Wales Raw Milk Laws & Regulations

Wales permits the direct sale of raw drinking milk on essentially the same terms as England, though the sector is much smaller. Only a handful of the 149 establishments on the Food Standards Agency register as at 1 March 2026 were in Wales, so buyers in much of the country face a long drive to the nearest registered holding.

How you can buy it

Permitted routes match those in England: direct from the farm gate, from a farm shop, vending machine or bed and breakfast within the curtilage of the holding, via internet sales placed with the holding, from a farmers market stall, and through a distributor selling direct to the final consumer. Sale through supermarkets and general retail is prohibited.

The rules producers work to

Wales has its own devolved food hygiene legislation, the Food Hygiene (Wales) Regulations 2006, but the practical requirements mirror England's. Schedule 6 of those regulations sets the same microbiological standards: plate count at 30°C no greater than 20,000 CFU/ml and coliforms below 100 CFU/ml. Retained EU law adds the herd-level somatic cell count and plate count requirements, and holdings are inspected roughly twice yearly through combined hygiene audits.

The statutory health warning applies to raw milk from all farmed species, including sheep, goat and buffalo: "This milk has not been heat treated and may contain organisms harmful to health." As in England, enforcement is split, with the FSA responsible for raw cows' drinking milk and local authorities for other species.

Finding a producer

Welsh producers appear in the same monthly FSA open dataset as English and Northern Irish holdings, with address, species and compliance rating. For the wider picture, see the United Kingdom raw milk laws overview.