On April 21, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will be suspending its oversight of the labs that conduct safety and quality testing on the nation’s milk supply. The move comes as raw milk is ascendant in federal public health policy. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for the end of what he deems the “aggressive suppression” of raw dairy by public health authorities, meaning that more deregulation may be on the way.
Today’s raw milk evangelists like Kennedy claim that it has more nutrients, benefits the immune system, and that kids are healthier when they consume raw milk rather than pasteurized dairy. Public health authorities have debunked these claims while highlighting thousands of illnesses linked to raw milk. Nevertheless, raw dairy is increasingly popular with American consumers. It fits nicely into the “tradwife” aesthetic, personified by Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman, who feeds her children raw milk on Tiktok for millions of viewers. Yet, like the rest of the aesthetic, the mainstreaming of raw dairy relies on consumers forgetting our history—in this case, a history in which kids got sick from raw milk.
The history of children’s health in the U.S. reveals an important truth. The U.S. government adopted a robust apparatus for regulating and monitoring the milk supply after an epidemic killed thousands of kids at the turn of the 20th century. This history offers a grim warning about what a future without milk regulation could hold for America’s children.
Nineteenth-century Americans recognized the dangers of an unregulated dairy industry. In 1843, the domestic writer Catharine Beecher warned parents that “diseased” milk was “the cause of extensive mortality among young children.” Yet, even after the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur patented the technology of pasteurization, or heating liquids to kill microorganisms, in 1865, Americans largely continued to…
