Tennessee Illnesses Prompt Raw Milk Warning: It’s Still Dangerous

For those who purchase “herd shares” in order to obtain raw milk, they’re often required to supply their own jars to be refilled each week. Credit: Chiot’s Run via Flickr

Raw milk is likely to blame for eight sick kids in East Tennessee. Top public health officials are using the small e. coli outbreak to warn against unpasteurized milk.

“Those who consume raw milk are eroding years of progress in reducing dangerous, preventable illnesses,” Tennessee Department of Health commissioner John Dreyzehner says in a statement.

Dreyzehner says people are 150 times more likely to get sick than if they just drank store-bought milk. And illness can be “life threatening to some, particularly the young,” he says. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two deaths occurred from 1998 to 2011.

But raw milk advocates say the health benefits are well worth the risks.

Several of the recent illnesses were traced back to the Knoxville-area farm of Marcie McBee, which supplies hundreds of families with raw milk. She acknowledges that several customers were showing flu-like symptoms. One girl remains very ill.

“We’re praying for her every day. We want her well,” she says. “But we have to remember there’s a lot of ways to get contamination here. I’m not in charge of the owners’ jars. I don’t clean them. I just put milk in them.”

As in many states, it is technically illegal to sell raw milk in Tennessee. But a law passed in 2009 creates a loophole allowing people to buy “shares” in a cow herd, giving them a legal way to obtain unpasteurized milk.

A press release from the state departments of Health and Agriculture says, “although it is legal in Tennessee for individuals to consume raw milk from their own animals, it doesn’t change the risk to their health.”