United Kingdom Raw Milk Laws & Regulations

The United Kingdom operates one of the more permissive raw milk regimes in the English-speaking world, and unusually it publishes exactly who is selling it. Raw drinking milk (RDM, sometimes called green top milk) may be sold direct to consumers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland by producers registered with the Food Standards Agency. Scotland is the sole exception, having banned sale outright since 1983.

Select a nation below for its specific regulations, permitted sales channels, and official government resources.

Is raw milk legal in the UK?

In three of the four nations, yes, subject to registration. The FSA treats raw drinking milk as a high-risk food and applies enhanced controls rather than a prohibition. Producers must be registered, are inspected roughly twice a year through combined hygiene audits, must meet defined microbiological standards, and must carry a statutory health warning. Sale through ordinary supermarkets and general retail remains prohibited: the permitted routes all keep the milk close to the producing holding.

Scotland bans it entirely. Mandatory pasteurisation of cows' milk was introduced there in 1983 and extended to all farmed species in 2006, with no exemption for herdshares, cow-shares, on-farm sale or any other direct model.

The register of producers

The FSA maintains and publishes a monthly open dataset of every registered raw drinking milk establishment in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including trading name, address, species kept and the most recent compliance rating. As of the 1 March 2026 release the register listed 149 establishments, the substantial majority in England, with a small number in Wales and three in Northern Ireland. Of those, 132 kept cows, 14 kept goats, 2 kept sheep and 1 kept buffalo. Compliance ratings were overwhelmingly positive, with 139 rated Broadly Compliant and 4 flagged as needing improvement.

This is a genuinely unusual level of transparency. Few countries publish a live, addressed list of raw milk producers, and it makes the UK sector unusually easy to verify and to find.

Permitted sales channels

FSA guidance sets out the routes by which a registered holding may sell raw cows' drinking milk to the final consumer:

Direct from the farm gate; from a farm shop, a vending machine or a bed and breakfast within the curtilage of the holding; via internet sales from the production holding direct to the consumer; from a stall at a farmers market, which is treated as an extension of the farm gate; and through a distributor selling directly to the final consumer. Doorstep delivery by roundsman in reusable glass bottles also continues.

What is not permitted is sale through general retail. Milk cannot be placed on a supermarket or corner shop shelf, and a vending machine sited away from the holding in a retail outlet is not allowed.

Standards and enforcement

Under Schedule 6 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 and the equivalent Welsh regulations, raw drinking milk must meet a plate count at 30°C of no more than 20,000 CFU/ml and coliforms below 100 CFU/ml. Selling milk breaching those parameters is an offence. Retained EU law (Regulation (EC) No 853/2004) adds herd-level requirements: for raw cows' milk a rolling geometric average somatic cell count at or below 400,000 per ml and plate count at or below 100,000 per ml. Milk from other species has no SCC requirement but a plate count ceiling of 1,500,000 per ml, dropping to 500,000 per ml where the milk is destined for non-heat-treated products such as cheese.

Enforcement is split by species, which catches people out. The FSA is the enforcement authority for raw cows' drinking milk, while local authorities handle raw milk from all other species. Testing is expected through UKAS-accredited laboratories, with samples drawn from the final container or the vending machine so they reflect what the consumer actually receives.

The FSA has been explicit that its tightened approach involved no legislative change, only clearer articulation of existing duties, and it has stated that if these measures do not prove effective it will consider whether further regulatory or legislative measures are required for the sector. That, rather than any announced reform, is the live regulatory risk.

Raw milk cheese

Unpasteurised cheese is legal throughout the United Kingdom, including Scotland, and the UK imposes no blanket 60 day aging rule of the kind used in the United States and Canada. This is why Britain retains a living raw milk cheese tradition, and why Scottish raw milk cheesemakers continue to operate in a country where raw drinking milk cannot be sold at all.