Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's raw milk, and that is federally illegal to sell. While there are literally 10,000 different chemicals that are generally regarded as safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration that they put into our foods that we don't know what on earth they are, but that's legal in 2024. Do we need pasteurization?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: I like your answer. Elaborate, please.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Is there a more controversial substance in food than raw milk?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Ooh, good question.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I say the answer is absolutely no. There is not a more controversial subject in food.
Welcome to the Duster Mud Podcast. I'm Shelly.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: I'm rich.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: After 25 years of rich being in the Air Force, we started farming and part of that farm we got some dairy cows.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And they've turned into quite a, quite a special little part of our farm.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: We didn't know we were gonna like them.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: No. That it was a hard no for me. When we started the farm, there was one thing that I said, you know, right off the bat, hard no. And that was dairy cows.
Before the Air Force, I worked some large scale with some large scale dairies. I, I did environmental engineering. We did waste treatment for large dairies. I was not in love with the Holstein cow. Um, I just didn't, didn't love them. And to me, a dairy cow, although I mean, take, take pigs, you have to feed them, but like they then go to the processor after six months or so. And a dairy cow, you've got around for years to decade and a half. You know, you could have 15, 20 years worth of a dairy cow if you're lucky.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be great.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: And.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: But when we first started, I was a hard no, I do not want that kind of anchor.
This is. Wow.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the anchor you're speaking of is having to milk that cow.
No matter what, hell or high water, the cow has to be milked and somebody has to be around to do that if they're in milk morning and night. Unless you're, you know, have switched to a once a day milking thing. But still every single day.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Which I didn't know.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: I didn't even know it was a thing when we first started out was a, the idea of calf share or once a day milking. To me again, what I had in mind was those Holsteins that twice a day, no matter what, those cows had to get milked.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Another thing that we, we didn't know and weren't really aware of or educated on at all was the concept of raw milk.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: We, we were in A healthy space where eat low carb, eat raw, you know, whole food. We've done keto and we've done carnivore, and we've bought whole cows and we've got. Bought.
Had our own chickens and in the suburbs. And so we, we were, you know, pretty healthy in the food space. But raw milk was. Was not in our. Even in our vernacular, really.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: No. We didn't even know it was a thing. And. And we. When we got the cows, we decided to get the cows. You know, whatever led up to the decision, I got over myself and decided to.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: For some reason, it started making sense.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And we, we got the. A couple of A2. A2 Jersey cows and really fell in love with the cows and fell in love with the milk and started really researching the health benefits of raw milk. And very quickly were convinced that this is a really good thing. And why haven't we heard of this before? And you know, like.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And why can't you buy it anywhere? More importantly, like, it's like, really rather difficult to procure.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Before we got our cows, we. We actually went and purchased some raw milk from a homestead. And we thought it was nearby. It looked like it was going to be nearby. It turned out to be a half hour or so away. And that whole process was an event in and of itself. But we did try some raw milk before we bought the cows enough to say, yeah, this is good.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Right. So we liked it. And then here we are three years later, having had them for nearly three years and multiple calves and multiple, multiple gallons of milk later, pounds of butter and all the things. Now we decided to start selling our milk. There's when the education came in.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, right off the bat, what is raw milk and the education that went on there just to be able to talk to people about what's the difference in what you're selling and what I buy in the grocery store. So the raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized. And pasteurization is a process where you raise the temperature of the milk to a point high enough and long enough that all of the bacteria that are naturally occurring in the milk and could have been picked up anywhere else in the process, all of that bacteria is killed. And then through sanitary processes, once that bacteria is killed, they then bottle the milk. And so there is no bacteria in the milk, pasteurized milk. So raw milk has not had that done to it.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Okay. And it seems very scary because a lot of us think of things like listeria and E. Coli and Things like that that could be found in the milk, especially coming out of some large dairies. Now, they started pasteurizing milk in the early 20th centuries. Whenever cows came from the farms, they came into the cities to the swill dairies. And those were very not hygienic situations for cows or humans or anyone for that matter. They fed them things that cows really shouldn't have been eating at the time. Um, and they made sick milk, and the sick milk made sick people. It was a real thing. And pasteurization in the early 20th century saved a whole bunch of lives.
