Public Health Risks and Conclusions

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So why not you Try Odoo for free at odoo. com That's O d oo d. com Hello. Yo, no I'm. Yoam. It's been a while. Yeah, we used to work together on Today Explained. It was a great time. so much that I still listen to every episode of Today Explained. Much love, much love. And u I heard this episode that you guys did recently that I loved about raaw milk Yeah. Thank you. ye. I drank some raw mil. And you went to a farm? I hear I went to a farm to do it. Yeah. How did it go. I'm still alive. lookook at me. Yeah, okay. What is going on with raw milk right now? Why is everyone talking about raw milk while. people probably know that someone who drinks raw milk, whatever it might be, but we thought let's take a look at this because once RFK enters the White House and becomes Secretary of Health and Human Services, all of a sudden, you've got him doing like a shot of raw milk at the White House. Yeah. They're not pushing it so hard. They're really getting on like the whole milk train But there are dozens of pieces of legislation throughout the country currently making their way through state legislatures that seek to make it easier to sell and or drink Rw mill What do you think surprised you the most from hanging out with the farmers and tasting the milk I think what's most interesting about this is If you talk to some people about raw milk They wanted condemn you for even considering the idea that you would drink non pasteurized milk, which is essentially what we're talking about. R But what's funny about it in this particular moment we're in is that You can go to like a trendy grocery store in LA and just buy some raw milk. you know? It's like to some people, it's tantamount to being anti vax and yet in California, you can go to the grocery store and buy some raw milk. So this is one of those issues Like many issues in this country that is incredibly divisive and yet also that some parts of this country have just kind of moved right past and have accepted it to their lives. You know, it's interesting that you bring up the anti vax conversation because I do feel like conversations around raw milk tend to mirror some of the conversations I've had about vaccines where like People are just like, oh, why should I go get this vaccine There's no measles around I mean, I mean, there're kind of is measles more now I do think that people often forget How many people used to die from things like the measles and polio and all sorts of preventable diseases, like vaccines have saved att least a hundred million lives. And something I learned from your episode is that before pasteorization You know, milk could lead to these tuberculosis outbreaks and typhoid outbreaks. Yeah. Tens of thousands of people, mostly children used to die from drinking milk Do you think people just don't remember what things used to be like or they don't want to think about what things used to be like and they're just Taking for granted all of these incredible scientific achievements we've had to get us to the place where we are now It's very clear that we've firmly entered the do my own research era, the anti establishment Anti convention, anti big phharma, whatever it might be And for a multitude of reasons that I don't want to Dunk on necessarily. someome of it's silly, but some of it's not. I mean, I think that's what Maha has really suggested that Well, he kind of has a point about food dies. sureure. maybe. Yeahah, why not, you know Does he have a point about vaccines? Less so, it seems. less of a point. But people want to figure out their own path. And with raw milk, especially what you see is a lot of people drink it and they don't die. so they trust it, you know? And I think we have a problem with like anecdotal experience in this country with distrust of big ag, big pharma, big everything. and that sometimes leading people to make some unfortunate choice. And I mean, a distrust also of u scientific institutions that are saying what is safe and what isn't safe. A reliance on your friend telling you what it's safe Yes. Do that mean you should never, ever ever drink raw milk if you're at some beautiful farm in the south of France and a farmer says, hereere's a milkshake. We just madeid fresh for you ' you're from America and you like that kind of thing. Like No, it's probably fine. It's probably That feels to me like he's trying to poison you somehow. Oh maybe so, right, right, right. Anyway That doesn't mean we should just You know. make it easier for the entire country to drink raw milk or just remove all the guardrails. It's a very interesting discussion. Your episode is great. I love the way that you to people on all parts of this issue So we're going to play it for our listeners. Do you want to tee it up? Any they need to know before you play Today explained from Vox, wherever you listen Hit plan Today explain from Vox, Seaan Ramas Rom here at the historic Old toown farmer' Market in Alexandria, Virginia On a quest to find something that is not totally legal here across these United States raw milk Mom, have you ever seen raw milk here at this market No. Have you ever seen it anywhere? Yes. In California, I'm in Sri Lanka. You drank raw milk in Sri Lanka? Yes. From the day I was born uill I left Sri Lanka. So you're not impressed with my search for raw milk? No Not at all Okay, mom's not impressed, but but I'm still looking for raw milk because more and more people are drinking it and something like eighteen states are currently trying to make it