This week on Straight, No Chaser, Katy Keiffer has an in-depth conversation on raw milk and food borne illness with Bill Marler, the managing partner of the Seattle law firm Marler and Clark, and a nationally recognized expert in food safety. Tune in and learn about some of historical context behind raw milk and some of its inherent risks. Can we find a safe way to distribute raw milk? Is the risk worth the reward? What other problems do we face concerning food borne illness? Find out the answers to these questions and more! This program was sponsored by Fairway Market.

"People read studies the way they want to read them. There are some nutritional enzymes that are denatured during pasteurization, but those are things that can be picked up in other food items that don't carry as high a risk as raw milk."

"The difficulty with food borne illness analysis is that most people don't report mild illnesses."

"You have to look at raw milk from a historical perspective. The rational for pasteurization was that in the teens and twenties, the major causes of food borne illness and death was consuming raw milk."

"I think you will see a continued development of states dealing with the raw milk issue."

--Food borne illness lawyer Bill Marler on Straight, No Chaser