If Thomas Massie is tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be Secretary of Agriculture, at the top of his list of priorities could be a push to end the federal ban on the interstate sale of raw milk.
He’s championed legislation for more than a decade that would allow smaller farmers to take their unpasteurized milk directly to market between states and said it’s personally “done wonders for my health and it’s delicious.”
“A cup of raw milk everyday is one of the best medicines,”
Massie posted in June. Massie’s legislation hasn’t even received a hearing in this Congress, but a Cabinet role would elevate his libertarian vision on an array of issues in which he’d like to see less government regulation and intervention.
While Massie has said he’s open to an appointment in the Trump administration, it’s unclear where his potential candidacy stands. As of last Wednesday, Massie told the Herald-Leader he had not received “commitments or offers from President Trump’s team,” despite social media rumors to the contrary.
The president-elect has named a flurry of appointments since his sweeping victory a week ago, but agriculture secretary isn’t considered as urgent as are his selections to run the State, Defense and Treasury Departments.
About half of states in the country, including Kentucky, prohibit sales of raw milk on the grounds that the unpasteurized version is more vulnerable to pathogens like salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
Nearly 200 people became sick or were hospitalized from a salmonella outbreak tied to unpasteurized milk from a California farm last year.
Still, some scientists say that properly produced unpasteurized milk can provide health benefits unavailable in pasteurized milk.
“My message to Congressman Massie is that producing raw milk for people to drink fresh and unpasteurized requires farmer training on careful production practices,” said Dr. Joseph Heckman, a Rutgers University soil fertility specialist who serves on the board of the Raw Milk Institute. “There needs to be high quality production standards and a reasonable amount of regulation to produce and legally sell low risk raw milk.”
Mary McGonigle-Martin, co-chair of Stop Foodborne Illness, a group dedicated to health safety, argues it’s foolish to end the ban on raw milk.
“It is a high-risk product. You have Amish farmers in Pennsylvania shipping milk to California. The longer it sits in a jug, the pathogens grow. If that milk is contaminated with a pathogen, that’s how people get sick,” McGonigle-Martin said. “You’d never come home with hamburger meat and say, ‘We’re going to eat this raw.’”
What’s also uncertain is how Massie’s checkered relationship with Trump will impact his chances.
Massie was an early endorser of Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire to campaign for him. He waited until Oct. 25 to formally endorse Trump in his race against Kamala Harris.
But over the year, Massie became friendly with Robert Kennedy Jr., the Democratic scion who is expected to have considerable influence over health policy inside a second Trump administration.
Libertarians across the country are attempting to boost Massie’s candidacy.
The Libertarian Party of Idaho declared him “the best man there is to oversee the USDA,” and the Libertarian Party of Iowa called him “a champion for food freedom and raw milk rights.”
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