Pus-y Milk
Would you drink pus-y milk? I mean, raw milk? I sure as fuck would not, neither should you, and we all need to be preaching it from the rooftops.
Word of warning: I’m not going to pull any punches. This isn’t a gentle attempt to sway those who might be raw-curious.
Second note: I still drink milk and consume dairy products. I just don’t want you to do it raw.
Homogenization (v). – the process of evenly distributing the fat from the cream into the liquid of the milk. You know how oil and water don’t mix? Same with cream and milk –– the cream “rises to the top.” If you let unhomogenized milk sit and separate, you can skim the cream off, leaving you with “skim milk” (get it?).
Pasteurization (v.) – the process, discovered by Louis Pasteur in the 1860s, of heating a liquid to kill any contained microorganisms. He did it because beer and wine were killing people in France. It was because of Pasteur’s discovery that people literally stopped believing that “noxious fumes from rotting meat” caused diseases.
Okay, so raw milk. Raw milk is milk straight from the teet. Unprocessed, unpasteurized, unhomogenized. It’s got a growing cult following in the United States, not the least of which because the words “pasteurization” and “homogenization” are too big to be pronounced by its room-temperature IQ followers.
Why is milk gross
It seems benign, but the production of milk is generally gross. Dairy cows have been bred for larger quantities of milk production, with cows today producing 4.33–6.66x the amount of milk compared to the early 1800s. One of the complications stemming from this vast overproduction is that without periodic milking, cow udders can become inflamed and susceptible to infection.
One source of that infection can come from the literal shit they sleep in. It is an inevitability of a farm environment that cow teats come into contact with their own piss and shit. Cows lay in dirt and hay and piss and shit while sleeping, and that not only gets on a cow’s teats but on the long thick udder hairs that trap dried mud and manure. That infection can also come from other environmental sources like contaminated teat dips, water ponds and mud holes, skin lesions, flies, and the water used to prepare an udder for milking. The most common bacterial udder infections come from contact with Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus agalactiae, Corynebacterium bovis, Trueperella pyogenes, Lactococcus spp, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Mycoplasma spp.
Once an udder is infected, it’s called mastitis. And infected they do get. At any time, a single herd of cows will have between 5-75% of the herd infected with “subclinical” mastitis. Based on environmental conditions, these cases of “subclinical” mastitis will progress to “clinical”, leading to inflammation causing pus, blood, and transmitted bacteria in raw milk.
(Exhibit A)
I want to make it clear that this isn’t a case of a disease outbreak, this is a managed inevitability of dairy herds. According to the Merck veterinary manual, “For well-managed herds in which mastitis caused by contagious pathogens has been controlled, a goal for the incidence of clinical mastitis should be 1–2 cases/100 cows milking/month.” (emphasis mine). In 2024 there were approximately 7.9-8.4 million lactating dairy cows, making 79,000-168,000 cases of clinical mastitis per month, assuming they all come from well-managed herds with controlled contagious pathogens (I’m sure they all are!!).
The (bacterial) growth of raw milk
Plant-based milks dominated the public consciousness in the early 2020s, with cow milks being replaced in the home and at coffee shops with soy, almond, and oat milks. This, along with general trends in lower milk consumption caused sales of dairy milk to slump ~8% between 2020 and 2023. But starting in 2024, dairy milk sales are up –– ~0.8% in 2024, and around 3% in 2025 to date. And while economic data is sparse, the percentage of those sales coming from raw milk is aggressively growing, some figures show that sales of raw milk were up 17% in 2024 compared to 2023. Mark McAfee, the founder and CEO of Raw Farm, has stated publicly that his sales of raw milk are growing ~1.5% week over week in 2025.
In my opinion, it’s no coincidence that this coincides with the change in political administration, and political climate. RFK Jr., the leather-faced anti-science United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, stated at a campaign event in June 2024 that “I only drink raw milk,” a statement that was met with whoops and applause from the devout audience. Less than 2 weeks ago, in May 2025, while guest starring on a podcast, he was recorded in the oval office drinking a raw-milk shooter –– straight out of a double high shot glass like a frat boy chugging Cement Mixers on Spring Break.
