Even after state officials found multiple batches of raw milk products contaminated by the bird flu virus from Fresno-based Raw Farm, triggering the dairy’s eighth product recall in recent years, CEO Mark McAfee remains defiant about the safety of unpasteurized milk.
“It is certain that decades-old FDA anti-raw-milk policies will shift soon,” according to a statement released to the press by McAfee, who said he has been asked to apply for a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory position by the transition team for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time Raw Farm customer and President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mark McAfee stands in the pasture with a few of his cows in 2012. (Bay Area News Group archive)
“Raw Farm stands at the battlefront of this transitional event,” he said.
On Tuesday night, the California Department of Public Health warned consumers against consuming any raw milk products from the quarantined farm. While pasteurized milk is safe to consume because the heating process kills pathogens, drinking raw milk containing bird flu virus may lead to illness, it said.
Raw Farm milk products have tested positive for bird flu at both retail and dairy storage and bottling sites in recent days, officials said. Customers should immediately return any remaining product — including raw milk, cream, cheese, and kefir, as well as raw milk pet food topper — to the retail point of purchase.
The news follows the discovery last week of contaminated Raw Farm product at Santa Clara County retail stores. That triggered a recall of two specific lots of milk, identified as code number 20241119 and code number 20241109. The stores have not been identified.
It is the latest in a long string of incidents at a dairy that has been linked to more than two dozen hospitalizations and 200 illnesses, most of them in young people, over the past two decades, including at least six in Alameda County, five in Contra Costa County and five in Santa Clara County, according to recent litigation.
Among them was Nicolas Yousif, of San Jose, who drank contaminated Raw Farm milk that his family bought from San Jose’s New Leaf Community Market in October 2023. He was then a fourth-year student at San Jose State University who balanced a busy schedule of mechanical engineering studies, a part-time job as an intern and a rigorous gym routine.
“Before my illness struck, I was a person in motion,” he said in a 2024 lawsuit. “Then, without warning, it all came to a halt when I contracted a severe blood infection.”
Yousif was one of 171 people sickened and 22 hospitalized from September 2023 to March 2024 linked to Salmonella bacteria in Raw Farm’s milk, according to the California Department of Public Health. Now recovered, he and 10 others are suing the dairy, saying it was negligent in the manufacture, distribution and sale of its milk, said attorney Bill Marler. Raw Farm has not responded to the lawsuit.
A plethora of outbreaks associated with products from Raw Farm, the nation’s largest producer of raw milk, have been detected since 2006. In 2011, three children who drank Raw Farm milk were hospitalized with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious condition that can lead to kidney failure.
Most recently, Raw Farm’s products were recalled in May and August 2023 due to bacterial contamination.
The maverick dairy also ran afoul of the law in 2010 after distributing raw milk to out-of-state customers, labeling its milk as “pet food” to avoid detection, according to a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2008, the company sued the state to stop enforcement of a law that limited bacterial counts.
“Raw Food, previously known as Organic Pastures, has a long and frequent history of recalls and outbreaks due to pathogens unrelated to the bird flu virus, including Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter,” said Michael Payne of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at UC Davis.
“Feeding raw milk to your family is always playing Russian Roulette with their health,” he said. “Bird flu has just added another bullet into a chamber.”
A fifth-generation dairy, the company’s supporters include actress and “wellness” influencer Gwyneth Paltrow, who told Dear Media’s The Art of Being Well podcast that she pours its cream into her morning coffee. Last June, Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan visited the farm.
Gallons of raw milk are displayed in a refrigerator at the Raw Farm USA dairy store in Fresno County, California, on June 14, 2024. (Craig Kohlruss/Fresno Bee/TNS)
Advocates like its creamy sweet taste and purported health benefits. The FDA disagrees.
“I have been drinking Raw Farm milk for more than 10 years, including my entire family of five,” without illness, said Elyse Imamura, of Torrance, a raw milk proponent. “I know people can get sick from raw milk, and I’m sure it’s sobering, but people can get sick from anything.”
There are no reported illnesses from the milk’s recent avian flu contamination. The company says that only fragments of dead virus were found. Scientists say that the genetic material proves the virus had been present. The company’s defense is “smoke and mirrors spin control from an owner who doesn’t want to see regulatory action taken which could threaten his business,” Payne said.
It’s proven that exposure to raw milk can cause infection, Payne said. That’s how an estimated 30 California dairy farm workers have become sick.
The problem comes amid a rising tide of bird flu cases at poultry and dairy farms and an increasing threat to humans. So far, 475 of the state’s 1,000 dairies have been affected. It spreads through aerosol particles, killing 10% to 15% of cows, according to Western United Dairies CEO Anja Raudabaugh.
The virus’s history of high death rates and its ability to adapt are raising anxiety about pandemic potential.
Fernando Hernandez gets cows ready for milking at the Raw Farm USA dairy in Fresno County on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Craig Kohlruss/Fresno Bee/TNS)
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Currently, the virus only targets the cells of animals. But it’s just a mutation or two away from being able to target the cells of people, virologists say. As it spreads, there’s a greater chance that a mutation will emerge.
Pasteurization, which kills the virus and other pathogens, was introduced in the 1890s after the discovery of germ theory.
By the 1980s, raw milk was considered so dangerous that the FDA ordered a ban on all interstate sales.
But individual states still control raw milk sales within their borders — and California is one of 12 states that allow its purchase in retail stores, embracing individual rights over collective responsibility.
Under pressure from raw milk advocates, the state conducts a “Grade A Raw Milk” inspection and certification program, Payne said.
Yet outbreaks and recalls persist. At Raw Farm, much of the flu-contaminated milk was discovered after it was too late to stop its sale.
If the state or federal government finds that a food company is egregious in its safety or sanitation practices, it could be forced to cease operations until it implements programs that prove it is in compliance, Payne said.
Raw milk is creating the same challenge as other products that carry health risks but that may be legally sold, such as alcohol, tobacco and raw oysters, according to Stephanie David of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
Rather than banning it, California has sought a middle ground, relying on two interventions — advertising restrictions and warning labels — to limit sales and inform consumers of risk, she said.
Meanwhile, federal policy may weaken under Kennedy, who would oversee the FDA as health secretary. Kennedy has long protested that federal oversight of raw milk is unduly restrictive.
Kennedy, who buys Raw Farm milk for his Los Angeles home, will likely raise the profile of the Fresno dairy. CEO McAfee says he has been asked to apply for the new position of “FDA advisor on Raw Milk Policy and Standards Development.”
In states like California “where consumers demand it and legislators support it, there appear to be few options to ensure the safety of individuals who consume a product that is known to cause significant foodborne illness,” according to David. “Public health officials are between a rock and a hard place.”
