It was a summer day in 2009 when an unexpected visitor pulled into Dan Brown's farm. It was a small operation. A few cows, a couple hundred chickens. I was outside milking the cow when he pulled up. It's vivid. It's right there. It's like 9-11 type thing. It would be burned into my mind for the rest of my life. A guy named John stepped out of the truck. He had one of those government lanyards around his neck and a big clipboard. He was a state health inspector. And he told Dan, listen, you have got to stop selling your milk. I was not nice to him. I'll be the first one to admit. I was very nasty, very antagonistic. I didn't want to hear what he had to say. At the time, Dan sold his milk raw, which means no pasteurization. Now technically, this was legal where he lived in Blue Hill, Maine. But Dan's setup was a pretty homegrown operation. He packaged it in recycled plastic juice bottles, and then he sold it straight to customers who'd pull into his driveway with cash. So the health inspector told him, until he outfitted his barns with stainless steel tanks and properly labeled his bottles, Dan's raw milk was violating Maine's health code. This is not how Dan saw it. I naively said, I don't recognize your authority, get the F off my property. And then the short version is they spent the next three years explaining their authority to me, and they did it really well to the point that I was no longer farming anymore. Dan may be a man of superlatives, but this is no exaggeration. Over the next three years, the dairy wars came to Blue Hill. The state sued Dan for not following the regulations. Dan fought back. Who is Farmer Brown? We are Farmer Brown! He became kind of a weird celebrity. People all across the country took up his cause. They're not saying I can't do anything. They're saying you can't come to my house and buy my milk. Reporters, even the New York Times showed up at his front door. Farmer Brown is this man, Dan Brown, of Gravelwood Farms in Blue Hill. I'm a farmer. It's all I ever wanted to be. It's all I've ever done. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Dan's day in court eventually arrived. In 2014, the main Supreme Court officially ruled that he was no longer allowed to sell dairy products. And with that, the milk wars in Maine quieted down. There was nothing good about the lawsuit. It ended a chapter in my life. I want to say that unequivocally. I was very happy doing what I was doing and I loved it. It was fabulous. But it was really just a house of cards. Recently, raw milk has been back in the zeitgeist. RFK Jr. is taking shots of it at the White House. You want to do a shot of raw milk? Sure. Let's host this with me. Alright. See you, old boys. Enjoy. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Howdy. How do you drink your coffee? Raw heavy cream. What? I know. And of course, Joe Rogan has weighed in. People live on farms and have been drinking raw milk since the beginning of time. It's normal and healthy. Tastes better. All these raw milk chugging celebrities make for a pretty obvious question. What's the appeal? Is raw milk some kind of superfood? Did you tell me you're like, I can taste a difference? Yes, I can. Or is it something to avoid at all costs? You wouldn't give your kids raw chicken. You wouldn't give your kids raw beef. The milk is the same. I'm Nate Hedgie. This is Outside In and producer Marina Hanky has the story after a break. Alright, so who is this? They're just my numbers. I don't name them. I just put numbers on them. You don't name them, okay? No, I don't name them. This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Marina Hanky. How many gallons of milk is she producing for you a day? Well, probably about 12 gallons. She's a good cow. So what is raw milk? Once fairly dairy ignorant myself, if you'd asked me a couple years ago, I'd have guessed raw milk must be organic, pasture-fed, and definitely from very happy cows. But it means none of those things. Raw milk is simply milk that has not been pasteurized. So to get to the bottom of the raw milk craze, I thought I should see pasteurization up close. That's exactly what I'm here to do at LP Bissen & Sons, a small family farm in Topson, Maine. Dairy farmer Andy Bissen is leading me down a long, concrete walkway with dozens of pictures of a stresque black-and-white cattle lined up on either side. One by one, a team of two farmhands are attaching an octopus-looking milking machine to each cow's udder. And so that milk that I'm watching go through that tube right now, that's going to be... Yeah, going in that same steel line, and I'll bring you back in the milk room and I'll show you where that's going. The milk room is a labyrinth of shiny steel. There's a huge metal vat that can hold 10,000 pounds of liquid. I watch as milk flows into