easier to drink right now. Let me see if I can find some. Sir, do you know where I can find raw milk? I'm doing. I don't. Not here. something. Nobody is that stupid here Okay, so my farmer's market thing was a bit of a bust, but we're not giving up. We're moving on to Google And we're going to find that raw milk on the show today Okay, momom, we weren't able to find any raw milk at the farmer's market in Alexandria, Virginia. But I think we might be able to find some out here in Glenn Arm, Maryland about twenty miles northwest of Baltimore Are you ready Yes I'm excited All right That's the spirit Let me kick this off more formally. So we are standing here in a field in Glen Am, Maryland. And your name, sir. My name is Matt Prigle. And we're here with Bobby Prigle Are you guys related? Yes, I'm his youngest son Very nice. Okaykay And we are at the Prigle Creamery. Yep, Prigle Creamery also gle farm, my great great grandfather got the property roll now in eighteen ninety five Aazing. And has it always been dairy or Back then, historically, farms did a little bit of everything, and then over the time and generations it's consolidated. now it's a dairy farm. The dairy is our bread and butter And then we also are registered to sell raw milk in the state of Maryland as a pet food. So we do offer raw milk for cats and dogs. Interesting, but not for humans. It's illegal to sell milk in Maryland for human consumption. Okay So how big is your raw milk for pet purposes in terms of your business? So the The milk for cats and dogs weeek to week is roughly the same or more in sales at the Greamery than pastorise milk. Wow So a lot of people want this milk for their cats and dogs. Sounds like it, yeah. Is there like a bit of a wigig situation here No winking, no nothing. They're not buying it for their cats and dogs or they drink it themselves. P food what they do with it when they leave the store, you know, I can't control that. It's up to them But it's possible We anything's possible People were eating Ta pods not that long ago. Have you seen an uptick in interest in raw milk here at the crereamery I would say been Stady for the past couple years. Oh wow. There's some cows trying to do. Oh wow Wow. That wasn't just an attempt of fornication, but also a bowel movement They have a couple party tricks. If you stick around long enough, you'll see some stuff. Sorry. got I got distracted. We were at oh, there's been an uptick in interest I think the interest has been kind of the same. No As far as like what goes on with with our story, but as far as You know, like the nation in general, I think there's been a Big movement and big change in interest You know, our government currently there's a lot of Type in push about social media. There's a lot of information coming out about it You don't think we saw a lot more now than we did last year notot right now. I think we've growned exponentially. Wh. We've got some father son disagreement here. Sounds like you're maybe looking at those numbers a little more closely and what you seeing? I think people are more interested in it. They're reading more about it, hearing more about it have interest. You mentioned some political trends that have perhaps you know, facilitated more interest in raw milk. Are you talking about the federal government That Maha business and all that? Yeah. I mean, people should just have get to choose, right? I mean, you go to the grocery store, you get to pick all you want. If you want to have raw milk, you should be able to go get that Do you drink raw milk Every day Really? Wow, and you, sir? Absolutely. Absolutely. If our kids drink ro milk I would drink anything else. You wouldn't drink anything else. I have option of drinking raw milk or passast your eyes milk in the same. refrigerator, p raw milk every day. Are you guys like glasses of milk guys? Are you talking about like with your cereal or what I had a glass of milk with my steak last night. I had it my coff. Oh What with your dinner? Oh yeah I'm not going to be offended by your answers to this question. but I want you to guess What kind of milk I drink? He milk Which isn't milk, by the way. It's oil. Oat oil, oat juice. I'm laughing because you guessed correctly it would guess. Well there's nothing wrong.ike I don't care. Like if you want to buy all means, drink as much as you want, but it's not milk. 'cause milk by definition has to come from a mammal's mammary glands. and it doesn't pressed and secreted oils and water Dags Dilut it and flavore it down so you can actually drink it. I will say unlike the other soy boys who come to visit you guys, I u I kind of have some lactose issues. So my drinking of oat milk, you know, it's a nice alternative for those of us who get some stomach issues when we drink milk Of course, the reason most of us don't drink raw milk in this country is because many, many decades ago. We discovered that through pasteurization, we could avoid A whole host of diseases that were killing kids, including Salmonell, listeria, tuberculosis, it turns out. E coli, there's a lot of questions now about bird flu in the raw milk. Your thoughts So historically, the biggest problem like you said, many, many decades ago, was one hundred years ago. And people had this idea that nothing has changed in the past hundred years with the agricultural practices around So historically, so what happened was Draanges and distillian became really big in the nineteen twenties, right All the distilleries were in the city and they were bringing in weed in and barley and and everything and doing