Dana Goodyear, “Raw Deal,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2012

“The new wave of American cuisine has a regressive side, wrapped up in
nostalgia for an imagined past… To chefs like [Daniel Patterson], unprocessed
milk does not just taste better; it is sentimental and, more important, it is
pure,” claims New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear in this article chronicling
the raw milk movement and its ongoing confrontation with government
regulators. Focusing on a California-based group known as “the Rawesome
Three” who in 2011 were arrested for—among other charges—running an
unlicensed milk plant and processing milk without pasteurization, Goodyear
likens the covert world of raw milk to that of marijuana and other illicit
substances. Despite the insistence of food safety officials that unpasteurized
milk “can carry salmonella, campylobacter, and E. coli O157:H7,” the
raw milk acolytes quoted in Goodyear’s report apparently believe in the
product’s natural healing properties and will go to great lengths to obtain it, frequenting undercover specialty stores and participating in clandestine “deals” with others in a community that ranges from “health-seekers” and “the
seriously ill” to celebrities such as Liv Tyler and Mandy Moore.

But even as disparate political causes have come to adopt the government’s
recent crackdown on raw milk as evidence of regulatory fervor run amok, the
movement has also drawn criticism from outsiders for its apparent inability
to address vulnerabilities in its supply chain. As Goodyear notes, the largest
supplier of raw milk in California has twice been implicated in E. coli outbreaks
involving young children, while two members of the Rawesome Three
allegedly planned to purchase additional farm land by defrauding a bank.
Meanwhile, such anecdotes have reportedly done little to persuade public
health officials that raw milk purchases should be left to the consumer’s
discretion despite the health risks.

“From a public-health perspective, milk has fallen into the category of water. Providing a clean milk and water supply is fundamental to what the government sees as its job. If the government were stopping people from selling impure water, it’s hard to imagine there would be a great public outcry,” concluded Michele Jay-Russell of the University of California, Davis, Western Institute for Food Safety and Security. “The crux of the conundrum is: why shouldn’t it be their choice?”