Raw Milk: Secret Superfood??

0:01Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and this is Science Versus. After this episode, we're taking a quick break just to work on some future episodes. So if you have ideas, let us know in the comments, things you'd like us to versus. And we wanted to let you know that we now have a YouTube channel. Yay! It's Science VS Podcast. There's a link in the show notes. You could also catch us on Instagram, TikTok. But now it's time for the episode.

0:36Let's jump in. I'm on an illegal mission today. Legal grey area would be more accurate, but for a cold open like this, we're going to say illegal. No, we're going to say grey area. There's no way that would get through fact check. The point is I'm doing something naughty. A couple of weeks ago, I went on a secret mission. Okay. Here I go. I'm going into the store. There's plants out the front.

1:09Plants inside. Organic bananas to my left. I'm here to buy something that some say is dangerous and could even kill me. The chocolate milk drops. I bet there's carob somewhere around here. God only knows. Oh my gosh, there's an empty. It's a completely empty fridge. There's one left. One left. I found it. It's a white substance. In a plastic bottle. There's one left. There's one left. One raw milk. Raw milk. I've got it. I've got it.

1:43I've got it. Okay. But should I drink it? Thank you. The car? Yes, please. Sure. A lot of people online are saying yes.

Raw Milk Benefits

1:53That this milk that I've got that hasn't been pasteurized and is straight from the teat has heaps of benefits. They say just look at the science. Raw milk, raw dairy in your diet is definitely going to improve your health. Raw milk protects kids. From asthma, eczema, and allergies. It is packed full of gut-healthy bacteria. You heal your microbiome. God intended milk to be raw. If he didn't, he would have put a pasteurization chamber on the udder of

2:27a cow. Raw milk fandom has even hit the udder echelons of society. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a huge raw milk fan. And it's not just the RFK juniors of the world. It's pretty common to drink raw milk in some countries. You can even find it in some vending machines around Europe. But of course, there is a flip side to this story. The raw milk naysayers who reckon that raw milk is dangerous.

3:02It's actually illegal to sell raw milk for humans to drink in Australia and in some states in the U.S. as well. I had to find it in the pet food section of the store. So why are people worried here? Some people keep trying to act like drinking raw milk is unlocking some secret level of health. Well, I want to say congratulations. It unlocked diarrhea, fever, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

3:33The only reason to drink raw milk is if you ever wondered, hey, I wonder what it's like to die from having too much diarrhea. So who's right here? Could drinking raw milk be the thing you need to help

Science of Raw Milk

3:50your microbiome, your allergies, your asthma? Or are you going to die from having too much diarrhea? Today on the show, we're going to squeeze the teat of science until we've filled our bucket with facts around raw milk. Because, you know, there's a lot of... God intended milk to be raw. And then there's science. Science vs. Raw Milk is coming up just after the break. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation.

4:26Built for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the asks aren't getting smaller. And the timelines? Ooh, yeah. Still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Learn more at adobe.com slash firefly. This episode is brought to you by Torquiatry. When your mental health is suffering, finding the right treatment can be overwhelming. That's where Torquiatry comes in. Torquiatry is an online psychiatry practice with licensed psychiatrists who can evaluate, diagnose, and provide

5:04ongoing medication management when appropriate. They accept major insurers, can treat anxiety, ADHD, depression, and more. And you can schedule your first visit in days, not months. Go to torquiatry.com slash sciencevs to get matched in minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y dot com slash sciencevs. Torquiatry.com slash sciencevs. Welcome back. Today we are guzzling down the science of raw milk and I'm here with our editor, Blythe Terrell. Hello, Blythe. Hello, Wendy. So I've got it in my hot little hands.

5:36Ooh, I'm so nervous. Um, it's, I should say, so it says pet milk only. And what's funny about the health food store that I bought it at is, so you go to the milk section with the regular pasteurized milk and then they have a sign that says, if you want raw milk, go to the pet food section. But there is no other pet food sold in the quote-unquote pet food section. Across the store, there's just a fridge with raw milk.