That is the short of it.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Now we are in the 21st century. Things have changed. We now have proper refrigeration. We can get the milk cold faster. We can do things in the cleanliness process. We now have things we can do in order to be able to keep our cows healthy. What we feed them good. And everything, if it's done in such manners, can make beautiful, very good, very clean raw milk. And the bacteria that remains in the milk is the bacteria that belongs in the milk. Because milk does come with beneficial bacterias.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: That's right. Right, Yep, absolutely.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: So in 2024, do we need pasteurization?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: I like your answer. Elaborate, please.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's a difference, and from a regulatory perspective, I'm not exactly sure how to draw the lines, so I'll set that aside and we can have that conversation towards the end. But I believe that pasteurization is still required in the 21st century because there are still huge dairies, some of those.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: That you worked on, some of those.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: That I worked on, you know, 1,000 plus cow dairies, where the cows never leave concrete and the practices are not necessarily the same as what you would find in a small homestead or small farm or microderry.
We've even heard where there's care taken in individual cow care taken to ensure that everything is very clean. And I think that when you take a thousand cows and you mix all of their milk together, you know, you just end up with a situation that could potentially still be dangerous. Although not as bad as the swill dairies were, I still think that there is potential. So I think for those types of operations and for them it's just easier. Right. Like you get the milk out of the cow, you put it all together and it gets pasteurized and there's. You don't have to worry with a lot of different things because it's going to be pasteurized.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Okay. So if a consumer is concerned there's pasteurized milk Go to the grocery store, it's all pasteurized unless it says raw milk on it. And there's only a few states that you can get it anyways, but it's pasteurized milk. But there, there are a lot of people in the food space, especially in the food regulatory space, who are very much against it and believe that the, the, the benefits of raw milk do not outweigh the potential risks that are, that could be found in it.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: And okay, people do believe that.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: And then there are at least as many, if not more people that think the benefits of raw milk far outweigh the potential negatives of raw milk.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: So we, and the divide is big.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it is big. So I mean, our raw milk is A two, A two. And there's a whole other conversation there about what that is, but it's a different kind of protein that is digested differently in your body. And so people who have issues with store bought milk there are, you know, maybe they don't have issues just because it's raw, because some of the bacteria that help in the production of lactase, which is required to digest milk, the lactose in milk, that's not killed the A2, A2 properties in the protein of our milk is digested differently. So like there are some things that, where people, and I don't know, I've lost count of how many people now have said to us, I can drink your milk and I can't drink store milk for whatever reason, be it an A1 intolerance or they aren't, their body doesn't produce lactase, you know, in the same manner that other people do. But like there are, there are people and we've had a bunch, even as small as we are, we've had a bunch of people talk about the benefits that they find from raw milk.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Okay. But with controversy, inevitably comes legalities.
And that's when things get a little dicey for the farmer, not the consumer.
The consumer can kind of do what they want a little bit. But the farmer, on the other hand, you can run yourself into some serious trouble in the United States of America with raw milk.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: So the legalities on the farmer in this country, it's state by state and there are multiple different levels of what's legal and what isn't legal because it isn't some federal.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Well, on the federal level, what they control is interstate commerce. And federally that is not legal. It is illegal to sell raw milk from one state into another state. So the federal government has spoken and they say raw milk is illegal. Now, inside the states, you go. Anything from it's legal in the store. Where retail sales are legal. You can go to a store and buy raw milk to farm sales are legal. And that's where we are. Here in Missouri, we are allowed to sell raw milk from the farm or deliver directly to a consumer, but we cannot sell it retail, even in our store, because our store is not on our farm.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: So that's where we are in this state. There are some states that allow what they call cow shares or herd shares, where, you know, five people go together and own that cow. So you get one fifth of the milk from that cow. So that's a loophole that some states allow. And then in other states, human consumption is not legal. So some farmers have taken to selling raw milk for. As pet food for pet consumption. And then what the person does with that pet food once it leaves the farm is up to that person.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: I think in our home, our original home state of Florida, that's the case.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: I believe in Florida, the last time I checked.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Peter. But people sell their raw milk as pet food.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Labeled.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Labeled as pet food. Not for. Not for human consumption.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: And again, it's a loophole. There is no. Nowhere is that a regulatory thing that says, hey, if you. You could sell your raw milk as pet food.
It's just a loophole.
And they're getting. And they're getting away with it. And that's fine. I don't care. Because let's get to the I don't care part.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Well, that's an interesting thing. Sorry. But it's interesting for us here in Missouri, it is more difficult for us to sell pet food than it is for us to sell our, say, chicken.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah. There are a lot of regulations on.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Pet food, but the concept is the regulations don't always make sense, especially when it comes to food. And what we were discussing was we can. We can butcher a hog on our farm and we can give that meat away.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Legally.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Donate it.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: We can. We can donate it, cook it for whomever.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Give it to somebody to cook for the family picnic for the kindergarten. For the kindergarten picnic for the locals. And you are a hero because you've donated some delicious food to the community.
