Mother Jones; TikTok (2)
If you go on TikTok or Instagram, you’ll see legions of wellness influencers selling the advantages of unpasteurized “raw” milk, which hasn’t been heated to kill off illness-causing microorganisms. Raw milk is risky business at the perfect of occasions, and regardless of what some influencers declare, there are no nutritional benefits to consuming it, in keeping with the CDC. But it’s now additionally a vector for H5N1, the brand new chicken flu spreading by means of cows.
On April 1, it was confirmed that H5N1 had spread to at least one person who labored with cattle—as of April 30, 36 dairy herds have been confirmed to have had circumstances of chicken flu, though that’s a possible undercount primarily based on restricted testing. On April 25, the FDA introduced its discovering that one in five milk samples from grocery shops had hint quantities of H5N1. Colombia has restricted the import of beef from US states the place the virus has been detected in cows, and the USDA is now testing floor beef for H5N1. The World Health Organization reported that between January 2003 and March 2024, 56 % of chicken flu circumstances detected in people have been deadly. Half the home cats on a Texas farm also recently died after consuming uncooked milk from cows contaminated with H5N1.
Pasteurization principally eliminates this danger. “Raw milk does not go through this process, so consuming [it] could unknowingly place you at risk of infection with H5N1,” mentioned Brian Labus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas public well being professor and epidemiologist. There are nonetheless different ways in which H5N1 can unfold moreover consuming uncooked milk, reminiscent of to dairy employees (human-to-human transmission hasn’t been detected within the US but). But according to the Conversation, that’s not a typical vector. And if different animals drink unpasteurized cow’s milk, additionally they danger contracting H5N1, identical to any human would.
Raw milk influencers have a large following, together with some whose content material doesn’t heart solely on eating regimen. Take mannequin Liz Siebert, who has over one million followers on TikTok, and who made movies final 12 months on how she will get her uncooked milk from a close-by Amish farm, claiming uncooked milk was serving to get her well being again on monitor and lowered her allergy signs (most of those clips have now been deleted, however the reaction videos debunking her claims have not). Raw milk can also be an enormous hit amongst health influencers and “crunchy” moms—dad and mom who need meals that’s “natural,” like within the good old days, when viruses killed a lot more people.
“People are seeing more influencers talk about raw milk over the last year or more,” mentioned Jessica Gall Myrick, a Pennsylvania State University well being communications professor. Myrick says that development “follows the changes in state laws allowing more retail and on-farm sales.” As a consequence, increasingly more individuals are shopping for uncooked milk: Ambrook Research reports that gross sales “jumped 27 percent, from $12 million in 2021 to $19.4 million” in 2023.
Dubious claims about uncooked milk predate social media (as does analysis debunking the supposed advantages), however it’s given these claims a brand new life. A 2022 research paper estimates that round 4 and a half % of Americans are consuming uncooked milk at the least as soon as yearly. In movies on TikTok, some influencers do acknowledge that there are individuals who assume their uncooked milk obsession is weird—however they nonetheless declare that they’re consuming it as a result of it improves their well being. Which is ironic: moreover chicken flu, uncooked milk consumption has been linked to circumstances of the illnesses salmonella and listeriosis. But you’re not going to listen to about that in a podcast clip on TikTok of Gwyneth Paltrow speaking about unpasteurized milk.
“Seeing an attractive influencer claim to be healthier and happier thanks to drinking raw milk can inspire people and give them hope for a similar outcome,” Gall Myrick mentioned. “We remember anecdotes better than statistics about risk, too.” But Gall Myrick does assume that individuals with important on-line platforms will also be useful in dispelling well being misinformation about uncooked milk in a transparent and interesting approach, pointing to a video of author John Green speaking about its risks for example.
It additionally doesn’t assist that social media feeds rapidly develop into echo chambers by design. “The more people see of this type of pro-raw-milk content in their social media feeds, algorithms will keep giving them more of it, and then they are less likely to see stories about people harmed by raw milk,” Gall Myrick mentioned.
Many states nonetheless do not allow uncooked milk to be bought in shops, with some exceptions for farms, which means that individuals impressed by uncooked milk influencers might should undergo extra hurdles to purchase it. “You can’t find raw milk in most grocery stores, and social media likes and shares are not going to change that,” Labus mentioned. For now, that’s.
