteur i speak

00:11:14.020 three words of french so like i'm actually qualified to do this part the thing is that's

00:11:19.120 actually why i'm here i the the french government heard me pronounce print amager no they were like 0.99

00:11:23.940 that's so good we're inviting you as a diplomatic trip to this country you're such a fucking you're 0.98

00:11:30.060 such a little troll even for me i struggle to pronounce like english words french is like a 0.99

00:11:36.940 particularly bad area so as you mentioned louis pasteur was a 19th century scientist and chemistry

00:11:44.660 professor from france he was working at the dawn of germ theory kind of catching on in 1864 he took

00:11:54.820 on a distiller as a client this distiller makes beet alcohol alcohol out of beets okay the

00:12:03.920 distiller wanted help uh figuring out why his alcohol kept turning sour so quickly oh pasteur

00:12:11.580 helped identify the culprit which was lactic yeast and found that heating the beet juice for

00:12:18.140 just a few minutes before fermenting it killed that yeast and allowed it to last longer beets

00:12:24.120 by dr pasteur boom oh oh it's so bad and i liked it so much i thought you would the spark is still

00:12:33.640 alive by god we've still got it uh pasteur figured out pasteurization and mostly applied it to wine

00:12:43.800 and beer alcohol was the main use of pasteurization early on it was other scientists who figured out

00:12:50.440 the application to milk in 1882 a scientist named robert coke argued that while scientists had

00:12:58.260 previously seen tuberculosis as resulting from just one germ he identified three different

00:13:05.320 tuberculosis germs one was a rare form spread by birds to birdculosis he found that there was

00:13:14.540 another germ that spread tb from person to person that one was much more common and there was a

00:13:20.160 third kind that had not previously been identified, which was TB that was spread from cows to people

00:13:26.000 through milk. It's not until a German chemist named Franz von Zaxlet came along. As the resident

00:13:35.280 pronunciation expert, you need me to do it? Oh, thank you so much. We get a lot of feedback on

00:13:39.280 how good my pronunciations are, how like accurate and precise they are. So I can do it. Perseverance.

00:13:47.540 Franz von Saxlett was the first to suggest that pasteurization be used for milk.

00:13:53.440 And that wasn't until 1886, which was 22 years after Pasteur applied it to alcohol, right?

00:13:59.180 It took him a while to, like, figure it out.

00:14:00.420 Yeah, totally.

00:14:01.580 Also, part of the reason that we call it pasteurization is by all accounts, Louis Pasteur was, like, his own hype man.

00:14:07.360 He's like, you know I'm the guy that did this, right?

00:14:09.060 You guys should just, like, name it after me.

00:14:10.240 Around this same time, pasteurization becomes a big public health issue.

00:14:15.480 or not pasteurization per se, but milk sanitation, maybe milk safety becomes a big public health

00:14:22.700 issue for a few reasons beyond just the TB of it all. One is that more people were moving to cities

00:14:32.300 and that meant that rather than maintaining small herds of dairy cows for small communities that

00:14:39.420 were more geographically dispersed, there were more centralized dairies with larger herds

00:14:44.600 producing larger amounts of milk and sometimes pooling milk from multiple sources first of all

00:14:50.600 if you have a larger herd there's more opportunities for those cows to all get tb right and right if

00:14:56.480 you're pooling milk from multiple sources and one of those sources is contaminated and the others are

00:15:01.900 not you pool it all together and surprise now it's all contaminated right right we saw this

00:15:06.300 mad cow as well absolutely when you have like basically one big bucket full of juice if like

00:15:12.080 one cow in the juice bucket has a problem then like the whole bucket has a problem yeah it's not

00:15:17.640 until the early 1900s that pasteurization really starts to catch on as a public policy in 1907 a

00:15:25.920 group of public health advocates started proposing a ban on selling raw milk in new york city

00:15:32.540 oh 1907 oh seven people have like known this is bad for like more than 100 years and we're just

00:15:39.080 like doing it anyway you were like is there an episode around this i was like don't get me

00:15:43.220 started on the 1907 campaign mike jesus christ the person leading the charge on that effort was

00:15:49.000 a guy named nathan strauss is this someone who you have come across no so this guy was

00:15:54.880 the owner of macy's and the owner of abraham and strauss which was one of the biggest department

00:16:02.820 stores in new york city throughout much of the 20th century okay strauss became really involved

00:16:07.760 in public life. He started doing a bunch of like philanthropic work. He worked as an elected

00:16:13.000 official. One of Strauss's main concerns was the public health threat of raw milk. As early as 1858,

00:16:23.280 the New York Times was reporting about the dangers of what they called swill milk. The city was

00:16:30.100 going through wave after wave after wave of disease outbreaks at this time yellow fever 0.98

00:16:37.000 cholera like really gnarly shit also they should leave raw milk legal but make them call it swill 0.97

00:16:44.340 milk dude the reporting on swill milk from this era goes so fucking hard i'm gonna send you this 0.98

00:16:52.880 is from uh that 1858 i'm sending you a quote the health commissioners agreed with the mayor that

00:16:59.260 the swill milk nuisance must be abated. I love swill milk nuisance. There's so many like metal

00:17:05.780 turns of phrase in this. Early next week, they will convene the board of health and unless all

00:17:09.760 the signs fail, we'll operate with energy and firmness to purify the city of the stables where

00:17:14.740 the disgusting stuff is manufactured, which by a scandalous and lying courtesy, we have for years

00:17:20.840 called pure orange County milk and under stringent penalties prohibit its use. If the board of health

00:17:27.000 has any function this certainly is one of them that the business of making and selling swill

00:17:32.200 milk is detrimental to the public health no sane man not even a city inspector can any longer doubt

00:17:38.260 it's so fascinating they're selling it as pure orange county milk which is like the same sort

00:17:43.560 of thing that they do now is like they rebrand this like basically like dirty milk like that's

00:17:48.500 what we should be calling it yeah as something that is like sounds slightly virtuous and like

00:17:52.860 clean and natural this same piece goes on to accuse swill milk farmers of making quote

00:18:00.060 diseased libels upon the fair name of cows well they have tuberculosis they also say that they'll

00:18:07.080 have to quote show cause before the board why their work of death should not be discontinued

00:18:13.800 more of this yeah metal also this is how i feel like genuinely like the fda should talk about

00:18:19.000 like people who sell raw milk all of that is to say strauss was not alone in his belief that raw

00:18:23.660 milk was a culprit this reporting happened 50 years before the new york campaign right so like