(No need for the lime juice to curdle that Bailey’s, that raw milk is chunky enough)
RFK Jr. gets his milk from the same Raw Farm mentioned earlier, a family-owned farm based in Fresno, California. RFK Jr., looking to expand his council hell bent on destroying the legacy of science-based health policy, asked Mark McAfee in 2025 to apply for a position as the “FDA’s raw milk standards and policy adviser”, at least according to McAfee. Absolutely bat-shit. Why? Between September 2023 and March 2024, there were 171 people reported sick from a salmonella outbreak due to raw milk from Raw Farm, across 5 states. 40% of those were children younger than 5. Mark McAfee said it all came from a single infected cow, who was later “removed from the herd” (we love a euphemism).
Oh, and in May 2023 the California Department of Food and Agriculture recalled Raw Farm milk after detecting C. jejuni. Oh, and in August 2023 there was a recall of Raw Farm’s cheddar cheese because of a Salmonella contamination. Oh, and in February 2024 the CDC reported 11 cases of E. coli from that same fucking cheddar cheese. Oh, and “when Raw Milk operated under the name Organic Pastures, its milk and cream products were associated with eight outbreaks of E coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter from 2006 to 2016.”
So let’s get this straight: the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services continues to pimp out his raw-milk supplier, allegedly asking him to become an adviser, while knowing that he’s responsible for 12 disease outbreaks.
I could go into even more detail of the myriad bacterial outbreaks due to raw milk, but I honestly don’t even have the space. According to the CDC, from 1998 to 2018 there were 202 outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk. And that’s acknowledging that food-borne illnesses are heavily underreported.
But hey, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, aren’t that bad. It’s just some vomiting, diarrhea, fever, headache, body ache. Well, and miscarriages in pregnant women, and sometimes death. I guess you could develop hemolytic uremic syndrome, like Christopher Martin, a 7 year old who contracted E. coli from Organic Pastures milk. But at least it’s not something horrible like bird flu (H5N1).
Oh wait, there’s fucking bird flu in the raw milk. Raw Farm issued a voluntary recall in 2024 after the California Department of Food and Agriculture found the virus in two lots of its raw milk. And they only started testing it because 28 of the 29 confirmed human cases of bird flu at the time were people who had direct contact with infected dairy cows. As of now, of the 70 national cases, 41 of them are from exposure to dairy cows. The first reported death from H5N1 was in January in Louisiana. Playing devil’s advocate, her specific strain was the one circulating in poultry farms, not dairy farms, but the risk for all viral outbreaks comes from mutations. Dairy farm H5N1 is not less susceptible to mutation, it just hasn’t had a bad one yet.
History and legislation
This fight over raw milk isn’t new. In 1895, a tuberculosis outbreak was blamed on infected cows (25% of tested herds harbored tuberculosis). In 1913, a typhoid outbreak in New York City was linked to contaminated milk, causing the New York commissioner of health to mandate compulsory milk pasteurization so that by 1921, infant mortality rates had dropped from 24% to 7%. Similar mandatory pasteurization ordinances began to pop up across all states in the 1920s. This was met with outrage from farmers and dealers, resulting in lawsuits such as Pfeffer v. Milwaukee, 171 Wis. 514 (1920), claiming that the requirements were anti-business and overstepped police powers. The Wisconsin Supreme Court penned this in response:
“Public health demands that milk and all milk products should be pure and wholesome. It is also common knowledge that milk containing deleterious organisms is an unsuitable article of food. Milk is known to be a product easily infected with germ life and to require special attention and treatment in its production and distribution for consumption as an article of food. Scientific knowledge concerning these facts and the best method of pasteurizing milk for human use in course of production and distribution as a pure and wholesome food is so generally understood and known that courts take judicial notice of these facts.”