it. Wow, so we are watching creamy white milk just kind of tumble into this big glass orb? Yeah. I don't know what else to call that. That jar, they call them glass jars. In the room over is another stainless steel barrel. It looks like one of those freestanding aluminum pools you might have had as a kid, but with a big lid on it. This is the pasteurization vat. So once it's made it to here, it's like gone through a whole journey, that milk, right? It's a lot of work. Pasteurization is essentially an elaborate game of temperature control. Milk must be made very hot and then very cold. Both things need to happen fast. That's because once milk hits 40 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes an ideal breeding ground for bacteria. That's why food inspectors love the joke, life begins at 40. Hilarious, right? To their credit, back in the day, life was beginning in milk pales across the country. Tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, all of these diseases could be spread through milk. And where a cow is milked is very close to where a cow poops, which is the source of most bacterial contamination. By the 1840s, almost half the babies born in Manhattan died in infancy. Milk was one of the main culprits. And then came the process I just watched happen in a barn in Thompson, Maine. It's hot, but it's not boiled. It's not sterilized. It's a very, very quick heat treatment for a very short period of time. This is Nicole Martin, a dairy microbiologist from Cornell University. For her, the process of pasteurization begins with a funny looking bacteria called coxialoburnadii. The pasteurization procedures that we currently use are based on eliminating or getting a five log reduction of that pathogen in the milk. And when you say you said a five log reduction? Five orders of magnitude reduction. So, man, scientists don't like absolutes. We don't say kill or not kill. We say, how much kill do we get? Right? So. How do you know you've killed nearly all the bad bacteria in milk? You heat it to the temperature that wipes out the most resistant cells. The most common method requires that milk be heated to 161 degrees Fahrenheit and kept there for 15 seconds. It's during those 15 seconds that all the other pathogens, besides coxialoburnadii, are dying left and right. The way you could think about it is in a serving size of milk, you have an exceptionally small chance of having a residual pathogen in that product. In 1908, Chicago was the first city to mandate pasteurization. Other cities soon followed suit, especially as they saw the dramatic improvements in public health. This includes a commonly cited example, an orphanage that switched to pasteurized milk saw the mortality rate of their children drop by nearly 50%. Meanwhile, raw milk became pricier to produce, as farmers had to jump through stricter regulatory hoops. A string of raw milk related salmonella outbreaks in the 80s was the nail in the coffin. In 1987, the federal government mandated that any milk passing state lines had to be pasteurized. This mandate said nothing about what happened within a state. Which is why, depending on where you live, raw milk can still be legal to sell. Although boy, is it confusing. In Maine, you can buy raw milk at farms and stores. In New York, you can buy it just at farms. In Florida, you can buy it at farms and stores, but only as pet food. This patchwork system has meant that raw milk productions stay small. As reported by the FDA, only about 1% of Americans consume raw milk weekly. But that number is growing. Take it from Andy Bisson, the dairy farmer who showed me around his farm. Because while, yes, he produces pasteurized milk, he also sells it raw. I still sell more raw milk than I do pasteurized milk. I probably sell almost three times as much raw milk as I do pasteurized. The question that rises to the top is, what do people see in raw milk that they are willing to covertly buy it as pet food, only to drink it themselves? Oh, I see. So a gallon of raw and pasteurized is $6. So it would be the same for the pasteurized milk. Andy's nephew, Danny, runs Bisson's Front of Shop, where you can pick up a gallon of raw or pasteurized milk for $6 a pop. Are there people that are coming here specifically excited to buy the raw milk product? Yeah, definitely. They love the raw. Even when we added to pasteurized, it was all worried that we were going to get rid of the raw. And we stayed right with the raw. We're like, no, raw's here to stay. So it was all happy about that. Just like his customers, Danny prefers to drink raw milk. Talking to him was a crash course in the most common reasons for the preference. Up first? Did you tell me you're like, I can taste a difference? Yes, I can. It changes that flavor just a little bit. Raw milk drinkers tend