Safety

Properly produced and handled raw milk is an extremely low-risk food. The articles below cover many aspects of raw milk safety, as well as the relatively higher risk of many other foods, which, unlike raw milk, are not universally condemned by food safety authorities.

See also our Key Documents, which include our rebuttals to the FDA, CDC, and others.

Order Caring for Fresh Milk by Peggy Beals, RN. Click here for more details.

The video below covers the safety of raw milk as well as its health benefits, providing much of the same information as our basic Campaign for Real Milk PowerPoint, using moving text and images.

A Campaign for Real Milk PowerPoint Presentation

The Weston A. Price Foundation has put together a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that explains many aspects of the raw milk movement. PDF Format: CampaignforRealMilkSept2011PPTasPDF.pdf PPT Format: For best results, RIGHT CLICK on the link ...

Bogus Accusations that Raw Milk Caused Illness

By Pete Kennedy, Esq. As demand for raw milk has increased, greater numbers of people in recent years have ignored the warnings of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), state public...

Death by Oysters

By Sally Fallon Morell If there ever were a good example of double standard coming from the food safety folks, it's a November 2011 article on oyster deaths posted at Food Safety News (www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/still-too-many-raw-oyster-deaths/...

Does Raw Milk Kill Pathogens?

A Response to Position Paper by Amanda Rose By Ted Beals, MS, MD Read this article in Dutch Amanda Rose describes herself as a consumer and supporter of raw milk. She represented the “pro-raw milk view” at a symposium entitled “The Raw Milk Conun...

E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak in Washington State: Lessons Learned

By Sally Fallon Morell In late November of 2005, an outbreak of illness attributed to virulent E. coli O157:H7 afflicted eight Washington State individuals who had consumed raw milk, sparked a flurry of news reports, and vaulted the subject of raw...

Fresh, Unprocessed (Raw) Whole Milk: Safety, Health and Economic Issues

The Safety of Raw Milk PROTECTIVE COMPONENTS: Raw milk contains numerous components that assist in: Killing pathogens in the milk (lactoperoxidase, lactoferrin, leukocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, antibodies, medium chain fatty acids, lysozyme,...

Is Mother's Milk Sterile?

Recent Research on Human Milk By Sally Fallon Morell Not since the 1940s have scientists carried out any significant research on raw cows milk, a lamentable situation attributable most probably to the influence of the powerful dairy industry. The...

Is Raw Milk Safe for Babies?

For more information on whole baby foods formula, visit these links: Recipes for Whole Baby Foods Formula Homemade Baby Food Formula FAQ (on the Weston A. Price Foundation website) By Sally Fallon Morell The biggest concern parents have about...

National Raw Milk Safety: No Outbreaks for First 2/3 of 2019

by Pete Kennedy, Esq. In recent years there has been a trend of fewer foodborne illness outbreaks attributed to raw milk consumption even as the demand for the product has increased. That trend has continued so far in 2019; through the first eight...

On Milk Production

By Paul Lovgren Shelton, Washington Letter received by the Weston A. Price Foundation When my cousin was selling raw milk, the most animals that he was milking at any one time as I recall was about 24. He was very finicky about cleanliness, both...

Pasteurize or Certify: Two Solutions to "The Milk Problem"

By Ron Schmid, ND By the last decade of the nineteenth century, a growing number of influential people throughout the country believed that American cities had a milk problem. Articles exposing conditions in the so-called swill dairies—urban confinement d...

Questions to Ask Your Raw Milk Farmer

by Jill Nienhiser and Sally Fallon Morell 1. Are your cows on pasture? (You're looking for a yes here, preferably rotated every day through native perennial polyculture pastures.) 2. What do you do in the winter? (They should be on hay, alfalfa,...

Raw Milk Debate at the IAFP: A Clash of Culture

by Sally Fallon Morell The International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) is a member-based association of more than four thousand food safety professionals “committed to Advancing Food Safety Worldwide by providing food safety professionals w...

Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI)

By Mark McAfee, Founder, Organic Pastures Dairy For years, we have all known that raw milk production and consumption has been oppressed and hobbled by regulators and the huge dairy processors that are politically and economically tied to the regulators....

Raw Milk Safety: A Summary

By Sally Fallon Morell Ever since the proponents for pasteurization began their campaign against raw milk—and this dates back to the 1940s—their main argument has been the safety argument. Raw milk is "inherently dangerous," they claim. Or as the ear...

