Emily Articulated: Raw Milk

By Emily Erickson
Reader Staff

Something people might not understand about what it’s like to grow up in America’s dairy state is just how deeply Milk is ingrained into everyday life. Milk is capitalized here because of the sheer volume consumed in my childhood home (gallons per day), the billboards I sped past on Wisconsin highways that simply read “Cheese” and the countless cow-themed trinkets nearly as omnipresent as Green Bay Packers gear (a fan base known for what other than their “Cheese Heads”).

This immersion in dairy culture wasn’t coincidental — it was cultivated. The seeds of the dairy industry’s influence were planted with me at a young age and tended to throughout my education. I was baffled to learn that kids in other states took school field trips unrelated to milk, its source, or its many fermented forms. Consider my shock at hearing about visits to train museums, Civil War reenactments, aquariums and high-ropes courses, when the majority of my out-of-school excursions were to dairy farms and cheese factories (with the occasional outlier, like a cranberry bog).

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

This education, coincidentally, makes me a dab hand at obscure and very specific trivia. I can’t rattle off the dates of most major historical events, but I can tell you what makes a New Holstein cow a top contender in a dairy judging competition (yes, that’s a real thing, and yes, “udder size” is a category).

Given my disproportionate exposure to milk, perhaps I should have been less surprised when dairy — and, more specifically, pasteurization — became a focal point for anti-regulatory conservatives. What was once a staple of public health initiatives has now been swept into the broader “health freedom movement,” a cause championed by none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Before his appointment as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. took to X to proclaim, “The FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” citing the agency’s “aggressive suppression” of raw milk as one example.

In a twist that nobody saw coming (or particularly asked for), raw milk — once the domain of yogis and the Amish — has become a cause célèbre for the MAGA movement, despite federal regulators’ repeated warnings.

Stephanie Armour, reporter for Kaiser Health News, writes “Federal regulators conclude [raw milk] is risky business. Samples of raw milk can contain bird flu virus and other pathogens linked to kidney disease, miscarriages and death.”

Marion Nestle, a molecular biologist, nutritionist and professor emeritus at New York University, underscores the importance of pasteurization: “Pasteurization was one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. The simple process of heating up milk for a brief period kills dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, listeria and E. coli.”

Public health experts warn that if a future administration weakens restrictions on raw milk sales or endorses its consumption, we could see a rise in foodborne illnesses. Even more concerning, they caution that it could increase the risk of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus evolving to spread more efficiently — possibly even between people — raising the specter of another pandemic.

This debate over raw milk is emblematic of a larger shift in how information spreads and how public opinion is shaped. Once fringe ideas — whether about dairy, vaccines or public health regulations — can, under the right circumstances, become mainstream. The way people are convinced to care (or not care) about certain issues often depends less on the facts and more on the narratives that gain traction in their social and political spheres.

And these narratives have real, often sweeping, implications on public health. In the wake of COVID-19, public attitudes toward vaccines have shifted dramatically, with declining trust in institutions like the FDA and CDC fueling vaccine hesitancy. The consequences are tangible: Once-eradicated diseases like measles are making a comeback in communities where vaccine rates have plummeted. When skepticism of public health measures goes mainstream, the ripple effects extend far beyond raw milk and into the stability of our entire health care system.

It’s a stark reminder that critical thinking is more important than ever. Just because an idea gains popularity doesn’t mean it’s grounded in reason — or in science. And, as our leadership continues to shift in favor of figureheads who seem to have forgotten that (or never learned it in the first place), challenging the whims of public perception is paramount. After all, if I hadn’t taken the time to interrogate the narratives I grew up with, I might have ended up as a dairy cow judge.