Transcript of Raw Milk: Everything You Need To Know | Dairy Farmer Rick Anglin

As a dairy farmer, how dangerous is raw milk?

You have a better chance of getting sick eating the store bought lettuce and the cut cantaloupe or any fruits at a grocery store than you do drinking raw milk. We don't even think twice about eating a salad every day. It's raw. Why raw milk? Why is it got to be the villain for everything? To say that all of it is safe? I can't make that statement. I don't think all raw milk is created equal. I just don't. Whatever you put into the cow is what's going to come out of it. We shop on the edges. That's where the food is. Other than my mortgage, the most expensive thing in my home is food.

What is the deal with raw milk? I'm wearing my Got Raw Milk crop top tee. You can see it on the Real Alex Clark YouTube. If you're subscribed there, I'll put a link in the description for you to get this. But everybody's talking about raw milk. How safe or risky is it? My guest today is Rick Anglen of Fondue Lock Dairy Farm in Casa Grande, Arizona. He's a fourth-generation dairy farmer who exclusively uses Brown-Swiss cattle, which are known to be A2 producers. He describes himself as an organic hybrid farm, which he'll explain in more detail. And super fun fact, he supplies all the sprouts in Arizona with raw milk and raw keffer. So if you live in Arizona or you're visiting Arizona, you can get Fondue Lock raw milk at any Sprouts grocery store, which is what I do. We discuss why we now pasteurize milk in America. If nutrients are really lost in the process of pasteurization, if putting raw milk in hot coffee counts as pasteurizing, and even what raw milk should ideally taste like. If this is your first time listening to Culture Apothecary, you should know know that this show is made possible with tax deductible donations from viewers like you.

The link is in the description to financially support us and our mission to heal us at Culture. If you're not able to do that at this time, you can leave a five-star review for free, and that really helps us become discoverable in the podcast apps. You will love this heartfelt conversation on raw milk with Rick Anglen from Fondalack Dairy on Culture Apothecary. The real reason I brought you here is how the heck do you explain what the What name of your farm means?

Well, that's a great question. Fondalack is actually a town in Wisconsin. And so with my girls, my three girls, we used to show cattle. And so when my girls were, Quincy, in particular, was the oldest. She was 10. We flew back to Fondalack, Wisconsin, because that's typically where brown Swiss are found, is in the Midwest. We flew back and we bought two hefers, Fendi and Xandra, and brought them back to Arizona. That's how it started. When we were kicking around What do we call this? It's like the love for brown Swiss from my family started in Fondalack. I'm like, Well, why don't we call it Fondalack? Because that's where our journey started with brown Swiss.

Okay, I love it. Brown Swiss is the type of cow that you use. And what is unique about this type of cow?

Well, the biggest thing that I think is unique is Brown Swiss is a cow of many extremities. You'll find them in really cold weather. You'll find them in tropical climates. They're all over the US. They're a very hardy breed. They're known to have really great feet and legs, and they live forever. They're just really a tough, rugged cow. So for our really hot climate here in Arizona, it's a great fit for me because they just seem to take the heat so well.

How long have you been a dairy farmer?

I've been in the dairy business. I was in the commercial dairy business for 17 years, and Fondalack just celebrated its 10-year anniversary in July of this year. We've been doing this now for 10 years.

Boy, that's interesting. You were in commercial farming doing the regular milk that you get at the grocery store, and now you've transitioned into being a raw milk dairy farmer. Some would say you're an extremist. Right.

No, exactly. Like I said, the commercial deal for me, it was like, it's how I grew up. It was a part of my family. I learned a lot there. I learned how to care for cattle. But just, I guess, if you will, my ideal of what I wanted the dairy to look like, it was really hard to work within the confines of commercial dairy. You have a given set. This is what you have to work within. I'm like, there's no freedom. It's here.

Can you give an example?

It's really set by... Our whole food system within this country is supported by the government. There's protection barriers there. Well, That's great. Other than the fact that a lot of those barriers were the same. It's the same number that was when my grandfather was dying. We would all be going broke. We're not just a nation that is taking care of our own people. We're taking care of the of the world, too, as far as food. Because when you get down to it, which is pretty amazing, that only 2% of Americans farm here in the US and are feeding 330 million people, plus the rest of the world. There was a big push towards get bigger get out back in the '70s. And so it really... The small farms started to disappear. They just started to get bigger and bigger.

So do you feel like we made a compromise? Technically, are we feeding more people going to this model? Yes, but we've sacrificed health somewhere along the It's like most businesses.

They're looking for the cheapest inputs, right? So this is how much I'm going to be paid. I won't make any more than this. So I need to figure out and budget within these confines to get this done as cheaply as possible so I can feed my cows, take care of my employees, have a living. And so that's where I say the control is, where mine's more of freedom. And so what I'm doing is about... I'm feeding cattle the way that is important to me, first and foremost. But also listening to the consumer out there and saying, Hey, listen, we really appreciate the fact that you feed your cows this way, that they're cared for this way. Well, it's very expensive to do that. So my input is to feed the cows, to produce the quality product that you want, are very expensive. I'm more than willing to do that, but it comes at a cost, obviously. I feel we make a superior product. My motto has always been quality over quantity. I'm not all about... I want to produce consistent, excellent product every day. We're like the Duncan Donuts, man. We go and every day, time to make the donuts, we get up and we master the mundane every day, but we do it with excellence.

