Rallying For Raw Milk

For now, government websites continue to recommend only pasteurized dairy products

By Nathan Metcalf Globe Correspondent,Updated May 8, 2025, 7:52 a.m.

Jugs of freshly bottled raw milk at the Lolans Farm stand in Middleborough.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

Once a week, Matt Rumley, 40, finds time between his two jobs to make the 50-mile round trip from his home in West Roxbury to a farm in Middleborough to buy seven half-gallon jugs of raw milk for his family, including his three young sons.

A part-time CrossFit trainer, Rumley considers raw milk an essential part of his rigorous health and fitness routine.

“There’s a lot of things I noticed when I started being my own test subject,” Rumley said of his decision to start drinking raw milk during the pandemic. “The way that my skin looks, the way that my eyes look, the way that my face has changed. Belly fat melted away. My stamina in the gym doubled.”

Rumley just wishes he didn’t have to go so far out of his way for what to him should be a routine milk run. “ I would much prefer to go to my local grocery store and pick up my raw milk,” he said.

Customer Matt Rumley bought milk from farmer Susan Shields at Lolans Farm in Middleborough, one of a few licensed raw milk sellers in Massachusetts.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

That’s not possible right now in Massachusetts — or in most of the United States. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who in February became the nation’s top health official, has pledged to roll back regulations on raw milk and reportedly tapped Mark McAfee, chief executive of the nation’s largest raw milk producer, to advise the Food and Drug Administration “on raw milk policy and standards development.”

“Raw milk,” simply, is milk that hasn’t been pasteurized, which heats milk to kill harmful bacteria and viruses and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is crucial for milk safety.” Before pasteurization became widespread in the early 1900s, milk was linked to about 25 percent of all outbreaks of food and waterborne diseases in the United States. Since 1987, the FDA has banned the interstate sale of unpasteurized milk.

Kennedy’s ideas dovetail with recent trends, with more than a half-dozen states loosening restrictions on raw milk sales in the past five years. The popularity of raw milk is also growing online, with social media posts ranging from the educational to the conspiratorial racking up millions of impressions; some spread mis- and disinformation that raw milk is significantly more nutritious than pasteurized milk or can “cure” conditions such as asthma and autism. Those claims have not been supported by any major health or safety body.

Livestock at Lolans Farm in Middleborough.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

The US Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But local health officials are alarmed. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said in a statement that expanding access to raw milk would pose an “unnecessary risk” because “scientific studies have shown that states allowing raw milk sales experience more frequent outbreaks of illness.” Between 1998 and 2018, there were 202 infectious disease outbreaks in the United States linked to raw milk, according to the CDC, including ones caused by Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

Dr. Dennis D’Amico, a dairy food safety specialist at the University of Connecticut, attributes the increased popularity to broader shifts driven by social media and distrust in traditional institutions, as well as by efforts of small dairy farms to stay afloat.

“Raw milk has become kind of a fad. There are lots of places to hear people talk about its virtues, discount what we do know about the risks, and inflate what we do or don’t know about the potential health benefits,” said D’Amico.

Many raw milk producers and consumers who spoke to the Globe described the taste as richer, creamier, and more “natural” than store-bought pasteurized milk. It also comes at a premium: a gallon can sell for $10 or more.

Massachusetts occupies a middle ground in regulating raw milk. Some states ban all sales for human consumption; a few, like California, allow it in grocery stores. Here, raw milk can only be sold at farms licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. There are 27 such dairies in the state, the department said, most in rural and western areas.

For the past three legislative sessions, however, advocates have introduced bills to loosen those restrictions, including one by Anne Gobi, a former state senator who is now director of rural affairs for the Healey administration. The bill would have allowed licensed farms to sell directly to consumers off-site, such as at farmer’s markets and via delivery.

Raw milk producers frame the issue as one of consumer sovereignt dairy farms left in Massachusetts from more than 5,000 in the 1950s. Nationwide much of the industry has been consolidated under fewer, larger operators.

“The difference between cost of production and your potential income just shrunk and shrunk over the years,” said Sam Shields, a third-generation dairy farmer in Middleborough.

For Shields and others, the premium they get for raw milk is a way to survive.y and regulatory overreach.

“I could start selling alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and lottery tickets, and there’s risks associated with all those things, too,” said Bill Coutu, owner of Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth. “So why are we picking on raw milk?”

Producers also argue their milk is just as safe, if not safer, than pasteurized milk because of strict health and safety standards. In Massachusetts, licensed raw milk farms are inspected monthly by the agricultural department and must meet more rigorous bacterial testing requirements than pasteurized milk producers.

But D’Amico, the food safety specialist at UConn, said that comparison isn’t so simple.

“Once a month the state will come in and test one tank, that’s it,” said D’Amico. “They open your bulk tank, take a small sample, go test it, it’s free of pathogens. All the gallons in that lot are associated with that test, but the ones that were produced the next day and the next day that are also hitting the shelf have not been tested. So those are complete unknowns.”

By contrast every gallon of pasteurized milk comes with a near-100 percent guarantee it has undergone a process to kill E. coli, and other pathogens.

Meanwhile, among raw milk producers, there is deep skepticism of what they call “Big Dairy.”

“Big Dairy controls everything, and they hate the fact that raw milk people are out there,” said David Sears, owner of Clover Luck Farms in Pepperell.

The dairy industry has been struggling for years, with fewer than 100 dairy farms left in Massachusetts from more than 5,000 in the 1950s. Nationwide much of the industry has been consolidated under fewer, larger operators.

“The difference between cost of production and your potential income just shrunk and shrunk over theProponents of expanding access often cite as a model California, where McAfee runs Raw Farm. He has advocated for a national raw milk ordinance, similar to the existing standard for pasteurized milk, that would set minimum safety standards based on guidelines promoted by his organization, the Raw Milk Institute, and permit interstate sales.

Health and safety experts across the country have spoken out against the proposal. years,” said Sam Shields, a third-generation dairy farmer in Middleborough.

For Shields and others, the premium they get for raw milk is a way to survive.

Farmers Susan and Sam Shields at their farm in Middleborough.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

“Now we can set the price we need to be sustainable,” Sam Shield’s wife, Sue, said, noting they sell raw milk for $10 a gallon — well above prices for pasteurized milk. “But when you’re in the commodity market, you take what they give.”

Proponents of expanding access often cite as a model California, where McAfee runs Raw Farm. He has advocated for a national raw milk ordinance, similar to the existing standard for pasteurized milk, that would set minimum safety standards based on guidelines promoted by his organization, the Raw Milk Institute, and permit interstate sales.

Health and safety experts across the country have spoken out against the proposal.

McAfee also claimed Kennedy is a regular. “He buys my raw milk in Los Angeles,” McAfee said. ”It’s helped him a lot, and he wants more people to have access to it.”

But McAfee’s Raw Farm has had recalls of its products and quarantines over the years; in 2024 it had to recall all its raw milk and cream produced in mid-November after tests detected the presence of the H5N1 bird flu virus in samples.

Alarm bells about raw milk from bodies like the CDC and FDA mean little to consumers like Matt Rumley, who see the choice to drink the product as an act of rebellion against public health institutions they lost trust in years ago.

“There is an incentivization to demonize raw, because this grass-roots upcoming of raw milk in the recent past has probably scared them,” he said.

And if Kennedy’s push to expand access falls short, Rumley said, , “it’s still not going to stop me from drinking it. I’ll drive however far I need to drive to continue this lifestyle.”