to say that pasteurized milk just tastes worse. They'll use words like flat or boiled. It reminds me of the way people compare the difference between Coke and Diet Coke. And just like how I will take Diet Coke superiority to the grave, raw milkers tend to feel strongly about their opinions. I got two liters and I'm going to give it a go. Let's see if this is all that it's cracked up to me. My gosh, that was so good. Oh my God, that tastes like ice cream. That doesn't even taste like milk. But beyond the taste, raw milk drinkers tend to believe it's just a healthier product. First, there's the idea that pasteurization reduces milk's vitamin content. And this is partly true. When rising temperatures start to kill that coxialobrinate and E. coli bacteria, some vitamins also get reduced. This includes a few common ones that you may recognize, including vitamin C and E. Another common argument is that all that pasteurization kills the quote, good bacteria. And again, there is some truth here. Raw milk contains lots of bacteria, some of which includes things like lactobacillus, which you might recognize from your yogurt labels. This good bacteria came up a lot when I was talking to Dan Brown, the ex-farmer at the center of Maine's Dairy Wars. He may not sell milk anymore, but he is still a big fan of it for this exact type of reason. I'm not sugarcoating it. I'm not hiding it. Putting it in a five gallon bucket with no lid on it, it's exposed to the air, it's getting contaminants on it. I just disagree on whether those contaminants are bad for you. Plus, Dan and others will say, yeah, there are some germs. But even the bad ones in small amounts are good for your immune system. This argument extends way beyond the raw milk debate. We don't fall on the swing set anymore. We don't get exposed to dirt. He's pointing to his daughter who was there during the interview. That kid's been squishing potato bugs and rolling around in the dirt since the day she was born. She's got an immune system. Now, I want to be clear about the next point because there is a misconception I've heard a few times reporting this story. Pasturizing milk does not include the addition of any synthetic ingredients. But most pasteurized milk produced at big scales is fortified with vitamin A and D. This was implemented in the 1930s and 40s to combat childhood diseases like rickets. Many raw milk drinkers think, why take stuff out to only add stuff back in? It's all perfect food as it is. Let's not strip everything out of it and replace it with synthetic. If given a choice, I suspect many of us do not want to drink something that tastes bad, is empty of nutrients, and was unnecessarily injected with extra ingredients. But there are many scientists out there who are tired of hearing these arguments. I kind of put it in a few different buckets when I talk about what changes during pasteurization. Again, this is Nicole Martin, professor of dairy foods microbiology at Cornell University. We started with the vitamin issue. There are some heat-sensitive vitamins that are found in raw milk. But Nicole tells me that prior to pasteurization, most of these vitamins are present in very small amounts. So yeah, you could see this reduction, but is milk a good source of those things to begin with? No, not really, right? Like they're there, but you're not solely getting your vitamin A from milk, for example. This is a very different framing than what's found on some of the most popular raw milk websites, which tend to overemphasize the vitamin content in their product. Raw Farm USA, which is where RFK and Gwyneth Paltrow get their milk from, lists their products' vitamin content by the court. Even for those most committed to a dairy-forward lifestyle, that's a lot of milk. The bacteria argument offers similar complications. You know, I hear a lot about the good bacteria, right? And there are these bad bacteria, but what about the good bacteria? Here's where, you know, I think the nuance of the reality comes in, because yes, you can find organisms like lactobacillus in raw milk, but they're there at very, very low levels. So Nicole says there's not much of a benefit there either. And if your raw milk does have a lot of extra bacteria, that might not be a good sign. If you were to consume raw milk, if you're a raw milk consumer, you want that farm to be clean, you want the animals to be clean, you want the equipment to be clean, you want the product to be held and handled well to prevent the growth of bacteria, right? If that's the case, then you're going to have very, very low levels of all bacteria, including any that might have some potential probiotic function. In other words, the safer your raw milk is from bad bacteria, the less good bacteria you will get from it too. But raw milk farmers remain convinced