Underground dairy? A look inside the demand for raw milk in Alberta

On a sunny suburban street in Calgary at midday, two vans are parked next to a sidewalk scrawled with children's chalk drawings.

Customers approach carrying bags stuffed with empty, litre-sized mason jars. Most stop to chat for a moment before returning to their cars with full jars, discreetly tucked away. 

The man who owns the vans is a farmer, and the product he's delivering to dozens of Calgarians each week is illegal: raw milk.

Within the hour, the farmer is visited by a stream of customers — couples with dogs, mothers with their children, a neighbour from across the street. 

It's against the law to buy and sell raw milk in Canada, and has been since 1991, when the federal government banned its sale due to concerns of food-borne illnesses. 

Pasteurization is a process that involves heating raw milk to at least 63 C to kill harmful bacteria, such as salmonella and E. coli, which can cause serious illness. 

"Pasteurization ensures the milk we drink is safe," reads the Government of Canada's website.

Despite these concerns, the raw milk trade maintains a low-profile existence in Alberta, with goat and cow milk stealthily sold away from the gaze of regulators. Raw milk advocates are lobbying legislators across the country to repeal laws preventing its sale.

Citing recent legalization in the U.S., longtime proponents of raw milk are riding a new wave of momentum, one that has found traction on social media, where it fits into wider lifestyle narratives of health-consciousness, "trad wives," and defying government control. 

"I think that the main argument for legalization is that people are doing it anyway," said Golda David, an Albertan representative of an advocacy group called the Canadian Artisan Dairy Alliance (CADA).

"You could spend all the money on cracking down and making sure that there's punitive consequences for selling it. Or you could legalize it, regulate it and make it safe."

David runs a Facebook page called Raw Milk Alberta. She says the aim is to educate people about how to consume raw milk safely and connect customers with sellers. 

Around this time last year, David said the page had about 4,000 group members. This year, that number has nearly doubled, up to 7,800.

"We get about 400 applications for the Raw Milk Alberta page every two weeks," said David. "I only started that group two years ago. That's a big jump and it's growing faster now."