Anna Merlin

Right.

So one of the first kind of big pushes for pasteurization of milk came in the 1930s after the discovery that raw milk could transmit tuberculosis, which was killing a lot of babies.

And so there was a pretty direct relationship between more and more places requiring pasteurization and infant mortality rates going down.

And so after that, it was pretty clear to most people in most public health bodies that this was a good idea.

So pretty much since pasteurization became a widespread thing, there has been opposition to it.

And the raw milk movement has always argued that raw milk is better for you, that it's more natural.

Raw milk will not spoil like conventional milk does.

For instance, when I talked to Mark McAfee, who's the founder and CEO of Raw Farm, the biggest raw milk producer in the country, he told me that raw milk makes asthma go away, which is not true.

According to public health experts, virologists, asthma experts, you will see arguments that raw milk is good for allergies.

It has beneficial

enzymes or bacteria.

And this is pretty much the argument that's been made since the raw milk movement sort of organized and took force is this idea that raw milk inherently has nutrients and good qualities that are stripped from pasteurized milk.

I think that historically raw milk, like anti-vaccine ideas, kind of cut equally across the right and the left.

You know, I grew up in a pretty blue part of New Mexico and would certainly see raw milk being sold and discussed, so not the way that it is now.

But definitely, you know, a lot of the places that you're seeing raw milk legislation, especially picking up, are red states because of ideas around government regulation and health freedom.

He sure did.

Want to do a shot of raw milk and toast this with me?

All right.

Secretary Kennedy, cheers.

He did a little shooter of raw milk to celebrate the publication of the Maha report, which was meant to be his big kind of capstone piece of writing presenting solutions for chronic disease and was full of AI slop and fake citations in which you will notice they don't talk about very much anymore.