their product is better. Plus, they'll tell you that raw milk dairies have come a long way since the 1800s. Can you tell me what's happened? I'm seeing some milk being poured into a pail, so is that... That's there, the cows that have high cell counts. Back on top of Maine, dairy farmer Andy and I watch one of his cows get their daily mastitis test. This will tell whoever's milking if a cow might be sick. And if they are, their legs get marked with a big red tag. That one has got two red tags, she's got two bad quarters, so we just put it in the milk machine. Got it, so that means that milk won't be going in to be sold. Milk that makes it through mastitis testing gets analyzed again, this time by the state's milk quality laboratory. Once a week, a state inspector pulls up to Andy's barn, grabs the sample, and tests it for abnormally high cell counts. Passing this type of regulation is what makes it legal for farmers to sell raw milk in Maine. It's also what gives them peace of mind. Is it stressful to wait for the test? Are you ever like, what am I going to see? No, really. I just go with it, you know, I've been doing it long enough. I just, I keep a close eye on it. But not everyone I talk to feels as comforted by these tests. Yeah, so on that pre-harvest side, like what are the biggest barriers to making that milk healthy? It's a farm. This is Dr. Pam Rueck. She's a veterinarian and professor at Michigan State University. I specialize in dairy cattle, utter health, in ensuring that milk is produced from healthy cows. Now, Pam loves a good barn and she spent a lot of time in them providing veterinarian care to cows, which is why she will confidently say that mastitis testing aside, contamination during the milking process is unavoidable. The data is really consistent. Three to 10% of all loads of milk will contain bacteria, either salmonella, campylobacter, think gastroenteritis, interotoxicinic E. coli, listeria, or in, you know, today it could include the bird flu organism. This isn't just milk that comes from, quote, dirty barns or unhealthy cows. As somebody who goes to farms of all scales and has for more than 40 years, I wish that was correct. It's just the data doesn't show what it is. Milk and units fall off, teats aren't completely cleaned, and in the most homegrown operations, bits of manure can land in open-air pails. Pam has seen this up close. Like about a decade ago, she knew of an outbreak that happened in Colorado. A whole bunch of people ended up hospitalized with E. coli. I actually know the veterinarian who worked on that farm and I talked to her. I ran into her at a meeting soon after that outbreak, and she said she was shocked when it happened. Because that farm, she said you could eat off the floor. Even in those circumstances, you know, you just can't predict it. For Pam, the solution is obvious. Pasturization wasn't invented because people wanted to put more cost in the processing of milk. It was invented because people got sick. After the break, what happens when people get sick? There are some weeks where it feels like you have no free time. Between work, taking the kids to school, walking the dogs, picking your car up from the mechanic. It's all a lot. I mean, you are tired, you are hungry, and all you want is a good home-cooked meal. But if you're like me, you often turn to the same dinners on repeat. Mac and cheese, tacos, a really boring salad that is mostly just spinach and dressing. You deserve a change that is easy and adventurous. With HelloFresh, you can cook up bold flavors from around the world without ever leaving home. Our producer, Marina, recently ordered Bara Mundi with Zesty Cilantro Sauce. She said the prep was seamless and the results tasted like something that took a lot longer to make. And that Zesty Cilantro Sauce was chef's kiss. Disclaimer, must order the third box by May 31, 2026. Hey, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Marina Hanky. When I was 19 years old, I started learning about nutrition and I just totally fell in love. Mary McGonagall-Martin had always been a health nut. So when her 7-year-old son Chris got diagnosed with ADD, she looked to his diet. A lot of people recommended that she cut out dairy. But my son lived on dairy and he was a very picky eater and there was like no way I could take away the dairy. One day, she walked into her local health food store in California and saw huge signs advertising the benefits of, you guessed it, raw milk. And I went, oh, that's right, raw milk is supposed to be a healthier option. Every week I go in, I look at it, hmm, eh, better not, look at it. I mean, it was this big process and I made the mistake of going to their website. What she saw there was reassuring, clean barns, happy cows, and promises of pathogen-free milk. And I