Sean tries raw milk

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1:19Sean. Hello. Yo, Noam. Hello. 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 I heard this episode that you guys did recently that I loved about raw milk. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I drank some raw milk. 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. Look at me. Yeah, okay. Okay. What is going on with raw milk right now? Why is everyone talking about raw milk? Well, you know, it's been happening for a while. People probably know that someone who drinks raw milk, whatever it might be.

2:05But 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 raw milk. 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.

2:43They want to condemn you for even considering the idea that you would drink non-pasteurized milk, which is essentially what we're talking about. 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.

3:24You 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. Or, I mean, there kind of is measles more now. But 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 at least 100 million lives. And something I learned from your episode is that before pasteurization, you know, milk could lead to these tuberculosis outbreaks and typhoid outbreaks.

4:11Yeah. 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? You know, it's very clear that we've firmly entered the I'll do my own research era, the anti-establishment, anti-convention, anti-big pharma, whatever it might be. And for a multitude of reasons that I don't want to dunk on necessarily. Some of it's silly, but some of it's not.

4:50I mean, I think that's what Maha has really suggested that, well, he kind of has a point about food dyes. Sure. Maybe. Yeah. 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's sometimes leading people to make some unfortunate choices. And I mean, a distrust also of scientific institutions that are saying what is safe and what isn't safe and a reliance on your friend telling you what's safe.

5:38Yes. Does 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, here's a milkshake we just made fresh for you because you're from America and you like that kind of thing? Like, no, it's probably fine. It's probably fine. 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. Well, it's a very interesting discussion. Your episode is great. I love the way that you talk to people on all parts of this issue.

6:15So we're going to play it for our listeners. Do you want to tee it up? Anything they need to know before you hit play? Today explained from Vox, wherever you listen. Hit play.

6:29Today explained from Vox, Sean Ramos from here at the historic Old Town Farmers 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 and in Sri Lanka You drank raw milk in Sri Lanka? Yes, from the day I was born until I left Sri Lanka So you're not impressed with my search for raw milk? No. Not a thought. Okay, mom's not impressed, but I'm still looking for raw milk because more and more people are drinking it, and something like 18 states are currently trying to make it easier to drink right now.

7:09Let me see if I can find some. Sir, do you know where I can find raw milk? I do not. I don't. Not here. Nobody's that stupid here. 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.

7:37Okay, Mom, 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 Glen Arm, Maryland, about 20 miles northwest of Baltimore. Are you ready? Yes, I'm excited. All right, that's the spirit.

8:05Let me kick this off more formally. So we are standing here in a field in Glenarm, Maryland. And your name, sir? My name is Matt Priggle. And we're here with? Bobby Priggle. Are you guys related? Yes, I'm his youngest son. Very nice, okay. And we are at the Priggle Creamery. Yep, Priggle Creamery, also Priggle Farm. My great-great-grandfather got the property we're on now in 1895. Amazing. And has it always been dairy? Back then, historically, farms did a little bit of everything. And then over the time and generations, it's consolidated to now it's a dairy farm. The dairy is our bread and butter.

8:44And 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 milk for cats and dogs week to week is roughly the same or more in sales at the creamery than the pasteurized 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 winking situation here? Nope. No winking. No nothing. They're not buying it for their cats and dogs.

9:28They're buying it themselves. 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. Yeah, I didn't think it's possible. People were eating Tide Pods not that long ago. Have you seen an uptick in interest in raw milk here at the creamery? I would say it's been steady for the past couple years. Oh, wow. There's some cows trying to do, oh, wow. Wow. That wasn't just an attempt at fornication, but also a bowel movement. Did you notice that? They have a couple of party tricks. If you stick around long enough, you'll see some stuff. Sorry.

10:06I got distracted. We were at, oh, there's been an uptick in interest. I think the interest has been kind of the same. As far as, like, what goes on with our store. 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 hype and push about it. Social media, there's a lot of information coming out about it. You don't think we sell a lot more now than we did last year? Not right now. I think we've grown exponentially. Whoa! We've got some father-son disagreement here. Sounds like you're maybe looking at those numbers a little more closely.

