Today, Explained - Raw milk is having a mooment

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Lawmakers around the country are trying to make it easier to access raw milk. Our co-host Sean takes a sip. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. A cow gets acquainted with Today, Explained’s Sean Rameswaram at Prigel Family Creamery in Glen Arm, Maryland. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, explained from Vox, Sean Ramosferam, here at the historic old town farmer's 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 at all. 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. Let 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 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. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and Mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and Mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th.

Tap in with us. Okay, 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 Glenarm, Maryland, about 20 miles northwest of Baltimore. Are you ready? Yes, I'm excited. All right, that's the spirit. Let 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 Prigel. And we're here with Bobby Pringle. are you guys related? Yes, I'm his youngest son. Very nice. Okay. And we are at the Pringle Creamery. Yep, Pringle Cremery. Also, Pringle Farm. My great-great-grandfather got the property we're on now in 1895. Amazing. And has it always been dairy? Or? Back then, historically, farms did a little bit of everything. And then over the time and

generations, it's consolidated. Now it's a dairy farm. The dairy is our bread and butter. And 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 greenery.

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. They drink it themselves.

They're buying a pet food. 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, anything's possible. People were eating tibos 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 party tricks If you stick around long enough You'll see some stuff Sorry I got distracted

We were at Oh there's been an uptick and interest I think the interest Has been kind of the same Oh 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. 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, and what are you seeing? I think people, are more interested at they're reading more about it, hearing more about it, and 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? Mm-hmm. That Maha business and all that? Yeah. I mean, people should just have, get to choose, right? I mean, you go to the grocery door, 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 drank roll milk, I 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, with your cereal or what? I had a glass of milk with my stick last night. I had 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. Oh, milk. Which isn't milk, by the way. It's oil. Oat oil, oat juice. I'm laughing because you guess correctly in one guess. Well, there's nothing wrong. I don't care.

Like, 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 glance. 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, hysteria, tuberculosis, it turns out, e-coli, there's a lot of questions now about birdfish. flu in the raw milk, your thoughts? So historically, the biggest problem, like you said, many, many decades ago, it was 100 years ago. And people had this idea that nothing has changed in the past 100 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 oates 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? Why are we shipping everything in? Why are we just bringing the dairy into the city next to the distillery? And we'll just go from one building to next and give it to them.

Well, 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 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, 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. And then the biggest concern that people have with raw milk is E. coli. And the problem with the FILA 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. We'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. If I was in Pennsylvania, I could give you a whole lot of different answers. Uh-huh.

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. Okay.

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 in to the East Coast. The amount of time it takes in transportation, there's too many variables or 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 it have to recommend you don't because it's not pasteurized and maybe contain some harmful bacteria. Now, and 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 for all 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. Yes. Well, thank you and happy Memorial Day to you guys. Yeah, thank 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. I'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. Tastes like milk. How you doing? Do you want to try it? One sit.

One sit. 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. I think that's true. Unless I get salmonella later. You won't? Mom says I won't.

It'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, explain, we're going to hear about the movement raw milk's having, not just in Glenauer, Maryland, but across the country. Support of the journey comes from Quo. Miss calls and slow follow-ups are silent killers. Yikes, that's how businesses leave money on the table without ever realizing that. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, like status.

The business communication system built so you never miss a call. Quo isn't just a phone system. It's a smart one. AI, hello, automatically logs calls, generate summaries, and flags next steps, so nothing falls through the cracks. And it can even qualify leads or respond after hours so your business stays on, even when you're off. And Quo says it's easy.

Calls, text, voicemails, transcripts, and contact details all in one clean view so your team always has the full picture and can show up for every customer conversation, ensuring a seamless and more personalized experience. Money is on the line. You can always say hello with Quo. You can try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash explained.

That's QUO.com slash explained. Pregnant athletes are not fragile. Yeah, that's right. I said pregnant athletes. I'm Rabin-Ajson, VPN head instructor at Peloton, and I pired my deadlift, the week before my son was born. I was also a, quote, geriatric type 1 diabetes pregnancy,

and so I know there can be a lot of fear and uncertainty about what is healthy movement when you're pregnant. That is why I got trained in pre and postnatal fitness, and this week on my podcast, Project Swagger, I am sharing some key guidelines and the story of how I stayed active during my pregnancies. Listen now at Project Swagger. Buy Now, Pay Later is everywhere, and honestly, we need to talk about it. 60% of Coachella goers put their tickets on Buy Now Pay Later this year.

You can even pay off your DoorDash order in installments now, like your sushi. So this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm breaking down exactly how these companies are making money off of you, why missing one payment can flip your interest rate from zero to nearly 36% overnight, and the uncomfortable truth about what it really means when you need to split a $200 purchase into four payments. Plus, I'm answering your questions, including what to do if you're already in over your head. head. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. We got to circulate this home radio. All right.

