Mike Armstrong is a third-generation dairy farmer from Logan County, Kentucky. A decade ago, he made the decision to go all in on converting from commercial dairy production to raw milk distribution — something he says came about out of necessity rather than a general interest.
“We started doing the raw milk about 10 years ago as a means to stay afloat,” he said. “We were going broke on the commercial side, so we were adding value (because) it was a niche market.”
Created in the mid-1800s by Louis Pasteur, pasteurization is the process of heating milk over a short period of time to kill potential pathogens while also increasing the shelf life of the dairy product. Raw milk does not undergo this process.
To legally sell unpasteurized dairy in Kentucky, producers participate in what is known as herd-sharing — a method Armstrong referred to as a “formality.”
“Herd-share is a legal way that we can do raw milk,” he said. “Basically what we're doing there is we're selling the customer a share in the cow. Now they're getting milk from their own cow, which is totally legal.”
Because herd-share dairy omits the process of pasteurization to make their product, they are not recognized by the state as meeting the same classifications as standard commercial dairy farms.
Tori Embry, executive director of the Kentucky Dairy Development Council, said this means herd-share farms do not receive the same regulations as other dairies.
“If you're a permitted dairy, you have to be regularly inspected … inspectors coming out to your dairy, checking for cleanliness around your facility,” she said. “And if you're not permitted, then you're not having any of those checks done. There's not a partnership there, so it's really independent farmers setting their own standards for quality and milk handling.”
Thomas Powell, a professor of animal science at Murray State University, said dairy regulations are important on farms because contaminated milk — which can contain pathogens such E. coli, listeria and salmonella — can be extremely dangerous for some consumers.
“The people that I'm really concerned about are those that are immunocompromised — young babies, pregnant women, people … that are transplant recipients that are on those drugs that suppress your immune system, the elderly and so forth,” he said. “They would be much more susceptible to serious disease from contaminated milk.”
One of the most recent examples of an outbreak related to raw milk occurred in September as a result of unpasteurized cheese contaminated with E. coli. The product was recalled after 13 people who consumed the product experienced symptoms of E. coli — with one confirmed case coming from Kentucky so far — resulting in eight hospitalizations.
Powell said pasteurization acts as a final safeguard in the commercial dairy process, ensuring outbreaks like this are rare.
Raw milk’s popularity, however, is due in part to the idea that pasteurization makes dairy less nutritious — a belief once touted by U.S Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which is shared by Armstrong.
“Buy a container of milk from the grocery store, look at the labeling on the back and look what they have to add back to it that the pasteurization process took out,” he said. “They've got to add back vitamin A, vitamin D. … We don’t take none of that out of there.”
Powell pushed back on claims of raw milk being more nutritious than traditional dairy products, saying the only real difference is personal preference.
“Raw milk has a slightly different flavor to it,” he said. “Some people say there's nutritional reasons that they go for it. There's really nothing that's scientifically backed on protein content or any of the major vitamins and minerals. Mineral content certainly isn't changed by heat.”
Despite contention around the benefits and safety, Armstrong said it’s evident that there is a real demand for the product.
He’s currently distributing around 500 gallons of raw milk a week to herd-share members across Kentucky and Tennessee through farmers markets and his network of sporadically placed “drop points.” He said the majority of his business comes from his close proximity to Nashville, which is part of the reason he entered the business at first.
“Nashville's population is … a lot of people from California relocating there now,” Armstrong said. “Raw milk is legal in the state of California, so we were lucky that they would Google [raw milk], and then we would pop up.”
Tennessee differs from Kentucky in that it has regulations in place for herd-share farms. Farms there are required to keep a list of all herd-share members within a period of three years. In the event of product contamination, all distribution must stop pending an investigation by the Tennessee Department of Health.
Armstrong said he was contacted by a Tennessee health official about further guidelines he would have to implement in order to comply with a federal law against the sale of raw milk across state lines — which includes labeling the product as “for pet consumption only,” while also obtaining a pet feed license.
“If we put our product on the shelf, and there's another food source, it has to be 18 inches away from the other food source, and it has to have that pet food label on it,” Armstrong said.
There are currently dozens of herd-share farms across Kentucky of various sizes and scale of production, all of which have no standardized regulations in place.
This is concerning to Powell, with Murray State, because of how relatively easy it is for pathogens to enter a farm’s dairy supply.
“You have an opportunity for milk to get contaminated every time the cow is milked. If they have some fecal material on their udder and it doesn't get completely washed off, that gets introduced into the milk supply,” he said. “If they happen to be a little sick, you can get pathogens into the milk supply through that. It doesn't take but one cow out of a herd to mess things up. … If you have tainted milk that gets into that tank, it can contaminate the whole lot.”
Since converting to raw milk production, Armstrong said he has scaled up his safety procedures compared to what he had previously done. This includes sanitizing each cow before milking with individual peroxide wipes, as well as swapping between two chilling containers for the dairy each day while the other is hand-scrubbed.
Although Armstrong is confident in the safety of his product, he said the practices of some smaller producers worry him.
“They milk that cow and put it in a milk can and set it in a creek to cool it,” he said. “That's not (how that) works.”
For this reason, Armstrong is in favor of regulations being placed on the herd-share industry — which he sees as a way to ensure more people have access to a safe product.
“You could police the dairies, just like when we were a commercial dairy,” he said. “You had a state inspector and a federal inspector that came and inspected your facilities.”
But Armstrong is skeptical about the likelihood of this happening in the near future. From his perspective, Kentucky officials in the milk safety industry have been deterred from raw milk due to what he assumes is a question of costs and liability concerns, along with a lack of recognition of herd-shares’ existence.
“Raw milk over the years has just been something nobody wants to talk about,” he said.
Embry said while the Kentucky Dairy Development Council recognizes the existence of herd-shares, the size of the industry and lack of government support could make implementing regulations on raw milk farms difficult.
“I would think it'd be quite a large process to try to do some of those checks on the herd-share companies, because you don't have any type of (state) support within that system,” Embry said.
For now, both Armstrong and Powell advise the safest option for those seeking out raw milk is to visit the farms producing it — making sure cows are in correct living conditions and, if possible, observing their milk collection processes.
Powell explicitly urges consumers who could be considered at higher risk of being affected by contaminated milk to stay away from the product entirely.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.
