The Raw Milk Question

Today we bring you a story from our sister podcast Outside/In, produced and reported by Marina Henke. DONATE TO THE PODCAST! In 2009, the state of Maine ordered farmer Dan Brown to stop selling his raw milk. It kicked off a five-year legal battle that stoked the flames of Maine’s dairy wars. But, after Farmer Brown lost his case and hung up his milking hat, things quieted down. Twenty years later, raw milk has surged back into the zeitgeist. Influencers are saying it tastes like ice cream, RFK Jr. is taking shots of it at the White House, and Gwyneth Paltrow is putting it in her coffee. All of which makes for a pretty obvious question… What’s the appeal? Is raw milk some kind of superfood? Or something to avoid at all costs? Featuring Dan Brown, Andy Bisson, Danny Bisson, Nicole Martin, Pamela Ruegg, and Mary McGonigle-Martin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice. Would you be surprised to learn that the federal government is responsible for maintaining a document about milk? I'm talking about the gallon you might have in your fridge right now. The document, and I've got a link to it in the show notes, is called the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. It is long. It outlines how distributors must process milk in order for it to cross state lines. It is constantly being edited, and as of this moment, April 2026, it is a whopping 465 pages long. Now, if you were to do what I just did and sort of thumb through a couple of those pages,

• 0:41Nick Capodice?

  oh my goodness, this is a good reminder that our government makes a lot of decisions about what gets to go into our grocery stores and eventually our bodies.

• 0:53Nick Capodice?

  And as with so many things that the federal government has a say in, there are people out there who do not like this. One little bit. Turns out that milk can actually tell us a whole lot about how American citizens relate to our government. We've got private rights versus the public good, state versus federal law, and finally, public health versus misinformation. So today, we are going to play an episode all about milk from our sister show Outside In. And instead of just focusing on the milk laws, which you know that Hannah and I could have had a field day with, Outside In does what they do best and starts with the science.

• 1:36Nick Capodice?

  But do not worry, gentle listener, all roads, even the well-trod cattle roads from a dairy farm, lead to civics. Stick around.

• 1:49Nick Capodice?

  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.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  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'd be burned into my mind for the rest of my life.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  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."

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I was not nice to him. I'll be the first one to admit it. I was very nasty, very antagonistic. I didn't want to hear what he had to say.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Who is Farmer Brown? We are the farmers!

• 3:43Speaker 02

  He became kind of a weird celebrity. People all across the country took up his cause.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  They're not saying I can't do anything. They're saying you can't come to my house and buy my milk.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Reporters, even the New York Times showed up at his front door.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Dan's day in court eventually arrived. In 2014, the Maine Supreme Court officially ruled that he was no longer allowed to sell dairy products. And with that, the milk wars in Maine quieted down.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  There was nothing good about the lawsuit. It ended a chapter of 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.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  But 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. Tell us this with me? All right.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  You go, boys. Enjoy.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Cheers. Thank you, Kenny. Cheers. Gwyneth Paltrow is talking about it on podcasts.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  Uh, how do you, how do you drink your coffee? With raw heavy cream. What? I know.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  And of course, Joe Rogan has weighed in.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  People who live on farms have been drinking raw milk since the beginning of time. It's normal and healthy. It tastes better.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  All these raw milk chugging celebrities make for a pretty obvious question. What's the appeal? Is raw milk some kind of superfood?

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Did you tell me you're like, I can taste a difference?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  I, yes, I can. Or is it something to avoid at all costs?

• 5:31Speaker 04

  You wouldn't give your kids raw chicken. You wouldn't give your kids raw beef. The milk is the same.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  I'm Nate Edg, this is Outside In, and producer Marina Hanke has the story after a break.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  All right, so who is, who is this?

• 5:56Speaker 06

  They're just by numbers. I don't name them. I just put numbers on them.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  You don't name them?

• 6:00Speaker 06

  No, I don't name them.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Marina Hanke. How many gallons of milk is she producing for you a day?

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Well, probably about 12 gallons. You know, she's a good cow.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  So what is raw milk? Once fairly dairy ignorant myself, if you'd asked me a couple of 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 Bisson & Sons, a small family farm in Tobsen, Maine. Dairy farmer Andy Bisson is leading me down a long concrete walkway with dozens of picturesque black and white cattle lined up on either side. One by one, a team of two farmhands are attaching

• 7:01Speaker 05

  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...

• 7:09Speaker 06

  Yep, going in that stainless steel line. And I'll bring you back in the milk room and I'll show you where that's going.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  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? I don't know what else to call that.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  Jar, they call them glass jars.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  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?

• 7:50Speaker 06

  It's a lot of work.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  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. It's why food inspectors love the joke, "Life begins at 40." Hilarious, right? But to their credit, back in the day, life was beginning in milk pails 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.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Milk was one of the main culprits. And then it came the process I just watched happen in a barn in Topsom, Maine. Pasteurization.

• 8:52Speaker 07

  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.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  This is Nicole Martin, a dairy microbiologist from Cornell University. For her, the process of pasteurization begins with a funny-looking bacteria called Coxiella burnetii.

