Selling raw milk is currently illegal in Australia, but producers are making a renewed push to legislate its sale.
Farmers are able to drink their own milk, however it is not available to the public.
‘There’s a lot of ignorance. People don’t understand the facts about raw milk and how it can be done well,’ raw milk dairy farmer Mark Tyler told ABC News.
Raw milk is unpasteurised, which the Australian health department says can lead to the growth of bacteria like E. coli- which can be harmful to humans.
Working within the current legislation has been difficult, and Mr Tyler has been charged by authorities for selling raw milk illegally.
A mistrial was declared after an appeal to the Supreme court in October, but a new trail to legalise the sale of raw milk to the public will begin later this year.
‘A farmer has a choice if we can get this legalised and simplify the whole procedure so that it is something people can do and do well,’ Mr Tyler said.
Across Australia people are legally obtaining raw milk for drinking via herd shares which allow people to buy a share in a cow and then pay a farmer to board and milk the animal.
They then receive the milk from ‘their own cow’, thus it is not being illegally sold.
Mr Tyler runs a herd share programme at his Moo View Dairy farm in Willunga Hill, South Australia and said he has people from all walks of life investing in his cows so they can get unpasteurised milk.
‘There are professional sportsmen, university professors, doctors – you name it, every profession from tradespeople to other farmers,’ he said.
Mr Tyler, who started his cowshare programme in 2008, believes the government banned unpasteurised milk as a way to control the dairy market and to support ‘big business’.
‘The more you look into it the more you realise how little facts there are about raw milk and there are problems with pasteurised milk,’ he said.
Mr Tyler is confident that raw milk is safe if produced in the right way.
‘I’ve drunk raw milk all my life, I always lived on this farm. I drunk it here and certainly our children have grown up on it.
Mr Tyler said he limits the risk of harmful bacteria – such as E.coli – associated with unpasteurised milk and that pasteurising laws put in place 70-years-ago are now outdated.
‘We’ve got a very modern milking machine – the dangers that were there when pasteurising came in is a world apart from modern dairy equipment,’ he said.
‘Milk isn’t squeezed into buckets surrounded by flies with ‘cows flicking manure everywhere’ anymore, he said, so ‘the situation is so different.’
In recent years the dairy farmer has noticed a surge in demand for raw milk as part of the raw food movement.
Source: DailyMail