00:18:29.560 it was a well-known and widely believed thing for decades that raw milk might have a role here

00:18:38.060 but it hadn't been regulated in any meaningful way right so it is almost like a cigarette allegory

00:18:44.900 where it's like we knew this was bad but we didn't do anything we did like weird half measures for

00:18:48.820 ages yep so in 1907 strauss proposed an ordinance to require all milk to either be pasteurized or

00:18:58.120 what was called certified certified milk producers would just test their herd way more frequently

00:19:05.460 they would be held to higher food handling standards and they would submit their milk

00:19:11.580 for certification from a commission of physicians so they're getting at it upstream it's like make

00:19:17.020 sure the milk is clean so you don't have to pasteurize it is like the the attempt right but

00:19:21.020 like even if you do that you're like that none of that guarantees that there's not right yeah

00:19:25.300 coli in your milk right again it's like getting more at the tb of it all like what's even the

00:19:30.420 downside of pasteurization at this point part of it honestly was consumer demand people were like

00:19:35.480 pasteurized milk tastes weird it tastes cooked and at that point it was cooked right like we

00:19:40.560 pasteurized milk now for way less time right right so people are like dude raw milk tastes dope this

00:19:47.000 stuff is bad i don't want to drink the stuff that tastes bad yeah i wonder if it tasted closer to

00:19:51.200 like how uht milk tastes now because you can definitely like tell the difference during the

00:19:56.260 campaign strauss told a story this has haunted me haunted i am going to send you this quote from

00:20:05.460 milk exclamation point milk milk the island was being used as an orphanage and in order to ensure

00:20:11.740 the children had a steady supply of good clean fresh milk a dairy herd was maintained there

00:20:16.940 But between 1895 and 1897, while the 3,900 children were being fed supposedly safe raw milk, 1,509 of them died. 0.99

00:20:27.060 Holy shit. 0.99

00:20:27.960 Yeah, dude. 0.99

00:20:28.840 So like 40% of the kids died.

00:20:30.960 Yes.

00:20:31.740 In response to this frightening statistic, Strauss built a pasteurization plant on the island.

00:20:36.860 He made no attempt to change the children's diet or improve the orphanage's hygiene, just pasteurized the milk.

00:20:42.440 The mortality rate declined from 42% of the children to 28%.

00:20:46.200 Honestly, 28% still sounds real bad.

00:20:48.860 I thought they would have a way better happy ending to this.

00:20:51.620 Right.

00:20:51.860 It sounds way bad, but it is a 14% reduction.

00:20:56.220 Which is like a lot of kids.

00:20:57.320 Just from heating up the milk a little bit for a short period of time.

00:21:02.360 Right.

00:21:02.880 Despite that really visceral, really heartbreaking example,

00:21:10.520 the 1907 campaign failed.

00:21:12.720 and so did a second attempt in 1909 the ban didn't pass until 1910 and again it's not a full ban

00:21:21.060 it's just like you can only sell it if it's certified right yeah yeah in the meantime

00:21:26.300 new york got scooped by chicago who beat them to the punch and became the first city to ban

00:21:32.000 raw milk in the u.s okay they did that in 1909 but chicago's implementation was held up for

00:21:37.420 more than five years for the same reasons that the new york ban didn't pass it's also funny like

00:21:43.500 thinking about how ambitious this policy making was compared to so much policy making now i mean

00:21:48.280 you're basically requiring an entire sector to like add on this very expensive process it's good

00:21:55.680 like i think much more of this kind of ambitious policy making should take place but now it's like

00:21:59.760 anything gets proposed that has any effect on businesses it's like decades of litigation it's

00:22:05.360 Like, it's so hard to do this stuff now.

00:22:07.420 It's really remarkable how sort of gutsy the public policy work was.

00:22:13.720 And also, it did take like 50 years of knowing better.

00:22:19.800 Yeah.

00:22:19.940 And it took a super rich dude putting like all of his money and political capital into making this thing happen.

00:22:27.720 That does feel more American now.

00:22:29.120 Now it feels American.

00:22:29.740 There we go.

00:22:30.600 We got there.

00:22:31.580 We got there.

00:22:32.740 We did it, folks.

00:22:33.720 The only good things that happen are because, like, rich people want them.

00:22:36.280 So by 1917, which was just 10 years after Strauss's first campaign on raw milk,

00:22:43.340 46 major U.S. cities required pasteurization.

00:22:47.600 Nice.

00:22:48.000 From there, those city ordinances became state laws.

00:22:51.940 It was a dance sensation, sweeping the nation.

00:22:55.140 And people get more accustomed to pasteurized milk and what it tastes like, right?

00:23:00.540 by the 80s 1980s a commanding majority of states have either heavily restricted or outright banned

00:23:08.240 sale of raw milk so we're in like the modern era where like you basically can't get raw milk

00:23:12.760 unless you like go to great hassle that's not true it's not yet impossible because um while

00:23:19.980 states have taken action at the state level the fda has not taken federal action so it is still

00:23:25.160 legal to sell raw milk across state lines so even if you live in a state where it's not legal

00:23:31.340 you could mail order raw milk like i'm in portland i could drive across the river to

00:23:37.280 vancouver washington right that's sort of what we're talking about at this point so we're going

00:23:43.840 to spend a little time now talking about like what got the fda to finally take action and that's a

00:23:50.280 story that starts in the 70s and 80s with one of the biggest dairies in california and in the

00:23:57.280 country altadena it's funny that the thing that got them to take action was not like the deaths

00:24:02.460 of many children we'll get there don't worry it's weird if you've been to a grocery store in

00:24:06.900 california in the last like 50 years chances are they sold altadena dairy products altadena remains

00:24:12.760 one of the biggest dairies in the country in the 70s and 80s they were also one of the largest

00:24:18.180 dairy selling certified raw milk so they're doing the certification process right and they're

00:24:23.900 selling raw milk according to the la times altadena was subject to dozens of recalls in the space of

00:24:33.220 like 10 years wow not only for products that they sold retail but also because they supplied raw

00:24:40.360 milk to other producers who then made things like queso fresco with it and that would then get

00:24:47.000 recalled right in the case of that contaminated queso fresco that caused the deaths of 22

00:24:53.720 angelinos oh wow through all of this altadena defended itself and denied any responsibility

00:25:01.680 in every step along the way every case their owner was out in the press constantly referring

00:25:09.480 to altadena's raw milk as quote the cleanest milk in the world by clean we do not mean it doesn't

