Is Raw Milk Safe to Drink? Microbiologist Breaks Down the Dangerous New Trend

The internet's chock-full of people who are giving unsolicited health and lifestyle advice that you should probably take with a grain of salt. Like this one woman who showcased her raw meat and dairy diet on the internet, listing several meals that would get flagged by the Mayo Clinic and the CDC as being breeding grounds for bacteria that could lead to severe food poisoning.

Sometimes, experts will respond to folks who post these videos who praise the benefits of consuming raw foods, like this one woman who recorded herself on what appears to be a farm, discussing why she loves drinking raw milk.

A microbiologist who posts on TikTok named Wes (@micriobiologywes) explained how this woman's advice is not only ill-informed, but could be potentially harmful and/or even fatal to those who follow it.

"I'm a conspiracy theorist," a text overlay in the video reads before the TikToker goes on to discuss what she means by that: "Of course I drink raw milk. Did you know that the biggest salmonella outbreak was actually from pasteurized milk, not raw milk?" she says, holding up a glass of what appears to be the raw milk that she refers to in her clip.

The embedded video then transitions to Wes, a microbiologist, who goes on to delineate why drinking raw milk is a bad idea. "Lucky for you, I wrote my entire Master's thesis on bacterial infections in the mammary glands of cows. You know, the place where they make that moo juice that you're guzzling down right now and thinking it's amazing," he states into the lens of his camera.

"Quick note though, the largest salmonella outbreak in the United States actually happened in 1994 and it was tied to ice cream that was transported in a tanker that was previously used to transport unpasteurized products and was not properly cleaned out afterwards," he says, clarifying and rejecting the point the woman made in her video by referencing this multi-state event.

He continued, "It led to about 224,000 people getting sick and it was not caused by pasteurization — it was caused by the dirty, unpasteurized stuff that was there before. Let's actually go over the risks of drinking raw milk, 'cause not only is it disgusting and weird but it's also extremely dangerous."

Wes then begins to go into a laundry list of reasons as to why consuming raw milk is a very, very bad idea: "Raw milk can carry pathogens that are very dangerous such as staph, E. Coli, campylobacter, and even tuberculosis. You can get tuberculosis from drinking raw milk," he warns viewers.

The TikTok user begins to further explicate why consuming raw milk is generally a very bad idea: "Pasteurization kills all of that bacteria. If you wanna drink the raw milk go ahead, you're disgusting, but don't pretend like it's safe because you have a 640 times higher likelihood to be sick after drinking raw milk than you do after drinking pasteurized milk."

"Not to mention you also have a 45 times higher chance of being hospitalized from that illness, if it's from raw milk versus pasteurized," he explains, stating that not only is one's risk of getting sick higher from consuming raw milk, but that one's risk of facing a very serious illness becomes much, much higher.

He also rattles off another alarming statistic that details how small the population size of raw milk drinkers is, but that they still account for a massive number of hospitalizations when it comes to the consumption of dairy.

"Well let's also remember that only about 3 percent of the population actually drinks raw milk but they account for 96 percent of all illnesses linked to dairy products," he says toward the end of his clip.

Numerous people who saw the video couldn't help but point out that pasteurization isn't that new of a process and that brighter minds nearly 200 years ago knew this was an issue and came up with a solution for human beings to consume dairy products in a safer fashion.

"RIP Louis Pasteur, you would’ve loved raw milk TikTok," one person said, referencing Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and pharmacist who invented the process of pasteurization.

Another wrote: "Like—do these people not consider why pasteurization was developed and widely adopted?? Did they think it was just for fun??"

Someone else penned: "The funny thing about the whole raw milk debate is the fact that most people that say they drink 'raw milk' actually boil it beforehand, they just don't realize that's what pasteurization is."

Another person said that they became sick from drinking raw milk: "Raw milk landed me in the hospital many times because back then they never suspected milk as the cause. Milk was promoted as healthy. It took almost 40 years to find out I was lactose intolerant."