6:08And that's it. Wow, that is cheeky. Yeah. Okay, so let's open, let's open this raw milk. Once it's open, it's open, Wendy. Then it really becomes like Chekhov's raw milk. Yeah. Okay, here we go. There it is. So you're just going to put it there next to you, right? You're not having it now. Nope. So the question is, Blythe, am I going to drink this? It sounds like maybe you need some science before you can make that call.

6:38I believe so. So tell me, Blythe, let's start here. What is different about this raw milk compared to regular milk that you would buy at the store? Okay. So the key difference is that it has not been pasteurized. Mm-hmm. Right? And I can tell you a little bit about pasteurization. Thank you. So what we do when we pasteurize milk is basically we heat it up usually to 161 degrees Fahrenheit, 72 degrees Celsius. Thank you. For you and those like you.

7:09For like 15 seconds or less. And when we started doing this at scale, it was about 100 years ago. Okay. And that, Wendy, was partly because milk was making people sick. Actually, a lot of the time with things like tuberculosis, like the cows would get tuberculosis. Oh. And like it would come out in their milk and people would drink the milk and get TB. Wow. Oh, I didn't realize TB. Yeah. Okay. So they start pasteurizing the milk and it works.

7:41It kills the bugs. Right. It kills the TB. Yes. It becomes the thing we do in the U.S., right? And in a lot of other places. And so I guess now the movement is saying we're killing too much in the milk. Right. Perhaps it's overkill. Mm-hmm. Overkill. Like a big argument is that we're getting rid of microbes that actually like would make our guts stronger if they hung around. Right. We're getting rid of the bad microbes and the good.

8:11And that's where I want to start with this argument about the microbiome. And so to find out if that is true, I called up this guy in the dairy capital of the United States. My name is John Lucey. I'm a professor in the food science department here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I'm also the director of our Center for Dairy Research. And that is not all. John is from Ireland. And also... I grew up on a farm too, so a dairy farm as well.

8:44And I also worked for a couple of years in New Zealand, another dairy country. So Wendy, I brought you the Dairy King. Yeah, he's perfect. He's perfect. And so I asked John about this argument that raw milk is good for your gut, that it's kind of a probiotic, basically. And so John told me out of the gate that there is a really good reason to be skeptical of this. And it comes down to the fact that generally, if you've got a healthy

9:16cow, the milk doesn't pop out of the teat chock full of bacteria. There's very little bugs of any description, good, bad, or indifferent, in milk. That's where the science is right now, is not that there's a really important, good bacteria flora in the raw milk. That's just not where we're at right now. Just the science isn't supportive of it. That's interesting, though, because it definitely suggests that this raw milk in front of me isn't that dangerous, right?

9:47We're going to get into the details of that later. Okay. But basically, the scientists tend to agree that when it comes out initially, it doesn't really have a bunch of bacteria in it. And this actually makes intuitive sense, because if you think about the dairy that we eat, that we know has good probiotic stuff in it, like yogurt, that stuff is fermented, which means that you've added that bacteria to it. Of course. You're thinking about yogurt, kefir, things like that.

10:18Yeah. And even if there were a tiny bit of good gut bugs for the microbiome, it wouldn't be there in the amount that it would need to be in order to actually do anything inside your gut. Yeah. Because for a probiotic to work, scientists generally think that, like, it has to have a lot of these bugs. Here is John on that. So if you, like, buy a probiotic supplement and you look at the fine print, they'll say it contains, per gram, millions and billions and whatever of bugs.

10:52And because numbers are important for these benefits, it's not like, because your own gut microbiome is in the bazillions, you know, off the chart. Yeah. The analogy that I always hear from researchers talking about the microbiome is that if you imagine your gut like a rainforest, and then you drink some milk and say it's like a pigeon comes in to the rainforest, it's not going to change things, it's not going to flourish. Right, right. That space is taken. Right. Well, exactly. So you can't just, like, sprinkle in a few things and

11:28expect to, like, fix your s***. Literally. Literally. Right. So John actually told me that to do the kind of thing that people are claiming that the milk could do. The milk would need a million per gram of bugs. And if the milk had a million per gram of any bugs, it would already start to be sour. Oh. Of anything? Anything. So, to me, this is what makes the microbiome claim fall pretty flat. Like, it does not make me want to go running to the local farm for a warm, frothy glass fresh

12:04from the udder. All right. So the next claim let's look up is this idea that it can prevent allergies and asthma. Yes. Anything to this? This one, Wendy, is, like, a lot more interesting, actually. Ooh. This is the one that made me go, hmm.