That's the culture I promote at our facility. My guys all know that. The gals that work for me know that. It's just always about excellence every day.

How many cows do you have?

Currently, we're a little bit over 100 cows.

Wow. And so 100 cows, and you are the raw milk supplier for Sprouts grocery stores all across the state of Arizona. Everybody always wants to ask me, Alex, where do you get your raw milk? Where are you going? And I'm like, Well, I'm blessed to live in the state of Arizona. Raw milk is legal here. So I get Rick's milk at the grocery. Every Friday, they deliver it. And so I am there always after work picking up my milk for the rest of the week. So how would you describe your farming practices?

I would say my farming practices are very, they're conventional to the West. And when I say that, you have to be open-minded in the approach because we all cannot farm the same way. So out here, it's more of a Western-style, Daring. We We tend to bring the feed to the cows. A lot of folks will talk about, Are your cows on pasture? Well, they really... I mean, we're in the desert. The only way for them to be on pasture is for me to create a fictitious pasture for them to go on with limited resources. Water is already an issue here in Arizona. I've seen it this last year and just that it's been cut back. We keep our cows in carels, but even at that, whatever the... I was talking to one of my daughters the other day, Let's say if they said, Hey, we'd like to have 100 square foot per cow in a carel space. My cows have 300 square feet per cow in a corral space. So there's lots of room to move around. But what you need to understand is that cattle, they're a herding animal. So wherever the rest of the herd is, is where they're going to be.

They could have five miles of property to roam, but you'll find them all in one little area. So it's like, we still have the adequate space for them, but that's how we do things, is that they're in a corral because this is a domesticated animal. My cattle are looking to me to care for them. They know that I'm going to provide them their food, their water, their care. It's animal husbandry. That's how we do things. Whereas if you went to the Midwest and a guy has got the option to run his cows on pasture during the summer, great. But in the winter, because it's too cold, he's going to bring them indoors and they're going to be locked up all through the winter, and he's going to bring the feed into them.

Why did we start pasteurizing milk in the first place?

Well, honestly, I would say the start of pasteurization really probably started back in the industrial revolution. What you had is in those big cities, the cows were there, too. We're all families of immigrants to this country. It's like we didn't have the sanitation. People weren't washing their hands when they milked cows. Cows were eating whatever was available. You're in a city, probably a lot of distilled brewer's grains and stuff like that. You had a sick host, if you will. You had sick people who didn't have cleanliness, and then you didn't have cooling. So now let's throw it in a bottle, truck it in the back of a horse-drawn trailer, and drop it off in front of your house and let it sit out there for who knows how long. And so people got sick. That's where pasteurization really first came into play, because really, it's a new phenomenon. It's like in the last 100 years that we've had this, but it became the status quo. Really what it is, is that, yeah, it kills everything, but it kills all the good bacteria, too.

I think it's an interesting point to make that before pasteurization and before we industrialized our food system, you didn't have people saying, Oh, I'm getting sick from drinking milk. Correct. Because this is how everybody drink milk.

We get stuck in a rut, right? We all have this awakening where we just start thinking for ourselves a little bit and start asking some questions. That's something that's always got me in trouble is asking questions. Well, why do we do this? I mean, for myself personally, I'm a dairyman who grew up that couldn't drink pasteurized milk as a kid. It would literally put me on the ground. I had stomach aches. I spent time out at Mayo's Clinic. They thought I had Crohn's disease. Wow. And so with that, but as a kid, I would go down to the barn and I'd get milk out of the tank, the big bulk tank where all the milk was, cold. I could drink that milk, no problem. And so I'm like, What's going on here? Why can I drink this milk? And that probably wasn't even the best raw milk anyways.

Well, that's what everybody says. Everybody's like, Oh, I'm lactose-intolerant, but I can drink raw milk.

Why? Well, the big thing about that is when you pasteurize, you actually destroy lactase. And so when people say that they're lactose-intolerant, what you've got going on you have a bottle of milk that is heavy lactose. So it's just sitting there, and that enzyme that was there before, lactase, which neutralizes lactose, that's what allows people to drink raw milk. I will always hear people... It's really amazing to get an email from someone that says, Hey, I haven't had any milk in 30 years. I drank some of your milk the other day, and I just want to thank you because I haven't been able to drink milk in 30 years. I'm like, That's pretty cool when you hear something like that because It looks great. I mean, to be able to have it and all the different things we use it in. It really is an option for somebody that... If I hear their lactose and tolerance, I'm like, You could potentially drink the milk. You know what I mean? But you got to give it a try. Some people are afraid to do that because They know what it feels like when they have dairy products.

I understand. But a lot of people that I run into are like, Man, I'm willing to take the risk because I miss drinking milk. Then find out that they can drink it, and then you get the thank you. Pretty cool.

Why is the government so so worried about raw milk becoming legalized?

It's a lot about control. I say that just because we have a system in place right now. When you start at the farm and you move through all the different positions until you get to finish product, there's a lot of things, there's a lot of middlemen sitting in there that stand to lose if they're not important anymore, whether it's the processors that actually make it into products and stuff like that. In my flow, We milk our cows, we process our own milk, we deliver our milk, we set it on the shelves and sprouts. We have no middlemen in our process. Where most farms have milk, they sell it to a processor. The processor sells it to the grocery store, the grocery store sells it to you. Well, how many people have their hands in the cookie jar to get to that point? And that makes it tough. It's about controlling markets. That would be the big thing, I If raw milk isn't quite your jam, that's okay.

