It’s Math! It’s Milk! They Don’t Add Up!!!!!
Respectfully (and this is the kindest phrase we can find), Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado is a horse’s patootie.
This post had been “put to bed” – an old newspaper term for the final approval immediately prior to actual printing, when The Miami Herald (August 14, 2025) headline announced, “Florida surgeon general supports consumption of raw milk despite 21infections.”
The front-page article continued:
“Under Florida law, raw or unpasteurized milk can only be sold as pet or animal food.
“Because it is not made to be consumed by humans, it also means the state is limited in how much it can regulate sanitation standards at dairies that sell unpasteurized milk.
“Yet on Tuesday afternoon, the state’s top health official took to social media to support the consumption of raw milk, which has become a health fad in recent years.
“’Floridians have the freedom to make informed health choices,’ Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado said in a post on X. ‘I support the decision to consume raw milk when sought for potential health benefits and protective factors. Be aware of your source and know its risks.’
“Lapado’s post also came one week after state health officials issued a health advisory after 21 cases of infection were linked to the consumption of raw milk produced at Keely Farms Dairy in New Smyrna Beach.
“The infections occurred among consumers in North and Central Florida… Six children under the age of 10 were among those infected and seven cases resulted in hospitalizations. Severe complications were reported in at least two cases.”
[EDITORS’ NOTE: Despite the levity of our approach, we’re writing this week because the public health issues we’re dealing with are serious and might mean the difference between a healthy life or serious illness and death.]
Here’s a few final-round questions worthy of an eight-grade level math class, a Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) logical reasoning quiz or the Scripts National Spelling Bee.
After the game, the Notre Dame head football coach berated his offensive team for earning 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 percent fewer yards than their Miami Hurricanes opponents, who earned a total 600 passing and running yards. How many yards did Notre Dame gain against the U?
The used car dealer promised to cut the price of the Tesla by “1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 percent….” How much will the Tesla cost to drive it out of the showroom?
Without regard to political party affiliation or ideology, compare and contrast the following presidential statements and analyze their strengths and weaknesses:
“We’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 percent….”
“We’re gonna get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re gonna get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1500%.”
Before we return to our final-round questions, a word from our sponsor Raw Milk Is Dangerous.
On August 5, CBS News Health Watch reported:
“The Florida Department of Health is warning about the risks of drinking raw, unpasteurized milk after 21 people, including six children under the age of 10, were sickened by E. coli and campylobacter bacteria linked to raw milk from the same farm. Seven people have been hospitalized, and two have developed severe complications…
“Although it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption in Florida, it can be sold in the state if it's labeled as a pet food. Raw milk has been promoted by online wellness influencers and raw food advocates, boosting sales in recent years, but public health officials say it can be risky.
“The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say raw milk can carry life-threatening bacteria, such as E. coli, campylobacter, listeria or salmonella.”
A 2025 post from the Center for Dairy Research of the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences of the University of Wisconsin-Madison noted:
“Claimed benefits of raw milk consumption related to allergies and asthma are likely instead to be a correlation with traditional farming communities, which retain high levels of raw fluid milk consumption. As an example of a traditional farming group, Amish women and their young infants have high levels of contact with animals and barns but have very low levels of allergies/asthma.”
In the simplest terms: Just because two things “go together” does not mean that one causes the other. Researchers frequently note that children reared on farms or with certain pets tend to have fewer allergies and respiratory (asthma) diseases; farm life and lower rates of respiratory infections seem to go together - correlation; it does not mean growing up on a farm makes kids have healthier respiratory systems - causation
The Center for Dairy Research also notes:
“Consumption of raw fluid milk remains a controversial topic here in the US. As more states have legalized the sale of raw fluid milk, we have seen more outbreaks associated with this product. The CDR routinely tracks recalls and outbreaks associated with all dairy products Dairy Recall Tracker. Here are recent recalls/outbreaks from 2022 and 2023 related to consumption of raw milk. 2022 and 2023 Raw Milk Recalls and Outbreaks | 2024 Raw Milk Recalls | Center for Dairy Research (wisc.edu)…
“The Raw Milk Institute is a nonprofit organization established in California that promotes approaches, testing, training and standards for what they call a system for low-risk raw milk production to be used for raw fluid milk products used for human consumption. Unfortunately, the significant difficulties in preventing pathogenic contamination of raw milk can be demonstrated in the many recalls and outbreaks experienced by the Organic Pastures Dairy Company, which recently changed its name to Raw Farm LLC. The long history of outbreaks and recalls by this single raw milk producer can be found on the Food Safety news website and are also documented here: Organic Pastures Dairy LLC/ Raw Farm LLC Recalls and outbreaks 2006 to 2023. The founder and CEO of Raw Farm LLC is also the CEO of the Raw Milk Institute. Unfortunately, this company had 11 recalls and outbreaks related to raw milk products since 2006 including 3 recalls and outbreaks in 2023 alone. In the latest outbreak, 19 patients were sickened and 3 children were hospitalized. These ongoing outbreaks, even in companies using the Raw Milk Institute’s guidance, reinforces to us that it is a misguided idea to replace a technology (pasteurization) that is 100% proven to destroy all pathogens with a collection of practices that do not eliminate the risk from pathogens. In many of these outbreaks, patients are as young as 1 year old. This is deeply concerning since infants are a high-risk population and very susceptible to illness from a pathogenic contamination. Consumption of raw fluid milk by infants should be avoided.”