went, oh, great, I don't have to worry, they test the milk. So I bought the milk in August and I bought the first week a little quart. I bought the second week another quart. It was that third half gallon that was contaminating. A day after drinking that gallon, Chris got sick. By the evening, he'd had diarrhea more than 16 times. Mary knew it was time to go to the hospital. So September 7th, we went to the emergency room. September 8th, we were admitted to the hospital and we did not get home till November 2nd. That's nearly two months. Chris got diagnosed with something called hemolytic uremic syndrome. When you get a pathogenic E. coli, a 157H7 infection, it carries this toxin called the sugar toxin. For 5 to 10 percent of kids, that toxin starts to destroy your red blood cells, your platelet counts plummet, as well as your hemoglobin. Finally, all of that starts to clog your kidneys. Chris went into complete renal failure. He had to be put on a ventilator because he was dying. Chris did not die, but he did come close. By the end of his hospital stay, his pain creases shut down, he'd had seizures, and he had little recollection of what had happened. If there was a pathogen in that milk, I would think, oh, it's vomiting and diarrhea. Never, ever in my wildest dreams think this could happen. When it comes to raw milk, hemolytic uremic syndrome is probably the worst-case scenario. The stories are harrowing. There was the family who was eager to support their local farm. Their daughter ended up so sick from HUS that to this day she cannot speak or walk. I think the sad thing of it is, is when these things happen, they happen to people who are trying to do the right thing. For their children, they really believe that there's going to be some benefit, and they end up with devastating, terrible consequences. Dr. Pam Ruegg again, veterinarian and dairy scientist. A part of me hesitates to relay these stories. It is hard to argue with someone whose kid has almost died. And most kids who drink raw milk will not get hemolytic uremic syndrome. In fact, deaths from raw milk consumption may be lower than you think. Over 20 years, the CDC has only reported three deaths from raw milk. And as many raw milk websites remind me, this is the exact same number of people who have reportedly died from pasteurized milk. But once you take into account that fact that only about 1% of Americans regularly drink raw milk, the numbers tell a slightly different story. 80% of all outbreaks associated with dairy products occur in the states where it's legal to sell raw milk. In other words, the reason those numbers are so low is because so few people drink raw milk. To public health officials, raw milk is simply not worth the risk. But the problem with these number games is that people often just use their own numbers. My test result is sitting right behind me, crunching numbers in my desk. She's drank it since she was two years old, every day with her cereal. Ex-farmer Dan Brown, again pointing across the room to his daughter. I'll tell you, I've talked to people kind of on all sides of the spectrum here of like some people who tell me there's no way you can guarantee clean milk without pasteurization. What do you say to that? You're right, there is no way you can 100% guarantee that that milk's safe. 100%? You want 100% guarantee? How many things are 100% guarantee in life? Having spent the past few months steeped in the raw milk waters, I do think there is something a bit more intangible going on here. As much as the raw milk craze can feel like it orbits around good bacteria and farm germs, conversations often come back to personal rights. Dan Brown thinks that the choice to drive down his driveway and pick up a gallon of milk is a decision between him and his customers. Who is the government to tell you you can't drive up the driveway? What's next? I can't have one for my family? I am opposed to that philosophy. For its boosters, raw milk isn't just a poster child of perfect nutrition. It has become a mascot for freedom. And it is this sentiment which has made it so sticky in certain political spheres. You hear it in the endless raw milk reels that I am now shamelessly served. We don't need them to make our decisions. We can make our own decisions. Food, freedom, is it important to you? It's important to me and my family. Every time a family cow gives milk, it gives independence. And that's what they don't want. The raw milk craze can sound loud online, but at the risk of letting social media warp reality, it does feel kind of important to say this. At MassGale, pasteurization has won the dairy wars. Most of us go to the grocery store, pick up pasteurized milk, and think pretty little of it. But what social media does offer are shots of new converts turning to raw milk for a