Everybody's like, Oh, my gosh, Alex, why I don't like milk? I'm not telling everybody you have to drink raw milk. I'm just saying there's amazing benefits if you do. If you don't, don't. Fine. You can drink juice. Some of us are juice people. And my trusted juice brand is Squeezed Juice from a small family farm in California. Non-gmo, never from concentrate, no water or sugar added, 100% mandrin, pomegranate juice, and antioxidant Lemonades. Don't worry. They're shipped cold, so you can take a cool, refreshing drink as soon as you open the box. If you're hosting a debate watch party this election season, serve squeezed juice in a mocktail or to the kids. Those antioxidant Lemonades are killer in a mocktail, especially the pink lemonade with pomegranate and cucumber. See what I mean? Squeeze Juice is the cleanest juice out there. No more high fructose corn syrup, artificial food dye juices. We just want the real thing. Go to shop. Squeezejuice. Com and use code Alex for 25% off. Very generous offer. That's shop. Squeezejuice. Com with code Alex for 25% off. Cold, completely clean, fresh juice straight to your door. No way. It's time. When you were a member of these typical dairy associations, when you were in commercial farming, what were the types of things that they would say about farmers who were distributing raw milk?

For the most part, they were crazy people if they did that. My family has been a part of this dairy industry, especially here in Arizona for a long time. I have roots here. I know a lot of farmers here. I have a lot of respect for the farmers here. I know how hard we work every day. But for me, the system just wasn't working anymore. It wasn't a natural pivot like, Yeah, I'm just getting out of this because I'm going to go and do this now. It was like, that was not the game plan. It just threw some time in talking with my wife and about what's next, what are we going to do? And just trying to, what do you do with a guy who's giftedness is caring for cattle? That's what I do. That's what I know how to do. How can I do that? How can I do something I'm passionate about and that I love? And then bringing in the side of that, My wife loves nutrition. It's like, she was actually the one that said, Well, I think we should do raw milk. And I was like, I don't know.

I really didn't know at the beginning, but I know more about milk today than I ever did before. I think just understanding the product, understanding that it is possible. It is possible to put up a beautiful a whole clean product, but it takes a lot of work. It is not for the faint of heart. I mean, you better be all in if you're going to do that. Because the thing of it is, is if somebody does something wrong, if one person does something wrong, it puts a negative light on the entire industry.

Do you think some of these dairy people that are just so up in arms about raw milk and talking about how dangerous it is and stuff, are they just scared that if people have their eyes open to raw milk, that maybe they'll start drawing conclusions to some of the farming practices that they've been using, and they don't want people to start making that connection?

There's always that possibility. But again, I think coming back to, I don't believe that all raw milk is created equal. A friend of mine, he always made has made the quote where he says, There's raw milk for pasteurization, and there's raw milk for consumption. That's a pretty-Self-explanatory.

Yeah.

That's what we do. We do something where we make raw milk for consumption. Really, when you talk about the industry as a whole, anytime, what do we all see? We get the click bait. We see somebody who's mishandling an animal. To paint the entire industry and say, Well, they all do it the same way. I don't know that that's fair. There's always a bad apple in every industry that we're talking about. So I think we got to be gracious about that. I'm not trying to do what that industry is doing, and they're not trying to do what I'm. I'm just trying to stay in my lane and just do what I do well. I don't really care what you're doing over there. I care about what I'm doing and providing a product to my customer base here in Arizona that supports us and our family and our vision and how we produce our products and the quality care that we take every day.

Critics of raw milk say pasturation is no more unnatural than cooking or refrigerating or freezing food. We do all of those things, they'll say, and that is to make food safer to consume. Sure. How dangerous as a raw milk dairy farmer is raw milk?

I say any time you go into a grocery store, you're taking a risk. Unfortunately, raw milk has been painted into a corner that it's the worst. I mean, you have a better chance of getting eating the store-bought lettuce and the cut cantaloupe or any fruits at a grocery store than you do drinking raw milk. We don't even think twice about eating a salad every day. It's raw. Why raw milk? Why is it got to be the villain for everything?

Or deli meat. Boar's Head just recalled how many bajillion pounds of deli meat in the last week that we're filming this because of listeria and different bacteria problems.

Sure. Like I said, if you're doing everything well, and even to take it one step further, my facility, because we partner with Sprouts, we've had to go through major food safety audits. My oldest, all of my girls actually, have all helped. We spent the better part of a year working on a food safety audit for Sprouts. My employee handbook is 165 pages long, if you come to work for me. We're really serious about food safety. I thought we were doing an excellent job before, but what I learned through food safety, even now, is what I thought was excellent. We're even doing an even better job. Again, it's really important that you vet your farmer and know the type of product that you're getting because it's not all created equal. It's nothing that there's anything special about me, but it's just we really take what we do very seriously.

What do you think about the media saying, Anyone promoting raw milk is a political extremist?