Risks of Raw Milk

12:21Hmm. Hmm. All right. Can you hear the intrigue? Intrigue. Hit it, Flav. Yeah. Yes. This is a big one that people say, right? They say that if you give kids raw milk, it can help prevent allergy, it can help prevent asthma. And actually, if raw milk could do this, it would actually be a pretty big deal because these conditions, asthma and allergies, they're super common in kids. I talked about this with Professor Christine Surugi. She's a pediatric allergist and immunologist who's also at the University of Wisconsin.

12:55And she says asthma can be really serious. It is the number one reason for admission to the hospital for a child. Asthma and losing. Really? The number one reason? Exactly. And so if you can prevent it in the first place from developing, that's game-changing. Yeah. And we've seen a rise in allergies and asthma in kids, right? Yes. And that's what she pointed out, too, is that, like, in a lot of countries, these numbers are going up. So this all is connected to raw milk because a couple of decades ago, we started getting studies relating

13:32to asthma and allergies in this particular group, kids who live on farms. So what these studies would do is that a lot of times there were these big surveys coming out of Europe, and they would look at thousands of kids comparing the health of the farm kids, medical conditions they had, to kids who didn't live on the farm. And what they found was? Really striking epidemiologic evidence that the children growing up on farms are really protected from developing allergic diseases. Some people say the farm effect. One study out of Austria found that about 1% of the farm kids had

14:08asthma compared to about 4% of kids who didn't live on the farm. You know, a study out of Germany found that just over 3% of farm kids had asthma compared to more than 6% of non-farm kids. Yeah. It's more than allergies and asthma. It's like skin conditions, stuff like eczema, these histamine things. Yeah. Yeah. And Christine told me this finding. It's been borne out in the U.S. as well. I feel like this story of kids on farms having low allergies, it's sort of, I feel like

14:38the science has known this for a while, but it's had in the past been attributed to the hygiene hypothesis and that maybe these kids on farms are exposed to more dirt and that's really good for them and lowering their risk of getting these illnesses is now the thought moving. Maybe it's because they're drinking raw milk. You have entered the ring on this debate, Wendy. So, Jono, walk me through. So, with the hygiene hypothesis, let's bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. So, okay. So, what is the up-to-date thinking on that?

15:10The up-to-date thinking is that, yes, like these exposures to things on the farm, to like dust, to dander, all these things that challenge your immune system at a really young age and sort of teach your immune system like what's out in the world and basically strengthens it so that like when it encounters that stuff later, you don't have a big allergic reaction to it. The idea is still that that's important. But at the same time, some scientists have also looked closer and started to think that maybe also the milk

15:42that these farm kids are drinking is at play. And some of these, particularly some of these researchers out of Europe started thinking this because they looked at these, they did these big observational studies of a lot of kids and they tried to look at kids who were in some cases not living on the farm but who were drinking raw milk and they tried to control for some of those other exposures on the farm and they have started to say, we think that there is something going on with the milk.

16:14Like we don't, we think that the hygiene hypothesis is part of this but we also think that the milk is at play. This will just show my ignorance. Living on a farm, growing up on a farm, these kids are drinking raw milk. I feel like we're making some assumptions here. I'm guessing the researchers actually asked these families. Wendy, you're such a good student of the challenges of this research. How did you know? Wait, is this an actual question? Yeah, yeah, it is. So it is not always clear that the stuff that the kids are drinking on the

16:48farm is strictly raw milk because some of the time, even if kids are drinking milk from the farm, it's getting boiled, it's getting treated some kind of way. And the studies don't always check for that. And then on top of that, some of these studies coming out of Europe are comparing this farm milk to milk that has gone way beyond sort of standard pasteurization. So this is stuff that like has been heated up way higher to a way higher temperature. And that kind of milk is more common in Europe.

