Lisa Bass is a raw milk evangelist.

"When you look at all of the data, and you look at what is a health-supporting decision to make, I think raw milk comes out on top," Bass told Blaze News.

Bass, a mother of eight who is known for her popular YouTube channel "Farmhouse on Boone" and blog about homemaking, is part of a growing movement of free thinkers eschewing processed milk and embracing the benefits of raw dairy.

"I think we are created by God, and there is a way everything was designed," Bass said. "And if you take certain aspects of the food away, of course there's going to be other ramifications and other ways it wouldn't be as healthful. It's close to a perfect food. It's whole and good."

Unfortunately, the potential benefits of raw dairy are a secret to most Americans. That’s because the federal government and dairy lobbyists warn that raw milk is inherently dangerous, and they claim that consuming raw milk and raw dairy products can lead to severe illness — or even death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in fact, describes raw milk as “one of the riskiest foods."

But is that true?

As it turns out, the government, dairy lobby, and the so-called “experts” are not telling you the full story.

The anti-raw-milk narrative

According to the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, raw milk and raw dairy products are unsafe to consume no matter what.

The public health agencies warn that raw dairy contains "disease-causing pathogens" that, if consumed, can send you to the hospital with severe illnesses and, if you're pregnant, may cause miscarriage or lead to stillbirths. In the worst cases, people who consume raw dairy may die.

The CDC and FDA, moreover, claim there are zero health benefits associated with consuming raw dairy. The FDA has even published an extensive document to debunk what it claims are the the "myths" associated with consuming raw dairy, asserting that every purported benefit is false. The science is unequivocally on their side, these agencies claim.

The dairy lobby is no different.

The National Dairy Producers Federation, one of the oldest and most powerful dairy advocacy groups, strongly opposes raw dairy and efforts to legalize it. Earlier this year, the NDPF suggested the raw dairy movement is akin to the "anti-vaccination movement."

That narrative is tidy and convenient. And it's true, after all, that pasteurization — the process of rapidly heating and cooling a liquid to kill all bacteria in it — helped solve a serious problem a century ago: People who lived in cities wanted to share in the benefits of consuming dairy products. But problems with urban sanitation, commercial agriculture, and the inability to refrigerate dairy led to many outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. Pasteurization, then, proved to be the right solution for a unique problem in time.

"It's a 19th-century problem, and pasteurization is a 19th-century solution," Mark McAfee, owner of Raw Farms USA in California — the largest raw dairy farm in the world — told Blaze News.

What they aren't telling you

As a general rule, absolutes are (almost) never true, and that is the case with raw milk. To claim that raw dairy is only harmful and there are no benefits to consuming it is a clue the government, dairy lobby, and so-called "experts" are not being honest with you.

Dr. Paul Saladino, MD, is a health influencer best known for promoting a holistic understanding of medicine and an ancestrally consistent diet, and he believes raw milk is a superfood.

In his educational content, Saladino teaches that consuming raw milk improves gut health, allergies, and immune function, and he has the scientific literature to back his claims.

"Raw milk contains many naturally occurring bioactive components that are beneficial and protective and prevent it from becoming a pathogenic breeding ground, things like lactoperoxidase immune cells, like neutrophil macrophages and immunoglobulins, which are antibodies. All of these are contained in raw milk. It is a bioactive-alive fluid," Saladino explains in a YouTube video.

The problem with pasteurization, then, is obvious in Saladino's view: Not only does pasteurization kill the "bad" things in raw dairy, but it also kills, reduces, denatures, or inhibits the benefits of raw dairy.

In Saladino's view, raw dairy has received a "bad rap" because of outbreaks of foodborne illness involving raw dairy more a century ago. But that was a unique problem in time, he argues, because cows were being milked in "very unsanitary conditions" and were being fed "complete garbage."

Metabolically unhealthy animals and unsanitary conditions were the perfect recipe for bacteria growth.

But advances in sanitation, technology, and understanding of human health now render raw milk "inherently safe" for all humans, according to Saladino — as long as farmers harvesting it uphold high quality and sanitation standards.

McAfee says that's exactly what Raw Farms USA does. According to McAfee, his family-owned farm has perfected the art of safely harvesting raw dairy and making it a product for consumers.

Raw Farms USA's cows are happy and clean, and the farm abides by "extremely strict standards" that McAfee told Blaze News surpass the standards of pasteurized dairy.

It's important to consider four more important facts about raw dairy.

First, humans have been drinking mammalian milk for thousands of years, and we haven't been stingy about our sources, harvesting from cows, sheep, goats, camels, horses, deer, buffalo, and other mammals. And for the vast majority of human history, this milk was consumed unpasteurized without problem.

We should consider, then, whether raw milk itself is the problem — as the anti-raw-milk narrative argues — or if something humans do makes raw milk sometimes risky to consume.

Second, the government's narrative about human breast milk is completely different from its narrative about raw dairy. Not only does the government recommend that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, but officials acknowledge that breast milk has "unique properties" that protect young children.

Breast milk, obviously, is neither pasteurized nor sterile, nor are human breasts sterile.

