After years on the periphery of American food options because of legal restrictions, raw (unpasteurized) milk has burst onto the national scene with the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services. HHS is one of the government’s largest agencies, and has responsibility for regulating dairy production. Kennedy has advocated for easier access to raw dairy products, but as Mark McAfee points out in this open letter to Kennedy, raw milk can pose safety issues if it isn’t produced according to strict standards.
Bobby,
I am your raw milk producer. You drink my raw milk in Los Angeles! You need me to be your raw milk guy in Washington.
Please don’t be misled into thinking that delicious clean tested raw milk just magically appears in that store near you in California. That is an uber huge mistake. Raw milk requires very special conditions to be produced safely: different standards from pasteurized milk, serious farmer training and frequent testing. You may want clean safe raw milk for everyone in America, which is awesome, but if it is not done with a very smart and strategic plan, it will give you a huge black eye and will be the biggest mess you can ever imagine!!
Nicole Shanahan, your third-party running mate, visited my farm near Fresno California in June 2024 before you joined the Trump campaign and long before you were put in place as the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA. At Raw Farm, we are the largest raw milk brand and producer in the world. Nicole and I talked in a podcast about how to make America healthy and raw milk is absolutely a great step toward gut microbiome strength and providing a better immune system for all.
However, there are no FDA standards for that kind of raw milk. The only FDA standards that exist for raw milk are under the PMO, or Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, and raw milk intended for pasteurization is filled with pathogens. If you open up the “freedom gates” to that kind of PMO raw milk, you will fill emergency rooms and ICUs all over America with very upset and very sick citizens and kids. That’s not freedom and that is not “making America healthy again” at all.
I’ll be very forward here and assert that you need me to be your commissioner for the RMO, or Raw Milk Ordinance. I am the chairman of the Raw Milk Institute, a standards-setting organization; we have developed internationally recognized standards that have been used to train thousands of farmers in the U.S. and internationally (175 in the UK alone). We have trained farmers in the use of on-farm labs to allow for inexpensive and rapid testing of milk samples. The result has been a thriving and emerging raw milk market renaissance. Farmers are thriving and consumers are elated.
All of this because of very strategic long-term planning and well considered standards, driven by my career in health care. I was a paramedic for 16 years and taught paramedic medicine for the Fresno County Health Department. I know the medical and health crisis we are in better than anyone, since I lived it! I did CPR and intubated and defibrillated it. I held it close as it tried to die on me at three in the morning. I helped birth newborns on kitchen floors and in the back seats of cars. I am premed trained and was valedictorian of my 2300-hour paramedic course. I was voted Fresno County Paramedic of the year in 1994 by my fellow medics.
When I founded Raw Farm in 1998, that same care, purpose, ethics and compassion for humanity followed me into my concern for food safety and pioneering development of special raw milk standards and protocols. After nearly 25 years of producing raw milk in California, I have learned a few things and some of them humbled me greatly. I have always been committed to life-long learning and I spend a great deal of my time with UC Davis Milk Genomics PhD researchers. If you are going to lead a renaissance of clean safe raw milk and be able to explain to consumers what raw milk is….you better stay in school. That’s me. I now serve, with our awesome team, hundreds of thousands of very happy consumers via 500 retail stores in California, and that includes both you and Nicole.
I want America to lead the world in the safe production of delicious, nutritionally dense, bioactive filled raw milk. We have a failed gut microbiome in America and we must heal it. The bioactives, functional proteins and good fats found in raw milk and consumption of whole foods that are unprocessed or less processed are critical to a strong gut and good health. I know the studies and teach this both here and around the world. I am your guy. I will serve “we the people” and leave a legacy of a strong foundation for an evolution to a healthier America.
Because the gut is at least 80% of the immune system, that is where you start to build a stronger and healthier America. Soils, cows, farmers connected to consumers. That is the path I know best and I am ready to serve our country. Taking out the preservatives in our highly processed foods is something you have right. Eating whole foods and raw milk is something else you get right. How to do raw milk right and develop that plan with a good team, that is something I get right. I want to make damn well sure we all get this right. The alternative is not what you want and will take us backwards. My raw milk brand is growing at 1% per week because we know raw milk and its technologies. I think you want that kind of raw milk for America and all of its future children and families. We all want this kind of raw milk for other farmers and their communities as well. This is a WE project.
I am filled with great purpose, and I am ready.
