In many respects, the lengthy feature on raw milk in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, one of Germany’s most prominent and prestigious newspapers, looks and sounds like what you’d see in The New York Times or the Washington Post or ProPublica. It came to me courtesy of a good German friend, Reiner Wadel; he’s a retired math teacher who lives in my mother’s home town of Darmstadt, which is near Frankfurt, and he’s a loyal reader of the Frankfurt paper.

A few similarities to typical American profiles:

*There’s a cutesy heading: “The charm of the unspoiled: This milk one can drink raw”. A subheading says a little more: “There is a strong desire for unprocessed foods. But what does that mean, exactly? We visit one of only nine farms in Germany that are allowed to sell raw milk.

*There are pretty pictures of dairy cows being milked and of a farm family committed to raw dairy

*And there’s lovely language extolling the beauty of the tradition and the attractive lifestyle of the farm life. The article begins with a long description of the farm’s oldest “employee”—one of its dairy cows, Monika, that has been giving milk for 18 years.

It communicates that raw milk is highly regulated:

“The requirements for raw milk are strict; only nine farms nationwide are allowed to sell raw milk as so-called “premium milk.” In Bavaria, there is only one: the Lerf Dairy in Ottobeuren….If you were looking for a place that captures Bavaria’s balance between living tradition and stereotype, this wouldn’t be a bad choice. Still, that’s not entirely true: You’ll also find electric cars and solar panels here. Michael Lerf is the fourth generation to run the farm here, which his great-grandparents once bought.”

It isn’t until deep into the lengthy article that we get to safety and risks, and here the language is different from what you find in the U.S. There are no interviews with people who got sick or had a child who got sick. There is no hype that raw milk will prevent and/or cure various illnesses. The language is factual, and straightforward. No one suggests “You are gonna die!!”:

“Farmers must pay close attention to the health of their animals. A veterinarian visits regularly to inspect the herd. Every two days, the farmers send samples to the lab to have their milk tested for possible bacteria; sick cows are not allowed to produce premium milk.

“ ‘We have to work with extreme cleanliness,’ says Michael Lerf. This applies in particular to milking in the morning and evening. The udders must be clean and are pre-milked. This involves manually expressing the first few sprays of milk by hand before the actual milking begins. Only then does the milk from the milking parlor go to the farm’s own bottling facility in the adjacent building, where it is filtered through metal screens and cooled to four degrees (C).

“But even with scrupulous adherence to all hygiene and precautionary measures, raw milk can contain disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli or Listeria. For this reason, doctors strongly advise certain people against consuming it: ‘Especially during pregnancy, raw milk should be strictly avoided,’ says Hans Hauner, senior professor at the Technical University of Munich and director of the Else Kröner Fresenius Center for Nutritional Medicine, ‘because it can lead to serious complications.’ “

“The product is also not suitable for people with chronic illnesses or children. Although there are studies suggesting that children who grow up on farms and drink raw milk are less prone to allergies, nutritional medicine specialist Hauner views this as “at best, weak evidence,” and believes the risks outweigh any potential benefits.

“Despite objections from the field of nutritional medicine, raw milk products enjoy steady popularity. Many see them as something authentic, something that has become rare in an age of maximum technological possibilities, in which processing is the norm—especially when it comes to food.”

Two other aspects of regulation worth noting: Raw milk sold in German stores have a very brief shelf life: 96 hours (four days) from milking. But raw milk kefir, can, and is, sold with much less stringent rules; in the U.S., raw milk kefir is nearly prohibited, except in California, and even there, it must be significantly processed.

I’d call this article pretty objective. Its big benefit is that it is free of the hysteria that has so seriously infected not only America’s raw milk debate, but pretty much everything that happens in the U.S.