00:25:16.360 kill kids we mean something else the owner is also alleging in the press that this is all a

00:25:21.540 conspiracy against raw milk which like well it kind of is in that like there's a scientific

00:25:27.840 consensus that your product is dangerous then like yeah it kind of is right like a flu shot

00:25:32.740 is a conspiracy against the flu right a bunch of parents got together just because we killed kids

00:25:38.240 i should also say um this dude no longer owns altadena altadena is still around it's no longer

00:25:44.220 owned by like total crackpots okay so like if that's where you buy your milk don't worry it's

00:25:49.600 not going to like a raw milk truther anymore and they no longer sell raw milk they're not doing

00:25:54.580 that anymore right so this all comes to a head in 1987 when two altadena court cases finally make

00:26:02.900 kind of a meaningful dent in altadena's reputation and in their ability to sort of do what they're

00:26:08.840 going to do one is the paul telford case a 66 year old man named paul telford was undergoing

00:26:17.300 radiation for lung cancer and his doctors had him on a liquid diet altadena certified raw milk

00:26:26.060 advertised itself as safe and clean and pure so he was drinking it regularly for the few weeks

00:26:34.660 leading up to his death altadena argued in court that cancer killed him but at the time of his

00:26:41.160 death he had infections caused by both salmonella and listeria oh right i don't see the idea that

00:26:48.420 somebody like that needs like more vitamins more than they need like milk free of pathogens is

00:26:54.420 insane yeah as a result for the first time ever altadena faces a court judgment finding them

00:27:01.760 liable for telford's death like yay they were found liable boo they were ordered to pay 40 grand

00:27:09.020 to tell god yeah you just like kill five or six people a year and just pay pay that out and keep

00:27:14.660 making your product right it's such a small amount in today's dollars that's around 113 grand 0.60

00:27:20.640 the other lawsuit that is sort of making its way through the courts around this time

00:27:26.300 was filed as impact litigation by a consumer watchdog group that watchdog group is public

00:27:33.400 citizen okay founded by ralph nader nader's like a really like influential guy on consumer safety

00:27:39.940 stuff so public citizen filed suit uh against altadena they co-filed with the gray panthers

00:27:47.540 do you know about the gray panthers it's like a seniors advocacy group and i fucking love the 0.59

00:27:52.620 name it makes me so happy there was gonna be like like a combination of like black panthers and like 0.98

00:27:58.340 a bunch of white people so they were gray you were just color mixing in your brain 0.70

00:28:03.300 the suit argued that altadena was making false advertising claims they were marketing their

00:28:10.600 raw milk products as quote safe healthy wholesome and pure and as suitable for vulnerable populations

00:28:17.740 like babies and sick people that's insane the court ultimately ruled in favor of public citizen

00:28:23.660 and the gray panthers and they find altadena liable okay that ruling prompted a federal

00:28:30.660 court to sort of force the fda's hand we've talked about this in the past that the fda

00:28:36.300 can only regulate interstate commerce things that happen within the state fall at the state level

00:28:41.040 so back in 1973 the fda had strongly considered a ruling that only pasteurized milk could be

00:28:48.560 shipped across state lines which would have effectively banned interstate commerce of raw

00:28:53.220 milk they consider it again in 1985 but that's during the reagan administration and you know 0.96

00:29:00.700 those fuckers aren't passing new regs right yeah the public citizen ruling addressed the fda directly 0.97

00:29:08.080 and said basically look like you can do what you want but quote there is no longer any question of 0.99

00:29:13.800 the fact that raw milk is unsafe right so they now have like judges saying publicly in high profile

00:29:20.720 cases like come on jokers nothing about this is safe this is literally like why we have a government

00:29:25.820 so that you can't just like sell a dangerous product to people yes and you can't just be like

00:29:30.700 i don't know regulation just sort of isn't our thing it's literally like what you're trading off

00:29:34.300 is like a slight inconvenience

00:29:36.320 to a corporation

00:29:37.320 versus the deaths of children.

00:29:39.080 This isn't even like a hard trade-off.

00:29:41.220 Yeah.

00:29:41.580 Following the FDA ban,

00:29:43.900 following the sort of proliferation

00:29:45.560 of state bans,

00:29:47.660 people like pretty immediately

00:29:49.160 try to find workarounds

00:29:50.820 and they're successful.

00:29:52.080 Great.

00:29:52.660 In doing so.

00:29:53.460 Of course they are.

00:29:54.040 How do I keep doing this thing

00:29:55.180 that kills kids?

00:29:56.100 One of those things,

00:29:56.800 one of the more popular workarounds

00:29:58.500 is something called a milk club.

00:30:03.200 Okay.

00:30:03.440 Which is essentially like an underground railroad for Listeria.

00:30:10.340 When you put it that way, it's less appealing.

00:30:13.780 There are like a bunch of organizations that get really into milk clubs.

00:30:17.520 One of them, a person named Liz Reitzig, who is one of the big popularizers of milk clubs, who also was a supporter of the Raw Milk Freedom Riders.

00:30:31.760 That's so good. 0.55

00:30:33.440 I'm basically Rosa Parks. 1.00

00:30:35.060 I want them to be able to kill kids. 0.99

00:30:37.320 I'm essentially Gandhi. 1.00

00:30:39.260 It's like staggering.

00:30:41.260 Mother Jones describes the raw milk freedom riders as, quote,

00:30:45.040 a caravan of self-described frustrated mothers who wanted the repeal of federal raw milk laws.

00:30:51.420 But it's like the same framing where it's like, oh, these are just like concerned mothers.

00:30:54.820 It's Mumsnet, but for diphtheria.

00:30:57.460 As opposed to like people who are just like anti-science freaks.

00:30:59.980 in addition to milk clubs um there's a workaround called herd shares so the idea is you're not

00:31:08.000 buying raw milk you're paying to lease a cow in a dairy herd and then the dairy delivers raw milk

00:31:17.140 as a byproduct of the cow you fake oh i love that we're not buying it we're like subscribed

00:31:24.760 That all brings us to our contemporary context.

00:31:30.400 Nightmare.

00:31:30.820 Interestingly, the current sort of landscape around raw milk laws is that, frankly, a lot of blue states allow the sale of raw milk and a lot of red states ban it outright.

00:31:42.840 Is it illegal in Oregon?

00:31:44.100 You can buy raw milk, but only directly on the farm from a farmer with a herd of three cows or fewer.

00:31:53.100 Oh, weird.

