The culture war over raw milk gained a new high-profile contributor on October 6.

“Raw milk does a body good. Make America Healthy Again,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) posted on Twitter.

The second part of her statement was an homage to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his condemnations of ultra-processed food, which have been even more publicized since he joined campaign forces with former President Trump earlier this summer. Attached was an image of a large mason jar on a kitchen counter, nearly overflowing with raw milk.

Unsurprisingly to readers of The Dallas Express, the positive tweet about raw milk was immediately hit with a community note. Community notes, crowd-sourced fact checks authored by Twitter users, are frequently attached to anything seen as endorsing raw milk, DX has repeatedly reported.

“Raw milk consumption is linked to a number of foodborne illnesses (e.g., Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella) that can result in serious complications and death,” the note said. Below the text were nearly a dozen links from various health agencies and the New York Times, condemning raw milk.

In the comments, were some of the usual pro-raw milk suspects. “True – raw milk is awesome for good mood, immunity, and adding muscle mass,” Case Bradford said.

He then embedded a prior ‘before and after’ tweet from himself, saying “Discovering raw milk + 20lbs Muscle mass Raw milk is Anabolic.” Then there were side-by-side images of the Californian.

He looks athletic and healthy in both. However, he is remarkably more buff in the latter picture where he is holding a container of raw milk.

Bradford claimed in a thread below these images that raw milk had helped him with muscle building, immunity, sleep, and a variety of other healthy activities.

However, not everyone agreed with his perspective. Many of the top comments were negative.

“how did this even become a culture war issue? what’s next, is maga going to start refusing to wash their hands after touching raw chicken to own the libs,” @Rightwingcope responded.

“Eating actual sh!t might be healthier. Raw milk contains bacteria that can cause severe or life-threatening diseases like Guillain-Barré syndrome, hemolytic uremic syndrome, meningitis, kidney failure, and paralysis. Drink up, Marge,” @Mrsbutters concurred.

Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized or heat-treated to kill potential bacteria. It is consumed in its natural state and is sometimes preferred for its unaltered nutrients, though, as some posters argued, it can carry a higher risk of contamination by harmful pathogens.

However, many independent agricultural organizations warn that while pasteurization largely eliminates the risk of disease, it strips nutritional value from milk.

Redmond Farms, a Utah-area raw milk producer, shares a table that is intended to demonstrate the greater nutritional value of raw milk compared to pasteurized milk.

“During the pasteurization process important key enzymes are killed that support a healthy gut and immune system,” an entry accompanying the table reads.

It adds, “Probiotics are microorganisms that support nutrient absorption and protect you from bad microorganisms. Pasteurization kills the beneficial bacteria.”

“When cows are given their natural diet, the milk they produce is high in omega-3 fats, creating a near perfect ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats. Our modern diet puts a lot of strain on our bodies, often leaving us with far more omega-6 than omega-3 fatty acids. Omega ratio imbalance can lead to inflammation that many doctors suspect to be at the root of the most troubling illnesses of our time,” it says, explaining the various benefits and the table.

The FDA denies much of this.

“Bacteria found in raw milk are not probiotic. Probiotic microorganisms must be non-pathogenic (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). In contrast, raw milk can host various human pathogens, including E. coli…,” an agency advisory says. “Probiotic microorganisms must be of human origin in order to have an impact on human health (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000).”

Later, the advisory adds, “Raw milk is not an immune system-building food and is particularly unsafe for children.”

It buttresses this point with a case study from California where two children got sick in California, after consuming raw milk.

However, outside of this unfortunate episode, a death directly attributable to raw milk in Texas in recent memory is hard to recall.

This stands in contrast to the recent nationwide recall over Boar’s Head deli meat that allegedly led to 9 fatalities and 57 hospitalizations in what the CDC said was the largest listeriosis outbreak since several dozen Americans died from contaminated cantaloupe in 2011.

Doug Haveman, a small-scale rancher near San Antonio, previously told The Dallas Express that our current food sanitation laws are made for major food manufacturers working in large plants where the risk of disease looms large, presumably like Boar’s Head plant, though he was not speaking about that case specifically.

He explained that laws restricting raw milk were likewise codified before refrigeration was widely accessible and he added that the risk of disease from a small farmer who knows both his cows and his customers is exceedingly small.

He sells raw milk directly to consumers, one of the few ways it is legal to do so in Texas.

He concluded that the fears of disease and the legal treatment of farmers like him as if they were major food producers are unwise and unfounded because of the higher degree of accountability he has to his customers.

Unlike a corporate producer or manufacturer, he says, a single complaint or lawsuit could sink him. Therefore, he has the highest incentive to produce high-quality and safe products.

As the debate rages, the world of raw milk is pulled in two opposite directions. Some weeks raw milk advocates will score more victories by winning over Amazon as a distributor in some regions, DX previously reported.

In other weeks, raw milk will be set back when major political figures such as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh condemn the beverage as ‘stupid’ and “disgusting,” DX reported.

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