There's a lot of extremism out there right now. No, I don't buy it. Like I said, it's back to that same statement. Why does raw milk have to be the villain in this? I don't really look at it as political extremism. We all make choices every day. I mean, a funny thing that people would ask me, it's like, I don't know what your life is outside of on the day-to-day. For For example, if I had someone to ask me and say, Oh, man, your milk's really expensive. I'm like, Okay. But they're standing there and they've got the Vente Starbucks Latte in their hands. I'm like, Hey, what are you drinking? Oh, this Vente Latte. I'm like, Well, what'd that set you back? 6:50. I'm like, Okay. So you're spending $35 a gallon for coffee? And it's like, Oh, my gosh, I never thought about it that way. It's like we all make choices. And so for me, the freedom, it's not extremism. It's a choice. I mean, isn't that the great thing about this country? We all get to have an opinion. We all to choose what we want to do. Love it. You know what I mean?

So don't paint us into our corner.

Does pasteurizing milk change its nutritional value? Why do some anti-raw milk people say that's a myth? It's pasteurization doesn't take any of the nutrients away.

Well, I mean, I would say that's simply not true because it does change it. It absolutely destroy... Like lactase, for example, is completely destroyed during pasteurization. And that's what you need to neutralize lactose. And especially if you're lactose-intolerant, how then could you consume it because your product is heavy lactose? A lot of the proteins are denatured when you pasteurize. It is a very different product because my product is literally alive. When you It's not the milk, it's a probiotic. If you put it under a microscope, you're going to see it moving. It's good bacteria, though.

It's good bacteria. That's the thing is that Americans today, we are not getting any good bacteria. We're keeping our kids inside. They're not allowed to play outside in the mud because that's too dangerous, and who knows what's in that? And then they're not drinking any real drink. They're not eating real food. So they have this... All they're eating is this like cardboard chicken nuggets and Tater Tot every day. There's nothing going on in their gut, and that's why we're getting sick easier. We need some healthy bacteria, right?

Yeah, you do. And that's the thing is that a healthy diet, and it's a process. Anyone who jumps on their health or fitness journey, it's going to take time. If you've destroyed your gut, it's not going to happen overnight. A lot of times people ask me about, I want to start drinking your products, or I want to try that. I'm like, okay, my advice is always start small. Maybe cup, shot glass, just start introducing it into your system. Get it in there, start making those changes. It's going to take time to change your gut health. I'm literally saying it could take years, depending on how much damage that you've done to your gut. Even when we go to the grocery store, where do we shop? We shop on the edges, right? I mean, that's where the food is. Most of the food isn't found in the middle. It's always found on the edges. That's where my family lands. Like I said, it's a choice, but that's what we choose. Other than my mortgage, the most expensive thing in my home is food. We spend a lot of money on quality food, and that's a choice that we make, and it's a good choice, I think.

It's evident in our lifestyles and how we feel.

I was asking you about your farming practices. Would you say that you guys are an organic farm? You had an interesting answer to me that I think is important because a lot of times when we're talking about you need to be finding real food and you can't trust a lot of these brands at the grocery store, people are like, Well, I don't understand. Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to shop? Where do I get food? I'm like, You're a local farmer. But you had an interesting point about, look at the climate that we're in. Sure. This is going to determine different things that you feed your cows, et cetera. Sure. There's also a lot of weird hoops that you have to go through to be considered organic. Correct. That sometimes are a little unnecessary. Sometimes your farming practices could be wonderful, but you just don't have technically the organic label. Could you walk us through?

Right. Yeah. For me, I would say we're an organic hybrid because we live in the desert. I don't think it's sustainable for us to try to pasture animals here. First off, because there's not enough water, and you have to have rights to that water to be able to even grow a pasture, which really isn't sustainable long term. Most of the farming that's done here is... I have a farmer that I've dealt with for a long time. He grows my alfalfa, and it's all non-GMO, and he doesn't spray with crop dusters. I know the farmer, he knows me. He knows it's important for me that this feed get raised a certain way and that it's clean. And so non-GMO, that's what we do there. I don't feed any corn or soy. I only feed barley. Barley is probably one of the oldest grains. It's biblical. You can read about it in there. Barley is a heritage grain. It's never been made into a GMO. It doesn't need to be. It's a winter crop. It grows in the winter, so we're not sitting out there spraying weeds and all the rest of this. And it's natural. A lot of people like to get hung up on this grass-fed, which that's fine.

But grain is a part of a cow's life. If she was out on pasture and we got to the end of a growing season and things are starting to die, what happens is that grass forms in the form of a seed at the top. Now, all your nutritional value moved up into that seed. So you watch a cow going around, nipping off those seeds because that's where all the energy is. And so for us, back to with this organic, it's like, that's not possible here to do all those things. So I'm not going to do that because we bring the feed to them. The The bigger one for me is just in treatment of cattle. In the last 10 years, I've had two cows that I've had to treat. That doesn't maybe not sound like a big deal to you, but that's pretty incredible because that's not a lot of sickness.

The farm people are like, Oh, that's good. That's real good.

Yeah. For me, even at that, it was like they had a foot problem. But in an organic facility, I would not have the ability to treat that animal. Therefore, she would probably either be cold out of the herd or she would be moved to if it was a farm that actually had an organic and/or conventional site, they'd move her over there and she's no longer in organic production. That's not fair to the cow. It's not fair to me. I'm like, there's just too much stuff where there's no flexibility in it. I think organic was started with the right mindset, but like anything else, it's been you try to capitalize on it and then it's about money, and it's about all this. I'm like, Man, I don't need somebody else telling me how to do something. I know how to care for cows.

