Scotland Raw Milk Laws & Regulations

Scotland is the outlier in the United Kingdom. While England, Wales and Northern Ireland license and publish a register of raw milk producers, it is a criminal offence in Scotland to place raw drinking milk or raw cream on the market for direct human consumption, whether at the farm gate, through a distributor or online.

The ban

Mandatory pasteurisation of cows' milk was introduced in Scotland in 1983 and extended to all farmed animal species in 2006. No exemption exists for herdshares, cow-share arrangements, on-farm sale or any other direct-to-consumer model, and the prohibition reaches distribution networks and internet sales as well as face-to-face transactions. Food Standards Scotland maintains that mandatory pasteurisation is an effective public health measure and has not signalled any intention to revisit it.

Raw milk cheese is a different matter

The ban applies to drinking milk, not to cheese. Unpasteurised cheese may be made and sold in Scotland, and the country has a significant artisan raw milk cheese sector including well known blue and hard cheeses. The UK imposes no blanket 60 day aging requirement of the kind used in the United States and Canada, so Scottish makers can produce styles that would be illegal across the Atlantic.

That sector has had to defend its position. In 2019 a group of five Scottish producers, including Errington Cheese, Isle of Mull Cheese, Galloway Farmhouse Cheese, Cambus O'May and Finlay's Farm, crowdfunded a legal challenge against Food Standards Scotland guidance they argued departed from wider industry practice and would make raw milk cheese production in Scotland unviable. FSS issued a revised second version of the guidance and the producers dropped the action.

Attempts to change the law

Pressure to align Scotland with the rest of the UK has been persistent and unsuccessful. Petition PE1978, asking the Scottish Parliament to allow raw milk sales in line with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, was closed by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee on 28 June 2023 under Rule 15.7, after submissions from Food Standards Scotland, Dairy UK and the NFU. The Scottish Government's position was that given the weight of expert opinion favouring mandatory pasteurisation there were no plans to lift the ban.

Two further petitions were lodged with the UK Parliament in early 2026, one seeking to lift the ban on regulated sales and another framing the issue as consumer choice. Both were rejected without reaching a government response, on 3 February and 26 February 2026 respectively, on the ground that raw milk policy in Scotland is devolved and therefore a matter for the Scottish Parliament rather than Westminster. Anyone campaigning on this should note that jurisdictional point: only Holyrood can change it.

Availability

There is no legal source of raw drinking milk in Scotland. The nearest registered producers are in northern England, and they appear on the FSA open register. Raw milk cheese is legal and widely available from Scottish makers and cheesemongers. For the wider picture, see the United Kingdom raw milk laws overview.