What you cannot do is sell it.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: No, you cannot sell meat that was processed on your farm to anybody.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Not even to your neighbor, to your friend, to your family. You can't sell it to anybody. There can be no monetary exchange for that meat.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: The farmer will get into serious trouble for that.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: The person that bought it won't get into any trouble at all.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: So it's a one way thing. In any other type of drug operation, both parties are guilty.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Right. So if I'm selling something that's illicit, like an illicit drug, as the dealer, I'm gonna get in trouble.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Right. And the.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: But if I sell it to you.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: And you get caught with it, I get in trouble.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Both parties are complicit in that. But in food, the person who maybe knowingly is buying it from someone, they're not, that is the onus isn't on them. It's only on the farmer. You become a criminal as soon as you sell something that the usda, FDA and CDC and who, whatever other agency is involved with it, Health and Human Services.
The farmer is criminally liable for selling that.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: That's right. But the consumer is not criminally liable for purchasing.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Now, I don't think that either one of them should be liable. I think we should have a little bit more food freedom. So let's talk about the.
Raw milk has kind of become the bastion of food freedom.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: It has. It's become like a flag to plant and stand around and I'm going to fight over this. And it's become a symbol of food freedom. And I don't know exactly why. I think some of it probably has to do with it's milk.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Like, are you really telling me that I can't buy milk?
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, like from somebody.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: The thing that babies drink, you know, it's like, it's just like the most unassuming thing probably food wise, that you could think of. It's not an alcoholic beverage. It's not. We're not talking prohibition, you know, like, it's milk.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And yet the federal government says it's illegal.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: And I think that's.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: People don't know that, by the way. People do not know that because we have people come into our store, which is aired around Meats, and say, oh, you have raw milk.
No, I cannot sell you raw milk out of the store. Now Erdogan Farms sells raw milk.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: You can come to the farm.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: You can come to the farm or we can deliver it to it to you in town, but we cannot sell it out of our store. Oh, huh. Really?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Well, that's dumb.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Dumb.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: I don't know how many times I've. Well, that's dumb. Yeah, I agree.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I agree, but I can't. And back to the legalities of it. The agencies, they know all of the rules.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Sometimes the farmers don't know all of the rules. And there have been multiple occasions where they'll do like a undercover, undercover sting operation to try to catch you gotcha. For doing something that is, that is, quote, illegal. And so they really, really like to do that.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: With. With the raw milk.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: I got an idea. Why don't you go fight drugs.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Or anything else other than food.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Because other than milk.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Other than milk.
Like, like you were saying, maybe some regulation is fine. But when we're talking about. You mentioned food freedom, really what you mean is also food choice. If I as a consumer want to find a farmer and I want to buy that milk from that farmer and I want to consume that milk, my body, my choice. I want to eat that, I want to consume that. And if we're going, hey, right though. I should have the right to be able to buy and consume the food which I believe nourishes my body the most. And in some states, you have to buy something that is not for human consumption, quote, pet food.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. You're absolutely right. And that's why I say that this is a symbol or at least has become a symbol for a larger issue. And there's been a lot of discussion recently with RFK Jr. And Casey and Callie Means and about the health crisis that there is right now, not only in the United States, but really in western civilized countries that are following this Western diet.
And raw milk has become this symbol, this flag for food choice and more healthy eating and supporting local farmers and regenerative farming and like it it all.
It's difficult to find a conversation recently at least, that includes raw milk that doesn't also include some of these other discussion topics to really include. I want, I want to be able to buy the food that I want to eat.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: So in all of this, you have a one ingredient item, which is raw milk. Milk, let's just call it milk from a cow or a goat or a sheep, whatever. It's raw milk. And that is federally illegal to sell. While there are literally 10,000 different chemicals that are generally regarded as safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration that they put into our foods that we don't know what on earth they are. But that's legal.
All of those are legal to put in your food. But if I want to consume and be able. If I want to be able to purchase easily, to be able to easily procure the thing that I believe is actually healthy, and the federal government says no to that.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Something is wrong.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what's Been being discussed recently from a lot of different places is something is wrong with our food system. It is really wrong, y'all.
Our nation is not well.
It is sick. And it's starting with the food.
This is a food sickness. And things like 10,000 different chemicals that are safe and yet milk is illegal is driving this.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: It is.
It really, really is. Because the very local food. Local food, local food. I'm just going to keep. I'm just going to keep pounding the drum because if we don't get our food system back a little bit closer to us and get it out of the hands of the corporations. And I believe that the FDA is a corporation. Like, I'm just kind of saying that the FDA is another. Is just an extension of the corporations.
