Embattled Beverage Scores Victory On Amazon

In a small triumph for its advocates, raw milk is now available on Amazon in some regions.

The move came without an announcement from the online retailer and without any attention from the press. X users first noticed the presence of the unpasteurized dairy product on social media and pointed out its availability.

In a thread, Bradford, based in California, clarified, “Turns out it is a regional offering for now, still cool to see Source from local farm using @getrawmilk or @farmmatch.”

The product received overwhelmingly positive attention on X. Most respondents appeared excited, and some reported that they would check their region’s Amazon listings to see if they could order it, too.

The Dallas Express checked North Texas’s Amazon catalog and found no listings for raw milk. A 32-ounce pack of six raw Kefir topper pet food was available for $78.47, which was the closest product we found. Apparently, Amazon has not made it to our pastures… yet.

In recent years, access to raw milk has become increasingly contentious, with most states forbidding or heavily regulating its sale.

Raw milk is legal in Texas when bought directly from a dairy producer. However, in North Texas, the product is a challenge to obtain. Nevertheless, the tide is turning in favor of raw milk advocates. For example, thanks to HB4911, West Virginians can legally buy and sell raw milk as of June 7, 2024.

Anti-raw milk advocates argue that the product is dangerous because it lacks pasteurization. Pasteurization is a process of heating milk until it kills off any potentially harmful bacteria. Most milk available on most grocery store shelves is pasteurized.

“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.

However, Dr. J.E. Crewe, a medical doctor and one of the founders of the Mayo Foundation, used raw milk in his medical practice for decades and advocated for its usage.

In 1925, during the proceeding of 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.”

While the merits of raw milk are still debated, the product’s new availability through Amazon shows a possible turn of opinion after stores like Amazon-owned Whole Foods dropped it from their shelves.