Most of the milk from the dairy cows on South Pork Ranch ends up pasteurized — heat-treated to reduce the chance that the people who drink it will get sick.
But every month, 300 gallons of the milk are sold raw, much of it to about five dozen regular customers who arrive at the central Illinois farm toting their own containers to tap the creamy drink from a squat, stainless-steel vat in a room next to the milking stalls.
That choice has put the farm's owners, Keith Parrish and Donna O'Shaughnessy, at the center of a particularly American food fight between passionate defenders of personal choice and health officials who warn that drinking farm-fresh milk can be life-threatening.
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