What’s the Skinny on Raw Milk?

By Emilie Hagen, Contributor, The Kennedy Beacon

High on a mountaintop off one of Southern Vermont’s most treacherous roads stands a white farmhouse from 1780 and a charming barn, a place two Jersey cows, Jupiter and Rain, call home.

Every morning at 8 a.m., a farmer greets the pair to begin their daily milking routine, producing raw milk—a subject as polarizing as last year’s election.

Influencers are calling raw milk “liquid gold,” while the FDA continues to label it “dangerous.”

Where’s the truth?

Is raw milk the same as pasteurized milk? Why are people going out of their way to buy raw milk on the black market? It’s not exactly a psychedelic trip, so why the fuss?

Ironically, the controversy seems to be fueling the craze. The more the media bashes raw milk as a potential health hazard, the more coveted it becomes. It’s the best unintentional dairy PR since the iconic Got Milk? campaign that began running in the 1990s featuring Jennifer Aniston.

In a world where so many people are following FDA rules religiously yet still feeling sick, tired, and depressed, raw milk has become a tantalizing promise.

But the mainstream media isn’t having any of it. Legacy journalists have been on a raw milk smear campaign since President Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary, amplifying the FDA’s warnings with fear-inducing headlines: “Please Do Not Drink Raw Milk,” “Raw Milk Can Cause Influenza,” and “Bird Flu Detected in Raw Milk.” Many articles express alarm that, if appointed, Kennedy might push to legalize raw milk nationwide, raising concerns about potential exposure to harmful viruses.

Other countries around the world have strict regulations for raw milk. In Japan and Canada, raw milk is illegal to sell because milk is required to be pasteurized before sale. But in France, Germany and Italy, raw milk is legal, regulated by strict health and safety standards.

This debate is nothing new. Raw milk has been a heated topic in healthcare since 1987, when the FDA required all milk sold across state lines to be pasteurized, effectively banning the interstate sale of raw milk. At the time, it was left-leaning liberals who rallied behind raw milk as a catalyst to healing. Nearly 40 years later, the movement has shifted, with right-leaning voices now at the forefront.

The question remains: is raw milk actually dangerous?

For an answer to this age-old question, look no further than farmer and educator Leigh Merinoff, who serves on the board of Children’s Health Defense and is an advisor at the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for nutrient-dense foods in modern diets. [Merinoff is also on the finance committee of American Values PAC which funds The Kennedy Beacon.]

Once a sculptor thriving in the big city, Merinoff swapped her fast-paced urban lifestyle for the slower rhythms of a sustainable homestead. She’s currently living in an underground house berm surrounded by 200 fruit trees, colorful peacocks, a blacksmith shop and cozy sugar shanty – which sounds like the setting of a 1800s fiction novel, but in reality is a place people can go to get their gut bacteria in order. Farm to table isn’t a trend there – it’s a ritual woven into every meal.

These days, Merinoff takes her morning coffee with a splash of raw milk – a luxury not everyone has access to. In Vermont, the only way to get raw milk is by purchasing it directly from the farm or through a cow-share program where people can obtain raw milk by “owning” a share of the cow. This inaccessibility is why some wellness influencers are calling farmers like Merinoff their “milk dealer.”

During a phone call last November, Merinoff explained how raw milk is in high demand, even as the media continues its coordinated efforts to tarnish its reputation.

”Pasteurized and homogenized milk – their sales have been going down, but if you have a dairy cow and you sell raw milk, you have a waiting list because Americans are not really listening to the news anymore,” Merinoff told me. “They're doing their own research. And if you do your own research, you'll see that raw milk is a way to absorb nutrients and be extremely, extremely healthy.”

Merinoff believes raw milk is one of the best things humans can put in their bodies for healing, claiming it contains beneficial enzymes, probiotics and vitamins that are inactivated by pasteurization.

Added Merinoff, “One of the extraordinary opportunities of our time is to continue to get food that nourishes every cell in our body and that is raw milk. Raw milk is filled with all these vitamins and nutrients and anti inflammatories.”

Merinoff recalls a time that she did the unthinkable: accidentally left a glass of raw milk out in her closet for four months.

“I left a glass of raw milk in my closet and I was like, oh, I'll get to it... And then I became afraid of it and then I thought it was going to explode,” she said.

“I finally opened it with a cloth and it was clabbered cheese and I ate it…and it was delicious!”

According to Merinoff, if raw milk is left out, the bacteria will turn it into a cheese.

“Because you're not killing the bacteria, the bacteria stays balanced,” Merinoff said. “This is why raw milk is safe because it's balanced bacteria and they don't allow the bad bacteria to grow and take control.”

Sally Fallon, the president of Weston A. Price, has been spreading the raw milk gospel for years, holding workshops that educate people on its alleged health benefits.

“Our government has spent the last 50 years demonizing this food and insisting that if you drink raw milk you're playing Russian roulette with your health and that you need to pasteurize the milk to get rid of all the bacteria,” Fallon said during a sit-down interview.

“One of the things our government says is people who are immune compromised should never touch raw milk,” Fallon said during a workshop “But raw milk is the perfect food for the immune compromised because it will put their immune system back in order.”

Gwyneth Paltrow, no stranger to headlines about her “unconventional wellness habits,” confessed to being a raw milk drinker on The Skinny Confidential podcast back in July. During the chat, the host joked with Paltrow about having a raw milk “dealer” herself and raved about how the beverage had changed her life.

But in an article published by Harvard Health Publishing, a publication of Harvard Medical School, the author cites multiple studies that have found no concrete evidence that raw milk is more nutritious than pasteurized milk.

Still, advocates like Merinoff are convinced by what they see. “We’re at a point where people are really sick,” Merinoff says. “Raw milk as a whole food will build your immune system and balance your microbiome. Why would we not want that?”

If this so-called forbidden drink truly holds the key to better health, it might only be a matter of time before more people embrace the raw milk revolution.

While the allure of the homesteading lifestyle is undeniable, most of us won’t be relocating to Vermont and tending our own cows anytime soon. Fortunately, raw milk isn’t entirely out of reach – you can source it through a local farmer or join a buying club that delivers it to your community. For first-timers, Merinoff advises starting slow — just a few sips — to let your body adjust to its unfiltered, nutrient-rich goodness.