Raw milk farmers in at least eight U.S. states - including our neighbors Connecticut and Maine - are permitted to sell their milk in grocery stores. Many other states - including Vermont - allow farmers to deliver milk to customers. By allowing access to these markets for raw milk, states are better able to monitor and regulate raw milk sales and keep it from developing into an underground market. This helps ensure the safety of raw milk.

HB 1995 - An act relative to the distribution of raw milk, introduced by Rep. Anne Gobi, will allow farmers to deliver raw milk to customers. Massachusetts agriculture faces some of the highest land, labor and regulatory costs in the country. Many Massachusetts farmers have survived, and thrived, by selling directly to consumers. The growing demand for raw milk has helped save many small dairies, but currently raw milk may only be sold on the farm.

By providing for regulations that would give farmers a way to deliver raw milk to consumers safely, the Massachusetts Legislature would give dairies a tool for survival and provide access to a local agricultural product to consumers who are currently unable to travel to a farm to make a purchase.

• About 80,000 gallons of raw milk is sold to consumers per year in MA - that amount could grow substantially if farmers were allowed to deliver milk to customers.
• Money from raw milk sales -- more than $600,000 per year -- stays in the community.
• Selling raw milk to consumers earns dairy farmers $6 a gallon or more, more than triple what they are paid by the conventional market.
• Allowing farmers to sell raw milk is a way to save dairy farms in MA without having to provide them with government subsidies.
• While the number of dairies in MA dropped from 829 in 1980 to 189 in 2007, the number of raw milk dairies has more than doubled in just the last several years.
• As evidence that raw milk sales help to preserve farms, no farm licensed to sell raw milk to consumers has gone out of business in MA.
• Raw milk dairy farmers steward more than 3,500 acres of Massachusetts farmland, keeping it open and in agricultural use.

Is raw milk safe? Yes. Massachusetts raw milk farmers have proven that they can produce and distribute raw milk safely. Any food product has the ability to harbor pathogens, but those pathogens are not part of the food itself - they are introduced via improper handling of the product. By developing production standards, and inspecting farms and testing milk on a regular basis, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture has worked with dairies to establish a system that has an excellent track record of safety. Raw milk sold to consumers must meet the same standards of bacteria and coliform testing as pasteurized milk sold in grocery stores.

"Cigarettes are more accessible than our milk. They've figured out how to regulate fish so that it can be sold and eaten raw from stores. Why can't they do the same with milk?" - MA Raw Milk Farmer