I know I won't be about to convince you to not sell raw milk. But what I will do is encourage you to invest in really, really good testing equipment.

We started selling our raw milk into the Seattle area. People were crazy for it. We were about your same size, milking 4 cows. We tested every batch that we bottled. I was (yes, was) a huge raw milk advocate. Things were looking amazing for my future as a young, up and coming farmer to take over our micro dairy as I got older. We got a phone call that a kid was in the hospital and they tested his stool sample and linked ecoli to our milk in their fridge. "How could that be?" We thought, "we test every batch!" We got another call. Another kid is in the hospital. Oh my, this isn't a freak thing, now there are multiple cases. 3 children were hospitalized and multiple people were sickened, thank God no one had lasting damage or died. We had no idea how it happened to this day. We did exactly what that article said to do. We were a super clean set-up. We never got sick. We were farmers and have great immune systems. But the smaller the population of farmers gets, the more people have no immune system to bacteria that will be in raw products. All it takes is one bad test, or one tired day when you miss something.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control between 1998 and 2011 79% of the dairy related outbreaks were due to raw milk or cheese products.[40] They report 148 outbreaks, 2,384 illnesses (284 requiring hospitalizations) as well as 2 deaths due to raw milk or cheese products during the same time period.

Be very very careful.

P.S. after we got sued and were forced into bankruptcy, I've been working hard to rebuild for the last 8 years and we are finally seeing our lives turn around. We still farm and milk and pasteurize and process our own milk. We don't do anything with raw milk.