It’s a brisk autumn day, and Anastasia Congdon is driving south from Providence to Baldwin Brook Farm in Canterbury, Connecticut, to pick up a few gallons of raw (unpasteurized) milk.

“I started drinking raw milk five years ago in California, and I drank it all through my pregnancy,” she says. “It improved my digestion, and I fell in love with it because it’s so delicious.” When she moved to Providence three years ago, she needed to find an out-of-state source because Rhode Island is one of 22 states that ban the sale of raw milk.

Why? The Rhode Island department of health considers raw milk a public health hazard. Likewise, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says raw milk can host germs such as E. coli and salmonella, which can cause serious illness. A joint CDC and FDA statement implicated raw milk in 45 outbreaks from 1998 to 2005 in which people became sick from various bacteria—a relatively low number when compared to outbreaks caused by spinach and ground beef.  On the other side of an extremely impassioned argument, advocacy organizations such as the Weston A. Price Foundation claim that the heat of pasteurization destroys the vitamin C and most enzymes present in raw milk, essentially stripping milk’s natural nutritional value.  They believe that “real milk”—that is, raw whole milk from grass-fed cows, produced under clean conditions and promptly refrigerated—can relieve health problems ranging from asthma to diabetes to ear infections in children.

The reality is much more complex but it’s difficult to separate the strands in such an emotionally charged argument. First, both unpasteurized and pasteurized milk can harbor pathogens. It’s important to remember that raw milk isn’t inherently dangerous but that sanitary and post-production problems can contaminate the milk with harmful bacteria.  In that respect, it is crucial for any would-be consumer to know and trust his farmer, and ensure that the cows, milking facilities and milk are frequently and rigorously inspected.

While Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002) and Safe Food: Bacteria,

Biotechnology and Bioterrorism (2003), says she “doesn’t see any reason why we can’t produce safe raw milk,” it’s another thing entirely if it is your child who ends up in the hospital with raw dairy-food poisoning.  Anastasia Congdon recognizes some wider issues surrounding raw milk consumption. “When dairies get bigger they get scary,” she says.  “I prefer getting my food from small family farms, where I can establish a relationship with the farmer.” And she is willing to pay the price—raw milk sells for approximately $6 to $10 a gallon.

Which brings us back to the economics of global versus local food systems. It’s much cheaper for agribusiness to spend money on “hightemperature/ short-time” (HTST) pasteurization, which near-instantaneously heats and cools milk—and probably represents overkill, compared with slower, lower-temperature pasteurization methods—when they are pooling milk from thousands of factory-farmed cows, shipping it hundreds of miles away, and leaving it on supermarket shelves for more than a week. Likewise with ultra-pasteurization which kills off even more of milk’s beneficial enzymes, shelf life can be extended up to a month or more.

So what’s an ordinary Rhode Islander to do if he or she wants to purchase raw milk?

GillianMarino of Providence joined a milk club almost three years ago after she first tasted raw milk and found it “flavorful and more satisfying than pasteurized milk.” To link up with people who want to share the driving to Connecticut or Massachusetts, check out realmilk.com for a state-by-state listing of raw milk providers, or go to yahoo.com “groups” and search for Oake Knoll Ayrshires, farmer Terri Lawton’s local raw milk drinkers group.

I visited Oake Knoll Ayrshires in Foxboro, Massachusetts, to get a sense of how a licensed raw milk retailer operates. It’s a rainy, cold day when I meet Terri Lawton, 29, who has a herd of 25 brown-and white, grass-fed Ayrshires on her family’s 200-year-old farm. She’s standing in a hay-scented former milking parlor that now functions as a shop for home-produced raw milk, cheese and beef. A prominent sign reads “Raw milk is not pasteurized. Pasteurization destroys organisms that may be harmful to human health.” Terri is passionate about raw milk.  “People call me the ‘raw milk lady,’ because I am so dedicated to this business,” she says.

A young couple and their 8-year-old son from nearby Wrentham are engaged in conversation with Terri. She insists on meeting prospective customers in person to show them around and explain her operation.  “Prospective customers to any farm should be sure to ask a lot of questions, about cows’ diets, number of cows, incidence of problems, even inspection reports,” advises Terry.

Customers pre-order their milk by email, then collect the half-gallon plastic jugs of milk from a large cooler. Everyone records their purchase on an official sheet, and then leaves their money, honor system–style, in a box. (Half-gallons of raw milk are $5.) Fifty percent of her customers come from Rhode Island.

I bought a half-gallon and brought it back to Providence. Very hesitantly I took a sip, and was deliciously surprised by its delicate vanillaedged sweetness and its rich texture. Another sip, and it was like dessert in a glass. I couldn’t get the family to try it, however, as they were worried about getting sick. If I loved milk as much as I love raw oysters, I might seriously consider buying it.

Matt Jennings, owner-chef of Farmstead and La Laiterie in Providence, brings a cheesemonger’s perspective to the discussion. “Raw-milk cheeses have a depth of flavor not found in pasteurized cheeses,” he says.  There’s a long tradition of raw-milk cheese making in Europe, where cheeses aged less than the 60-day U.S. standard are both honored and consumed.

Will Rhode Island relax its strictures against raw milk? Hard to say, Matt says, but he’s hopeful that the state will eventually adopt a more open relationship with legitimate, licensed cheese makers and raw-milk dairies. Regulation is essential, he says, but on the whole, “there’s really more good than bad out there.”

Elizabeth Field, a Providence-based food writer, will try any food once.