Milk is big business in Ohio.
It's 11th in the nation for dairy cows. The USDA reports that dairy accounted for over $1.3 billion in production for the state last year, with the industry's farms covering about 13.6 million acres.
And all those gallons of milk people buy here to drink must be pasteurized.
The sale of raw milk has been banned in Ohio since 1997, with some exceptions.
“The direct retail sale of raw milk for human consumption is currently prohibited in Ohio," said Meghan Harshbarger, a spokesperson with the Ohio Department of Agriculture. "However, raw milk can be sold for animal consumption only if a license is obtained from the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Division of Plant Health."
But some lawmakers in the state are looking to put those rules out to pasture, allowing farms to sell the product directly to consumers.
Under the proposed House Bill 406, farms wanting to sell raw milk would be required to sign liability waivers and do monthly testing of food-borne bacteria and diseases.
A spokesperson from the Ohio Farm Bureau told WYSO in a statement that raw milk regulation is an ongoing conversation among Ohio Farm Bureau members. The organization says it supports dairy farmers and recognizes the need for a "balance between consumer choice, food safety and regulation."
"As a farmer-led organization, our members continue to have thoughtful policy discussions around raw milk, and we look forward to their insights and perspectives that will help guide our approach moving forward," the statement says.
Yellow Springs dairy cuts raw milk for curds
In Greene County, Young’s Jersey Dairy knows a thing or two about raw milk.
Starting in the 1950s, the family-run farm was allowed to sell unpasteurized milk directly to customers.
They were grandfathered in under the current ban by continuously selling the product prior to 1965, the last farm to do so in the state.
It no longer sells raw milk.
"I grew up on it, so when we stopped selling it in '01 or '02, it took me a long time to get used to non-raw milk, getting milk from the grocery store," C EO, John Young said
Their raw milk product wasn't as popular, Young said, making up less than 1% of sales at the time.
In addition, in the early 2000s, 55 cases of salmonella were linked to the business. While raw milk wasn’t the source, Young's decided to cease the product's sales altogether.
“So we took a couple years to figure out what we wanted to do, and we ended up converting our raw milk sales into cheese sales," Young said. "We thought best case scenario, let's turn lemons into lemonade, but this way, turn milk into cheese.”
He said they don't plan to go back to selling it.
Risks versus rewards
Milk has been a staple in many cultures for centuries as a rich source of protein, nutrients and vitamins.
But it wasn’t until around the last 150 years that Americans started pasteurizing it on a large scale.
Pasteurization is a process where milk is heated to kill bacteria that can cause food-borne illnesses. Without pasteurization, the milk is considered “raw."
Raw milk has a shorter shelf life with a higher risk of several food-borne illnesses, according to Jason Hartschuch, a field specialist in dairy management with OSU Extension..
“There's a host of different diseases: E. Coli, salmonella, many others that aren't even typically in our vocabulary today that can end up in raw milk that pasteurization is going to kill,” he said.
Ohio regulates food-grade milk quality through the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. It allows sanitarians from the Ohio Department of Agriculture to inspect all Grade A facilities multiple times a year for sanitation to prevent the spread of deadly illnesses.
"When they go out and inspect those facilities, they're looking at the milking equipment, making sure it is clean, making sure the bulk tanks are working properly," Hartschuch said.
Before pasteurization, deadly illnesses abounded, said Rafael Jiminez-Flores, the J.T. "Stubby" Parker Endowed Chair in Dairy Foods at Ohio State University.
“In the 1850s, there was a lot of people dying of tuberculosis," he said. "And the main vehicle of that tuberculosis was milk. The microvacillium tuberculosis thrives in milk.”
The current bill to expand sales in Ohio would require bacteria level testing. Both OSU experts said that’s not enough of a safeguard because bacteria can grow quickly, sometimes even overnight.
Several other states including California, New Mexico and Pennsylvania do allow the sale of raw cow milk, with some regulations.
And those states have seen outbreaks of illness as recently at 2024, tied to the consumption of raw milk.
"Most of them have fairly stringent testing requirements to make sure that that raw milk is disease-free, but most of the time they don't test every day, it's random testing," Hartschuh said.
So why are some Ohio lawmakers now pushing for similar legislation?
One sponsor of the bill, state Rep. Levi Dean of Greene County didn't respond to requests for comment on the legislation, which is currently in the House Agriculture Committee.
Misconceptions on raw milk
The most common perceived differences between pasteurized and raw milk are flavor and nutritional benefit, according to Jimenez-Flores.
“When people say, ‘Oh, because raw milk is so much (more) beneficial.’ Believe me, in 40 years that I've been reading the literature, there hasn't been any proven benefit of raw milk,” he said.
Scott Higgins, CEO for the Ohio Dairy Producers Association, said he believes a growing resurgence of a desire to return to nature could be a part of it. But this doesn’t change the risks for consumers.
“I personally buy directly from a packer, a farmer who packs their beef, but I cook it. I want to make sure it's safe," he said. "And so the dairy industry has a matter of, 'Let's make sure that food is safe when we consume it.' We choose the route of pasteurization.”
According to Higgins, consumer studies conducted by the association found that some small farmers who consume fresh milk from their own farm will heat the milk, pasteurizing it for consumption.
Higgins himself consumed raw milk as a child living on a dairy farm. But he said his father turned to pasteurized milk when he learned of the risks at a dairy cooperative meeting.
“As an eighth grader, I came home one day from school and there were gallons of milk with red caps on them," he said. "And I'm like, 'What's going on?' He said, ‘We're not drinking raw milk off our farm anymore. As much as I love you kids, I'm not gonna put you at risk.’”
'We never considered it dangerous'
Growing up on a self-sufficient farm and consuming fresh milk daily is also less common today.
But for 71-year-old Terry Fredrich, that was his reality on his family farm with four holstein cows in Wood County.
“"We didn't call it raw milk at that time, it was just milk,” he said.
His family made sure to consume the milk within the first day, or give it to their livestock and pets to avoid it spoiling.
It nn high school his family sold their dairy cows and decided to start drinking pasteurized milk from the store.
"Society as a whole, even in the rural areas we were transitioning at that time and we were all told of course that this is better for you and you should you should do this and those things are more dangerous," he said. "We never considered it dangerous of course."
Fredrich now manages a large community garden in Springfield where he helps tend to over 100 chickens, but no cows. He said he would drink raw milk again, given the opportunity.
"I definitely would use it within 24 hours, and maybe you can keep it longer than that, that's just what we did," he said.
Right now, Fredrich and other consumers can buy unpasteurized milk through what’s called a herd share. This allows producers to sell part-ownership of an animal, rather than the milk itself.
The ODA doesn’t provide a list of all the herd shares in the state. But a pro-raw milk campaign says there are more than 30.
"That's a very limited number of folks, and so when you initiate a law and make it more readily available, you increase your risks associated with the number of occurrences that could happen," said Higgins of the dairy producers association. "There are many in the health professional community that have come out against it as well in Ohio."
The Ohio Dairy Producers Association opposes selling raw milk. Higgins said he encourages curious consumers to “be wise, make good decisions, and look for the information.”
“That's our organization's position," he said. "We're going to continue to do our very best to assure consumers that food is safe, milk is safe, dairy foods are safe for consumption.”