Mark McAfee
CEO Founder Raw Farm
Chairman Raw Milk Institute
Thank you David…I sure hope RFK is listening. This renaissance of raw milk gives all farmers an opportunity, the honor with highest responsibility to serve people and not processors. For those that chose this path…we are helping those farmers and their future local communities.
The PUBMED 2021 Cornel research funded by the National Dairy Council says it all. BIOACTIVES in unprocessed milk are powerful immune system compounds and they are all neutralized or eliminated by pasteurization. Making America Healthy Again is a huge undertaking a massive food fight.
Mark
Mark, let me remind you what contaminated raw milk can do to the human body. https://patch.com/california/murrieta/amp/31980177/son-nearly-died-after-drinking-raw-milk-murrieta-moms-journey
I asked CHATGBT this question: does a mother with COVID shed covid virus into her breastmilk when nursing. It said that the breast milk rarely contains active virus, but rather it contains antibodies to the virus to protect the baby.
You should all try some AI CHATBGT, its a free app. The answers are compelling. I asked if H5N1 had ever caused human illness via consumption of raw milk containing H5N1 virus. It said NO…but the antibodies to H5N1 are found in that raw milk….It did say that H5N1 is mostly a bird disease even though it can be found in cows.
What a great tool. Makes you wonder why the FDA does not create better policy with AI. I know exactly why.
AI does not try to protect PHARMA stock or Big Dairy processors in its algorithm and decision tree.
Moderna Stock is down from $160 earlier in April to about $43 today.
Shall we call this the “RFK…MAHA Food is Medicine Effect?”
down from $352 three years ago. Thats 87% decline. Thats Farmers over Pharmacies and Food is Medicine verses more drugs are medicine.
Don’t get me wrong, we need good pharma, but not at the complete exclusion and displacing WHOLE FOOD nutrition and safe delicious raw milk and rebuilding the gut microbiome! There is a place for both. Look at the Sprouts Farmers Market Stock…last year at this time it was $35 now it is at $155 and climbing. Consumers and investors are getting smart. Hard facts are hard facts.
Given the current Avian Flu exposure, it should be noted that no one is reported sickened from the lot being recalled. I had been drinking milk from that lot (20241109). I will cease to do so and will return for a replacement from Raw Farms. I have not shown any symptoms.
“massive recall” headlined the LA Times? Hardly
when one gets down to the facts of the matter, all the FDA has, is > one single sample from a bottle at one retail store. Not so much as another bit of similar evidence corroborating the contention that milk from Raw Dairy is contaminated
When I came along in the Campaign for REAL MILK – 25 years ago – the big story, was : a lawyer in Australia proving that raw milk on the shelf in a retail store * , had been deliberated poisoned by people who hated the very idea. * Raw milk was being sold then as Cleopatra’s bath
Bearing in mind the seething un-reasoning hatred for REAL MILK, displayed by officialdom (never forgetting a certain contributor to this blog ) a similar scenario = of the package
having been poisoned = is more likely than not .
the kicker, being ; insinuation in the article : that Raw Dairy would obtain cheaper pasteurized milk, bulking up its product …. is nothing less than defamation of a foodstuff. I think there’s a law against that?
I would hold onto to that product dearly…
URL to a classic example of what a journalistic “hit piece” looks like
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-27/questions-follow-bird-flu-recall-of-california-raw-milk
a dairy with (now ) 1400 cows in two herds, producing/ delivering thousands of portions DAILY ! operating for a quarter century, has next to no proven adverse events. Yet the govt. comes at Raw Farm, again
The Naysayers who relentlessly slag REAL MILK would be hard-pressed to show any other food enterprise, with such a sterling record
the bird flu thing is bunk… just another round of fearmongering after the Covid19 moral panic was exposed as a monumental HOAX
Gordon
No other raw milk farm in the world has invested in two full time microbiologists to run our own ThermoFisher PCR pathogen lab to test every batch for pathogens…first means pioneers.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/150-fruits-and-vegetables-recalled-due-to-possible-listeria-contamination-these-are-the-products-and-states-affected/ar-AA1v0wBg?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=5ff9fea5d9544532ac08191175296997&ei=63
Starvation by recall….Listeria, and microdosing of pathogens is essential to protection from pathogens. We are sterilizing America and dumping our food when parts of America, and so many others are starving!! You will notice that Listeria is allowed in the EU and on EU food, and the EU is far healthier than we are.
