Got (raw) milk?

If you have never tasted raw (farm) milk, you honestly don't know what you are missing. I speak from experience; growing up in Alaska my family usually had powdered milk that we mixed up for cereal in the winters (grocery shipments came by barge, weather permitting... i.e. not often in the winter). When I moved to Oregon I thought the whole milk I could find in the local Dari-Mart chain of convenience stores, very fresh and local milk from the Lochmead family farm (but still pasteurized/homogenized), was the best milk I had ever tasted.

Then I tried real farm milk. Straight from the tap, so to speak :) The texture is a silky creaminess that sort of glides around your mouth. The flavor - indescribable, the purest notes of cream with delicate hints of clover and blue skies - it tastes like a happy summer day.

Milk from Maya the Cow - Maya is the creamiest milk producer in the herd which I own a small herd share of (garnering me a weekly delivery of "single cow" raw milk)

Readers from outside the US may be totally familiar with how awesome raw milk is -
but unfortunately here in the US our government has waged a war on small dairy farms, putting regulatory barriers between dairy farmers and consumers which prohibit most kinds of sales and actually aggressively prosecuting dairy farmers who attempt to use legal loopholes to get their raw milk out to consumers.

But raw milk is dangerous! - you might say. Certainly the US FDA thinks so. The FDA's current position remains "... raw, unpasteurized milk can carry dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which are responsible for causing numerous foodborne illnesses." (https://www.fda.gov/food/ucm293042.htm)

In addition to holding the position that unpasteurized milk is a danger to public health, the FDA officially denies any potential health benefits from raw milk compared to pasteurized milk - the FDA believes that despite the numerous chemical changes that occur in milk during pasteurization and homogenization, there is no difference in how the human body digests and takes advantage of raw milk vs. pasteurized/homogenized milk.

I wouldn't be drinking a cup of raw milk on my back stoop in the morning sun right now if I believed this. Not only is raw milk (from pastured cows raised ethically) categorically safe to drink, it is easier to digest because of beneficial probiotic bacteria and contains numerous other beneficial active components which reduce risk for allergies, improve skin health, support the immune system and help prevent nutrient deficiencies.

But don't take me at my word - please research this topic yourself and then do yourself a huge favor - try some raw milk!
Some good beginning places for the safety and benefits of raw milk (these summarize current research and cite the original sources for further reading):

High level overview of safety and benefits of raw milk:
https://draxe.com/raw-milk-benefits/

Detailed rebuttal of specific FDA claims against raw milk:
http://www.realmilk.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/RebuttaltoFDARawMilkArticle-MAR2012.pdf