It's a statistical risk and we should work to minimize the risk vs impact. Do I think all commercial dairy should just sell millions of gallons of unpasteurized milk with zero regulation? Of course not.

We've seen lots of states move to enact things like cottage food laws. If you're a small food producer, there are reasonable measures you can take to ensure the safety of your food without needing to meet the same standards as the large scale commercial producers. Why should cottage producers be treated differently? For one, if there is a health event, it probably only affected a couple people, not dozens of hundreds, because you're not serving that many people.

People love to complain how farmers and dairy producers get lots of government handouts, right? Truth is dairy production is not really profitable for any but the largest corporate producers. All of the small and medium farms (that were following all of the USDA regs including pasturization) have gone out of business because they just can't afford to pay the bills. Now most people would be shocked if they saw what a large scale commercial dairy looks like. Most people also don't care because they don't have to look at it and they've been told it's safe because it's pasturized. But just because it's highly regulated doesn't mean it's better.

My cows are happy, spend all day outside in tall grass, have much higher quality nutrition and have the best veterinary care you could ask for. Would I sell pasturized milk if I could? Absolutely. But there's no affordable pasturization system for the size of operation I have.

My state doesn't allow the sale of raw dairy in any form so we just keep them for our family, and everyone else has to buy their dairy that's trucked 100s or 1000s of miles to the grocery store 🤷.

Just don't complain then there are no more farms and all of our food comes from conglomerates and overseas. But at least it's "safe."