Considering that breast milk is raw milk harvested in a non-sterile environment — just like other mammalian milk — the natural question arises: Why is raw breast milk best, but other raw dairy is unsafe under every circumstance?

"They talk out of both sides of their mouth," McAfee told Blaze News, citing scientists who have found that raw dairy milk and breast milk, while quantitatively different, are "practically identical" qualitatively.

"You compare cow's milk to breast milk — it's practically identical on kinds of proteins, the kinds of fats, but the amounts are different. That's why there's so much compatibility between humans and cows," he said.

"We're a match made in heaven in terms of being able to have a portable, whole food nutrition from cows to people," McAfee explained. "Breastfeeding is the tell."

Third, the government emphasizes the dangers of raw milk and points to foodborne illness outbreaks as evidence. What officials never include alongside data about alleged raw-milk outbreaks is data about outbreaks involving pasteurized dairy.

A recent systematic review analyzing dairy outbreaks in the U.S. and Canada between 2007 and 2020, indeed, had interesting results. It found:

Thirty-two disease outbreaks were linked to dairy consumption. Twenty outbreaks involving unpasteurized products resulted in 449 confirmed cases of illness, 124 hospitalizations, and five deaths. Twelve outbreaks involving pasteurized products resulted in 174 confirmed cases of illness, 134 hospitalizations, 17 deaths, and seven fetal losses.

That's right: More deaths associated with outbreaks connected to pasteurized dairy than to raw dairy.

Statistically speaking, the data can't be compared directly because most people in the U.S. and Canada consume pasteurized dairy, and thus deaths from unpasteurized dairy are a much smaller percentage of overall consumers.

But the point to remember is this: There is risk associated with consuming both raw dairy and pasteurized dairy — just as there is risk with almost everything in life.

"Every food has risks. There are outbreaks with greens, fruit — there is no food without risk. Even pasteurized milk," Bass told Blaze News. "We think that there is a way to live a risk-free life, but there's always risk.

"There's no risk-free choice," she said.

Unfortunately, the government and the "experts" only emphasize the risk and potential harmful consequences of raw dairy while ignoring altogether the potential risks of pasteurized dairy, which is why the FDA has officially prohibited the interstate commerce of raw dairy since 1987.

Finally, there is a difference between raw milk harvested specifically for human consumption and the pasteurized milk that ends up on most grocery store shelves.

"It's filthy milk, I wouldn't produce it ever, and guess what? You need to pasteurize it because it's going to make somebody sick," McAfee said of pasteurized milk.

"That's what the FDA, in their minds, in their reality, thinks is raw milk," he explained. "What you have is two paradigms that are true at the same time: My milk is safe without pathogens because I set up the conditions for that, I test for it, and I'm preparing for human consumption — not pasteurization. Their paradigm is correct because their definition of raw milk is that it's filthy.

"You have two different realities, two different structures, two different protocols, two different standards and practices," McAfee said. "They're rendering filthy milk 'safe,' but it's not really safe. It's highly allergenic and hard to digest. So what they've got is a filthy milk problem that they're fixing with pasteurization that's killing all of the bio-actives that consumers want."

In fact, McAfee said most dairy farms have no incentives to produce raw milk for human consumption.

"It's not their fault. Their milk design is to have pathogens, their [design] is to put as much milk as they can into the channel — they're being paid by the weight of the milk, not the bacterial standards," McAfee said.

Should you consider raw milk?

Bass told Blaze News that she transitioned her family to raw dairy when her first child was in the weaning process. She did her research, became confident about the benefits of raw dairy, and "never looked back."

Bass has a humble spirit. She doesn't want to push her view on others, and she doesn't want to engage in the politics of the issue.

But if you consider drinking raw dairy, Bass wants you to know that you're more than capable of understanding the issue — despite what "experts" may claim — and that you are the best advocate for yourself and your family.

"Get some hard facts, not just fearmongering; get some real data and statistics, and you're going to find there have been sicknesses and deaths from both [raw dairy and pasteurized dairy]," she said. "But, either way, it's extremely low."

That skill — questioning with boldness the narrative that is pushed on you — translates to many areas of life.

"When you take a look at the actual numbers and you look at the actual studies, you'll find that a lot of times the narrative can be questioned, and there are a lot of benefits to learning things yourself and not just trusting what is told to you," Bass said. "I encourage people to be that advocate for themselves."

"It's important to ask questions because we live in this culture where it [is] always whatever the experts say," she explained. "I see what the experts say — there's a lot of fearmongering with a lot of, 'This will happen to you. This is scary.' And then when you actually look at the statistics, you're like, 'Oh, that's not at all what I was expecting.'"

If you ask Saladino, he will tell you that you should considering drinking raw milk not only because it's beneficial for your health and is ancestrally consistent, but it's just plain tasty.

"Raw milk is delicious!" Saladino says.

McAfee agrees.

"If you poll people about why they drink raw milk, the No. 1 thing they're going to say: It's delicious! 'It tastes good. It settles in my belly. It feels good. It makes me feel good,'" McAfee explained.

No matter what choice you make, remember to question with boldness, seek the truth, and cultivate the health of your family.

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