Do you know for a fact as a farmer that some of these brands that are like, pasture-raised, organic, whatever, big name brands that are in every grocery store across the nation are absolutely doing horrible farming practices. We're all getting duped.

There's always going to be a Walmart, right? Right. I mean, it's just part of our society. And it's the same with milk. You know what I mean? And the reality of it is that there are fewer small farms. And who's left is they've been merging together for the last almost 70 years now. Even back to when my grandfather, Derry. Just smaller farms are out, get a little bigger, get a little bigger. And that's just the way it is in society. So it's like, you can have a 10,000 cow organic facility. I mean, tell me, I guess it's possible. But again, it's like, I think in the statutes right now for organic, a cow has to be on pasture for 120 days to be classified as organic. Okay, fair enough. But I mean, how do you rotate 10,000 cows out on pasture?

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What is the truth about listeria in raw milk? The truth about listeria? Well, I would say how it got piggybacked onto raw milk would probably be because of queso fresco. Queso Fresco. Queso Fresco day cheese, typically made with raw milk, which is very popular in Latin culture. And so what happens is a lot of times people come here from other countries and, Oh, I always had queso fresco. Well, in the US, a lot of times, they refer to it as bathtub cheese, because some of those, maybe they worked at a dairy farm. They snuck out five gallons of milk from the farmer, poured it in the bathtub at home, made queso fresco, gave it to their friends and whatever else, and then you're sick. That's where listeria really tie it in, especially when you hear about it with raw milk, it's typically because of queso fresco. Now they make queso fresco that's pasteurized. It's literally day cheese because you can make it in a day. That's not really what I think as far as consumption, as far as fluid milk. Listeria is really not on my radar, but I think it really is more tied into the cheese production of queso fresco.

If you went to the CDC, that's probably what you'd see. It's about day cheese.

What is the difference between A1, A2, and raw milk?

It's a casing. So you have A1, A2 casing. And a lot of that comes back to, I would say, where we ended with more A1 casing is probably because of breeding. So if you have, and especially in larger, I guess, larger demographic of breeds, say Holsteins, the Black and Whites, and or Jersey's. There's just a lot more of them out there in the US. If you have a stud, which is the... He's the one that they're collecting the semen from, and he's an A1 producer. Then you've got a thousand dairies that breed to that particular stud, and they all have who knows how many cows they have. You could end up with 100, 200,000 daughters out of a particular bull who's an A1 carrier, which then they pass that on to their progeny, and it keeps going. You really have to be selective as far as A1, A2. Brown-swiss, which I milk, are historical A2 producers. Even the bulls that I use within our breeding program, they're A2 carriers. And a lot of that is infused with European genetics because the difference between the US and Europe is I think the US, we have a, at times, better-looking animal as far as visual.

Europe has always been known for their health traits. And so A2 is very common in Europe. Longevity, just the health of the animal. So I like to infuse that European blood into my cows. That's what I'm currently doing right now. When I talk about A1, A2, to me, the bigger thing is, I know you can consume raw milk. If you still can't consume raw milk, let's talk about Cacing, and that might be A1, A2. But the jury's out for me as far as A2. I know I can test a cow, and she can say that she's A2. The gentleman who originally started the A2 Milk Company, when it was a big craze, when it first started, I thought it was ironic that all the data was his data. He was the one that created all the data that back the A2 Milk Company at the beginning. Stop. Yeah. For me, I was always a a little bit like, okay, I know that Guernsey's produce 90% A2 milk, so the other 10% is A1. When we pull this test and say that cow's A2, Is she 90% A2 and 10% of her milk is A1? What is it?

Is it 100%? What's the metric?

But is there a level like A1 is regular, it's good, and then you have A2 better, and then raw is best? Do you see it that way, or is it like that's not how it works?

Honestly, for me, I look at it, is it raw? It's probably your best. If you don't want to do the raw, I think a lot of people pivoted to drinking A2 milk. That was, Well, I'm not going to do raw, so I'm going to drink A2 milk.

Because that's another thing. Some people that have milk issues end up being able to drink A2, right?

I've heard that. Maybe. I would find that interesting just because, like said, even that A2 milk, if it's been pasteurized, it's going to be heavy to lactose. There's nothing in there to reduce that. I don't know if it's taken- If you're lactose-intolerant, raw milk, you should really try it and see that might be your best bet. It could work for you. I mean, it is definitely possible.

Do you cook with raw milk?

Our family personally does because it's the only milk in the house. Because it's just there. Now, I believe that that's not necessary, especially if you're going to be baking.

Because that pasteurizes it, right? Correct. Okay. If you put raw milk in hot coffee. Is that pasteurizing it?

It's a VAT pasteurization for sure.

Yeah. Okay. Thank God I'm putting raw milk in aniced chai because then I'm getting the benefits. But if you're putting raw milk in hot coffee, it's basically you might as well just have regular milk?

It's definitely going to change the consistency.

Oh, my best friend, Nicole, is going to be devastated. What does raw milk taste like?