00:31:53.620 Well, that's because of transmission of bovine tuberculosis.

00:31:57.320 A smaller herd can't transmit it as much, right?

00:32:00.540 That there's fewer opportunities for the disease spreading.

00:32:04.400 Washington and California both have legal raw milk retail sale.

00:32:09.540 You can go to the grocery store and buy raw milk in Washington and California. 0.93

00:32:14.320 It's at gas stations next to the Kratom. 1.00

00:32:16.140 I mean, honest to God.

00:32:17.780 One-stop shop.

00:32:19.260 It's so...

00:32:20.940 Just like the sketchy things aisle.

00:32:23.240 You know, Erewhon sells it in California, because of course they do, and it's 13 bucks.

00:32:28.860 The funny thing is, I think you could actually do a thing where you're like, look, you want

00:32:32.640 raw milk, we don't want raw milk, why don't we compromise?

00:32:36.160 And we come up with some sort of process where, like, we'll bring it up to a certain

00:32:39.360 temperature, but, like, it won't be brought up to boiling.

00:32:41.680 How about that as, like, a compromise?

00:32:43.740 And, like, they just don't know what pasteurization is, and they're like, yeah, that sounds pretty

00:32:46.880 reasonable, as long as you don't bring it up to boiling.

00:32:48.660 It's like, yeah, actually, you know what?

00:32:50.380 We can meet in the middle on this one.

00:32:51.520 You know, you treat it like it's a new discovery.

00:32:53.560 We found a totally non-chemical way to sanitize milk.

00:32:57.020 It's like perfectly natural.

00:32:58.720 And actually it dates back hundreds of years.

00:33:01.680 So it's an ancestral way of keeping milk safe.

00:33:04.440 That's good. 0.99

00:33:04.820 You could use the like paleo bullshit language as a way to sell heating milk to kill germs. 0.99

00:33:12.900 Just call it like a deliberate sunshine. 0.99

00:33:15.240 Milk sunning.

00:33:16.300 We're basically sunning the milk.

00:33:17.840 The milk has gotten red light therapy.

00:33:21.520 just like the kind you put on your ball the only like my only hopes for america now because

00:33:25.660 everything is just like on fire is just like let's just how can we lie to these people to get the 0.94

00:33:29.880 outcomes that we want because they're so dumb ultimately in 2007 we were at a national high 0.93

00:33:36.860 point of raw milk regulation just four states allowed for retail sale of raw milk in grocery 0.98

00:33:45.400 stores. Say their names. Who was it? I don't remember which four states. I didn't look into

00:33:51.620 which ones in 2007. It does, by the way, it does seem like California has always been a state that

00:33:58.180 doesn't ban it, which I'm like, fucking California, man. Gwyneth is too big to fail. 0.99

00:34:02.340 In recent years, a number of states have repealed those bans and allowed for the sale of raw milk.

00:34:09.080 today many coastal states allow retail sale of raw milk california and washington a number of

00:34:18.140 western states most of new england all allow for retail sale of raw milk oh so how in less than

00:34:27.680 20 years have we seen such a backlash to pasteurization and a rollback of those state

00:34:35.040 bands right the story of how we got here starts with the founding of the weston a price foundation

00:34:43.200 i was gonna ask about this if they're gonna make a little cameo oh it's not even a little cameo

00:34:48.060 it's like a protagonist it not protagonist and antagonist is is that a drag name has someone

00:34:55.780 so mike what do you know about the weston a price foundation well i know of them from 0.98

00:35:01.720 previous show research yes it's like the dumbest like woo woo ant that you can possibly imagine

00:35:07.880 but also with like a ton of power woo woo ant is such a great description of the vibes at weston 0.88

00:35:14.620 a price there's like a patina there's like a hippie aesthetic yeah yeah to some of the things

00:35:19.620 that they produce so here is uh i'm gonna send you their mission statement which i think i was

00:35:26.740 going to send you in the seed oils episode, so we're coming full circle, because I know I have

00:35:31.300 it in my notes. I'll just do it from memory. The foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense

00:35:36.920 foods to the human diet through education, research, and activism. It supports a number

00:35:41.400 of movements that contribute to this objective, including accurate nutrition instruction,

00:35:45.980 organic and biodynamic farming, pasture feeding of livestock, community-supported farms,

00:35:51.160 honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting, and nurturing therapies.

00:35:55.720 specific goals include establishment of universal access to clean certified raw milk and a ban on

00:36:02.280 the use of soy formula for infants it goes really nuts at the end there they're also leaving out of

00:36:08.260 this mission statement like how much of their whole thing is about animal fats and like fat

00:36:14.180 is actually good for you and you should be eating meat fat and like right keto kind of elements right

00:36:19.980 so that mission statement has like a fair amount of curb appeal if you're not a partisan or if

00:36:27.500 you're like a little left-leaning here's a little glimpse into the issues currently listed on their

00:36:33.880 website okay say no to cell towers in your neighborhood oh i love this okay bird flu in

00:36:40.820 raw milk our founder reveals the lies underlying the latest attack on raw milk oh they're debunking

00:36:48.900 You from an hour ago.

00:36:50.580 Aubrey in shambles.

00:36:52.420 Weston A. Bryce Foundation 0.97

00:36:53.880 destroys fat activists.

00:36:58.000 They also have a section called

00:36:59.160 Main Health Topics.

00:37:01.480 Here are some of their main health topics.

00:37:05.200 Cod liver oil,

00:37:06.560 our number one superfood.

00:37:09.020 Okay.

00:37:09.720 Why butter is better,

00:37:11.200 nature's healthiest fat.

00:37:13.700 Vaccinations,

00:37:14.720 the most important decision

00:37:16.220 parents will ever make.

00:37:17.660 I wonder where they come down on that.

00:37:19.200 I wonder what decision they think is best.

00:37:20.760 And then the last one is just soy alert!

00:37:25.000 The funny thing is they sound like some sort of like 1910s grandma.

00:37:29.720 They're going to give you a Werther's and measles.

00:37:32.260 The foundation is named for Weston A. Price.

00:37:34.780 Do you know who Weston A. Price is?

00:37:37.340 I did not.

00:37:38.000 I looked this up, but I forgot.