17:20It's actually like the milk that you get that you don't have to put in the fridge, like the shelf stable stuff. Oh, like the crap you get on a plane. Right, like sterilized. That's sitting in a hotel room in a little box, that sort of stuff. Exactly. That can just sit on the shelf for three months or whatever without being refrigerated. Oh, so you compare it to that, which is seriously processed milk. Right. And so online, this is what a lot of people seem to get wrong about these studies.

17:53You know, they're assuming that like farm milk is raw milk. But if you actually read the nitty gritty papers, you see sometimes that's not true. And sometimes what they're looking at is something else, Wendy, called, quote, minimally processed milk. You want to know what that is? Yeah, minimally processed milk. What's that? So that is pasteurized milk. That's that science versus touch flight getting into the papers, working out what all the definitions are. That's right. We love a definition.

18:24That's why we're here. And so I will say, despite all that, scientists like Christine, they are not like driving a nail through the coffin of this claim that raw milk might do something to help reduce allergies. So when she looks at all this complexity, she's like, I'm not crying over spilt milk. Correct. She doesn't think the science is spoiled. She thinks we shouldn't be lapping up the science out of Europe and using it to bolster claims that raw milk is good for you.

18:57But she doesn't think we're ready for a milkshake up and that we should all be drinking raw milk right now. She does not think that. So we've done our puns. Where do we go from here then? Well, I'm not going to leave you with just that. Okay. Okay. Because- It would behoove you to tell me more. Um, I can- Yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I can squeeze out a few more drops of science. Uh, just- Okay. Okay. We've really milked this for all it's worth.

19:30Oh my God. I'm going to put my dipper back into the pail, Wendy, and pull out more science for you. So, okay. So, Christine actually was part of a study that I did think does some work here to help us parse out how big of a deal raw milk might be. Like, if there's a signal, how much might that matter? Compared to, like, the other stuff people are exposed to on the farm. Right? And so, Christine is based in Wisconsin, and she works with a lot of people.

20:04She studies a lot of different families who live on farms. And what she did is some research into these two particular groups in the U.S. The Amish and the Old Order Mennonites. Are you familiar? Um, yeah. I've been to Pennsylvania, intercourse. Big Amish community there. My parents laughed a lot at the name. I didn't understand what was funny. I do now. Um, tell me more. So, yes. So, the Amish and the Old Order Mennonites are similar in

20:34a lot of ways. They often have big families. They live these, like, sort of more traditional farming lifestyles. Not big on technology a lot of the time. Yeah. And they tend to drink raw milk. Okay, great. And from the farm. Yes, great. Raw milk. Perfect. Yes. Yes. But these two groups are different in one important way. So, the Amish often don't use any electricity at all. And the Mennonites, some of them do have electricity. So, they tend to sometimes use mechanized processes for things.

21:07Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, Christine's team, what they did is that they surveyed a bunch of families in these two groups. They looked at the rates of asthma, the rates of allergy, and they found... The Amish community is, like, super protected. Like, they had decreased allergic diseases across the board. Compared to the Old Order Mennonites. This might suggest that what matters here is that they're doing all this stuff by hand with the animals. Mm-hmm. So, that animal contact is what's important.

21:38So, what you see in, like, an Amish family, and I'm speaking generally here, right, is that people are in the barn, you know? They're, like, one-on-one. They're milking the cows by hand. They're in the cow shed. Mm-hmm. It's not about drinking the raw milk. It's about all that time with the animals. That is a suggestion that the time with the animals could be more important. Mm-hmm. Which is back to the hygiene hypothesis. That's bing, bing, bing. Exactly. Hygiene hypothesis. Bing, bing, bing.

22:10Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Another scientist told me that in Amish households, a lot of times, it's the women who are doing the milking. So, they're in the barns a lot, including when they're pregnant, maybe including when they have really small babies. Mm-hmm. You know, and that the kids are involved. And so, there's like just a lot of exposure one-on-one with animals that if you have like a mechanical milking setup or like a more mechanized farm, you're on the tractors, all this stuff, you're just like not up in

22:43it with the animals nearly as much. Got it. And the thinking is that that might be, we don't know for sure, but that might be the bigger difference maker here. Mm-hmm. So, like even away from the Amish and the Mennonites, just sort of bigger picture, you know, Christine's group, they study a lot of farming families in Wisconsin and they will ask them, you know, is the child going into the barn? And if so, at what age? I mean, that makes a difference.