In my opinion, it tastes better than what you can get in the store. And there's a A couple of reasons for that. I think the breed is important, and I know I'm harping on my brown swivel out here today, but I think they make the best tasting milk. For me, it's the perfect balance of fat and protein. What the customer needs to understand, too, is when you go to the grocery store, and if you buy whole milk at a grocery store, any whole milk that's in there, it's 3.25% butter fat. That's what the government says you get. That's what constitutes it. When you see whole milk, 2%, 1%, so whole milk is 3.25% butter fat, 2% is 2% butter fat, 1% on down. With my cows, we don't standardize. When I use the term standardize, that means that I don't take anything out of the milk. On average, like Brown-Swiss produce about 4.5% butter fat. I'm giving you all of that extra butter fat. That's a part of your bottle. You're getting everything from me. I'm not taking anything from you. You're getting it just how it was. It's not homogenized. I haven't crushed the fat globules It just blends together nicely.

For me, I would say it's just this sweet taste, and how you feed them varies. If you drink milk from cows that are out on pasture and eating something, It's going to taste a little bit more earthy. It just does. What you feed the cows definitely changes what it's going to taste like.

It is a real thing that the raw milk will taste totally different depending on who the farmer is, in my opinion. I tried a different local raw milk. It was so gross to me. It tasted almost like they were adding vanilla flavoring in it. I don't know how to explain it. It was not natural. It was just weird. I almost wanted to call them and be like, What are you feeding them just for my own sanity? I just didn't understand why this milk tasted so sugary. I didn't like it. Then I went and tried yours. I picked it up at Sprouse, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, it's so good. People ask me, What does raw milk taste like? I'm It just tastes like milk. Sure. But better. The milk you are used to having, to me, is just better, maybe a tad creamier, but it's just the same. But I could taste a difference. It was not the same, that other milk. See, then I was just like, That's not the farm for me. Now, I have coworkers who love that farm raw milk, and that's the milk that they like. I'm like, It's not for me.

But you have to try different raw milk from your different local farmers and see which taste you like.

And that's it. And it doesn't need to be like, Well, we hate that farm, love this farm, whatever. If that farm works for you, cool. You know what I mean? If you like my milk, great. But you don't need to badmouth me and say, My milk is not good, or whatever. It's just like, It's not a good fit for me. I don't like it. Not a good fit.

And one person asked me, they were like, What does it mean if your raw milk tastes oily?

If you have a lot more fat... So let's just say, for example, on average, let's say my brown Swiss produced four and a a half % butter fat. Other breeds can produce up to 6 %. So that's like an oil slick. That's what I would say. So that oily taste is because there's so much fat in that milk that it almost has this... You know how when butter gets stuck in your mouth. It's that slick taste.

And you guys also sell kefir. We do. What is that?

So that is a cultured milk product. We add cultures to the milk and we set it, and it sits for 48 hours. Ours at an ambient temperature. It has the consistency, probably, of a Greek yogurt when we first start to churn it. We mix it all up, and then we run it through our fillers, and it's a live probiotic. It has 13 different probiotic bacterias in it. If you were to buy a yogurt in the store, it's going to maybe have one or two strains of beneficial bacteria. Ours has 13. It's a superfood. It is something that you definitely want to start in slowly with. Small doses. Because if you've not had it, it will work in your body.

So you just pour a little shot glass?

That's what I always tell people when you're starting. If you want to start drinking kefir, you should start small. My wife uses it in smoothies. She makes mashed potatoes with it. She makes salad dressing with it. There's a lot of places you can sub it in and sub out. If something calls for mayonnaise, we'll show you kefir. You can use it anywhere.

What kinds questions should you ask a dairy farmer before buying raw milk from them?

What are your milking practices? How do you milk? What are your bottling practices? How long? This is really, really, really, really important, how long does it take your milk to get down to below 40 degrees? Because cold is your friend with raw milk. It really is. A cow's natural body temperature is 101.5. That's her temperature. When that milk comes out of that cow, it's over 100 degrees. I have something in my barn, it's called a plate cooler. When the milk enters the plate cooler, it goes through a series of plates. By the time, and this is instantaneous, and it comes out the other side, it's 40 degrees. My milk is cold immediately, and then it goes into a bulk tank until we package that milk and ship it to Sprouts. And then from there, it gets cooled down anymore, but it's instantaneous. So like, anything when you start, if it takes, say someone's milking in their backyard, and we put it in the mason jars and we put it in our fridge. Okay, that's cool. Maybe even if they use an ice bath, we got it down to 70. Well, now we set it in the fridge and it takes another three hours.

It's going to grow. It just is because it's alive. It's going to continue to grow. Cold is your friend. I would want to know how that's being handled. Feed is obviously, to me, is probably one of the biggest things. What do you feed your cows? I want to know what you're feeding them. That's important to me because whatever you put into the cow is what's going to come out of her. If you came to my facility right now and you watched us milking cows, I would describe it as prepping for surgery. That's what it looks like in my barn. It's not a race. We're all about excellence in there. It is very boring and it's very tedious, but we do every step of the process with excellence, and it takes a long time to milk our cows because we're all about the quality. I don't think all raw milk is created equal. I just don't. To say that all of it is safe, I can't make that statement.