00:37:39.180 He's a dentist from Cleveland who authored a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

00:37:45.960 that was published in 1939 price traveled to more than a dozen countries to observe

00:37:52.840 the health and diets of different societies his argument was that the dental and physical health 0.97

00:38:00.980 of non-industrialized excuse me is your fucking beans for breakfast i only have beans to blame 0.92

00:38:07.480 they make me all that i am um his argument was that the health of non-industrialized communities 0.98

00:38:17.680 was superior to the health of industrialized communities laughably false but okay he said

00:38:23.420 the culprit for americans health woes was quote foods of modern commerce okay what we now call

00:38:30.780 processed and ultra processed foods here is a synopsis of his conclusions from a piece in

00:38:39.000 the atlantic i apologize for making you read something from the atlantic i hate you i know

00:38:44.680 i know you do uh it says in the conclusion of price's book he suggests a common theme in the

00:38:51.180 diet he observed across the world the healthy primitives ate plenty of meat seafood and fats

00:38:56.820 Americans would be wise to adapt their own diets accordingly, Price warned.

00:39:01.020 Shortly before publishing the book, he'd gone to the Rutland State Fair in Vermont

00:39:05.100 and had sat for an hour observing the crowd.

00:39:08.300 Three out of every four people he saw there, he said,

00:39:11.220 showed signs of prenatal injury due to poor maternal nutrition. 1.00

00:39:16.080 He's like eating a turkey leg at a fucking state fair, 1.00

00:39:19.120 just being like, that guy's fucked up, that guy's fucked up, your mom fucked up. 1.00

00:39:23.640 Just like judging people on no information. 1.00

00:39:25.680 that is absolutely what does that even mean why i included that part about the state fair 0.99

00:39:31.940 allow me to introduce this part where he just sits at a state fair and goes that guy's fucked 0.94

00:39:36.300 up yeah look at that's overbite that's because your mom didn't eat enough butter so like of 0.99

00:39:40.940 course this is like just like an aggressively racist way of talking about shit right he is 0.99

00:39:47.220 also a dentist and not a physician which is a different fucking thing also i i will say like 0.98

00:39:52.800 when i worked in human rights i did a lot of work on like developing countries and oftentimes you 0.92

00:39:56.940 read like nutritional reports and like in poor countries people are often eating like 1900

00:40:02.000 calories of like white rice in a day because you can't afford protein you can't afford like fat

00:40:07.880 like it's just not factually true that people in like poor southeast asia are eating tons of like

00:40:14.200 meat and seafood and fats those are like rich people food the book didn't make much of a splash

00:40:19.620 when it was first published i can't imagine why it would yeah but it was influential with two people

00:40:26.140 who matter most and those are the co-founders of the weston a price foundation okay one of them is

00:40:31.820 a credentialed person the other one is not we're going to talk first about the credentialed person

00:40:36.060 mary enig had a master's and a doctorate in nutritional science so she is credentialed

00:40:42.060 but her views are extremely fringe.

00:40:45.040 She passed away in 2014.

00:40:47.760 She was a big critic of vegetarianism.

00:40:50.880 Oh, good. I love this.

00:40:51.940 The vegetarian dunking always comes along with this weird animal fat thing.

00:40:57.120 Among other things, Mary Enig once argued that coconut oil could effectively treat HIV and AIDS.

00:41:04.820 the other co-founder is um the one who is still with us sally fallon moral is her name

00:41:12.300 she is not the credentialed one she has a bachelor's in english from stanford and a

00:41:19.100 master's in english from ucla and take it from a literary arts major from brown university 0.98

00:41:25.340 knock that shit off you're not a nutrition guy she co-authored a book called the contagion myth 0.96

00:41:33.580 why viruses including quote unquote coronavirus are not the cause of disease our entire show is 1.00

00:41:43.560 just leading up to this thing where all of these people just come out against the fucking germ

00:41:47.840 theory of disease michael you're not asking the questions that matter which is if germs and 0.95

00:41:52.760 viruses don't cause disease what does and the answer is 5g oh wait is it literally it is 0.94

00:41:58.480 literally oh my god i thought she was gonna do some like imbalance of humors type shit but this 0.89

00:42:04.220 is this is very innovative in the 90s she read weston a price's book and it really resonated 0.97

00:42:11.620 with her as a result she started feeding her kids a high fat diet with lots of animal fats in it she

00:42:18.760 starts feeding her kids raw milk she says her children don't have any health problems at all

00:42:23.780 and she credits that diet for things as like even for like her kids not needing braces she's like

00:42:32.140 it's the animal fats that's why or maybe she's decided not to give them braces they're like mom 0.99

00:42:37.280 yeah totally her teeth are fucked up it's kind of mean 0.92

00:42:40.520 one of the biggest priorities of the foundation is raw milk they don't usually call it raw milk 0.99

00:42:50.300 they call it real milk weston a praise foundation spins off something called the campaign for real

00:42:58.460 milk which no joke to this day has a blog post called the vendetta against alta dina again the

00:43:05.840 whole real milk thing it's like what do you think pasteurization is real milk is only warm once and

00:43:11.760 that's when it comes out of a cow it doesn't get warm again later they're all like catastrophizing

00:43:16.640 about like this extremely minor thing this is a quote from the website of the campaign for real

00:43:23.940 milk under the header raw milk safety okay it says real milk milk that is pasture raised full

00:43:31.640 fat and unprocessed is an inherently safe food that's because raw milk contains numerous bioactive

00:43:38.420 components that kill pathogens in the milk prevent pathogen absorption across the intestinal wall

00:43:45.820 and strengthen the immune system.

00:43:48.380 No other food that we consume contains a built-in safety system like the one in raw milk. 0.99

00:43:54.280 Dude, this is like the most density of bullshit I think we've ever had. 0.98

00:43:57.960 Would you like to know what their source for this is? 0.99

00:44:00.480 It is one case study from 1984.

00:44:04.480 It's like it's a sheer balls to say like not only is raw milk not bad for you,

00:44:08.840 but it's actually super good for you.

00:44:10.760 It's actually the only food that's this good for you.