23:14And getting exposed to that barn environment and the stable, like that is another protective signal. At what age is it most beneficial for the kid to be in the barn? Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. The data from the epidemiologic studies strongly suggests that this needs to happen early in life. And the European studies have suggested that even begins in utero. Aha. So actually, what we need to be doing is taking our kids to the farm or going to farms

23:45when pregnant to reduce the risk of allergies and asthma. That's where we're at. Yeah, which is sort of a little bit of an annoying answer, right? Like, because not everybody has access to that kind of thing. But the other thing Christine told me is that like, get a pet, get a dog. Like, that also is a good way for your kid to be exposed to this type of stuff early in life. So where we're at with the research at the moment, this raw milk in front of me, not packed

24:20with good bacteria and probably not going to be the thing to help me with my allergies or reduce your kid's chance of having eczema allergies and asthma in the future. Is that where we're at? I think that's right. You know, it's possible there's some kind of link with allergies and asthma. Not really a slam dunk. Okay. How are you feeling about the idea of taking a big old gulp of that? I mean, less interested than when we started, I've got to say.

24:51But I'm also less worried about it because John said there's probably not that many bad bugs in here. But is that... Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. I'm going to have to stop you right there. Oh, okay. Let's talk about that after the break. After the break. After the break. After the break. After the break. Hey parents. How do you make smarter choices for your kids' college today? That's where Sally can help. With Sally, you can find scholarships, funding options, tools, and guidance all in one place.

25:24And if you need a loan, Sally has options for different families and different situations.

Raw Milk Outbreaks

25:29College is only worth it if you do it right. So don't just help your kid go. Help them go smarter. sally.com slash go parents. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.

26:03Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire, the no-show. Who set you back because they didn't show up on day one, or day two, or ever again. And now your product launch is delayed because you're talking to alien abduction podcasters to track them down. But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help make sure your next hire sticks. In fact, businesses who use LinkedIn are 24% less likely to reopen a role in the next 12 months.

26:34Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at linkedin.com slash quality. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plan start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at Visible.com.

27:05Terms apply. See Visible.com for details. Alright, welcome back. I'm here with Blythe. We are suckling at the teat of raw milk research. Absolutely. Yes, we are. Okay, so now we are on to the risks. How dangerous is this glass of milk in front of me? Because I am getting thirsty, Blythe. I don't know. My time is running out. I'm parched. I'm parched. Right, okay. Let me tell you. Even though, like John said, the milk doesn't start out with a bunch of bugs in it if the cow

27:38is healthy, of course, sometimes the cow is not healthy. And gnarly stuff can get into the milk that way. So actually, astute listeners of the show will remember from our bird flu episode that cows can get bird flu and that can get into their milk. Yes, that's right. But even if the cow is healthy, you have something else to worry about. Because the other big concern is that even if the milk comes out okay, it can get contaminated afterward.

28:08Bugs can get in because cows are on farms and the milk comes out of their udders which are just kind of like flopping around under their bodies. It's also somewhat close to their butthole, right? I guess. Yes. Near the poop chute. Yes. So they can come into contact with all sorts of stuff. And I dug into this with John Lucy who's the first scientist that we heard from. You know, I grew up in a farm. We do the best we can.

28:39But you try and keep it as clean as you can. But to think that the ground or the soil or the bedding that the animal is laying down in is sterile is just fantasy. And the problem is the dairy farms are just not a sterile environment. Right. You can't, the cow's not in a bubble. The cow's not in a bubble. The soil is not in a bubble. The feed is not in a bubble. That's fascinating. So the, so it comes out, let's say, close to sterile.

29:12But as soon as it's out, then it's exposed to all of these other things. And that stuff that can then infect the milk, that tends to be the bad bacteria. Is that right? Yes, exactly. Like, that's what we, that's what we see. It's a dirt, it's a dirty environment because there's dirt, you know? And actually, one thing that John told me that was also kind of interesting is that if this bacteria gets on the teat of the cow somehow, sometimes it just like hangs out there.