• 9:11Speaker 07

  The pasteurization procedures that we currently use are based on eliminating or getting a five-log reduction of that pathogen in the milk.

• 9:23Speaker 05

  And when you say it, you said a five-log reduction?

• 9:26Speaker 07

  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?

• 9:41Speaker 05

  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 Coxiella burnetii, are dying left and right.

• 10:03Speaker 07

  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.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  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.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  But 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.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  I still sell more raw milk than I do pasteurized milk.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Really?

• 11:52Speaker 06

  I probably sell almost three times as much raw milk as I do pasteurized.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  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?

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Oh, I see. Okay. So a gallon of raw and pasteurized is $6. So it would be the same for the pasteurized. 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, like specifically excited to buy the raw milk product?

• 12:32Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 08

  Yeah, definitely. They love the raw. Even when we added the pasteurized, they was all worried that we was gonna 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.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  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 the difference"?

• 12:55Speaker 08

  Yes, I can. Changes that flavor just a little bit.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  Raw milk drinkers tend to say that pasteurized milk just tastes worse. They'll use words like "flat" or "boiled." It reminds me the way people compare the difference between Coke and Diet Coke. And just like how I will take Diet Coke's superiority to the grave, raw milkers tend to feel strongly about their opinions.

• 13:17Speaker 09

  I got two liters, and I'm gonna give it a go. Let's see if this is all that has cracked up to me.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh, that is so good!

• 13:24Speaker 09

  Oh my god, that tastes like ice cream? That doesn't even taste like milk!

• 13:34Speaker 05

  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 Coxiella bernetii and E. coli bacteria, some vitamins also get reduced. This includes a few common ones that you may recognize, including vitamins 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.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  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.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  I'm not sugarcoating it. I'm not hiding it. I'm 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.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  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.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  We don't fall on the swing set anymore. We don't get exposed to dirt.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  He's pointing to his daughter, who was there during the interview.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  Now, I want to be clear about the next point because there is a misconception I've heard a few times reporting this story. Pasteurizing 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?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  It's all perfect food as it is. Let's not strip everything out of it and replace it with synthetic.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  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.

• 16:00Speaker 07

  I kind of put it in a few different buckets when I talk about what changes during pasteurization.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  Again, this is Nicole Martin, professor of dairy foods microbiology at Cornell University. We started with the vitamin issue.

• 16:12Speaker 07

  There are some heat sensitive vitamins that are found in raw milk.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  But Nicole tells me that prior to pasteurization, most of these vitamins are present in very small amounts.

• 16:23Speaker 07

  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.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  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 product's vitamin content by the quart. Even for those most committed to a dairy-forward lifestyle, that's a lot of milk.

• 17:02Speaker 05

  The bacteria argument offers similar complications.

• 17:06Speaker 07

  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.

• 17:27Speaker 05

  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.

• 17:37Speaker 07

  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.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  In other words, the safer your raw milk is from bad bacteria, the less good bacteria you will get from it, too.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  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.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Can you tell me what's happening? I'm seeing some milk being poured into a pail, so is that...

• 18:27Speaker 06

  That there are cows that have high cell counts.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Back in Topsy, 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.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  That one there's got two red tags, he's got two bad quarters in it. So we just put it in the milk machine.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  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 a 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?

• 19:18Speaker 06

  Not really. I just go with it, you know? I've been doing it long enough. I just, I keep a close eye on it.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  But not everyone I talk to feels as comforted by these tests. Yeah, so on that preharvest side, like, what are the biggest barriers to making that milk healthy?

• 19:41Speaker 10

  Um, it's a farm.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  This is Dr. Pam Ruig. She's a veterinarian and professor at Michigan State University.

• 19:49Speaker 10

  I specialize in dairy cattle, other health, in ensuring that milk is produced from healthy cows.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Now Pam loves a good barn, and she spends 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.

• 20:11Speaker 10

  The data is really consistent. 3 to 10% of all loads of milk will contain bacteria, either Salmonella, Campylobacter--

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Think gastroenteritis.

• 20:24Speaker 10

  Enterotoxigenic E. coli, Listeria, or, you know, today it could include the bird flu organism.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  This isn't just milk that comes from, quote, "dirty barns" or "unhealthy cows."

• 20:37Speaker 10

  As somebody who goes to farms of all scales and has for more than 40 years, I wish that was correct. It just, the data doesn't show it is.

• 20:46Speaker 05

  Milk in 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.

• 21:04Speaker 10

  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.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  For Pam, the solution is obvious.

• 21:27Speaker 10

  Pasteurization wasn't invented because people wanted to put more cost in the processing of milk. It was invented because people got sick.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  After the break, what happens when people get sick?

• 21:52Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 22:37Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 22:59Nick Capodice?

