You will never forget your first sip. From raw milk, fresh from the cow, simply filtered, cooled and bottled.
No pasteurisation, homogenisation or standardisation, meaning it still contains the full complement of vitamins, minerals and natural digestive enzymes, as well as delivering the most delicious creamy bite of pure dairy pleasure; rich, sweet and luscious full bodied.
For someone ambivalent about milk, the raw stuff was a revelation. And that revelation came courtesy of Stephen Hook, a fourth-generation Sussex dairy farmer, way back in 2011 at Selfridges, in London.
A manager of the store’s dining room had tasted his raw milk at the Abergavenny Food Festival, fell in love, and after a few meetings to sort out the legalities (the law stated that raw milk could “only be sold on the farm grounds”), it was agreed that Mr. Hook could rent some floor space in the Selfridges dining room, install his own raw milk vending machine and sell directly to his customers.
And it was from that machine, after putting my coin in the slot and filling my own glass bottle, I took my first taste. The gamblers couldn’t get enough of it. “For 50 years, the pasteurization industry has tarnished raw milk’s image as a dangerous food,” explains Mr. Hook out.
For someone ambivalent about milk, the raw stuff was a revelation
And it was from that machine, after putting my coin in the slot and filling my own glass bottle, I took my first taste. The gamblers couldn’t get enough of it
But then the Food Standards Agency (FSA) demanded that the machine be removed from Selfridges because it was illegal. It wasn’t, because by renting the space, Mr. Hook was selling from his premises.
Anyway, to cut an epic story short, thanks to circumstances beyond Mr. Hook’s control (and with a totally unrelated issue), he retired the machine in March 2012, though Selfridges agrees that the company had been a great success and no laws had been broken.
However, the prejudice against raw milk goes back many years, a mixture of frightening stories, misinformation and once very legitimate fears.
“The idea that raw milk is unsafe and toxic is ingrained in the British psyche,” says Jon Cook, who runs Dora’s Dairy in Wiltshire with his wife Sarah. “But there was a good reason for pasteurization.
‘During the industrial revolution, when dairy farms moved to the city, the cows were fed beer from breweries and bakeries, not grass. And they got sick. And sick cows give sick milk.’
Add to that hygiene standards that range from poor to non-existent, and pasteurization became an essential and life-saving innovation. Today, English and Welsh producers of raw milk (the milk is still illegal in Scotland for some unfathomable reason) operate to some of the highest hygiene standards in the world.
In 2014, when the FSA visited Hook and Son (as well as Ellie’s Dairy in Kent), its officials were, in Mr Hook’s words, ‘incredibly impressed’. And they began to understand that farmers could safely produce raw milk, train staff, use food management systems, understand and mitigate the risks of pathogens, and conduct independent testing to validate their raw milk sales .’
Mr Cook points out that pasteurisation destroys goodness, adding: ‘Raw milk is a complete food, perfectly designed to grow a baby mammal for up to a year.’
His dairy herd consists of a mix of Jerseys and alpine breeds, such as Fleckvieh and Brown Swiss. While a commercial cow can produce up to 3,000 liters of milk per year, we only get 440 to 660 liters. But once people have tasted it, there’s no turning back.’
By 2018, the demand for raw milk had increased fivefold and the number of licensed farmers went from 70 to 200. Now, with support from the FSA, there is a Raw Milk Producers Association, offering guidance to anyone new to the industry. Next to Hook and Son is the Morwick Dairy, Northumberland, where Ben Howie started with an ice cream parlor and then started selling raw milk in 2016.
He says: ‘It’s an intensely local product. All I can say is ‘give it a try’. Once tasted, you’re sold.’
Rebecca Mayhew and her family have been farmers in Norfolk since the 1940s and now produce raw milk from their herd in Jersey.
As for the health benefits of raw milk, its proponents, of which there are many, claim that it can lower your cholesterol, fight infection and be an incredible source of protein, as well as helping with eczema, asthma and many allergies. It is even suitable for people with lactose intolerance.
I have spoken to many people who swear by its beneficial properties, but as Mr Hook points out, ‘the only real claim that pasteurized milk can make legal is that it is a good source of calcium and possibly a good source of protein’ . The problem is that no serious research has been done on the benefits of raw milk.
“Why is raw milk such a mystery?” Mr. Hoek asks. ‘Very easy. It is not in the interest of the corporate food world that this knowledge is there.’
In the meantime, give raw milk a try. Not only are you supporting a dairy industry already on its knees, but you’re also giving those taste buds an experience they’ll never forget. The fact that it can have other benefits just makes raw milk all the sweeter.
- A longer version of this article appeared in the June 14 annual sustainability issue of Country Life magazine.