Sadly, and as a result of our sterile diets, use of antibiotics, preservatives in foods and probably roundup in and on foods, the Akkermansia bacteria in our guts are gone or at very low levels. These bacteria care for and produce the protective mucous layer that protects the gut intimal tissues from pathogen invasion and attachment. That mucous lining is thin or missing in America. Leading to leaky gut, food allergies, loss of biome colonization habitat, gut inflammation, Crohns and on and on. This is also the leading cause of why HUS can start. Without the mucous lining, Ecoli pathogens can then attach to the gut tissues and start the SHIGATOXIN — HUS—Sepsis infection cascade. Raw milk fats carry butyrate’s that feed those Akkermansia and all of the poweful bioactives destroyed in processing.
Remember this: PCR does not find living viable virus. It finds pieces of DEAD genetic material that was once a virus. About 20% ( some show as high as 60% ) of all pasteurized milk found on shelves in California contains dead PCR positive virus. That is right…the same thing found in one Raw Farm sample. It is not a danger. The FDA says that no illnesses have ever been reported from HUMAN consumption of HPAI in raw milk….none.
As of Friday Nov 28th, we are shut down for future production. NO recall of products in stores and consumers are free to clear the shelves. That means no risk…no recall means no risk or risk is so low it is considered insignificant
Mary, I am still asking you for an endorsement for my potential position as advisor for FDA Raw Milk Standards and Policy. Would you rather have me or some wildcard that has no standards, little concern for other farmers or consumers and no testing experience, no research experience, did not establish RAWMI to help all farmers? Please send me an email that says…even though raw milk made your son sick 18 years ago, Mark has learned and become the best choice for the position. I will fight like hell for the highest and best standards for future raw milk for America.
Mark, I would work on explaining this to Kennedy. Once again, you are being sued.
https://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/california-raw-milk-farm-tied-to-bird-flu-also-linked-to-hidden-salmonella-outbreak/
All of you students of Raw Milk, HPAI, COVID, human and mammalian immunity…The FDA, NIH and CDC has excellent advice for raw milk and influenzas.
https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding-special-circumstances/hcp/illnesses-conditions/covid-19.html
Mothers Protect Their Young….if you have an influenza…don’t stop feeding your baby that raw milk!!! it protects them and contains ANTIBODIES to the influenzas’. Its how mammals work. It defines us.
and I quote from CDC
“Breast milk ( ie human raw milk ) is the recommended source of nutrition for most infants, even while their mother is ill. A mother’s breast milk contains antibodies and other immunological factors that can help protect her infant from infections. Research indicates that the breast milk of mothers with COVID-19 contains antibodies and other factors that may provide immunological protection to infants.”
I rest my case…
That statement by the CDC merely demonstrates their overall hypocrisy, aka…the pretending of having virtues, principles, or beliefs that one in fact does not have. Those who persist in believing the FDA and CDC are concerned with healthy living are living in a fool’s paradise…
No Ken….I disagree….lol 🙂
The FDA are true geniuses. They changed mammalian evolution in just 30 years and now Cows are not mammals….Its just humans that are mammals… and create antibodies for their young. No other mammals do that!????.
Politics over People. What a horrible lie sold to the American people to sell more drugs. It is no wonder that RFK is a voice of constructive disruption and the FDA – Pharma are terrified and horrified. Their money sickness machine and merry-go-round is screeching to a rocky bumpy stop.
We are all over this and working with nature and science we will champion raw milk.
My official comment…
https://www.health.com/brie-cheese-recall-listeria-8739996
Another massive pasteurized cheese recall….its starvation by recall. The FDA says the only way to assure and GUARANTEE safety is to pasteurize cheese??? THIS IS PURE Suppression of Truth. Bioactives found in raw milk are destroyed by heat and the natural controls found in raw cheeses are lost.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/costco-organic-eggs-recalled-due-to-salmonella-risk/ss-AA1v8F2s?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=d7014c911c6240ee8dd1d48e43cc61c8&ei=12
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/vegetable-medleys-sold-at-walmart-other-retailers-recalled-due-to-risk-of-e-coli/ar-AA1v99s0?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=1be63d16d5954c5bac2d711078a7b57f&ei=31
FDA is going to starve this nation.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/costco-kirkland-signature-organic-eggs-are-recalled-here-s-what-you-need-to-know/ar-AA1v9nNk?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=1efc2e08a7274c74818e02968211b329&ei=15
Eggs are supposed to have salmonella. FDA starvation by recall.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/fda-announces-nationwide-recall-of-broccoli-carrots-and-more-veggies-due-to-e-coli-contamination/ar-AA1vcKZR?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=9028cec47f134774aec4c86165633641&ei=34
here it comes…all vegetables will be chlorine saturated.