promise of health benefits that aren't necessarily there. For this reason, Pam Ruig doesn't see much of a victory to be had, especially because educating people doesn't seem to move the needle. You know, we're in a period of skepticism, of science. There's just a bunch of people who have to experience things themselves before they believe them. And so, you know, that's kind of where we're at today. I don't know what you do. I mean, I really don't know what you do. It's an unpredictable risk. And so when things are unpredictable, I mean, you could print on the label, three to ten percent of this milk may contain dangerous pathogens, and, you know, you can have severe long-term consequences like kidney failure, Guillain-Barre syndrome, miscarriage, neonatal death. But I don't know that that's going to really change people's opinions. Music Read the news today, and it's clear that these debates between private rights and public health apply to a lot more than just dairy. Vaccines, fluoride, even recreational drugs, they all have echoes of the same thing. It's all about just taking the cuttings off these plants to sell nursery stocks. Can you describe what we're looking at just for a second? Well, this is just a, in the industry, this is a grow room. In a plot twist, I truly was not prepared for. Short-lived raw milk celebrity Dan Brown is now in one of these businesses. Probably about, like, what, 30 little cannabis plants in here? Five, ten, fifteen, six, so, eighteen in here? Cannabis. After he lost his case in 2014 and was banned from selling raw milk, some marijuana growers in the state offered to show him the ropes. Now, he owns a combination grow and feed store. You can pick up grain for your goats and your CBD gummies at the same time. I don't smoke cannabis. I don't drink. I don't smoke. It's a business to me. I love growing. Are they put a tomato going in the ground or a cannabis plant in the ground? It doesn't matter to me. It's just, it's still farming. It's just a different crop. Dan's days look pretty different than they did when he was milking cows. But he's still interacting with a lot of the same people, including a certain lanyard-wearing health inspector. I don't hate John anymore. I did for many years. He's now my inspector. He didn't say boo. We don't bring it up. He doesn't talk about it. I don't talk about it. Wait, wait, wait. The same guy who walked out of his car with the clipboard is the same guy who walks in here to check that your eyes are dotted. Yeah, he comes in. He says, this little clipboard checks his things off. There's your certificate. There's what I'm selling, John. All good. It's cut and dry. These inspections go well because whether he likes them or not, as a business owner, he accepts that marijuana, like milk, is regulated by laws. When I got into this business, I said, I don't care. I'll get every damn license you want. I'll pay you all the taxes you want. I'll beat you at your own damn game. I never would have had that philosophy if I hadn't gone through what I went through over here. And I think that's where I am. Ten years later, I'm still here because I've... You want to play in their sandbox? You get played by their rules. Dan has already lost at this game once, and he will not again. But he still believes in a limited government that lets people make their own choices about milk, weed, you name it. But every day when he wakes up, you know what he does? Pours a little raw milk in his coffee. This story was reported, produced and mixed by Marina Hanky. It was edited by our executive producer, Taylor Quimby. I am your host, Nate Hedgie. Our staff also includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Rebecca LaVoy is NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Special thanks to Bill Marlar. Music is from Blue Dot Sessions and Ellen Peele. Outside in is production of New Hampshire Public Radio. All right. I feel like I should ask her a question because she's been waiting so patiently with us. Do you have any comments? No comments. You didn't really need to. I'm just going to ask you a question. I'm just going to ask you a question. I'm just going to ask you a question. I'm just going to ask you a question. No comments. Do you want the truth about the organic food on your plate? Then check out the chart-topping real organic podcast. Recently named one of the best climate podcasts by Earth.org. It's hosted by Dave Chapman and me, Linley Dixon. Each week we feature eye-opening interviews with farmers, scientists, authors, and journalists to uncover the forces reshaping the food system from why corporate lobbying is redefining what organic means to how organic farmers are fighting back. So don't miss it. Follow and listen to the Real Organic podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