all the dilling process and they had all these leftover grainens and they didn't know what to do with them. And they said, well, let's feed it to cows All the dairy farms are out in the country Why are we shipping everything in? whyy are' we just bringing the dairy into the city next to the distillery and we'll just go from one building into the next and give it to them The problem was, one, no nutritional value left in the grains that the cows were eating. The cows were kept indoors. which is ripe for sanitation issues Also in that era, there was no osed systems There was poor refrigeration as well And over time, now Our milk, we like to see it around thirty six degrees. Okay. And then we have a closed milking system, right? So the milk never actually touches the air until it's getting bottled or you open the cap for the first time?. Do you guys ever have people show up here who are curious about raw milk for their pets or maybe for another purpose who talk about those Anxieties around, you know listerious salmonea, anything like that, and then have questions for you guys? So listeria is a groundwater issue and we get tested very well the health department comes out once a year and tests our groundwater. so that gets tested on a periodic basis. And then The biggest concern as people have with raw milk is eoli. and the problem with the philot is you have thousands of cows in one spot. It's very easy for it to transmit. So when it goes to slaughter, One back cow can get everywhere just by hands moving We're a single herd. Th are all of our cows. No one touches it but us. And it goes from here to the processor and then onto our shelves you would tell someone who showed up here with some anxieties over raw milk not to worry about it I would never tell them that. That's the thing, right? in Pennsylvania I could give you a whole lot of different answers. But if they're worried or concerned, I would tell them not to drink it. There's always a chance. I wouldn't buy raw milk For me to consume were my family if I wasn't able to visit the farm and see how the practices are. And if you can't visit the farm, I wouldn't drink their milk. Okay. And obviously that's not how most Americans consume their food. I think if you're buying raw milk, it should come from your state and should come from your farmer. I think you should find your farmer. and you should keep it there Yeah, I don't think milk from California should come in to the east Coast The amount of time it takes in transportation, there's too many variables where things can go wrong. It needs to be a hyper local product Now, if I were to ask about trying some raw milk, how does that work in the state of Maryland I would have to recommend you don't because it's not pasteurized and maybe maybe contain some harmful bacteria Now and I can't buy some to try right now. to say I lived a little bit while I was out here, but I could buy some for my mom's dog. Yeah, milk for catching dogs. Yeah So maybe I could buy some of that. Now if I were to drink some of that, That's my business I Recommend you don't, though. Got it. But you do I drink raw milk every day And when was the last time made you sick I have never been sick that I'm aware of from consuming it. I rarely ever get sick to begin with Well, I'm going to buy some And what I do with it business is my business And on this memorial Day, there's something beautiful about that. Yes. Well, thank you and happy Memorial Day to you guys.. It looks like you're working through it.. Cow's always got to be milked. That's right it never ends. That's right. They don't know it's memorial Day. They don't care I'm shaking the raw milk And then I'm trying the raw milk. Here we go. openening the raw milk Oh wow, yeah. Smelling the raw milk What does it smell like? It doesn't smell like anything. Let me shake it one more time just to be extra sure, you know Okay, here we go. Wish me luck. Tastes like milk How are you doing? Do you wanna try it?'sip. One's it All right, mom's trying the raw milk Here we go What do you think If nobody told you, you wouldn't know. If nobody told you, you wouldn't know.. That's true. Unless I get salmonella later. You won't Mom says I won't It's two days later now and I didn't, but my tummy did feel a little funny that Memorial Day night if I'm being completely honest. but as I said, I got some lactose issues, so it's still out oil for me When we're back on today, E explain, we're gonna hear about the moment. Raw milks happen not just in Glenower, Maryland, but across the country Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other Introducing OdDu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, and more And the best part, OdDu replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you Try Odoo for free at odoo d. com That's Ooo dot com This Father's D, do more with Dad and spend less with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Get him fired up with a new grill and accessories, like the next grill five burner for just do two hundred ninety nine dollars, so you can spend more time together while he becomes the grill master he was always meant to be, or build memories with savings on top brand power tools so you can tackle projects side by side Gift more and do more together this Father's Day with help from the Home Depot Exclusive supplies at H homekeeper. com slash press match for details. With Share My trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most. Like Dan and Hannah who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. orr