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Raw milk advocates in West Virginia won a legislative victory in March 2016 with the passage of a bill legalizing the consumption (though not the sale or distribution) of unpasteurized milk in the state, only to suffer a setback days later when some of the delegates who voted on the legislation fell ill after drinking raw milk to celebrate. The bill went forward despite recent research indicating that outbreaks of illness associated unpasteurized milk, which can harbor E. coli and other disease-causing bacteria, have increased with the popularity of raw milk consumption in recent years. The West Virginia law includes precautionary measures such as annual health tests for milk-producing animals aimed at preventing such outbreaks. The incident at the state capitol was made public after the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources received an anonymous tip, according to a report by WSAZ News: Since the law wasn't to go into effect until May, the delegate who distributed the milk, bill sponsor Scott Cadle, was in violation of an existing statute, DHHR stated in a letter announcing the investigation. However, they declined to prosecute or issue a fine because it was his first offense. The results of the health bureau investigation, released a month later, were inconclusive, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported: What the investigators did manage to determine, the Gazette-Mail said, was that out of six delegates who reported symptoms such as diarrhea, fever, and nausea, only three said they had drunk the raw milk, raising serious doubts about the milk being the cause of the illness. One of the roadblocks they encountered was limited cooperation from many of those potentially affected by the outbreak. Only 15 out of 79 people responded to a survey sent to workers at the state capitol, for example. A request for stool samples yielded no takers at all.
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