Because it is cited so frequently, the June 23, 2017 report “Outbreak-Related Disease Burden Associated with Consuming Unpasteurized Cow’s Milk and Cheese, United States, 2009-2014” published in Emerging Infectious Diseases is considered the gold standard of studies of the risks associated with the raw milk fad.
The proverbial one-two punch comes in the “Discussion” section of the extensive report notes:
“Unpasteurized dairy products are responsible for almost all of the 761 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations in the United States that occur annually because of dairy-related outbreaks caused by STEC, Salmonella spp., L. monocytogenes, and Campylobacter spp. More than 95% of these illnesses are salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis. Consumers of unpasteurized milk and cheese are a small proportion of the US population (3.2% and 1.6%, respectively), but compared with consumers of pasteurized dairy products, they are 838.8 times more likely to experience an illness and 45.1 times more likely to be hospitalized. Illnesses caused by L. monocytogenes, however, were found to be more often associated with the consumption of pasteurized cheese, albeit only causing 1 additional outbreak-related illness per year on average.
“An easing of regulations has allowed greater access to unpasteurized milk in recent years (8–10), and this study shows that illnesses and hospitalizations will rise as consumption of unpasteurized dairy products increases. If such consumption were to double, the mean number of outbreak-related illnesses that occur every year would increase by 96%.”
A September 1, 2023 Canada Communicable Disease report (“Public health risks of raw milk consumption: Lessons from a case of paediatric hemolytic uremic syndrome”) noted:
“A 2018 study found raw milk to be responsible for almost three times more hospitalizations than any other food-borne illness ((8)). With health implications in mind, it is essential for consumers and policy-makers alike to understand the need for pasteurization. Laws requiring pasteurization can be traced back to a 1927 typhoid epidemic in Montréal caused by contaminated milk ((9)). In 1938, Ontario became the first Canadian province to ban all sales of raw milk ((9)). In 1991, Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations officially banned the sale of raw milk due to concerns over food-borne illnesses like E. coli and severe sequelae from HUS following raw milk consumption ((9)). Health Canada data shows that mandatory pasteurization has been linked with a decrease in the number of food-borne illness outbreaks from milk, with 45 linked outbreaks between 1975 and 1982 compared against 7 linked outbreaks between 1998 and 2021.”
The acceptable answers to move from eighth grade to high school, score well on the LSAT or win a spelling bee scholarship are:
The Notre Dame team never boarded their buses and never left their hotel, ‘cause they’re still in South Bend.
They have to pay you twelve to fifteen times the sticker price of the car just to get you to drive it out of the showroom. If you drive through one of the showroom windows, you will have to pay for those repairs.
At those presidentially-promised rates, your medications won’t cost you anything. The president might as well have promised that the pharmaceutical companies will pay your monthly mortgage for you. The statements are ipso facto crazyasbatguano but, if you believe them, we have a bridge across the Everglades to sell you and wewanttoknowwhereyougotwhatursmoking.
The bottom line is:
Believing statements from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or the Florida Surgeon General about the benefits of raw milk or reducing the cost of medications at mathematically impossible percentages is exponentially more dangerous (crazy ?) than drinking raw milk.
A final observation: If a parent elects to give his/her child raw milk and the child become sick or is hospitalized as a result, the parent – and the parent alone, not insurance companies or government medical care programs – should be held entirely responsible for all care costs. If the child is hospitalized or dies, the parent or parents should be criminally charged for child endangerment and/or child abuse.
And Florida’s Surgeon General is still a horse’s patootie.