Raw milk is fine to drink if the producer is careful with the sterility of it. Milk comes out sterile, but if the proper precautions aren't taken when bottling it, it can grow some scary bacteria rather quickly from what I've heard. The listeria threat from raw milk is fearmongering though, plain and simple.
There was recently a listeria outbreak in a California apple processing plant... But I guess I missed the part where the government banned the production and consumption of apples after that.
Here's another case of listeria, this time from PASTEURIZED cheese.
"An outbreak of the foodborne illness listeriosis has been reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)… you get this potentially serious infection by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.
This is the disease the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) often uses as its “poster child” in its warnings against drinking raw milk, but this actually deflects from the fact that people are dying from listeria found in other commonly eaten foods.
Perhaps the FDA and the CDC should start letting people know that raw milk is not the only source of listeria… nor is it the most common one! In the latest outbreak, reported in February 2014, people were sickened by eating cheese… that was pasteurized."
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/11/listeria-outbreak.aspx
The government just so happens to love to tell you how to live your life, and what you can and cannot do.
