President-elect Donald Trump campaigned in part on the promise to “Make America Healthy Again.” That pledge attracted voters engaged in a growing national battle over our food. They claim the government is making it hard to buy food that’s safer and more nutritious while force-feeding us a diet that’s unhealthy and causing chronic diseases.

Among them are advocates of raw milk. I recently traveled to Brandywine in Prince George’s County where the owner of P.A. Bowen Farmstead, Sally Morell, praises the benefits of raw or “unpasteurized” cow milk, while others say it can cause serious illness.

“[Raw milk] strengthens the gut wall, kills pathogens,” Morell said. “And then in human studies — and these were done in Europe in the last couple of decades — we have less asthma, less respiratory disease, and less allergies. Fewer allergies in children brought up on raw milk.”

More states have been legalizing the sale of raw milk products — responding to growing consumer demand. But in Maryland, there’s still a ban on selling raw milk products for people to eat and drink.

As with many such farms, the raw milk sold at Morell’s farm is labeled “for pet consumption only,” avoiding the issue of regulation. What customers do with the milk is their own business.

“Recently there’s been this big push to tell people that raw milk is dangerous,” Morell said. “But we have probably 20 million people drinking raw milk in this country who know that that’s not true.”

Sarah Sorscher has a different view. She’s with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food watchdog group. They’re against a growing push to put raw milk on more of America’s grocery shelves.

“It’s become an issue recently because a number of states are passing laws that open up the market for retail sales of raw milk,” she said. “But when we’re talking about putting it on grocery store shelves, you have consumers who may have no experience with the product being exposed to that risk, and we’re going to see more illness, more hospitalization, and potentially more deaths as a result of these policies.”

Sorscher says milk in its raw state contains bacteria that can be harmful, like pathogenic E. coli.

“When they looked at the amount of raw milk that’s being sold versus pasteurized, and they compare that to the outbreak rate, they found that raw milk is 150 times more likely to cause an outbreak than pasteurized milk,” she said. “So there’s certainly a potential to have more illness if the sale is expanded.”

Pasteurized milk also sometimes can come with problems, Sorscher said.

“With pasteurized milk, there can be contamination after the pasteurization occurs,” she said. “And so you could still have issues from that. But the scope and scale is really far reduced by the pasteurization process.”

Delaware recently passed a bill to allow sales of raw milk. In the meantime, the FDA announced it will soon start testing raw milk for bird flu.

“Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” airs at 10 a.m. Sunday, WBFF (Channel 45) and WJLA (Channel 7).