00:44:13.140 you're basically encouraging people to drink like a shitload of it so in 2007 they also founded

00:44:18.280 something called the farm to consumer legal defense fund and from what i can tell this is

00:44:24.640 the most effective arm in their raw milk work okay the fund provides legal support to farmers

00:44:32.200 presumably farmers aligned with their organizational values of course the defense

00:44:38.420 fund also set a goal quote to make raw milk sales legal in every state right they sort of put out

00:44:45.700 the word that they're providing legal support and legal defense funds to farmers right in that

00:44:52.700 process they start elevating those dairy farmers in the press and that is where we start to see a

00:45:01.140 real uptick in more mainstream coverage of raw milk fights when a raw milk dairy farmer is found

00:45:11.600 to be in violation of a state or local ban or when raw milk tests positive for really dangerous

00:45:19.940 pathogens they then kind of court media and push the story as like an injustice look at how our

00:45:25.940 federal government is attacking these small farmers right who are just doing things the

00:45:30.440 way we've always done things don't pay attention to the mortality rates yeah and they frame it as

00:45:37.440 like really devastating evidence of governmental overreach right so they're identifying raw milk

00:45:44.440 farmers and then kind of pitching them to the media as like salt of the earth family farmers

00:45:51.180 who are being trodden upon by government overreach yeah like the legal attack doesn't necessarily make

00:45:57.720 headlines in and of itself right it makes more headlines to have people kind of wilding out and

00:46:03.280 we have a couple of people who have kind of wilded out about raw milk right so i want to spend some

00:46:08.480 time talking about two of their biggest rising stars of the raw milk world i'm like a raw milk

00:46:14.480 influencer i'm like so popular oh yeah i'm like the coolest it's just like me puking in the toilet

00:46:19.400 one of those is someone named mark mcafee who is from the san joaquin valley in california

00:46:27.620 in 2000 he co-founded what was then called organic pastures dairy company

00:46:35.320 which was renamed in 2020 to raw farm usa all caps and now the logo is just two ar-15s

00:46:44.900 i mean there's a lot of like distressed american flag graphics happening yeah it's very much like

00:46:52.100 aesthetic by christian odige right right mcafee founds his farm in 2000 by 2007 his products were

00:46:58.420 in 300 stores in california just fucking room temperature just on the shelf just festering 0.85

00:47:04.440 to their credit they do refrigerate but then why do they refrigerate it these people don't even 0.99

00:47:08.820 believe in bacteria why are you refrigerating it have like bright green fucking mold floating on 0.99

00:47:13.780 it you fucking weirdos mcafee also had a mail order business that he said brought in about 0.99

00:47:19.400 eighty thousand dollars a month now you might be thinking this is after the fda ban how on earth 1.00

00:47:26.660 is he selling mail order raw milk across state lines and that is he is labeling it as pet food

00:47:34.300 not for human consumption that's like those people that were selling like fish antibiotics

00:47:38.900 on amazon much like altadena before them raw farm usa has faced a lot of lawsuits and regulation

00:47:47.720 first up that labeled as pet food thing didn't last very long he was doing that in 2007 talking

00:47:53.980 about in the press in 2007 in 2008 they did face federal criminal charges for that oh wow god in

00:48:00.440 2023 federal prosecutors charged that raw farm usa had once again been shipping raw milk across

00:48:10.500 state lines so as a result they're now in a consent decree oh wow until 2028 the fda can

00:48:18.660 conduct audits and unannounced inspections but as we know the fda a shell of its former self 0.95

00:48:24.400 so you just order raw milk in the fucking mail it takes like a couple days in like the back of 0.87

00:48:29.640 a van to like get to you the farm has had many recalls the most recent was in december for bird 0.99

00:48:37.780 flu in their milk. Oh, my God. When McAfee was asked for comment on the bird flu recall,

00:48:44.720 he gave comment to Mother Jones. Here is how he responded to their request for comment on the

00:48:55.260 bird flu recall. Trace the money, he wrote in an email in which he also denied bird flu could be

00:49:00.820 a threat to his business or his customer's health. We don't think avian flu causes things to be

00:49:05.880 unsafe. You may think I'm some kind of crazy person, but show me one person who's ever gotten

00:49:11.180 sick from raw milk with avian flu. Viruses don't exist in raw milk. They die off quickly. Fearing

00:49:17.360 viruses is ridiculous, he says. He holds that only people lacking strong microbiomes and good

00:49:24.180 immune systems need worry. Of COVID, for instance, he says, I got it and it was mild. I'm a raw,

00:49:29.920 i'm a raw milk drinker it didn't hardly phase me i can't argue with science all right he got

00:49:36.600 covid and he drinks raw milk show me one person who got sick from covid and it wasn't mild 0.99

00:49:42.040 he's saying only people without good immune systems need to worry that's a lot of fucking 0.99

00:49:48.040 people dude he's the guy with the turkey leg at the state fair being like your mom 1.00

00:49:52.460 your mom drank too much wine pointing at people being like fetal alcohol

00:49:56.080 he's also very clear on his view of where the demand for raw milk is coming from

00:50:04.180 he told cbs news quote people are seeking raw milk like crazy anything that the fda tells our

00:50:12.440 customers to do they do the opposite yep that sounds about right that sounds like we're dealing 1.00

00:50:17.620 with the dumbest fucking people in the country who are also running it by the way to your point 0.99

00:50:23.180 mcafee is currently rumored to be in consideration for a role at hhs of course that's always the 1.00

00:50:29.820 fucking epilogue to these people now the good news is that he does think bird flu is quote a 0.96

00:50:34.920 huge scam oh good that was backed by pharma companies quote to create fear and produce 1.00

00:50:41.980 a new vaccine after covid closed up just say fucking birds aren't real get to the fucking 1.00

00:50:47.600 point let's just birds are fake dinosaurs we all know this god why not there's another sort of 0.99

00:50:53.860 rising star named amos miller who is an amish raw milk dairy farmer in pennsylvania okay pennsylvania

00:51:03.340 allows for sale of raw milk you just have to have a permit and the core of the issue with amos miller 0.97

00:51:09.460 is he's like fuck your permit i'm never getting a permit so like it is legal to do what he is doing 0.99

00:51:15.140 He just decided to do it in the illegal way. 0.99

00:51:17.680 Right.

00:51:18.720 So the permit requires dairy farmers, raw dairy farmers to regularly test their milk, their water and their herd. 0.66

00:51:28.480 It's pretty fucking reasonable.

00:51:31.140 Permit holders can't, however, produce raw yogurt, kefir or fresh cheese. 0.91

00:51:37.120 I am guessing that that was the problem.

00:51:39.480 He'd have to stop selling some of his products. 1.00

00:51:41.880 It's also such garbage that you can just fucking sell this dangerous product with a permit. 0.99

00:51:45.820 It feels like these people have all been coddled by, like, these weird carve-outs. 1.00

00:51:49.860 For what?

00:51:50.580 For what reason are we doing this?

00:51:52.620 It's so weird.

00:51:54.100 Pennsylvania's attorney general has also charged that Amos Miller has also been illegally shipping raw milk across state lines through what he calls a buyer's club.

