The contested terrain of biological citizenship in the seizure of raw milk in Athens, Georgia

•Biological citizenship highlights how people orient to state exercise of biopower.•Biological citizenship highlights both truth and rights discourses in biopolitics.•Raw milk drinkers create biosocialities to pluralize scientific knowledge.•Biopower can work to disrupt biosocial networks based on alternative views of health.

This paper examines a raw milk seizure in Athens, Georgia, USA, and its aftermath as a moment of contention over the contours of biological citizenship. Conflicts around the sale of raw milk are flashpoints in a biopolitical struggle over who decides what constitutes health or disease in the food system. Drawing on Rose's (2006) framework, the paper illuminates how discourses of life, health and disease are used by the state in expressions of biological citizenship 'from above', and interpreted by raw milk consumers in acts of individual and biosocial citizenship 'from below'. We argue that regulations restricting access to raw milk rest on a view of Pasteurian science as unproblematic, while efforts to expand market access to raw milk represent efforts to pluralize biological truth and introduce post-Pasteurian views into decision-making arenas.