Reported Outbreaks of Foodborne Illness vs. No Foodborne Illness for Raw Milk

The table below was drawn up for a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors vote on permitting raw milk in the County. It is also available as a PDF . RAW MILK— with WARNING LABEL PASTEURIZED MILK— NO WARNING LABEL OTHER FOO...

Response to the FDA Anti-Raw Milk PowerPoint

By Sally Fallon Morell Posted on the FDA website is a PowerPoint presentation by John F. Sheehan, BSc (Dy), JD, Director of the FDA’s Division of Dairy and Egg Safety, entitled “On the Safety of Raw Milk (with a word about pasteurization).” The 6...

Safety of Raw Milk Summary PowerPoint Presentation

The Weston A. Price Foundation has put together a six-slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that summarizes the data on raw milk safety, especially in comparison to other foods. For best results, RIGHT CLICK on the link and choose "Save as" (or...

Sowing the Seeds of Fear

By Jean Bullitt Darlington Part 1 of Why Milk Pasteurization? Reprint No. 28, Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee; Reprinted by permission from The Rural New Yorker: The Business Farmer's Paper, Est. 1850 March 15, 1947 Contrary to c...

The Campaign to Pasteurize Breast Milk

By Sylvia Onusic, PhD, CNS, LDN According to the Ross Mothers Survey, which has been tracking breastfeeding data for years, breastfeeding at birth has increased from approximately 25 percent in the early 1970s to 75 percent in 2007. The overall benefit...

The Harvest is a Barren One

By Jean Bullitt Darlington Part 2 of Why Milk Pasteurization? Reprint No. 28-B, Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee; Reprinted by permission from The Rural New Yorker: The Business Farmer's Paper, Est. 1850 July 5, 1947 In the f...

The Johns Hopkins Raw Milk Study

Prepared by the Weston A. Price Foundation Two years ago, after testimony regarding a bill to legalize the sale of raw milk in Maryland, the House of Delegates’ Health and Government Operations Committee called for a study of raw milk from Johns H...

The Listeria Scare

By Pete Kennedy, Esq. The demand for raw milk has continued to increase rapidly. Coverage in the media (both the The Washington Post and The New York Times ran stories on raw milk in August) and growing dissatisfaction with the industrial food system...

The Raw Milk Movement: Healthy or Hazardous?

More and More People See Advantages in Drinking Untreated, Unprocessed and Unpasteurized Milk By Gigi Stone and Arash Ghadishah REALMILK.COM NOTE: We have included this story written by ABC News as the basis for their broadcast on "Nightline" and...

The Real Reasons for Milk Pasteurization

By Sally Fallon Morell Government and medical officials tell us not to consume raw milk because it is “inherently dangerous,” a soup of evil microbes that put everyone at risk, especially children, the elderly and the immune-compromised (the very pop...

The Risk of Bovine TB from Raw Milk Consumption with a Focus on Michigan

By Ted Beals, MD This review is written in response to an announcement I first heard on January 7, 2005. The radio report declared that there had been a confirmed case of bovine tuberculosis in a human male hunter who had become infected from a deer...

The Safety of Raw Milk

By Mark McAfee The Colorado Department of Public Health Denver, Colorado May 19, 2004 Dear Sirs, I have been requested to share with you our commercial organic raw milk production and sales experience. For the last four years, Organic Pastures...

There Are Two Raw Milks

By Jim Roberts Consumers are willing to pay for the other one. Departments of Health want to ban both. For benefits of raw milk see www.realmilk.com . For a response to the FDA/CDC Reminder on the Dangers of Drinking Raw Milk, see our press...

Those Pathogens, What You Should Know

By Ted Beals, MD Remarks delivered at the Third International Raw Milk Symposium, May 7, 2011, Bloomington, Minnesota. See also Dr. Beals' PowerPoint Presentation from this event (PDF). I wish to begin by saying that the real discussion of food,...

Which Do You Choose? Raw Certified Milk vs. Pasteurized Milk

The following chart was drawn up for a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors vote on permitting raw milk in the County: Which Do You Choose (PDF)

Why Is Fresh Cheese Illegal?

By Pete Kennedy, Esq. With all the laws on the books today favoring industrial food under the guise of protecting the public health, one that stands out is the federal prohibition on fresh cheese (raw cheese aged less than sixty days). The cheeses...

Why You Can Rely on Raw Cheeses

By Arthur Cunyngham and John Dennis Read this page in: French , Polish The August issue of Dairy Industry News carried an article by Nicol and Robinson entitled "The Taste Test." They acknowledged that increasing numbers of consumers are discovering...