00:52:04.720 That has led to this kind of wild, protracted face-off between Miller and regulators.

00:52:13.820 He and his attorney really seem to be leaning into the controversy on a bunch of this.

00:52:18.480 His attorney, while they had a court case in progress, wrote that Pennsylvania's Secretary

00:52:25.180 of Agriculture thinks he's, quote, the food pope of the world.

00:52:29.140 Right. He is kind of the food pope of America.

00:52:31.460 Of Pennsylvania. Yeah, absolutely.

00:52:33.860 This guy thinks he's in charge of this issue.

00:52:36.820 Yep.

00:52:37.440 That's how a government works. 0.54

00:52:39.120 Amos Miller is extremely public about his alignment with the Weston A. Price Foundation.

00:52:45.280 He publicly talks up the foundation.

00:52:48.340 He cites them as kind of a cornerstone of his analysis and as a flashpoint of his politicization around this issue.

00:52:54.700 He has been a sponsor of their annual conference where, fun fact, the keynote speaker has been RFK Jr.

00:53:03.560 of course i'm amazed it took us this long to get to him honestly for all of those reasons and more

00:53:09.860 amos miller has made a great candidate for right-wing stardom part of what happens is that

00:53:16.000 these guys start going hard on raw milk publicly weston a price then boosts the media stories that

00:53:22.920 they're in yeah right and there's this sort of like symbiotic relationship of they keep grabbing

00:53:28.180 headlines and Weston A. Price keeps boosting them. Once we've got these couple of rogue dairy farmers

00:53:34.740 in the headlines, those are now news stories that podcasters can pull up, that YouTube reaction

00:53:42.440 channels can start to react to. And it becomes a topic of conversation that otherwise wouldn't

00:53:48.960 necessarily be a topic of conversation. It then becomes a circular thing where then you get the

00:53:55.160 stories about like oh the movement for raw milk is getting bigger and then that then feeds into

00:53:59.520 the next round of people who are like oh maybe i should be trying this and then you get yep the

00:54:03.140 next round of stories saying oh there's a lot of raw milk people around we have had a wave of raw

00:54:08.560 milk endorsements from high profile people many of whom are friends of the show paul saladino

00:54:15.380 has encouraged feeding raw milk to infants yeah great stuff i mean he also says that they should

00:54:20.860 eat raw livers and stuff so at least he's consistent uh joe rogan says he's a raw milk

00:54:25.960 drinker i watched a whole clip of him talking about it at length and he switches pretty quickly

00:54:30.900 from raw milk to whole milk as the language he uses so i think he doesn't know what we're talking

00:54:37.120 like i genuinely think he doesn't know he's someone you could go on his show and be like 0.98

00:54:41.980 they need to heat up the milk joe easy easy he also talks in the fucking clip he's like uh you 0.93

00:54:49.080 can pretty well tell when milk has gone bad like i just sniff it before i drink it that's not even 0.93

00:54:54.860 safe or not and you're like we're not talking about sour milk joe you can't smell listeria joe

00:55:01.240 it's not the same thing it's oh my god again these people don't believe in like microscopic

00:55:06.780 things that could cause diseases turning point usa sold a shirt that said got raw milk on it

00:55:15.160 referencing a very timely got milk reference in 2025 first of all and second of all it did have

00:55:22.780 an illustration of a bull on because now we're at the place where it's like do you do you know

00:55:26.240 where milk comes from god damn it's not even like do you believe in bacteria it's like walk me 0.70

00:55:31.320 through what you think milk is it's when you squeeze almonds mike oh my god thomas massey 0.96

00:55:36.480 that same republican from kentucky has introduced a bill to overturn the fda ban on interstate raw

00:55:44.160 milk sales goop herself says that she puts raw cream in her coffee each morning and she says

00:55:51.400 she gets it from mark mcafee's farm god not that i expect any better from quinn like jesus christ

00:55:57.760 she acknowledged to the cut that some of the claims around raw milk are quote-unquote pseudo

00:56:03.740 science but she also said is someone going to invest in getting a data set around raw milk 0.97

00:56:10.640 oh my god it's not gonna be the dairy industry right and i'm like what are you fucking kidding

00:56:16.300 me if the dairy industry was like you can do less work sell more products at a higher price point 0.91

00:56:22.240 across the fucking country do you not think altadena would be jumping at the opportunity 0.58

00:56:27.800 and also you're paying for the raw milk it's also a business it's not like big business versus like 0.99

00:56:33.760 small farmers it's all big business and also like who's gonna get the data set we've had the data

00:56:38.520 said since the fucking 1800s my guy this is like the thing this is also like rfk jr being like

00:56:44.340 we're finally gonna see whether vaccines work on top of that there has also been considerable uptick 0.94

00:56:51.040 in pro raw milk discourse on gab and rumble and info wars and a couple of info wars podcast hosts

00:57:02.920 have uh talked about it one of them owen schroyer said in his uh podcast the war room

00:57:10.380 quote they say bird flu and milk bird flu and milk oh it's the scariest thing they'll just

00:57:16.540 make raw milk illegal that's what this is all about and like them is trump and rfk jr right

00:57:23.660 and even under democrats no one was reaching further than the fda interstate commerce band

00:57:29.640 No one was saying it's totally illegal to sell raw milk in the United States of America.

00:57:35.760 Right.

00:57:35.880 There's some things to think about in terms of like why raw milk has taken off now after so many years of such successful regulation of it.

00:57:45.440 There are a couple of things.

00:57:47.040 One is that as in the turn of the 19th to 20th century, the dairy industry has been changing.

00:57:56.560 In recent decades, more and more independent and family dairy farmers have disappeared.

00:58:02.960 They've been bought out.

00:58:03.940 They've been overtaken by large scale corporate dairy farms.

00:58:07.520 And if small farmers are trying to compete with the margins of huge dairy farms, they can't.

00:58:14.500 Right.

