Over the past fifty years, Johnson writes, the rate of autoimmune disorders in developed countries (multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s diseases, allergies) has risen at startling rates. Could it be possible, he posits, that our avoidance of bacteria, our determination to sterilize our surroundings, has actually weakened our immune systems?

Of course it could. And rather than blame raw milk for the illness it occasionally causes, maybe we’re the ones to blame for getting ill. “Look, if I made four kids sick, I made four kids sick,” says Mark McAfee, the owner of a Californian raw-milk dairy to whom a 2006 E. coli outbreak was traced. “But show me the 50,000 kids I made healthy. We aren’t worried about the 0.001 percent chance that someone will get sick; we are worried about the 99 percent assurance that you are going to get sick if you eat a totally sterile, anonymous, homogenous diet.”

E. coli, in fact, evolved in grain-fed cattle, an animal that only exists due to our insatiable desire for cheap food. A 2002 survey by the USDA found E. coli on more than half of the 500+ cow farms that they tested. So of course we pasteurize. But this puts farmers “who emphasized animal health and cleanliness…at a disadvantage to those who simply pushed for greater production,” whatever the method.

In the end, however, as conventional dairy farmer Brent Stoker admits, “cheap food makes for expensive health care.” The efficiencies we thought we were making aren’t quite as absolute as we thought, even though under the status quo, it would be unthinkable to revert to being a raw milk nation. Yet yogurt giants like Dannon are realizing the benefits of bacteria, and re-introducing pro-biotic bacteria into our foods, albeit in a totally artificial way.

The present system is contorted and synthetic, and makes sense only in economic terms (where it makes perfect sense). Johnson’s article is an eloquent, cohesive exploration of how we got here, but it doesn’t tell us where to go next.

And where is that? In my case, straight to a healthy cow. I always knew, despite my mother’s threats, that my low standards of personal hygiene would pay off someday!