Raw milk is gaining popularity, but opponents aren’t shying away from wanting the beverage to be put out to pasture, so to speak.

Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire thinks the raw milk craze is stupid.

“Raw milk is disgusting. We live in a first-world civilized society, and people are actively choosing to consume milk riddled with E. coli and listeria. Pasteurization is not some evil sorcery. It just kills the dangerous bacteria you morons,” the commentator and filmmaker posted to X.

In a thread, Walsh followed up, “Next you should go out and drink some ‘raw water’ straight from your local lake without doing anything to purify it. Enjoy the parasites, hippies.”

In the thread’s conclusion, he added, “Very disappointed to see so many right-wingers falling for this hippie propaganda. Glorifying third-world hygiene practices should be the leftist’s domain.”

Walsh was responding to Case Bradford, a raw milk advocate, who had celebrated more raw milk becoming available on retail shelves in his area.

“Fifteen different raw milk options available on the shelf at the store 3 block walk away. Every American should have this level of access to healthy nourishing food and local raw milk,” Bradford posted.

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Bradford noted the success of Raw Farms, a dairy products producer.

“Raw Farms sells 85,000 gallons of raw milk a week and is still falling short of demand. Nothing is so anti-America than laws against raw milk,” he said.

Numerous high-profile figures weighed in on the soured debate.

Kentucky GOP congressman Thomas Massie responded to Walsh with “Bad take. I’ve consumed raw milk almost everyday [sic] for over two years. It’s done wonders for my health, and it’s delicious. Pasteurization and homogenization can kill germs but they both diminish the health benefits of the milk. In any case, it’s everyone’s right to consume it.”

FAFO Farms, an account for a central Texas farm known for its work in regenerative agriculture, responded with a long blog post explaining why raw milk from a small producer is safe.

“So the milk you buy in the store can have milk from over 1,000 different cows with a 1,000 different opportunities to be contaminated with E. Coli or Listeria. This is why pasteurization is important, as if there is a recall. Which farm do they end of having to investigate for the outbreak?” the account said.

“Raw Milk Dairy Farms are different. We run a cleaner operation. The Milk that is produced is coming directly from that farm and farms like us label exactly what cow the milk is bottled from. At max we have 2 cows that can be bottled that you would receive,” the account added before adding that FAFO’s cows are regularly tested for things like mastitis.

In a warning that would be shocking to some, the account said, “If your fear is truly Listeria or E. Coli then you should stop eating Deli Meat and Produce. More people have died from Listeria outbreaks from deli meat in 1 day than Raw Milk has killed all together since 1987.”

To FAFO’s point, one would be hard-pressed to find a death directly attributable to raw milk in Texas in recent memory. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing national recall over contaminated Boar’s Head deli meat that allegedly led to 9 deaths and 57 hospitalizations since the contamination was identified, which the CDC said was the largest listeriosis outbreak since more than 30 people died from contaminated cantaloupe in 2011.

Small-scale raw milk producers widely hold FAFO’s points.

Doug Haveman, a small-scale rancher near San Antonio, told The Dallas Express that part of the problem with Texas’s laws restricting raw milk sales is that “the laws were developed before refrigeration.”

Haveman previously told DX that farmers like him have even higher incentives to protect the health of their small list of direct-to-consumer clients because any complaint or lawsuit from a dirty product could sink them.

Other reactors to the Walsh-Bradford exchange included Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk posted a laughing emoji and the 100 emoji.

Reflecting both Walsh’s and Bradford’s views of raw milk, health resources hotly debate its merits.

“Raw milk is milk from cows, sheep, and goats — or any other animal — that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful germs. Raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and others that cause foodborne illness, often called ‘food poisoning.’ These germs can seriously injure the health of anyone who drinks raw milk or eats products made from raw milk.

“However, the germs in raw milk can be especially dangerous to people with weakened immune systems (such as transplant patients and individuals with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and diabetes), children, older adults, and pregnant women. In fact, CDC finds that foodborne illness from raw milk especially affects children and teenagers,” states the FDA.

In contrast, Dr. J.E. Crewe, a physician and one of the founders of the Mayo Foundation, used raw milk in his medical practice for decades and strongly advocated for its use for treating afflictions.

In 1925, at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the United States Live Stock Sanitary Association, Crewe wrote, “The results obtained in various types of illness have been so uniformly excellent that one’s conception of disease and its alleviation is necessarily modified.… When sick people are limited to a diet containing an excess of vitamins and all the elements necessary to growth and maintenance, they recover rapidly without the use of drugs and without bringing to bear all the complicated weapons of modern medicine.”

Nevertheless, raw milk has advanced despite its critics in recent months. As DX previously reported, in some regions, raw milk is available on Amazon.