Tolkkinen: RFK Jr. supports raw milk. Here’s what to know before jumping on the trend.

Years ago at a local food event in Fergus Falls, I tasted butter made from raw milk.

It was so delicious that I decided to buy a jar of raw cow’s milk from a friend. The raw milk was so rich and creamy, so delectable, that I chugged an entire mug.

And then I got sick. My stomach — well, I’ll spare you the details. It wasn’t so bad that I went to the doctor, but it was unpleasant. And surprising. My husband and his siblings had grown up drinking raw milk on their dairy farm and they never got sick. Drinking filtered raw milk is a fairly common practice on dairy farms. So how could milk, my favorite beverage, turn on me like a viper?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to champion raw milk if confirmed as the nation’s top health official after Donald Trump takes office. Already raw milk sales have surged as MAGA seems eager to take on any trend espoused by Trump or his chosen deputies.

Before you thunder off to your nearest raw milk supplier, glass jar in hand, here are a few things to know.

Raw milk is what humans drank for millennia until pasteurization became commonplace in mid-1900s America. In 1948, Michigan became the first state to require pasteurization. Pasteurization heats milk to at least 145 degrees before cooling. Raw milk goes from the udder through a filter and is then cooled quickly and stays good in the refrigerator for at least a week.

Pasteurizing milk kills harmful bacteria that can cause disease, such as salmonella, E. coli and tuberculosis. However, tuberculosis isn’t a threat in the U.S. anymore, and pasteurizing also kills good bacteria, including those that produce lactic acid, which can protect against salmonella and other diseases.

It’s true that people can and do get sick from drinking raw milk.

From 1998 to 2018, there were 202 disease outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those outbreaks caused 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations. A separate study found that there were also five deaths from 2007 to 2020.

It’s also true that people can and do get sick from drinking pasteurized milk.

From 2007 to 2020, pasteurized milk led to 12 outbreaks of disease in the U.S. and Canada, resulting in 174 confirmed cases of illness, 134 hospitalizations, 17 deaths, and seven fetal losses, according to the Canadian Journal of Public Health. One infamous case of a pasteurized milk product leading to disease was the 1994 national outbreak of salmonella from Schwann’s ice cream, which had come into contact with raw eggs after pasteurization. As many as 224,000 people were sickened in that incident.

Since many more people drink pasteurized milk than raw milk, it’s clear that your odds of getting sick are much greater from raw milk than pasteurized milk.

But they’re still not that high. Each year, about 3.2 million people use raw milk in preparing home meals, according to the USDA. So if you consider 2,645 cases of illness over 20 years, that’s 132 illnesses a year. Spread out among at least 3.2 million consumers of raw milk per year, that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable risk.

Minnesota’s Constitution allows farmers to sell their own farm products without a license. That’s not to say the state doesn’t impose some restrictions. For instance, people who want to buy raw milk have to buy it on the farm where it’s produced, and they have to bring their own container.

Most states allow the sale of raw milk. In 2024, Delaware was the latest to legalize raw milk, with proponents arguing that it could help the state’s struggling dairy industry. The industry is increasingly dominated by a few gigantic dairies. The number of dairies in Minnesota fell from about 13,000 in 1992 to 1,699 in 2024.

Julia Carter, proprietor of Happy Cow Dairy in Park Rapids, Minn., sells raw milk from her homestead’s microdairy, which is made up of three Jersey cows.

“There’s such a demand for raw milk,” she said. “We have a waiting list.”

She has seen demand rise in the past six months, which she believes may be a response to Kennedy’s favorable comments. The farm also has long-time regular customers, including those who can’t tolerate store-bought milk but are able to drink raw milk.

“People are opening their eyes,” she said. “We are getting families that have young kids and they’re starting to think about, what am I feeding my family? That’s a good thing.”

Raw milk, never too far out of the news, regained headlines in 2024 as bird flu infected dairy cows in several states and was also discovered in milk. In May, researchers said they had discovered that mice that drank raw milk containing bird flu contracted the disease.

Despite those findings, raw milk sales grew after the federal government issued fresh warnings about bird flu, which indicates that once again, the anti-establishment crowd rushed to do exactly the opposite of government recommendations. And, predictably, the pro-establishment crowd hurried to ridicule the raw milk crowd without trying to understand them.

“I bet people who drink raw milk are the same people that try to pet a bison in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks,” one wit wrote on Facebook.

I haven’t tried raw milk since that first ill-fated attempt. But I can’t say I wouldn’t go for a second round. This time, I’d follow the advice of a local dairyman (not the one I purchased the milk from): Take it slow. Something so rich takes time to get used to.