Original air date: November 24th, 2024

Donald Trump campaigned in part on the promise to “Make America Healthy Again”. That pledge attracted voters engaged in a growing national battle over food. They claim the government is making it hard to buy food that’s safer and more nutritious while force feeding us a diet that’s unhealthy and causing chronic diseases. Today we hear both views, starting with the debate over raw milk.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Nestled in the gentle hills of Brandywine, Maryland is P.A. Bowen Farmstead. Where owner Sally Morell sells cheese, eggs and most importantly for the purposes of this story, raw cow milk.

Sharyl: Is all of the milk that you sell unpasteurized?

Sally Morell: That’s correct.

Sharyl: Is that what raw means—just unpasteurized?

Morell: That’s what raw means.

Today, a debate rages over which is healthier and safer—raw milk or pasteurized milk—and what rights the government has to limit the choices of farmers and consumers.

Sharyl: What is the idea that there’s something in the milk that’s, that stimulates the immune system in a good way?

Morell: It creates the immune system, strengthens the gut wall, kills pathogens. And then in human studies, and these were done in Europe in the last couple of decades, we have less asthma, less respiratory disease, and less allergies. Fewer allergies in children brought up on raw milk.

The idea of pasteurizing, or heating to kill bacteria, was patented in 1865 by French scientist Louis Pasteur, first used on beer. Then milk.

History Channel documentary: Scientists discover cows can spread disease through their milk. Even worse, bad milk is linked to the deadliest disease of the day. Tuberculosis. By 1907, scientists know that heated milk can stop Tuberculosis cold. Soon, pasteurized process is the law of the land.

A flashpoint in the debate can be found in the heart of Pennsylvania dairy country where a fifth generation Amish farmer has drawn repeat visits from the food police.

Robert Barnes: They want to make him an example so they can have complete control over our food supply in America.

Robert Barnes is an attorney speaking on camera for farmer Amos Miller since the Amish typically decline to be photographed.

Barnes: Over the last five years, either the state or the federal government has at various times rated his farm, searched it, seized food related to it, tried to destroy food related to it, that they found, and often try to shut him down.

When we visited, the state had tagged and ordered destruction of $100,000 worth of raw milk and other food, arguing Amos Miller doesn’t have the proper permits. Barnes says the permit requirements are unconstitutional and claims the government has wrongly blamed Miller’s products for several illnesses.

Barnes: Government wants a monopoly on the food supply. They want to use Amos Miller’s case to set the legal precedent for a monopoly on food supply here. They went into a farmer’s freezer and took his own food from his own family that he himself had made. That’s the precedent they want to set, that they can go into anybody’s home at any time whenever they think there’s any food in there. Because if they have a complete monopoly on food, that gives them extraordinary power.

More states have been legalizing the sale of raw milk products — responding to growing consumer demand. But here in Maryland, there’s still a ban on selling raw milk products for people to eat and drink.

Sharyl (on-camera): As with many such farms, the raw milk sold here is labeled “for pet consumption only”, avoiding the issue of regulation. What customers do with the milk is their own business.

Sharyl: Has the government, do you feel, gotten more aggressive about warding people off of raw milk?

Morell: Well, recently there’s been this big push to tell people that raw milk is dangerous. But we have probably 20 million people drinking raw milk in this country who know that that’s not true.

Sarah Sorscher has a different view. She’s with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food watchdog group. They’re against a growing push to put raw milk on more of America’s grocery shelves.

Sarah Sorscher: It’s become an issue recently because a number of states are passing laws that open up the market for retail sales of raw milk. But when we’re talking about putting it on grocery store shelves, you have consumers who may have no experience with the product being exposed to that risk, and we’re gonna see more illness, more hospitalization, and potentially more deaths as a result of these policies.

Sharyl: What’s potentially in the raw milk and why?

Sorscher: So milk in its raw state contains bacteria that can be harmful. So we have pathogenic E. coli, the same E. coli that caused the Jack in the Box outbreak. It’s present in ground beef and can be found in raw milk. Salmonella, Campylobacter, Brucella.

Sharyl: Do we have any idea how many people are getting sick from raw milk?

Sorcher: When they looked at sort of the amount of raw milk that’s being sold versus pasteurized, and they compare that to the outbreak rate, they found that raw milk is 150 times more likely to cause an outbreak than pasteurized milk. So there’s certainly a potential to have more illness if the sale is expanded.

Sharyl: Pasteurized milk can be problematic as well, just not as often you’re saying?

Sorscher: Yeah. With pasteurized milk, there can be contamination after the pasteurization occurs. And so you could still have you could still have issues from that, but the scope and scale is really far reduced by the pasteurization process.

Sharyl: Are there risks?

Morell: Well, we believe that pasteurized milk is more risky.

Morell points to the largest milk-related outbreak in American history. It was in 1985 and caused by Salmonella in pasteurized milk.

A single Illinois processing plant sickened nearly 200,000 people and killed 48.

After a widespread outbreak from pasteurized milk cheese in Canada in 2008, a study noted that Europe found bacteria-contaminated cheese was more often linked to pasteurized milk than raw milk.

And there are growing fault lines over other food produced on small farms. This Missouri farmer says someone on Facebook reported him to state authorities for selling pickles and beans.

Missouri Farmer/Cattlemen Family Farms: We’re getting ready to go in the 4th of July to celebrate our independence and our f***** freedom. Two days before that I get a call from the health department says ‘no you can’t sell the f***** products you make on your own farm. That’s the whole goddamned American dream! We buy our own f****** land, we produce our own food, and we can sell our own food. That’s what f***** America was built on. And whoever reported it? F*** you. Buy your f***** canned green beans and your canned pickles, all that shit’s had f***** herbicides pesticides on it, we offer a different solution that doesn’t have all those chemicals, doesn’t have preservatives, it’s all actually organic s***.

Small food producers ask why the government isn’t giving the raw milk treatment to pasteurized milk or other FDA-approved foods after they make people sick.

The deadliest known U.S. food outbreak in the past three and a half decades was in 2011, caused by bacteria in cantaloupes. It killed 33.

To name a few examples from this year: Fears of listeria bacteria led to a massive recall of 11.7 million pounds of meat including at hundreds of schools. Also recalls of ice cream and Planters Nuts. Listeria in sliced deli meat killed at least 10 people and sent 59 to the hospital. E. coli in walnuts sent 7 to the hospital. And salmonella in cucumbers sickened 449 people, 125 were hospitalized.

Barnes: This is just boxes and boxes, and again it is his whole supply, they are trying to bankrupt him.

Small food producers argue the government is tagging their food while giving its stamp of approval to food containing chemicals, metals, preservatives, dyes, and toxins known to cause everything from chronic diseases and cancer to brain and fertility problems.

Barnes: And these are the same Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture people that tell you sanitary is taking four chicken, sticking ’em in a tiny little cage, letting them eat each other’s crap and then feeding it to you. That’s their definition of sanitary.

Amos Miller was ordered to destroy the government-tagged food but a court has put that on hold and is allowing him to sell to customers out of state. Pennsylvania law only technically prohibits in-state sales of non-permitted food.

Morell is convinced she’s part of a movement that will continue to grow and find support.

Morell: This is the future. Raw milk is the future. It will mean that we have healthier children, healthier farms, healthier rural economy.

Sharyl (on-camera): Delaware recently passed a bill to allow sales of raw milk. Meantime the FDA announced it will soon start testing raw milk for bird flu.

Watch video here.