Legislation remained patchwork by city, county, and state until 1973 when the FDA began requiring that all milk sold across state lines in the U.S. had to be pasteurized. Even that was quickly undermined, when a raw milk producer successfully objected and created an exemption for “certified” raw milk. The FDA tried to close this loophole with proposed regulation in 1982, during the Reagan administration, but was shut down by then Secretary of Health and Human Services –– history fucking repeats itself. It wasn’t until 1985 when a lawsuit was filed – Public Citizen v. Heckler, 602 F. Supp. 611 (1985) – against then Secretary Margaret Heckler when the District Court of D.C. compelled the department to publish a proposed regulation within 60 days. In the Court’s opinion it states:
“The facts here speak for themselves and need little elaboration. Officials at the highest levels of the Department of Health and Human Services have concluded that certified raw milk poses a serious threat to the public health. Leading health organizations are unanimous in proposing that sales of any raw milk should be banned. … The Department’s justification for its continued delay is lame at best and irresponsible at worst. ‘When the public health may be at stake, the agency must move expeditiously to consider and resolve the issues before it.’ Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Commissioner of Food and Drugs, 740 F.2d at 34. The Department has wholly failed to meet that mandate here.”
By 1987, the FDA was finally able to mandate the pasteurization of all milk and milk products for humans. And ever since, those regulations have been rolled back time and again. Because the limitations are only on interstate commerce, the states began to pass another set of patchwork laws regulating sale and consumption within the state.
For some states like California, the sale of raw milk is completely allowed in retailers (our own local grocery store Farmer Joe’s has it on the shelf). For others, loopholes exist such as purchasing raw milk on farms (Illinois, New York), or at farm stands (North Dakota). In a completely asinine legal loophole, other states allow one to “obtain” (not buy) raw milk via a Herd Share arrangement, where you “co-own” a herd and thus are entitled to receive a portion of its produce. For $25, you can buy a “half share” of an Ohio based herd, giving you a half gallon/week (for pickup only).
(Only the finest of fine prints)
Topping that off for more batshit and evil than ever is the loophole where farms sign up to sell raw milk as “commercial feed”, and consumers buy it by pretending it’s for their pets. If you’re in Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, or Maryland you too can chug Fluffy’s flu-ridden fluids. Better you than them, I guess, considering the 3 cats killed or hospitalized in California from drinking the H5N1-infected raw milk from the lots recalled by Raw Farm. Thanks “moo-nshine” laws.
On raw milk and culture
Proponents will tell you this sudden obsession is not really sudden, and to an extent they’re correct. As shown above there’s likely always been a historical desire to drink raw milk, but also shown above, it’s growing. But why?
If you ask a proponent why they like raw milk they will talk about its physical effects: it’s healthier, it has good bacteria, it strengthens your immune system, it’s easier to digest, it retains essential vitamins.
It’s hawked equally by Gwyneth Paltrow and her cadre of hippie health food proponents, milk-maid fantasizing conservative trad-wife influencers, alpha males with podcasts, and anti-establishment red-hat MAGA government officials.
While textually all of these groups may tout the same physical benefits, what binds all of these groups together is a belief that raw milk is a cure to some nebulous cultural illness.
Raw milk is a symbol, a weapon against “what’s really wrong with America” –– a mad-lib hole that can be filled with your personal rage-against-the-machine.
(That’s the same Raw Farm with all the outbreaks)
To the hippies and Gwyneth Paltrow it’s a mistrust of science itself. The process of science, whereby new information and experimentation modifies our beliefs and recommendations about how to move through the world is threatening. The overabundance of “experts” and “authorities” with conflicting information causes us to be faced with living a life of profound doubt. As Anthony Giddens wrote in his amazing book Modernity and Self-Identity (seriously go read it):
“Of course, day-to-day life is not ordinarily experienced as perennially ‘in doubt’...Through the protective cocoon, most people are buffered most of the time from the experience of radical doubt as a serious challenge…The dilemma of authority versus doubt is ordinarily resolved through a…commitment to a certain form of lifestyle…Some individuals find it psychologically difficult or impossible to accept the existence of diverse, mutually conflicting authorities. They find that the freedom to choose is a burden and they seek solace in more overarching systems of authority. A predilection for dogmatic authoritarianism is the pathological tendency at this pole.” (p 196)
The relationship between health food advocates and authoritarianism is two-way. Under authoritarianism, the body is the final battleground. It’s no surprise to me that eating disorders are more prevalent in children with authoritarian parents, as the body becomes the last locus of control a child still has access to. So in a whole society under a growing authoritarianism, it’s also no surprise that a new form of disordered eating is gaining popularity. Raw milk is a sword to fall on, a pyrrhic victory, but at least I got to choose my weapon.