No, I wouldn't either. People always ask me that, Well, how do you know it's safe? I'm like, It's as safe as the farmer in their practices. Correct. These outlets that paint me up to be so crazy and like, This is so dangerous. You're putting your audience in danger by telling them to drink raw milk. I'm like, But I am also telling them, No, you're farmer. How are they farming? I would never say... I trust getting raw milk from a farmer that's farming with decent farming practices. I would trust that milk more than I would pasteurize just because it's pasteurized from one of these big companies at a factory farm. I mean, that's just me. Sure. I wanted to ask you about how you could have two different farms raw milk. In one of them, the expiration date will be a lot shorter than the other. Why?

Well, I mean, again, I think it comes down to the type of quality that you're putting up. For Like my farm, we ship out samples to a third-party lab. A lot of some other farms, they say, Well, we do on-farm testing, which is great. There's nothing wrong with that. I think that's just another tool. But I think you always run the risk of being a little partial to yourself. It's like, You know what? I'm going to have a third party go ahead and take a look at this and verify the data. Even to take it one step further, my facility, in particular here in Arizona, I am a state-certified inspected facility. I have the state of Arizona at my place every month pulling bulk tank samples, pulling finished product samples. It doesn't matter what I say. It's whatever the state lab says. That's a lot. There's a lot of pressure. It's like, we are always looking at, I'm not going to wait for the state to tell me if I have a problem or anything like that. We send out our samples and we look at it. But to answer your question about as far as how long it lasts, you should easily be able to get two weeks out of a bottle.

Okay. If you're not, there's something's probably not quite right. When I first started at the beginning, and I'm not encouraging this in any way, but we kept a bottle in our fridge, and we kept sending out samples every week on that same bottle, and that bottle was still good a month and a half later. The quality of the product that you put up, the lower your bacterial count numbers, the longer it's going to last.

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Honestly, we looked at glass in the beginnings. A couple of things about glass. Glass is very heavy. There really is no new technology as far as how to clean glass. There's one large dairy here in Arizona that bottles glass. The piece of equipment that they have was probably made in the '50s. It's a glass bottle washer. They're very expensive. What I've noticed in glass in the past, and I've known some other raw milk dairies across the country who bottle in glass, and they've had problems to know that that bottle is actually clean. That's what scares me, is just that I want to know. I can spend all the time in the world to get this beautiful product put up and and know that everything's right and then wonder or not whether my glass is clean. That spooks me a little bit.

But don't the people just buy it and take it home? What's the clean part, I guess?

The clean part is that you need to have this super clean vessel. And so if I'm using reusable glass, how do I know that his glass bottle washer is... I don't know their production, how they do things at their farm. I've seen glass bottles at a grocery store. Not everybody is considerate and washes them out and brings them back to the grocery store. I've seen bottles in a store that got milk sitting in them that looks like it's been baked in there for two weeks. Am I hoping you got that clean when you put more milk back in it? I mean, that's just me. We use a BAP-free plastic. There are things that we're looking at as far as pivoting into that I think it's going to be a better thing for the future. We have a lot of changes happening at our right now. Really? Yeah. Stay tuned.

Pink milk cows, maybe, or something?

No, but there's a lot of great things. To be here today, to be talking to you, it's like my son-in-law Dylan started working with me. I don't know about... It's been six months now. The reason that I was able to get here early today is because he's at the farm. He's out there feeding cows this morning. Shout out Dylan. Yeah. He's coming alongside and taking some stuff off of my plate because when I can do my best work is when I have a second to think. Sure.

Yeah, I'm the same way.

Yeah. We've got a lot of things that are in store.

We talked about how different nutrients are zapped during pasteurization. What are the nutrients in raw milk?

If you look at it from a nutritional standpoint, you've got your different proteins and calcium. There's all this host of all these different makeup of milk. It is a nutritional not necessarily perfect food. But what happens, like you said, when you pasteurize, it's just you're denaturing stuff and or you're killing it in the process. And so that's why I always come back to it's just like, live product, dead product. I really think the live product is probably better for me.

Do you think that families that buy conventional milk at the store are basically just wasting their money? They're just buying expensive water?

It depends. I think that comes back to where it's like a choice, right? I'm sure you have people that tell you, Man, I don't have any money. Okay. I don't judge you on how you choose to spend your money. It's like, you can say you don't have anything, but I see you've got this in your hand. We're willing to sacrifice for the food in our house over other things or activities or whatever else. It's more important to me. I can't judge you. If you want to buy store bought milk, fair enough. Some people, maybe that's just what it is. That's what they can afford. I feel like we all have to prioritize what's important to us.

Speak on it, Rick.

For me, it's just about food is just is so important. We were talking about this earlier when we first got here. It's just like, I have a family of girls. I have three daughters. I'm big. I'm into girls, and I'm all about women. Doing this and with my oldest, I got my first grandson coming in in November. It's just like, I want young women, the next generation of young women, when they're families, to be educated and to try to make the best decisions that they can for their family in regards to food, because we're all doing our best, and we're out here, we're on your podcast We're looking for information. You're out there trying to get it all to us and help us understand and see, Hey, I found this or whatever else. It's like, All right, we're all moving in the same direction, and there's going to be grace through that, and we're going to pivot, and there's things Oh, that doesn't work for me. This works for me. But yeah, I really believe that food is critical, and we're going to continue to do what we're doing, Lord willing.

Are you scared that we could have another almost food supply chain collapse if we have another pandemic?

It was really interesting during COVID. And not to make light of everybody's situation was different, but for us, we never stopped working.

