It’s not raw milk, but it’s the closest thing to it.

Unpasteurised milk will appear on Australian shelves for the first time today after the NSW Food Authority declared cold pressure an effective method of killing the micro-organisms that increase the risk of contracting serious illnesses.

Sydney company Made by Cow uses cold pressure as an alternative to conventional heat pasteurisation and claims that the “cold-pressed raw milk” that results retains the nutrients usually affected by heat.

It also claims that the milk is as raw as ever, which is a little bit disingenuous. If it were, the food authority would have had no choice but to deny it approval. For its part, it claims not to recognise the milk as raw because it has undergone the unique pathogen-eliminating process.

Aficionados have longed claimed that raw milk is richer, creamier and more distinctive than its processed counterpart. They have skirted the laws against it where possible, selling raw milk as “bath milk,” for example, with tongue-in-cheek warning labels claiming it should only be used for “cosmetic purposes”. Every bottle is different, they claim: the taste changes from season to season, from farm to farm, and even from cow to cow—the bovine version of terroir, if you like.

But it also has its attendant risks. In 2014, a three-year-old child died and another four young children fell ill after drinking unpasteurised “bath milk”. CSIRO food microbiologists have claimed there is no evidence to suggest that the health benefits of milk are substantially compromised by pasteurisation.

Which is possibly why Made By Cow’s founder, Saxon Joye, plays up the flavour argument instead.

“This process allows people to enjoy the natural, tasty and nutritious goodness of raw milk, without resorting to the use of heat pasteurisation or homogenisation,” he said.

“We believe this is the first time in the world that high pressure processing has been used for commercial milk.”

High pressure processing has long been used for other food products such as fruit juices.

Made By Cow gets its milk from a single, 250-head Jersey herd near Berry on the NSW south coast. The milk is bottled in Berry before being transported to Sydney’s Homebush, where it undergoes high-pressure treatment.

The milk will be sold in NSW at Harris Farm Market stores and About Life health shops, with each 750ml bottle retailing at $5—noticeably high in a country that’s currently at war with itself over $1-per-litre milk—which Joye said reflects higher production costs.

While it seems safe to say that unpasteurised milk is unlikely to take over Australian fridges just yet, Made By Cow’s product is guaranteed to generate excitement amongst raw milk advocates.

The authority’s decision follows the gradual relaxation of laws surrounding raw-milk cheese production over the past few years.