What do we circulate? Looking 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. The 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. So 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, you know, 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. I had to go to Maryland to do it, though. 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 best. 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. Pasteurized 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 and 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 and most public health bodies that this was a good idea. Okay, 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. Raw milk will not spoil like conventional milk does. For instance, when I talk 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. And these groups that are advocating for more raw milk, do they necessarily hue to like a certain political party? I think that historically raw milk like anti-vaccine ideas kind of cut equally across the right and the left, you know, I grow really. in a pretty blue part of New Mexico and would certainly see raw milk being sold and discussed, so not the way that it is now. But definitely, you know, a lot of the places that you're seeing raw milk legislation, especially picking up are red states because of ideas around government regulation and health freedom. And like, of course, red state, blue state, you know,

crunchy or libertarian, distrustful of government, wherever it might be, you might find some affinity in our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who last year, famously, did a shot of raw milk at the White House. He sure did. I want to do a shot of raw milk to toast this with me? All right. Secretary Kennedy, cheers. He did a little shooter of raw milk to celebrate the publication of the Maha report, which was meant to be his big kind of capstone piece of writing presenting solutions for chronic disease and was full. of AI slop and fake citations in which you will notice they don't talk about very much anymore. Did that quash his attempt to normalize raw milk at the federal level?

So this is what's super interesting. Before Kennedy was in office as HHS secretary, he was famously really bullish on raw milk. As I was here last year, I only drank raw milk. He had this famous tweet in 2024 where he talked about all of the the things that the FDA was going to stop suppressing under his leadership. You know, he said the FDA's war on public health is about to end. And he listed all these things, including raw milk. But since then, much to the frustration of big players in the raw milk industry,

there actually hasn't been any federal action to make raw milk more legal or to make it legal across state lines. Kennedy actually hasn't done anything on that. And Mark McAfee told me that he can't get Kennedy to, like, return his calls. Huh. One thing that has happened instead, though, is that the Trump administration has suddenly been trumpeting their emphasis on whole milk, right? No. You might have seen this a few months ago.

They were saying, you know, we're bringing whole milk back to the schools. So today I'm delighted to sign the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law. Whole milk is no longer illegal in America, which it never was. It's like the war on Christmas. Yeah, exactly. And he's also ended the war on saturated fat. So, yeah, a lot of their language around whole milk really echoes kind of the language around raw milk that you see among raw milk advocates, but it's not. They actually have not talked about raw milk at all.

So you can speculate, you know, why this might have happened, if this is a liability issue, if there are still people at the CDC and the FDA who are like, it would be a really bad idea for the federal government to promote this. But, yeah, I would say that for raw milk and raw dairy advocates, the fact that the Trump administration has not been on their side is clearly a big disappointment. Well, anecdotal, Anna, but the creamery I visited yesterday, Prego out in Glenar, Maryland, they said raw milk was a big boon to their business. I mean, even though they only sell it for cats and dogs, it certainly seems like people are drinking it. are public health officials, other than the Secretary of Health and Human Services, worried about that trend if there is one? So earlier this year, an infant died in New Mexico from Listeria that public health officials there, I think,

was probably linked to the infant's mom drinking it during pregnancy. And there have been, you know, a bunch of foodborne illness outbreaks. So, yeah, I think this is a concern for people because raw milk can carry, ecoli, salmonella, campelobacter, things that can make you really, really sick. So there are concerns here, right? One, obviously, is the increasing availability of raw milk in various places. Another concern is that it is being marketed by health influencers and other people with big social media followings as like a miracle cure in a very simplistic way. And it is especially being marketed to parents as a cure all for

children, which is concerning because raw milk and dairy are especially risky for infants, immune-compromised people, and elderly people. You know, an illness like Ecoli, that could be, you know, serious, but you would make it through, potentially as an adult, is incredibly serious for a child and can lead to this thing called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which has sickened and killed children. The raw milk industry tends to talk about this idea that raw milk is safe if you trust your farmer. But when you talk to like a virologist, they will tell you that no matter how well you know your farmer, how much you think you trust the dairy, if you're not pasteurizing your milk, you're going to be at more risk of common foodborne pathogens. So, you know, you can find the farm to be delightful in every way and it will not prevent you from illness. You know, ideally we would not be continuing to litigate. like really well-established pieces of science and we could move on to other stuff. But instead, um, we are, you know, talking about raw milk again and whether it's a good idea.

So I take it despite it being available at, say, the grocery store around the corner from you, you, Anna Merlin, are not going out to buy any. You know, I grew up, um, partly on a ranch and I have actually seen cows before and I know how they're shaped and I know where the utter is compared to, for instance, the cow's asshole. So no, I am personally not going to drink raw milk. If your listeners want to look at the FDA or the CDC, there's a page on the FDA right now at the moment called raw milk misconceptions and the danger of raw milk consumption. And you can read a lot about the counterarguments to these common claims that people make about raw milk. For instance, that it contains, you know, beneficial bacteria or enzymes or something. Like there's very,

very, very good evidence about raw milk's actual dangers and risks. Anna Merlin, mother Jones.com. Shoutouts to my mother for making the time. Shout outs to Avi Shai Arzzi for making today's show with help from Amna Al-Sadi, David Tattishore, Bridget Dunagan, and Gabriel Dunitav. It's today explained. You know, I'm going to be. You know,