Had Joel Salitan on? Mm-hmm. He said exact same thing.

It was insane. We would take product to the grocery store, and we would get a call, typically two hours later, that they were sold out of product. Could you please bring more? And we had people buying our milk that had never bought it before because it was the only milk that was left on the shelf at the time, probably because it was the most expensive.

Well, and they were scared like, what the heck is the raw milk?

People were like, Hey, I just bought this bottle, and, Can you tell me what it is? What's the deal? We want to create a beautiful product that's done done that is created with perfection to the best of my manmade abilities. And so we're really working hard, and we're trying to bring more product into the market. But it's really been interesting how, yeah, it's just COVID really opened a lot of people's eyes.

Did you see an explosion in the last couple of years of people wanting raw milk? Like, you get phone calls like crazy?

Yeah, it really has been pretty much an explosion is a good-That's great. Yeah, because it's been pretty crazy.

How How does somebody find raw milk if it's not legal in their state?

Well, the biggest thing I'd say is you can go to a Real Milk Finder, and Real Milk Finder will show you wherever your state is, county, you can click on it. It'll take you there and show you who's doing it. Every state is different. The rules are different. Might be called pet food. Correct. It could be pet food. It could be a herd share where you buy a percentage of that animal and that farmer takes care of for you and you get so much milk. That, to me, has been the best way to find milk in your state.

If raw milk isn't legal in somebody's state and they really want it to be, who do they call? What do they say to their local people in office?

I really think if you're going to get any major movement, you're going to have to go to the federal level, and it's going to be like talking to Senator Rand or something like that. You're going to need to get some big guns behind to really try to push that forward. But obviously, it's a state-by-state issue. I think the more that if you band together and people keep going and pushing, because I know it's been legalized in a few more states here recently, I think Iowa recently is. Louisiana. Louisiana. I think New Mexico, it was legal, but the shelf life was super short. I think they've gotten that change now where they can have a normal shelf life.

Would Sprouts allow you to sell raw milk ice cream, you think, one day?

It's tricky Because with raw milk ice cream, all ice cream is supposed to be pasteurized. I don't know that that's going to change. See, because one of the things you talk about, it's not up to Sprouts, it's really up to the PMO. That's a pasteurized milk ordinance. Those are rules that are set up for dairy nationally. For me, it's like even me doing raw milk, I still fall under this PMO. I'm held to all the standards. I am producing a product under the standards of the pasteurized milk ordinance, except I don't pasteurize. So my levels have to be all below what it would be for pasteurized milk, and I accomplished that.

If you had one remedy to heal a sick culture, and that could be physically, emotionally, or even spiritually, what would it be?

Yeah. Well, we're going biblical now.

Sure. Yeah.

It's the great healer. Yeah, that's having a personal relationship with Jesus. That's what that is. Is it? Sorry. He is the great healer because we live in a fallen world. In this side of heaven, we're not going to have all the answers of why certain things happen and why we have to deal with them. But when I look at this, this is practice life, and I'm just passing through. I want to be a good steward of what he's entrusted me with. I told producer Katie, there's nothing special about me. I'm just a man who milks cows, and I'm thankful that the Lord saw fit. That's he was going to allow me to do.

So beautiful. It's the best answer we've had so far this season. Oh, so good. Okay, so what is your website? Instagram? Do you know all that stuff?

Yeah. So you can find us online at www. Fondolacfarm. Com. We also, too, are on Instagram at Fondolac Farms. We'll have photos up there where you can take a look at what we're doing on our farm. Yeah, so those are the main two avenues right now.

And it's F-O-N-D-U-L-A-C.

F-o-n-d-u, two Ds.

Oh, you're right. F-o-n-d-d-u-l-a-c. Okay, yes.

Yeah, F-A-R-M-S.

And all the links are in the show notes. You can find farm website, Instagram, all that stuff. And also, if you're traveling to Arizona When I get asked, I'm just in town for a week on vacation or whatever, I'm in Scottsdale, where can I get raw milk? You can go to Sprouts, but they are out. You got to start giving more. I mean, I know you're like, Stop putting pressure on. We're doing what we can. But, Rick, if you are not there on the day it is delivered or the morning after it is gone. I know.

We are definitely... That is something we are working very hard at right now. So, yeah, please be patient with us. There's a lot in store, Lord willing, coming forward.

Butter coming soon?

It's been talked about, but like I said, there's a lot on the horizon. All right.

Just be patient with us. Awesome. Thank you so much, Rick, for coming on Culture Apothecary.

I appreciate it. Excellent. Wow. As you heard, Rick brought his entire family to watch his film.

His wife, his grown daughters, even their husbands came. They prayed over the episode as a family, and our crew before we filmed, they were just the sweetest family ever. Come to find out one of his daughters works at Habit Salon in Gilbert, Arizona, which is where I go. Absolutely crazy small world. If there were any raw milk questions that didn't get answered, ask them in the cute serve at his Facebook group, which is where all the women who are fans of my show gather to make friends, get advice, and discuss the show. The link is in the description. If you love this episode, you will love my interview with Rancher AJ Richards from last December on the fragility of the food chain in America. New episodes of Culture Apothecary drop every Monday and Thursday night at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific with a mission to heal a sick culture. Please leave a five-star review if you enjoyed this episode with Rick. I'm Alex Clarke, and this is Culture Apothecary.