29:44We all see these hospital shows and we see the doctor about to go into the surgery and he's washing his hands. And it's not a five-second job. It's like scrubbing of the hands, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. Why? Because on the hands, they can be bacteria and it can form actually biofilms on the hands and in the environment. And that means it's harder to remove than just a simple little wash off. The same can be true on the outside of these other, of the teats that the cow has.

30:18They can actually be permanent bacteria living on the outside of it that are very hard to remove. And remember, this is a sensitive area for the cow too so you can't spend five minutes like the doctor scrubbing. And the things we're worried about here are stuff like Salmonella, E. coli, this thing called Campylobacter. And in particular, I want to zoom in on one bacteria, Listeria. So there's a bunch of different types of Listeria but one of them in particular can make us pretty sick

30:50and it can cause gross stuff like diarrhea and nausea but it's actually especially dangerous to people with compromised immune systems and if you're pregnant it can kill the baby. And Listeria is kind of all over the farm. You can find it in the soil, you can find it in the cows a lot of the time at least in their crap. Here's John again. I'll give you just an example. One of my colleagues here at the University of Wisconsin did

31:20a study of a farm here in Wisconsin and she literally went out and sampled poop from these animals and cows. 90% of the animals were carrying Listeria monocytagics. So that's in their poo though. So then the question is how often is that Listeria are any of these scary bugs going from the farm to the milk, right? Right. That's the question. That is the question. That is the question. How often is this grotty stuff actually getting into the milk? Yes, yes. And so one way that scientists try to figure this out is that they look at the milk

31:57at the dairy because it comes out of the cows and all gets collected up before it gets pasteurized. Right? Yeah. And what happens is it gets collected in this big tank called a bulk tank. Okay. And scientists what they'll do is they'll take samples from a bunch of tanks and they'll actually analyze them to see what's in there. I would say if you look at the percentage of the different pathogens sometimes you see 5% of them are contaminated with listeria 5% are contaminated roughly I'm giving broad ranges with campylobacter E.

32:31coli etc. Yeah. So when they look at these samples about 1 in 20 of them have one of these nasty bacteria inside them. But if you amalgamate all of them and you ask a slightly different question John how many bulk tanks in many of these surveys have at least one pathogen? Sometimes it's as high as 20-30% have one pathogen present in the bulk tank. Whoa. Whoa. There's no way I'm drinking that! You don't like those odds? No way. The upper estimate of 30% in the bulk tanks?

33:05Yeah. Whoa. And why would you give that to your pet? Or your kid, Wendy. Right. So I mean the bottom line is like it's pretty common to find creepy stuff in the milk. Like John talked about those numbers. I found a study out of the UK that looked at raw milk that was actually for sale and it found that 40% of the samples they looked at had some kind of problem with a risky pathogen. But then 40, right, but then not everyone who will then drink these

33:38microbes in their raw milk will then get sick, right? Some of them, their immune system will deal with it. So how often are people getting sick from drinking raw milk? Yeah. I mean, it's a great question, you know, because like, look, some people drink raw milk and they are totally fine. You know, it's not like they're drinking arsenic, right? But there have definitely been some disease outbreaks. So this one CDC study looked at about a 20-year period and found more than 200 outbreaks tied to raw milk in the U.S., getting about 2,600 people sick.

34:14Just this year, there have been a couple of outbreaks in the headlines. There was an E. coli outbreak that was linked to this raw cheese. In Idaho, almost 60 people got sick from raw milk, a bunch of them from campylobacter. And look, when you look at the raw numbers, Wendy, people are more likely to get sick from other foods. Stuff like seafood, maybe leafy vegetables like spinach. That is true. But with raw milk, what freaks out scientists like John is that a lot of the time with these outbreaks,

34:48the people who get sick are kids. Children end up being the most largest percentage of hospitalizations for raw milk outbreaks. They don't have a choice. They don't know anything. Mom and dad are feeding it to their kids. Those are the ones that I get most concerned about. And depending on which study you take, sometimes it's like a quarter or more, are sometimes under the age of three and five years old. People are thinking, oh, I've got to expose my kids.