Tiffany, who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. Look, She's right there. She's three minutes away. Or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is Some journeys are meant to be shared Share your ride in real time with Share My trip on Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Len more on the Uber app We gotta circulate this. Home radio All right Wh why are we circulating Looking for a man who has recently drunk milk. My name is Anna Merlin, and I'm a senior reporter at Mother Jones, covering disinformation, extremism, and technology. I guess if you've like hung around on either side of the ideological spectrum for the past decade or two, you've probably heard someone talk about raw milk for me. I've heard like lefty crunchy people talking about raw milk personally, but raw milk is having a moment right now in these United States We are not united on raw milk. What is going on with raw milk There is definitely an increasing interest in raw milk, especially the idea of increased like raw milk legalization and selling raw milk across state lines, which I think even under the second Trump administration and RFK is not suuper likely the FDA has enforced their ban on the interstate sale of raw milk since the nineteen eighties, but there is a bill out there in committee right now. and there's also tons of bills at the state level to continue making raw milk even more accessible in various states. There are like forty plus bills across eighteen states that have to do with you raw dairy, raw cheese Oklahoma just passed one. Congratulations, Oklahoma. We are one step closer to food freedom. Raw milk is now legal to advertise and sell up to fif five hundred gallons So this is super awesome for Oklahomans. Raw milk is legal. to some degree in forty three states, but it varies really widely. So in some places like California where I live You can go to the store and buy raw milk. In other places you can access it through what's called a Hedhare, which is a legal agreement where Consumers have access to a milking animal or a herd and they can buy or get the milk directly from the farmer. In other places, raw milk is only legal as pet food. but you, obviously there's nothing stopping people if they really insist on it from buuying and drinking milk labeled as pet food. I bought and drank some pet food raw milk yesterday, Anna. Yes, I imagine you did because you're in DC That's right. I had to go to Maryland to do it, though, yeah. Yeah. So DC is one of the places where raw milk is illegal. Rhode Island. I believe it is totally illegal except I think you can get raw goat milk with a prescription from a doctor. It's also illegal in Hawaii. But yeah, most places in the US, you're gonna to be able to get raw milk in some form Remind us why we decided to pasteurize our milk or what the benefits were? Right. So one of the first kind of big pushes for pasteurization of milk It came in the nineteen thirties after the discovery that raw milk could transmit tuberculosis, which was killing a lot of babies. Pasteurized milk, a safe food trusted by millions of people and important in every diet. Let's go back to middle school for a quick refresher on pasteurization. It's a centuries old process that heats up milk to kill off bacteria like salmonella, listeria, or E coli, then cools it back down By heating raw milk to at least one hundred and sixty one Fahrenheit for fifteen seconds and letting it cool, we can reduce the amount of viruses and bacteria in dairy. And so there was a pretty direct relationship between more and more places requiring pasteurization and infant mortality rates going down And so after that, it was pretty clear to most people and most public health bodies that this was a good idea. Okay, so there' some clear risks here before pasteurization came around. And then they were saying basically, pasteurize your milk, warm it up a little bit and we will keep more kids alive. Yeah. then Since that, you know, medical breakthrough basically, we've been trying to Dial it back Why are we trying to dial it back and who's doing the dialing Pretty much since pasteurization became a widespread thing, there has been opposition to it. And the raw milk movement has always argued that Raw milk is better for you, that it's more natural. It's actually healing. And very beneficial for your body. Raw milk will not spoil like conventional milk does. For instance, when I talked to Mark McAfee, who's the founder and CEO of Raw Farm, the biggest raw milk producer in the country, he told me that raw milk makes asthma go away, which is not true U according to public health experts, virolologists, asthma experts You will see arguments that raw milk is good for allergies. It has beneficial Ezymes or bacteria. And this is pretty much the argument that's been made since the raw milk movement sort of organized and took force is this idea that raw milk inherently has Nutrients and good qualities that are stripped from pasteurized milk And these groups that are advocating for more raw milk. Do they necessarily cuue to like a certain political party I think that historically raw milk like anti vaccine ideas, kind of cut equally Across the right and the left, you know, I grew up in a pretty blue part of New Mexico and would certainly see raaw milk being sold and discussed, so not the way that it is now But definitely, you know a lot of the places that you're seeing raw milk legislation, especially picking up are red states because of ideas around government regulation and health freedom And like of course, red state, blue state, you