To trad-wives and the man-o-sphere, the cultural illness is gender. The loss of traditional gender roles has upended society, turning the frogs gay, the women into unshaven dykes and the men into wimpy Soy Boys. The nuclear family has collapsed, and now women and men have no script to follow whereby they woo, they marry, they have babies, and women are trapped in abusive marriages with no access to bank accounts or credit cards. Both of these flavors of influencers have something to sell you to fix your gender problems: the trad-wives will sell you a milk-maid dress, a butter churn, and a Megachurch sermon; the podcasters will sell you testosterone shots, protein-laced human dog food, and a course on “hacking the Hinge algorithm.”
(I mean, I can’t even parody this)
To both of these groups, raw milk is an appeal to history and primitivism. The idea that “we had it right before.” This aligns pretty well with the unstated values of one of the biggest raw milk advocates, the “Weston A. Price Foundation.” Created in 1999 but named after a dentist whose 1939 book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, “relates entertainingly what he discovered during vacation trips to primitive peoples in Switzerland, the Hebrides, North America, Melanesia, Polynesia, Africa and South America.”
To RFK Jr. and his ilk, the cultural illness is the threat to whiteness. More than the obvious color parallels between milk, there’s historical precedent; this idea isn’t new, even by government officials. As secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover told the World Dairy Congress in 1923:
“Upon this industry, more than any other of the food industries, depends not alone the problem of public health, but there depend on it the very growth and virility of the white race.” (emphasis mine)
(I guess White people don’t follow Punnett squares)
In 2025, it’s safe to say one of the largest global cultural wars is between White America and Not-White China. Within America the “Great Replacement” theory plays out with the future of white people threatened by immigration or Mexican and Black births. But on the global stage it’s the replacement of (American) white people by Chinese people, of American industry by Chinese industry, of American intelligence by Chinese intelligence, of American influence by Chinese influence, ultimately of American superiority with Chinese superiority.
And in this refrigerated war, milk is a rallying standard: white supremacists see the ability for white people to digest lactose as a bio-marker of racial and cultural superiority. In a social media post from an account called “Enter the Milk Zone,” a map of the global distribution of lactose-digestion genes is accompanied with the text, “If you can’t drink milk you have to go back.”
In 2017 a group of white guys toted gallon jugs of milk to an anti-Trump art installation, yelling racial and anti-semitic epithets. James Allsup, a far-right podcaster who was an attendee of the Unite the Right gathering–which if you forgot was filled with Neo-Nazis and resulted in the murder of Heather Meyer by James Fields–summed it up pretty well:
“You’ve been drinking the fascist, white supremacist, white neo-Nazi milk … To be a successful antifa soldier, you have to become a soy boy.”
(Ori says it looks like the start of a gay porn and… he’s not wrong)
To them, the battle between cow milk and soy milk is the battle between White America and Not-White China, between Men and Not-Men. Plant milk’s growing influence in America is symbolic of the death of whiteness and masculinity, the growth of a native enemy: the liberal race and gender traitor.
(From “epic” to cringe)
And raw milk, unadulterated, straight from the primal source, filled with pus and blood and grime and bacteria is the pinnacle of toughness. To go through the fire and flames daily of drinking raw milk and come out the other end unscathed is to pass the ultimate cultural Darwinian test (even though they don’t believe in evolution), emerging as Spartan warriors (who totally weren’t gay).
