By Mike Melanson
On a small family farm in East Texas, Charles Wright is giving customers what they want. He and his wife run a goat farm in Crockett, Texas called Hilltop Dairy where they provide raw goat milk to a small number of local people. The couple says selling raw milk helps them to remain financially viable—a small farm struggling against big business—and is a way to give people something natural, something God wanted them to have. The thing is, what they are doing may be illegal.
“The government is trying to do everything they can to keep the small businesses from competing,” Wright says. “When you do everything naturally, the large farms cannot compete with the quality.”
Raw milk, or “real milk” as some call it, is simply the unpasteurized, unprocessed, unhomogenized milk of a cow or goat. Only 18 farms in Texas have the proper permit to sell raw milk, but more than 40 farms across Texas sell it, many by way of goat or cow share. A share attempts to circumvent the laws by making the consumer a partial owner. The consumer buys shares in a single animal or herd, much like buying a company’s stock, which cover health issues, boarding, feeding, breeding and other daily care of the goats. In turn, they receive a share of the animal’s raw milk.
It is illegal in 25 states to sell raw milk for human consumption at all, never mind on a supermarket shelf. In Texas, you can legally get raw milk only by going to the farm and buying it directly from the farmer. And you can’t go to just any farm—the farm needs a Grade A Raw for Retail Milk Permit to sell raw milk. Hilltop Dairy doesn’t have such a permit.
Gene Wright, group manager of the Department of State Health Services Milk Group, says the permits are a way to ensure farms that sell raw milk are operating by a particular standard. “The rationale behind that regulation was to give consumers a way, if they wanted to take the increased risk with raw milk, to see the conditions of the farm,” Wright says.
Hilltop Dairy’s Wright sees it differently. “Large business is trying to come up with any scare tactic to keep people from purchasing a product unless the government has put a label on it,” he says.
Charles Wright doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong and neither does Kaayla Daniel, the media liaison for the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. The FTCLDF is a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance to farmers that sell unprocessed products, such as raw milk. Daniel says, “If you can’t buy raw milk in your state, you can still own part of a cow and you own part of whatever the cow the produces.”
Gene Wright disagrees. “The truth of it is, the cow share type of operation is a legal question that’s never been completely answered in the state of Texas.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cares less about the legality of livestock share than about public safety. There is much dispute over the health hazards posed by raw milk. The FDA maintains that raw milk is inherently dangerous and a source of food-borne illnesses and any claims to the contrary are without scientific report.
People insist on drinking raw milk for many reasons, despite the stern warnings against it. Some claim it has restorative and healing properties, from curing acid reflux to containing enzymes and nutrients that are said to be destroyed by the pasteurization process. Others drink raw milk for religious reasons, claiming that it is in accordance with the Bible.
“God didn’t design your body to be drinking burnt milk that has preservatives,” says Charles Wright. “The goats’ milk cured my acid reflux in two weeks. I now no longer take medication.”
This sentiment is echoed by many who indulge in raw milk. They voice distrust over the government’s raw milk prohibition and suggest that the public is fooled into believing that the danger in drinking raw milk is greater than other pasteurized or packaged and preserved foods.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” says Pat Stevens, a local Texas representative for the FTCLDF. “[Raw milk] is one of the most healthy whole foods people can put in their body – most people are afraid because of what we’ve been led to believe by the almighty FDA.”
The FDA states that more than 800 people in the United States have gotten sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk since 1998. Raw milk is known to carry Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, all of which are destroyed during the pasteurization process.
“Milk is a great media for carrying pathogens, organisms that affect people, and pasteurization is a very quick easy step that kills pathogens, and that’s why it has been a practice for a long time,” says Gene Wright.
Raw milk can and sometimes does carry pathogens that make people sick, but so do other foods, whether pasteurized, preserved or carefully monitored and packaged. Advocates for raw milk want the responsibility to lie with the consumer and the producer in knowing the possible risks and benefits. The goat share contract for one farm in Texas contains the following passage concerning the responsibility of the consumer:
“The shareholder is willingly drinking raw milk that has not been pasteurized from their goat. As such they do not hold the farmer liable for any health reactions they may have. Benefits versus dangers of raw milk are to be researched and understood by the shareholder. The farmer will make available for shareholder’s inspection all goats and milking operations. Milk handling will adhere to standards for producing healthy, clean milk as well as subject milk to regular quality control and health tests.”
Advocates for raw milk see the battle as one of a person’s choice to make his own decision as to what they put in his body, while the FDA sees it as a genuine public health and safety concern. But until the legal hammer comes crashing down at Hilltop Dairy, Wright will continue to sell raw milk to his loyal—and happy—customers.