10:41And what are you seeing? I think people are more interested. 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 I would always drink raw milk.

11:15I wouldn't drink anything else. You wouldn't drink anything else? I have an option of drinking raw milk or pasteurized milk in the same refrigerator. I pull raw milk every day. Are you guys like glass 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 in my coffee this morning. Oh, like with your dinner? Oh yeah. Now, 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. A milk. Which isn't milk by the way. It's oat oil. Oat oil, oat juice. I'm laughing because you guessed correctly in one guess.

11:50Well, there's nothing wrong. I don't care. If you want, by all means, drink as much as you want. But it's not milk because milk, by definition, has to come from a mammal's mammary glands. And it doesn't. It's pressed and secreted oils and water that gets diluted and flavored down so you can actually drink it. I will say, unlike the other soy boys who come to visit you guys, 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 salmonella, listeria, tuberculosis it turns out, E.

12:41coli. 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 it was a hundred years ago and people had this idea that nothing's changed in the past hundred years with the agricultural practices around. So historically so what happened was grains and distilling became really big in the 1920s right so all the distilleries were in the city and they were bringing in weed in and barley and oats and everything and doing all the distilling process and they had all these leftover grains and 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 uh why are we shipping everything and why don't we just bring the dairy into the city next to the distillery and we'll just go from one building to the next and give it to them.

13:29Well, 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 closed systems. There was poor refrigeration as well. And over time, now, our milk, we like to see it around 36 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 who talk about those anxieties around you know listeria salmonella anything like that and then have questions for you guys so listeria is a groundwater issue um 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 um and then the biggest concern most people have with raw milk is e coli and the problem with the fela is you have thousands of cows in one spot it's very easy for it to transmit so when it goes to slaughter one bad cow can get everywhere just by hands moving.

14:44We're a single herd. These 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. It's a thing, right? If I was in Pennsylvania, I could give you a whole lot of different answers. Aha. 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 or 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.

15:20Okay. And obviously that's not how most Americans consume their food. Correct. I think if you're buying raw milk, it should come from your state and it 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 into 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 hyperlocal 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 contains some harmful bacteria.

15:57Now, 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 it 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 is my business. And on this Memorial Day, there's something beautiful about that.

16:35Yes. Well, thank you and happy Memorial Day to you guys. Yeah, you as well. It looks like you're working through it. Yeah, cows always gotta be milked. That's right. Work never ends. That's right. They don't know it's Memorial Day. They don't care.

16:52I'm shaking the raw milk, and then I'm trying the raw milk. Here we go. Opening 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.

17:19Tastes like milk. How you doing? Do you want to try it? One sip. One sip? 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. Yeah. That's true. Unless I get salmonella later. You won't. Mom says I won't.

17:49It'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 oat oil for me. When we're back on Today Explained, We're going to hear about the movement raw milk's having, not just in Glenarie, Maryland, but across the country.

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20:01We got to circulate this on radio. All right. What do we circulate?

20:11Looking 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, like, ideological spectrum for the past decade or two. You've probably heard someone talking 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 super likely.

21:00The FDA has enforced their ban on the interstate sale of raw milk since the 1980s, 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 40 plus bills across 18 states that have to do with, you know, 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 1 ,500 gallons. So this is super awesome for Oklahomans. Raw milk is legal to some degree in 43 states, but it varies really widely.

21:51So in 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 herd share, 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 obviously there's nothing stopping people if they really insist on it from buying 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 D.C. That's right.

22:30I had to go to Maryland to do it, though. Yeah. Yeah. So D.C. 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 U.S., you're going 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 came in the 1930s after the discovery that raw milk could transmit tuberculosis, which was killing a lot of babies.

23:10Pasteurized 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 161 Fahrenheit for 15 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 in most public health bodies that this was a good idea.

23:48Okay, so there were 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. And 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? So 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.

24:27Raw 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. According to public health experts, virologists, asthma experts, you will see arguments that raw milk is good for allergies, it has beneficial enzymes 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.