‘So much misinformation’: Health officials fear popularity of raw milk will cause diseases to spread

FOXBORO, Mass. — Not that long ago, a popular question was “Got Milk?”

Now more people are changing that up and asking “Got Raw Milk?”

At Oak Knoll Farm in Foxboro, Terri Lawton milked Silver Fox and took the milk director to a chiller.

“That’s as pure as you can get it,” said Lawton. “Right now, we have people driving two hours to the farm to purchase the milk.”

One young man chugged raw milk out of the bottle right in the store to show just how much he loved it.

Raw milk sales have taken off in recent years. Social media influencers tout the taste and the health benefits they say are abundant in raw milk.

Lawton said some people like knowing they’re getting their milk from a single source. “When they get milk from our farm, it’s straight out of the cow’s udder. There’s nothing added. We just make it colder.”

Oak Knoll Farm is one of about two dozen farms in Massachusetts that are certified to sell raw milk directly to consumers.

Lawton believes raw milk is also more popular because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It really hit home to people how much we’re dependent on trucking, how we’re dependent on factories, and really removed from our food sources, and I think as a result, people came to question where our food is coming from.”

Raw milk is not the type you find on grocery store shelves. That type has been pasteurized, which is a heating process that kills any parasites, viruses, or bacteria that may be present in the milk.

Matt Motta, Ph. D., an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said, “If we’re not pasteurizing milk, people are going to come in contact with various microbes that can exist.”

He says the consequences can include salmonella poisoning, food poisoning, and bird flu.

In California, health officials suspect a child got sick from bird flu after drinking raw milk.

Motta has been studying the health impacts of raw milk and worries these individual cases of illness could potentially start spreading from person to person one day.

“Raw milk is a public health risk. It stands to make all of us sick and potentially sick in ways that we have not seen in American public life or in the world in quite some time.”

Motta said the purported health benefits of raw milk “are not scientifically accurate. . .there’s so much misinformation out there on social media.”

Still, business is brisk at Oak Knoll Farm.

Jordan Stobeck drives about 45 minutes to pick up raw milk, not only for her family but for her neighbors as well.

“We love it, we love it. I’m just a big fan of local farms, how they treat their cows.”

Lawton runs a top-notch facility, practicing safety measures, and is regularly inspected by the state.

Even so, she doesn’t believe raw milk is for everyone.

“Our stance is we’re more interested in providing consumers choice. Safer, healthier alternatives. No food is 100% safe. Whether it’s pasteurized, anything can have risk with it. But our goal is to minimize the risk associated with raw milk.”

Here’s another sign of raw milk’s popularity: the Oak Knoll farm is currently building a bigger barn on their lot in Foxboro.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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