00:58:14.620 so instead they're going to look for ways to signify that their milk is different and better

00:58:20.300 this is part of the reason why um some small dairies have started putting their milk in glass

00:58:26.800 bottles because it looks like a heftier and more prestigy kind of product oh that's interesting

00:58:33.180 right there are a number of dairy farmers that i read interviews with who are like look i don't

00:58:37.660 believe that gmos are any kind of issue but we absolutely label our milk as being gmo free because

00:58:43.440 people will pay more if there's a GMO free label on it. And people, I guess, willing to pay more

00:58:48.160 for milk they think is like fucking has so many vitamins or some shit. On top of that, in recent 0.99

00:58:52.880 years, there has been more new research to misinterpret. The biggest example of this is

00:58:58.940 that in the late 90s, there was a Swiss epidemiologist who started to look into something

00:59:03.840 called the farm effect. It is this sort of sometimes observed, sometimes not effect where

00:59:10.220 some kids raised on farms appeared to develop allergies and asthma much less than kids raised

00:59:18.500 in other settings, right? So they published their first study on this in 1999. And they found that

00:59:25.580 local kids who lived on farms did indeed appear to have lower rates of allergies. This is just

00:59:32.080 in Switzerland, right? That's all we're talking about here. Studies since then have been considerably

00:59:37.200 more mixed but there's definitely like enough evidence to keep looking the farm effect appears

00:59:43.800 to be most observed and in some like it might even be exclusively observed in western european

00:59:51.040 farms so i'm like well there's a lot of differences there and also that does it doesn't have anything

00:59:55.980 to do with milk specifically that's just like that could be many different things they start

00:59:59.400 looking into farm milk essentially what they're talking about when they talk about farm milk is

01:00:04.720 milk that is produced on the farm but in that research they didn't track whether the farm milk

01:00:11.160 was raw or not because they might be just like pasteurizing it themselves right or they might

01:00:16.240 be doing what lots and lots of farmers have been doing for hundreds of years and boiling or scalding

01:00:21.140 the milk yeah even though they have not been able to certify what portion of that is raw versus

01:00:28.640 pasteurized versus boiled or scalded milk raw milk folks have seized upon this and been like

01:00:35.040 aha i knew it it's the milk even for them this is thin it is really thin farms in other countries

01:00:43.300 have kids who may or may not be drinking raw milk have fewer allergies there's like five leaps you

01:00:52.060 have to make to think that's evidence of anything your kid's gonna get asthma so as a result don't

01:00:57.500 let him get asthma instead give them a listeria kill him quicker on top of the dairy industry

01:01:05.400 stuff on top of that new research one of the big boosts that appears to have taken place with raw

01:01:11.440 milk consumption is covid lockdowns and the amount of anti-vax and anti-science yeah uh sentiment

01:01:19.580 that that kicked up mark mcafee has talked about what a boom in sales they experienced during and

01:01:26.740 after 2020. Raw Milk and sort of the rhetoric around Raw Milk dovetails really nicely with a

01:01:34.020 number of other right-wing projects and conspiracies. So one of the biggest boosters

01:01:40.940 of Raw Milk has been a number of Tradwives, right? Which is like part of this project around 1.00

01:01:47.060 cultural nostalgia and like a throwback to a time with much more misogyny.

01:01:51.960 And also like everything else on TikTok, it's like mostly people faking it.

01:01:54.960 I'm so sorry. You don't think Nara Smith woke up to a sick toddler and was like, I need to make

01:01:59.440 cough drops from scratch. Right. Like the whole thing is just like it's like those morning routine

01:02:03.840 videos that we were talking about that are like completely faked. It's just everyone is like

01:02:07.300 faking the lifestyle that they're living. And this is just like one of the other fake lifestyles that

01:02:11.920 you can pretend that you're doing. I will say some folks on the right go so far as to contend that

01:02:17.080 dairies are injecting chemicals into pasteurized milk sure they call it quote state approved milk

01:02:25.860 what fiat currency that's just like everything you eat is state approved there's like health

01:02:30.640 inspections at restaurants on some level it's state approved i'm a rebel i don't eat your 0.99

01:02:34.660 state approved usda inspected beef have fun getting poisoned have fun getting fucking listeria 0.96

01:02:41.500 genuinely and like i mean i do think that is sort of the question that we're grappling with here is 0.94

01:02:47.960 like what are the risky decisions that we let people make right we allow people to drink to

01:02:53.580 excess we allow people to smoke we give them lots of warnings about it but they're allowed to do it 0.97

01:02:58.160 we allow people to eat like steak tartare you know what i mean like shit like that but we also like 0.94

01:03:03.800 don't let people use like a lot of uh controlled substances we don't let you enroll your kid in 0.77

01:03:10.500 school without vaccinating them for certain communicable diseases in a lot of states not

01:03:15.320 everyone anymore jesus christ but then i also think raw milk is different because there isn't

01:03:20.300 actually any like benefit to it right there's not a use case yeah the purported benefits are fake

01:03:26.060 like people are lying and then it just feels like it's in a category that's much closer just like

01:03:30.900 driving without a seat belt yeah like it is and it isn't right like it's a freedom issue but you're

01:03:35.320 like, sorry, you want the freedom to, I guess, drink things that make you sick.

01:03:41.380 Right.

01:03:41.800 And also, especially to give them to your kids, right?

01:03:44.280 It's like, there's also victims of this who are not making a choice.

01:03:47.300 And there's a reason why, like, if you want to smoke when you're over 18, you're smart

01:03:50.360 enough to decide that that's the risk reward for you.

01:03:52.460 But like, if kids are being given raw milk, those kids are not in charge of the decision.

01:03:56.500 Right.

01:03:56.680 That is the hardest stop for me.

01:03:58.920 Right.

01:03:59.120 is like the fact that like so many people are getting raw milk under the misapprehension that

01:04:05.960 it will prevent their kids from getting allergies right in the process their kids are getting 0.97

01:04:10.360 fucking diphtheria right and like old timey ass diseases because that also is where like 0.98

01:04:17.140 regulation would come in that you're basically making a trade-off okay regulating this does 0.98

01:04:21.180 involve some like loss of freedom if you think about it purely philosophically but also will

01:04:26.520 save the lives of many children. I thought that I would give our final word today to a food

01:04:32.760 scientist named John Lucy, who was quoted by USA Today. Quote, a lot of people just don't trust

01:04:40.460 science anymore. But I don't even think this is science. I think a lot of it is just common sense.

01:04:45.820 This is not making milk into an ultra processed food. I know. This is just heating it to 160

01:04:51.820 degrees for 15 seconds you fucking weirdos it's so it really is one of those things where i'm like 0.98

01:04:58.440 i feel like i'm living on another planet the most amazing thing to me is that these people do not 0.99

01:05:04.560 believe in bacteria but they do believe that you can walk around a state fair and identify people

01:05:11.240 with prenatal injuries

01:05:12.780 Ha ha ha ha!

01:05:42.780 You

Maintenance Phase - November 13, 2025

Raw Milk

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