About once or twice a year, like clockwork, one or another mainstream media outlet will publish an “expose” suggesting that millions of ordinary people are recklessly putting their lives at risk by consuming a food that is deadly dangerous; on top of that, public health officials aren’t doing enough to stop the food’s consumption, suggest the media. That food is unpasteurized, or raw, dairy.
In 2024, it was PBS with a major story about how raw milk sales were spiking despite new dangers to dairy from bird flu. A food safety expert was quoted as saying “I liken drinking raw milk to playing Russian roulette.”
Below: coolers at a raw milk pickup site in Pennsylvania
Earlier this year, a New York Times story about states loosening restrictions on raw milk recPiounted how thousands died from consuming tainted raw milk in the 1800s and early 1900s. “Unpasteurized milk today can harbor the same deadly pathogens….” suggesting that today’s raw milk is just as dangerous.
Most recently, ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative outlet, has come out with a two-part report on the many illnesses traced to Raw Farm, the nation’s largest raw dairy, in California. The main focus of the first article and the second article is Raw Farm owner Mark McAfee and the many illnesses associated with his dairy. “Before (pasteurization) was widely adopted a century ago, thousands of babies died each year from illnesses linked to contaminated dairy,” the first part states, as if the same thing could happen with millions now regularly consuming raw milk and cheese from the Raw Farm.
Leaving Raw Farm and the media hysteria aside, the reality is this: Raw milk and cheese have become increasingly popular over the first quarter of this century, but deaths are nearly unknown. Back in 2010, I did a detailed assessment of government data on illnesses and deaths from raw milk between 1998 and 2008; according to this data, there were three deaths from raw milk, but on investigation, it turned out the deaths were caused by a raw cheese served fresh (rather than aged 60 days, as required under FDA regulations) known as queso fresco; such cheese is popular in Hispanic communities and the milk usually obtained from dairies that sell most of their milk for pasteurization. They sell informally to individuals producing queso fresco in a kind of black market.
Here is what I concluded: “The reality is that there have been zero deaths from milk intended to be sold unpasteurized for the 1998–2008 period (versus three deaths from pasteurized milk in Massachusetts in 2007, according to the CDC table). And from all I can tell, zero deaths from raw milk going back to at least the mid-1980s–a period of at least 25 years.”
The situation doesn’t seem to have changed much in the intervening 15 years. An in-depth 2022 study examining whether there are more illness outbreaks in states that allow raw milk sales concluded that, yes, there are, but it didn’t suggest they pose any kind of special danger aside from the reality that children are more likely to be victims. The study showed two deaths among the data between 2013 and 2018, but didn’t provide any details about their ages or the circumstances of their deaths. I had published on this blog information about two adults during that time period who were being treated for cancer, and then died from complications of pathogens that could have been from raw milk.
I concluded in my 2010 blog data assessment: “The big problems in our food system have nothing to do with small producers of raw milk, but much more to do with the factory producers.” In the raw dairy world, the king of the factory producers is Raw Farm, owned by Mark McAfee, who is profiled by ProPublica in its two articles (this and this). The articles estimate his dairy’s annual revenues at $30 million, which is likely several times the next largest raw dairy. Most producers are small traditional dairies with fewer than 100 cows (Raw Farm has more than 1,000 cows).
It’s important to note that ProPublica’s sweeping generalizations about the dangers of raw dairy are made based on a single producer, when there are literally hundreds of other small dairies turning out safe raw dairy day after day and week after week, without any of the illnesses and other drama described by ProPublica.
Why doesn’t ProPublica explore those dairies? Perhaps because it would have contradicted much of what the reporter was able to get from Mark McAfee of Raw Farm: colorful controversial quotes from a ‘bad-boy’ farmer who refuses to acknowledge that his dairy’s ongoing problem of food-borne illnesses most likely stem from its large size. Safe raw milk is best produced in smaller quantities, where the spread of dangerous pathogens can more easily be controlled than in mega dairies like Raw Farm.
But ProPublica never seems to question McAfee about his dairy’s large size, probably because the reporter doesn’t know enough about the complexities associated with raw milk production, regulation, safety, and history to ask probing questions.
The reporter suggests that raw milk has only recently exploded in popularity, in tandem with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s political ascendancy, to become secretary of health and human services in the Trump Administration. The reporter also suggests that because Kennedy is a self-professed raw milk drinker, the FDA has become less concerned about raw milk safety, even going so far as to ease up on possible legal sanctions against Raw Farm in connection with recent illnesses associated with its raw cheese.
Yet if you examine the history of food safety enforcement, including raw milk, federal legal authorities are loathe to take drastic legal action like seeking injunctions and filing suit, preferring voluntary recalls, like the one Raw Farm instituted earlier this year when illnesses were associated with the dairy’s raw cheese. Moreover, the FDA web site continues to warn about the potential health dangers associated with raw milk. It has done nothing to lift the prohibition on interstate sales of raw milk, instituted in the 1980s when another huge California raw dairy, Alta Deena, was producing raw milk for national distribution, and similarly experiencing repeated illness outbreaks.
So why the continuing media slams of raw dairy? The main reason seems to come down to the fact that raw dairy has an unfortunate history. The fact that the worst of the history is more than a century old does little to deter media intent on sensationalism and scare tactics to drive clicks.
And why doesn’t Raw Farm downsize so as to reduce the risks associated with raw dairy production? Only Mark McAfee can answer that question. But my guess is he’ll blame the expanding demand for raw milk in California. (‘Somebody has to help all these desperate consumers obtain raw dairy products.’) The reality is that there are a number of smaller raw dairy producers in California, and there could be more if the marketplace moved from retail sales to on-farm and cow-share type sales. In the meantime, it’s very difficult for anyone to turn down millions of dollars of business….even if dozens of people are sickened periodically, some of them seriously. And it’s very difficult for media looking for additional online traffic to give up profiling the guy who gives you great quotes and endless public health crises to wring your hands over. Both ProPublica and Mark McAfee are benefiting from their unholy alliance.
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