35:19To pathogens? Are you serious? They could end up in a hospital? That's the problem. And earlier this year, this is actually how raw milk kind of got on my radar, because there was a listeria case. So this woman in New Mexico apparently drank raw milk during her pregnancy, and she lost her baby. Because of a listeria infection. She had a listeria infection. Yeah. Oh, God. So, like, not common from what we can tell, but these outbreaks, when they happen, people can

35:51die. I mean, this is exactly why it's so devastating, right? I mean, I don't know what was happening for this woman during her pregnancy, but more broadly, you see these trends and these influences and people saying, damn, the establishment, what do they know? Raw milk is the answer, pasteurization is a farce, and then this is the ultimate conclusion. Of course it is. Then people thinking, oh, I've got to be drinking raw milk to help my unborn child

36:21and reduce the chance of them getting allergies and then they're missing the bigger picture that is listeria. Right. And the stakes are just really high because it's not common for those horrible, horrible things to happen, but when they do, it's awful. They're awful. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to spill that milk right in front of me, but there's carpet. I don't want to have to clean that. So, I mean, it's really feeling like this raw milk. This raw milk's not coming back from that, right? No, I don't think so.

36:56And I mean, you know, just to say, like, some raw milk producers, of course, they'll say, like, listen, we try to avoid this. We keep things clean. We try to test for bacteria. And also, like, there are instances where stuff sneaks into pasteurized milk and makes you sick. Right. But one study found that when people were getting sick from contaminated dairy, 96% of the time, it was the raw stuff. Wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 96% of the time.

37:27Which is why we pasteurize it. Pasteurization works really well to kill all the stuff that we are talking about. You had it fast in 2026. 100 plus years later. Pasteurization works really well. Yeah, I mean, listen, John was like, it's good that we've been doing it so long. You know, like, it's allowed us to, like, test it and refine it and figure out systems for it, figure out how to do it at scale. And all of that has been put in place over 100 years to

38:01show that pasteurized milk is one of the safest food products on the planet. So I asked him, is there a way to have safe raw milk? You're shaking your head. No, no. It's a foolish and risky thing to do. I don't want to be called foolish by John. So what are you going to do with that milk? I mean, there's this annoying neighborhood cat. When do you know that might be thirsty and piss pisses on my security gate? If you even. Don't do it. It says pet milk only.

38:35Oh my God, Wendy. Throw it out, put it down the drain. Tell us in the comments, what should I do with the raw milk? Oh my God. Yeah, I think they'll tell you exactly where you can put it, Wendy. that's science versus. I'm not going to give it to the cat. Don't call Peter. Don't go, put down the phone, don't call Peter, it's fine.

Conclusion

39:00How many citations are in this week's episode, Blythe? There are 72 citations in this week's episode. And if people want to see them, where should they go? They can find a link to our transcript in our show notes. Thank you, Blythe. Like I mentioned, we just started a YouTube channel, so you can come and find us at ScienceVS Podcast. That's where we are. There's going to be a link in the show notes. And while you are looking at the transcript, you can click on it and find us there, see some of

39:36our video episodes. And Blythe, like I said at the start of the show, we are taking a short break. Yeah, just a few weeks. We'll be back. In a few weeks. All right. Bye. Bye. This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell with help from Eketty Foster Keyes, Meryl Horne, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and me, Wendy Zuckerman. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. I'm the executive producer, fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Research help from Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Boomi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord.

40:12Thanks to the researchers we spoke to for this episode, including Professor Marcus Egger. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks to Elsevier for sharing your raw milk book with us. Thanks to the Zuckerman family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson, and Jack Weinstein. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. Are We Doomed looks at big problems. Nobody would rationally want nuclear war. That's not quite correct. How can we add friction? Put the launch codes inside somebody's chest cavity and you have to kill them to get them out. Are we doomed? Solving humanity's biggest threats. Part of the NPR network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long-haul truck together. We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats. I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there? There were 32,000 pounds of them. 32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats. That's it. Find out what it's like to be a long-haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.