Raw milk drinkers may face bird flu risk, new study suggests

On her farm in Utah, Hannah Neeleman makes herself a turmeric latte with a special ingredient: raw milk, fresh and frothy from the udder of a cow. Her young daughter squeezes some into her cup, too.

The video of Neeleman’s raw milk latte has been viewed 8 million times on her Instagram and TikTok accounts, Ballerina Farm, since it was posted on May 11. In videos across social media, people are showing themselves drinking raw milk, claiming it offers health benefits that are lost in pasteurized milk, which is heated to kill disease-causing pathogens. One influencer squirts it from the teat into his mouth. Another says raw milk is “pure.” (Neeleman declined a request for an interview.)

Dairy farmers who sell raw milk say demand is on the rise. But U.S. public health officials have long warned about the risks of drinking raw milk — especially now, as a highly virulent bird flu is infecting dairy cows across the country.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a Michigan dairy worker had been infected with the avian flu virus, the second U.S. human case in less than two months that has been linked to the H5N1 outbreak in dairy cattle. Federal officials consider the risk of humans catching the H5N1 virus to be low. They said pasteurization kills the virus.

But the CDC warned the public to avoid “unprotected exposures” to unpasteurized, or raw, milk. And on Friday, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that when mice were given raw milk from dairy cows infected with the bird flu virus, the mice quickly developed symptoms and had high levels of the virus in the respiratory tract.

The findings, the researchers said, raise questions about the potential risk of bird flu infection in humans who drink raw milk from infected cows.

Richard J. Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital who was not among the researchers in the study, said scientists can’t say with “any real confidence” that drinking raw milk contaminated with the flu will infect people. But cows that are “heavily infected” with the bird flu have high amounts of the virus in their milk, Webby said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to be drinking unpasteurized milk at this stage,” he said. “Not everyone who drinks virus-laden milk is probably going to get infected with that virus. But, from my perspective, it’s a chance I’m certainly not going to take.”

Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, said more human exposure to the H5N1 virus increases the likelihood of people getting sick and creates more opportunities for the virus to mutate so it’s more easily transmissible among humans.

“You’re giving yourself more shots on goal and increasing the probability,” Gounder said.

The difference between raw and pasteurized milk

Raw milk advocates claim the unpasteurized dairy has beneficial enzymes, probiotics and vitamins that make it nutritious and better for you than pasteurized milk. But food scientists who study the safety of dairy products say there’s no meaningful difference in the nutritional value of pasteurized milk and raw milk.

Nicole Martin, an assistant research professor in dairy foods microbiology at Cornell University, said there are very minor reductions in certain vitamins during the pasteurization process. Some of the enzymes found in milk are inactivated during pasteurization but there’s no evidence those enzymes confer a health benefit.

There are also low levels of probiotic bacteria in raw milk, but those bacteria need to be present in the billions, as found in yogurt or sauerkraut, to confer a benefit, she said.

“Just because the type of bacteria is there does not mean it’s going to cause or effect an improvement in health in any way,” Martin said.

Though raw milk’s popularity has increased in recent years, its consumption is still rare. Around 4 percent of U.S. adults said they drank raw milk at least once in the past year, according to survey data from the Food and Drug Administration using data from 2016 and 2019.

Mark McAfee, the chief executive and founder of Raw Farm in California and the chairman of the Raw Milk Institute, said people have been turning away from pasteurized milk for years, toward oat milk and soy milk. And now, through word of mouth, more are turning to unpasteurized milk, he said.

Raw Farm processes roughly 85,000 gallons of milk per week from 1,800 cows, and they deliver raw milk to close to 400 stores in California, said Aaron McAfee, who is the president of Raw Farm and Mark’s son.

Raw Farm’s sales are up 36 percent in the past four weeks, compared to the same period last year, said Aaron McAfee.

“I’ve done everything I can to increase supply, and I still don’t have enough product,” he said. “The demand is significantly more than I am able to produce right now.”

Increased access linked to more food-borne illness

Raw milk can contain bacteria, such as Campylobacter, E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria, that can cause diarrhea, stomach cramping and vomiting. Most people recover quickly, according to the FDA. But the agency also says contaminated raw milk “can be especially dangerous” for children, older adults, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems. In serious cases, the bacteria can lead to kidney failure or Guillain-Barré syndrome.

“What folks really need to hear is that this product, raw milk, does represent a higher risk of illness,” Martin said. “Even if they perceive there to be a nutritional benefit, or a health benefit, there really is no support for that in scientific studies.”

Many states, such as California and Iowa, allow the sale of raw milk, although the federal government prohibits its sale across state lines. According to the CDC, greater access to unpasteurized milk has led to more associated outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, based on U.S. data from 2013 to 2018.

Dennis D’Amico, an associate professor of animal science at the University of Connecticut who studies the safety of milk products, said it’s not that all raw milk has pathogens. But it’s difficult to eliminate the chance of contamination without pasteurizing the milk, which involves heating it to at least 162 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds in most cases.

John Lucey, a professor of food science and the director of the Center for Dairy Research at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s similar to cooking a steak to a certain temperature.

“At some point, are we going to say eat all the meat raw, too? Because I don’t want to process it?” Lucey said. “Is heating and cooking to a temperature, is that a lot of complicated processing? I don’t see it that way.”

How raw milk supporters weigh the risks

Noah Young, 28, runs a family farm selling produce and chicken eggs in Kenesaw, Neb., where he posts instructional videos on farming basics for his nearly 1.5 million TikTok and Instagram followers. During the pandemic, his family started buying raw milk from a ranch about 30 miles away.

In March, he uploaded a satirical video that implied public health officials’ concern over raw milk is exaggerated, garnering about 400,000 views across both accounts.

“We’re constantly taking on that risk anytime we put food into our bodies,” Young told The Washington Post. “Each individual person needs to take into account: Okay, what risk am I taking on eating this versus the reward?”

Aaron McAfee, of Raw Farm in California, said his cows are tested every other week for H5N1 and the herd is checked daily for signs and symptoms, including high temperatures.

“There are no cases of avian flu in the state of California,” McAfee said. “Not at my dairy, not in anyone else’s dairy.”

Brigitte Ruthman, 64, who owns a small dairy farm with five cows in Sandisfield, Mass., said people come to her farm with their own jugs and take home raw milk for around $11 a gallon.

Ruthman said she’s concerned about bacterial contamination in the milk more than she is of the H5N1 virus. “The bird flu isn’t even on my radar,” she said.

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