  Holiday season is coming, and I don't think I have to tell you this might be a tough one because things are expensive in the fall of 2026. Everyone I know is looking for ways to make a little extra money, prowling around the side hustle subreddits. But I will say, if you're looking to sell something, to launch a store fast before the holiday rush, Shopify is the one-stop-shop platform for making a professional-looking store without touching a line of code. You can sell anything, and you can sell it anywhere that people shop online. You can have it done in minutes, and you can launch before Black Friday, that time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy.

• 23:43Nick Capodice?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/civics to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/civics. Just go to Shopify.com/civics today to hear your first

• 24:03Hannah McCarthy?

  The older I get, the more I am looking for truly lovable closet staples that I know I will reach for just as often next year as I do right now. I want a closet that doesn't need constant updates or replacements, just high-quality clothes that last, especially the kind with tags that say 100%. As in 100% Mongolian cashmere, 100% mulberry silk, 100% organic cotton, just like the Quince Fisherman Cropt Cardi and I am wearing right this very second. This sweater has kept its shape, color, and softness for years now. I reach for it every single fall, every time I want a warm and elevated look. Quince gives

• 24:43Hannah McCarthy?

  you the quality you expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. Find the fall pieces you will reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's a great way to support the show.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  Hey, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Marina Hanke.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  When I was 19 years old, I started learning about nutrition and I just totally fell in love.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  Mary McGonigal-Martin had always been a health nut. So when her seven-year-old son, Chris, got diagnosed with ADD, she looked to his diet. A lot of people recommended that she cut out dairy.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  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.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  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.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  And I went, oh, that's right. Raw milk is supposed to be a healthier option.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Every week I'd go in, I'd look at it. Hmm, nah, better not. Look at it. I mean, it was this big process. And I made the mistake of going to their website.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  What she saw there was reassuring. Clean barns, happy cows, and promises of pathogen-free milk.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  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.

• 26:51Speaker 05

  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.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  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.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  That's nearly two months. Chris got diagnosed with something called hemolytic uremic syndrome.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  When you get a pathogenic E. coli, a 157H7, infection, it carries this toxin called the sugar toxin.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  For 5% to 10% 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.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Chris went into complete renal failure. He had to be put on a ventilator because he was dying.

• 27:49Speaker 05

  Chris did not die, but he did come close. By the end of his hospital stay, his pancreas had shut down. He'd had seizures. And he had little recollection of what had happened.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 28:12Speaker 05

  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.

• 28:28Speaker 10

  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.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  Dr. Pam Ruig 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.

• 29:26Speaker 10

  80% of all outbreaks associated with dairy products occur in the states where it's legal to sell raw milk.

• 29:41Speaker 05

  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.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  My test result is sitting right behind me, crunching numbers at my desk. She's drank it since she was two years old, every day with her cereal.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  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?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  I would say 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?

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Having spent the past few months steeped in the raw milkwaters, 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.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  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.

• 31:31Speaker 07

  We don't need them to make our decisions. We can make our own decisions.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Food freedom, is it important to you? It's important to me and my family.

• 31:40Speaker 12

  Every time a family cow gives milk, it gives independence. And that's what they don't want.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  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 mass scale, 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.

• 32:32Speaker 10

  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.

• 32:48Speaker 10

  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, 3% to 10% 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.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  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.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  It's all about just taking the cuttings off these plants to sell nursery stock.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Can you describe what we're looking at just for a second?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Well, this is just, in the industry, this is a grow room.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  And 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?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 16, so 18 in here.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  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.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I don't smoke cannabis. I don't drink, I don't smoke. It's a business to me. I love growing. Either I put a tomato plant in the ground or cannabis plant in the ground, it doesn't matter to me. It's just, it's still farming. It's just a different crop.

• 34:52Speaker 05

  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.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:11Speaker 05

  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?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. He comes in, he has his little clipboard, checks his things off. There's your certificate. There's what I'm selling, John. All good. It's cut and dry.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  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.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  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 10 years later. I'm still here because I've... You want to play in their sandbox, you play by their rules.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  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.

• 36:27Nick Capodice?

  This story was reported, produced, and mixed by Marina Henke, who also works with us here at Civics 101 from time to time. It was edited by Outside In's executive producer, Taylor Quimby. Outside In's host is Nate Hegy. Their staff also includes Justine Parity, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Rebecca Lavoy is NHPR's director of on-demand audio. Music from Blue Dot Sessions and Alan Peel. Outside In and Civics 101 are productions of NHBR, New Hampshire Public Radio. Woo! See you next week.

• 37:05Speaker 13

  Looking for a horror podcast that isn't murder to get through?

• 37:08Speaker 14

  Then check out another effing horror podcast. Our show, where paranormal and true crime stories collide with unfiltered commentary.

• 37:16Speaker 13

  I'm Monique Sanchez.

• 37:18Speaker 14

  And I'm Amy Trainor. Each week, Monique and I share one paranormal story.

• 37:22Speaker 13

  And one true crime case. From unexplained phenomena to true tales of murder and mayhem. We find the stories you haven't heard before and research them obsessively to bring them to life.

• 37:34Speaker 14

  Follow or watch another effing horror podcast wherever you get your podcasts.