Raw milk revolution: it's tastier - but is unpasteurised dairy safe?

Take a gulp of raw milk for the first time and you probably wouldn’t recognise it as the stuff you drank as a child. It’s richer, creamier, and more distinctive. Each bottle differs in taste – raw milk changes from summer to winter, cow to cow. Where cattle graze has an impact on flavour.

Raw dairy is finally starting to get the mainstream attention it deserves – it’s now not only foodies and rural folk who opt for that silky, buttery hit of unctuous white stuff (well, actually, it’s more yellow in colour).

The crucial difference between the cartons you pick up in the supermarket and the raw stuff is that is that raw milk is unpasteurised. This means the milk (and butter, cheese, yoghurt made from it) hasn’t been heated and likely homogenised to kill harmful bacteria such as E coli.

The science of pasteurisation has been around since the late 1800s. It is an efficient way to ensure milk lasts longer, and all risk – however minute – is eliminated. There are living organisms in dairy and some of them aren’t welcome.

But an increasing number of people believe the process damages the flavour and they're willing to run the (admittedly miniscule) risk of illness in pursuit of the perfect pint. Sup on raw milk for the first time and things change – it’s no longer just a tea top-up or something to make batter with, but a beautiful drink in itself. What’s more, improved and modernised farming techniques, as practised by producers such as Jonathan Crickmore, have rendered the dangers of consuming raw dairy far slighter.

Crickmore, from Suffolk, is one farmer fighting government-peddled safety fears that stifle the raw dairy industry. Currently, you cannot purchase it in supermarkets or shops – only, with plenty of hoops jumped through, from independent producers. In Scotland, there’s a complete ban.  

The Food Standards Agency says: “The milk may only be sold direct to consumers by registered milk production holdings (at the farm gate)” and all products must display health warnings.

When the likes of E coli are mentioned, people worry – understandably. The Department for Food and Environmental Affairs told me that currently just 0.01 per cent of the population regularly consume unpasteurised milk.

“Raw cows' drinking milk represents only a very small fraction of total milk consumption,” a DEFRA spokeswoman said.

But what the FSA doesn’t say is that there are also numerous health benefits to raw milk – in addition to its improved taste. Some beleive raw dairy retains nutrients that are lost in the pasteurisation process.  

Linda Wright, “a very angry farmer’s wife” from Barton Farm in Devon, has been selling raw dairy since 2012. She feels traditional methods are undervalued.

“We make raw cheese and extra thick raw cream,” Linda explained. “Our customers appreciate the health benefits.

“It’s easier to digest and a lot of people find it helps with natural immunity and helps with asthma and eczema.”  

Barton Farm probably more than any other has experienced the difficulties of selling raw dairy. The FSA shut it down for six months in 2014 following an E coli scare. Two children in the community suffered food poisoning after drinking raw milk.

But rigorous testing found no trace of the harmful bacteria in any of Barton Farm’s products. According to the FSA, there has not been a single reported illness associated with drinking raw milk in the UK since 2002. Since then, in excess of 10m litres has been drunk. 

Farmers such as Wright and Crickmore understand there’s a need to tread carefully, but ultimately think raw dairy’s time has come.

Crickmore’s Fen Farm Dairy moved from traditional pasteurised production to raw when the sector as a whole began looking bleak. His raw milk arrived in 2011.

Back in 2013, his raw brie – as nutty as a squirrel’s house and perfect with red wine – quickly became a cheese board favourite of countless locals. And now he’s started making raw butter. It tastes like nothing else and sells out within a day of hitting his farm shop shelves.

“We have lived in the age of mass, low-quality food production for too long,” Crickmore said.

“I think the problem now is the big dairy processors scaremongering people into believing everything has to be taken through at least 15 different stages of processing before it's safe to eat.

“For most of us, a bit more education on the pros and cons of raw dairy would help bust the misconceptions.”

Crickmore said in 2011 “hardly anyone” knew raw milk even existed, let alone the fact that you could pour it on your cornflakes and add it to your custard. But he added customers are turning up all the time – “they’ve come to love the variant flavours and silky nature,” added the farmer.  

It’s little wonder some health-conscious people – perhaps those who might have otherwise gone "dairy free" – are shying away from the tasteless Greek mock-up yoghurts and watery milk of old. Many believe raw dairy is easier on the stomach than pasteurised products. 

Stephen Hook, from Hook & Son, East Sussex is in the midst of the revival. He too thinks the public have been “misinformed” about raw dairy. He says long gone are the TB scares of the 1950s. He’s also seen an uptick of sales – the public is flocking to his gate. But there’s a long way to go.

“There is disdain for dairy as it has become an increasingly processed, reconstituted commodity food that has an increased shelf life,” said Hook.

“More and more people become lactose intolerant, yet nobody mentions pasteurised dairy intolerance.”

“Sometimes, when I do a farmers’ market stall in London, and offer passers by a sample of raw milk, I am accused of spreading disease!”

Hook says the pasteurising industry, led by Dairy UK, has been lobbying the Food Standards Agency and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health about the “dangers” of raw dairy. As a result, we find ourselves with a distorted view on pathogen risks and beguiled enzymes. Raw dairy isn’t in supermarkets’ interest.

Hook continued: “It’s a tough industry. It’s not really in the supermarkets’ interests to go with raw milk – it’s about mass and speed.

“But more of the British public do not believe in the highly marketed food they see on supermarket shelves since the horse meat scandal.

“As a result, if they feel they cannot trust the foods integrity, quality and provenance, then the only thing they can do is buy from source, from the farmer.

“Thirty years ago, Europeans used to look across to the UK and wish they had our grass and climate, as ours was the best milk in Europe."

Fiona Provan at the Calf at Foot Dairy in Suffolk also produces raw dairy products. She echoed Hook’s sentiments.

“People fear food which isn't wrapped in plastic, with instructions or sell by dates, and fear food that hasn’t had the life zapped and sucked out of it by processing,” she said, but added that “many food intolerants have been found instead to be intolerant of the modern processes.”

Are you ready to join the raw milk revolution? Have your say here.

UPDATE: The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has asked us to point out that its policies are fully aligned with the independent Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food, which believes that pasteurisation remains necessary to protect public health. We are happy to make this clear.