The Tuberculosis Risk Behind TikTok's Beloved Raw Milk

TikTok advice should always be taken with a grain of salt. The social media platform has brought us clever tricks like the viral pancake flipping hack, but it can also lead people awry places, like the apple juice and tequila combo that can get people dangerously inebriated without even realizing it. But of all the questionable wisdom proliferated through TikTok, one subject seems to generate more controversy than any other: raw milk.

Raw milk TikTok is a thriving subcommunity where wellness influencers promote drinking unpasteurized milk. Pasteurization is a process in which milk is heated enough to kill any harmful pathogens it might contain before being cooled down and bottled (or cartoned, as it were) for sale. Pasteurization is used for many foods, and the process has been credited with saving millions of lives worldwide, but a number of TikTok influencers are trying to portray it as yet another over-processed food.

Influencers often claim that the U.S. government has made it illegal to sell unpasteurized milk, but this is an oversimplification. The federal government bans instate distribution of raw milk, however, a number of states have made it legal. Drinking raw milk is often portrayed as a way to defy "the system" and get back to our natural roots, but in reality, it exposes us to numerous health risks, the worst among them being the world's most deadly infectious disease, tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis is perhaps the most devastating disease in human history. According to Partners in Health, someone dies of tuberculosis approximately every 20 seconds, amounting to an annual death toll that eclipses HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. Rates of infection are generally lower in developed countries like the U.S., but if we take a backstep in our food safety standards, the situation could worsen quickly.

The denizens of raw milk TikTok claim that pasteurization reduces the amount of vitamins and minerals in milk, but there is no evidence to support this. On the other hand, a compilation of 83 scientific studies, published in the medical journal Tuberculosis, showed that raw milk can carry Mycobacterium bovis, the bacteria that causes bovine tuberculosis. To call this a risk would be an understatement. In 2005, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report tracing 35 tuberculosis deaths in New York City to cheese made from raw milk. Thirteen of the victims were children.

Fortunately, a growing number of TikTok influencers have been pushing back against the raw milk trend. Popular author and educator John Green, who has spent the past five years researching tuberculosis, posted a TikTok video highlighting memoirs from tuberculosis patients who contracted the disease from raw milk and endured a lifetime of pain and medical procedures to address it. One woman even contracted tuberculosis in her bones from drinking raw milk as a child.

The risk of a potentially deadly disease like tuberculosis should be enough to turn us off from raw milk, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The dangers of raw milk include many of the most common bacteria that cause food poisoning. On top of that, raw milk may carry contaminants from farm sources like improperly sanitized milking equipment, infections in a cow's udder, and even traces of manure.

More recently, the rampant bird flu outbreak that affected the American poultry industry has struck the dairy world. Cows have been infected with bird flu, and just as was the case with tuberculosis, they can transfer it to humans through unpasteurized milk.

Despite the well-reported dangers of drinking raw milk, there are still a number of TikTok influencers with large followings who continue to promote it. The fact that more and more states have been legalizing sales of raw milk shows that this movement extends far beyond social media, too, but evidence shows this backfires in devastating fashion. A Cambridge study from 2022 found that rates of foodborne illness are over three times higher in places where raw milk sales are legal. TikTok influencers may be getting views by ignoring this data, but you shouldn't.