know, crunchy or libertarian, distrustful of government, whatever might be, you might find some affinity in our current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. who last year famously did a shot of raw milk att the White House. He sure did. W wanted to do a shot raw milk. S close this with me. All right. Secretary Kanny, Cair. He did a little shooter of raw milk to celebrate The publication of the Maha report, which was meant to be his big kind of caps down piece of writing presenting solutions for chronic disease and was full of AI slop and fake citations in which you will notice they don't talk about very much anymore. Did that quash his attempt to normalize raw milk at the federal level So This is what's super interesting. Before Kennedy was in office as HHS secretary, he's famously reallyally bullish on raw milk. I was here last year. I only drink w milk. He had this famous tweet in twenty twenty four where he talked about all the things that the FDA was going to stop suppressing under his leadership, you know, he said the FDA's war on public health is about to end. and he listed all these things, including raw milk. But since then, much to the frustration of players in the raw milk industry, there actually hasn't been any federal action to make raw milk more legal or to make it legal across state lin. Kennedy actually hasn't done anything on that, and Mark McAfee told me that he can't get Kennedy to like return his calls. Huh. One thing that has happened instead though, is that the Trump administration has suddenly been trumpeting their emphasis on whole milk, right? You might have seen this a few months ago. they were saying, you know We're bringing whole milk back to the schools. So today I'm delighted to sign the wholeo Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law. Whole milk is no longer illegal in America, which it never never was. It's like the war on Christmas. Yeah, exactly. And it's also ended the war on saturated fat. So yeah, a lot of their language around whole milk really echoes kind of the language around Raw milk that you see among raw milk advocates, but it's not. They actually have not talked about raw milk at all So you can you can speculate, you know, why this might have happened, if this is a liability issue, if there' still people at the CDC and the FDA who are like it would be a really bad idea for the federal government to promote this. But Yeah, I would say that for raw milk and raw dairy advocates, the fact that the Trump administration has not been On their side is clearly a big disappointment Well, anecdotal, Anna, but the creamery I visited yesterday pre goo out in Glen Am, Maryland, they said raw milk was boon to their business. I mean, even though they only sell it for cats and dogs, it certainly seems like people are drinking it. Are public health officials other than the Secretary of Health and Human Services worried about that trend if there is one. So earlier this year, an infant died in New Mexico from listeria that public health officials there think was probably linked to the infant's mom drinking it during pregnancy. And there have been, you, a bunch of foodborne illness outbreaks. So yeah, I think this is a concern for people because raw milk can carry Eoli, salmonella, campblobacter Things that can make you really, really sick So there are concerns here, right? One obviously is the increasing availability of raw milk in various places. Another concern is that It is being marketed by health influencers and other people with big social media followings as like a miracle cure in a very simplistic way, and it is especially being marketed to parents as a cure all for children, which is concerning because raw milk and dairy are especially risky for infants, immune compromised people and elderly people. You know, an illness like Eoli that could be, you know, serious, but you would make it through, potentially as an adult is incredibly serious for a child and can lead to This thing called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which has sickened and killed children The raw milk industry tends to talk about this idea that Raw milk is safe if you trust your farmer. but when you talk to like a virologist They will tell you that no matter how well You know your farmer, how much you think you trust the dairy. If you're not pasteurizing your milk, you're going to be at more risk of common food borne pathogens. So you know you can find the farm to be delightful in every way and it will not prevent you from Iillness You know, ideally, we would not be continuing to litigate like really well established pieces of science and we could move on to other stuff, but instead We are, you know, talking about raw milk again and whether it's a good idea. So I take it despite it being available at, say, the grocery store around the corner from you you Anna Merlin are not going out to buy any. You know, I grew up partly on a ranch and I have actually seen cows before and I know how they're shaped and I know where the odder is compared to, for instance, the cow's asshole. So no I am personally not going to drink raw milk If your listeners want to look at the FDA or the CDC, there's a page on the FDA right now. at the moment called raw milk misconceptions and the danger of raw milk consumption. And you can read a lot about the counterarguments to these common claims that people make about raw milk. For instance, that it contains you beneficial bacteria or enzymes or something. there's very, very good evidence about raw milk's actual dangers and risks