It's a revolving bureaucratic door. They go from the corporations to the bureaucracy to the corporations to the bureaucracy. And they are an extension of the corporations. They are lobbied. They get all of the money. They get all of the support. And they can kind of guide these regulations in favor of the corporation.
And a raw milk is illegal.
Is a great way to favor a very large dairies.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Now, I don't know if that's why, but it does.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Well, I mean, take raw milk specifically. There are concerns over the bacterias that you discussed.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: And the government has taken it upon itself to make the decision for the consumer, thinking that the consumer can't make the decision for themselves. So, I mean, as a consumer, I believe you should have the choice. And if something. If a farmer sells something that makes you sick, then you don't buy from that farmer again. And you tell your friends, don't buy from that farmer because it made me sick. And then that farmer goes out of business because the food made somebody sick.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: And like, we have a poultry exemption. The U.S. department of Agriculture has an exemption. And each state then modifies that exemption as they want. In Missouri, we are allowed to process 1,000 birds. Poultry, which could include turkey or rabbits or any of the things that they consider poultry. We are allowed to process them on farm through a USDA poultry exemption.
If we go to 1001 birds or poultry, that takes us into a different category. And there are different regulatory hoops to jump through to go over a thousand poultry. Maybe something like that for dairy would make sense for raw dairy. Maybe there are. There's a size.
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a number of cows milked.
Average number of cows milked per day across the year. Maybe it's an. A total number of gallons milked across the year. Like, I don't know, but maybe we could come up with some type of exemption, like the poultry exemption. Like if it has to be regulated, like if we can't, if we can't just get away from it all the way, then use something like what you've already got.
And maybe you could do that, the same thing for, I don't know, beef or pork or lamb. Like, maybe if your facility is producing 5,000 beefs a day, maybe that's too big and that needs to be inspected. But maybe if your farm is producing five a year, maybe that's small enough that you don't have to be inspected and you could sell it to your neighbor.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I like the way you think. And maybe some of this new administration that's coming on and getting new and innovative ideas around regenerative farming and our health, and our health starting on our plate or in our cups, maybe with some of these, with the onset of a new administration coming on, maybe, maybe there would be some changes coming. Maybe.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a level of, dare you say, common sense to I want to eat what I want to eat and I should have the right to make that decision.
Like, why does the federal government tell me what I'm allowed to eat or drink?
That. That, to me is just ludicrous.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: I knew that was the word you were about to choose. Crazy. So if you are looking for some raw milk and you're like, hey, I want to. I got to get some, I think that I'm going to make the switch and all of that. RealMilk.com is a website. I believe that one is run by the Weston A. Price Foundation. He was a huge advocate for the benefits of raw milk on the human body.
Rawmilk.com or org, not sure which, but at any rate, there will be links. That's another place that you can go and find raw milk in your area.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Facebook, Facebook, marketplace.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. A lot of people put their Craigslist, even farms and stuff on Facebook like that. So you can find it. And you know, if you're, if you're unsure, you want it, but you're unsure, talk to the farmer. Go see, ask them, hey, can I watch you milk? What are your practices? Do you feed them grain? How much do you feed them?
Where are they? What are their living conditions? Find these things out. You're the person that's about to put that thing into your body. So have consumer awareness and understand what it is that you're doing and go find Your farmer that you trust.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Check out your local state's rules and regulations so that you know what, just what to expect if you show up someplace and it says, you know, pet food, not for human consumption, you'll understand why.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah. You'll know exactly what you're getting and that, you know, what, what you, what you want to do with it is what you want to do with it.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Or, or like in, in our state, we'll, we will say, sure, you can come to the farm or we can deliver it to you.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: But just, just know that a lot of times the answers that you get aren't that the farmer isn't wanting to sell it to you or they're not, or they're trying to be difficult. A lot of times it's just these are the regulations that we as farmers have to follow. Right.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: And you know, again, to find some balance in common sense with the regulation that we're not saying that there should be none, but a little bit of common sense for goes a long way.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't, I don't know what the level is. I'll let some policy experts figure that out. I, I, I would, I would rather none than where we are right now. Right.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Like we gotta, we gotta go, we gotta go somewhere other than the government decides what I can drink when it comes to milk.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: We really do believe that you hold the power to make changes. You can vote with your dollar and what you spend your money on, and each individual voting like that with your money really does make a big difference. You can support local, you can find a farmer, you can make choices about what you put into your body from a food perspective.
We just really encourage you to do so. And if you like these types of conversations about food freedom and farming, be sure to check out this next video where we're going to dive right in into another great topic.
