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.
Scale (getting big with better efficiency) has always been an issue with raw milk direct to consumers for more than one reason. Yes large numbers of cows are harder to keep any eye on as for illness and pathogens can be hard to detect in larger amounts of milk, care of cows can slide to lowest general care, and the single most important issue with cows is calf care which in a 1000 cow dairy is a lot of calves on a consistent basis or God forbid you hire that out to another farm/facility. Amount of milk ran through a system between cleanings can be an issue. (side note my father ran a smallish chicken processing butcher shop, regulations required changing rinse water every 2 hours. His facility that meant 400 birds, in large commercial facilities that was 25,000 birds.) The other equally important issue is exposure to the public, more cows wider range of the compromised population one could possible reach. Not all people are ready for raw milk, and that has only gotten worse since I found that out back in 1998, despite WAPF promoting it the gateway to better health.
Tim Wightman
“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”
This is not even close to the reason. The reason is it is HEALTHY! I drink raw milk when I can by the gallon. Farm kids drink out of the “bulk tank” long before “paturisation” occurs! They are all big and strong!
The attack on raw milk is about CONTROL.
Read “Untold Story of Milk” and you will be a different person.
Link right here!
https://archive.org/details/untoldstoryofmil0000schm
David,
I sent you a four-page written statement filled with great data.
Please post it as soon as possible. I was not able to post as a comment because your spam filter didn’t like the length.
Mark
I don’t believe I received a four-page statement. I received the following from you, which really doesn’t tell us much:
Small vs Larger Raw Dairy Operations
Standards & Practices Matter…Size doesn’t
In July 2008, a legally operating 12 cow raw milk dairy in Connecticut was the Root
Cause of illness of at least 14 people and changed the national landscape for raw milk
in the USA. This dairy was bottling raw milk and selling it in Wholefoods stores in
Connecticut. They had no insurance, no food safety plan, no testing program and they
made people sick, including 2 serious illnesses from E.coli. Wholefoods wrote the check
from Austin Texas to settle the matter. Thankfully no one died. I put the blame on
Wholefoods and their food safety naivety for not performing a thorough food safety audit
and requiring an insurance policy which named them as co-insured. After this incident,
Wholefoods made the corporate decision to drop all raw milk from all its stores
nationally (in six states), including 100 stores in California. Also at the root of the
problem is that Connecticut has very loose testing protocols and lax standards for raw
milk including 50 coliform and 30,000 SPC tolerances. This is a true example of lax raw
milk standards and poor regulatory standards at the state level. This standard allows
and excuses contamination of raw milk. Clean raw milk contains from 0-5 coliforms (
sometimes 0-1 coliforms ) and less than 1,000 SPC ( sometimes 50-300).
Vol29No2_FNL.pub any numbers higher than that are caused by management.
The Walker Gordon Dairy was established in 1897 in New Jersey and operated until
1971. For 74 years, this dairy milked as many as 1650 cows and was certified by the
AAMMC ( Dr. Coits Certified Raw Milk program ). Remembering the Walker-Gordon
Dairy, an Innovator in Safe Raw Milk from 1897-1971 — Raw Milk Institute This dairy
was a pioneer and delivered cold fresh raw milk to the Whitehouse and presidents as
well as consumers in several states nearby. They operated a lab on farm and did their
own testing. They invented the rotary milk parlor and called it the Rotolactor. They used
AAMMC standards which reflected the highest standards in the world at the time. The
last AAMMC certified raw milk dairy was Alta Dena in Los Angles and it closed its
operations in May of 1999. According to records there was no official report of illnesses
from that operation.
Standards matter. Practices matter. Management matters.
You might help the situation by providing illness/outbreak data for all the dairies that are members of RAWMI, excluding Raw Farm. Send it to me or try posting here. I’ll explain more when you’ve provided it. Thanks.
Simply put, it’s a repetitive attempt of behavior modification to control the public… In other words, mass media’s attempt to saturate our lives with scare tactics to reinforce a fixed narrow-minded agenda. It parallels the goings-on of this this recent so-called pandemic and the persistent ongoing vaccine ritual.
RAWMI does not have a list of recalls or outbreaks related to LISTED farmers. There is a reason for this.
Each state handles pathogens and illness in different ways and with different policies. In Texas, they don’t do much. They consider it a problem between the farmer and his consumer. They don’t get involved. This was shared with RAWMI several years ago when RAWMI provided training to raw dairies in Texas and a speaker representing Texas Ag department was invited to speak.
In other states there is no pathogen testing, and any issues are found by the farmers themselves. RAWMI has only had a couple of events come up in the past 15 years. Several have been consumer complaints of diarrhea and no pathogens found in the milk when it was tested. Then the incident passed and that was it. Sometimes regulators receive complaints of illness, and the milk is tested and no pathogens can be found. This is classic. In other words….we don’t have outbreak data because there have not been outbreaks in the LISTED community of farmers (that we know of and we should know). If i am in error… I apologize, but I don’t have any records of an outbreak from a RAWMI Listed operation ( outside of Raw Farm ).
The risk profile of RAWMI standards and its producers is very low risk.
Remember that more than 900 cases of illness from Ecoli occur every day in America from all causes and sources. Raw milk does not even occur as a blip on the radar screen within that massive COHORT and huge pool of data.
David, you didn’t post my four-page letter. It also listed 16 reasons why practically NO raw milk producers ever sell their raw milk into large retail stores. You just posted part of my letter.
The size of the operation just changes the investment in conditions, size of the team and management expertise to assure compliance with the standards being applied.
There are 12 brands of raw milk in California. CDFA now keeps a list of these inspected and approved operations. Licensed Raw Milk License Brand
Of these 12 brands, nine dairies actually produce the raw milk that is tested and inspected by CDFA. The CDFA standards for human consumption raw milk include less than 10 coliforms, less and 15,000 SPC, and zero detected pathogens in finished raw milk product ( plus additional facility and temperature standards ). Interestingly, these standards are the same bacterial standards that pasteurized milk ( milk that has already been pasteurized ) must pass! Raw Milk dairies do it by milking healthy cows in clean conditions and by being clean and cold. Some of these smaller operations have had multiple recalls every year and these events don’t make the news because the brand is small. Only the bigger brands make the news. Only the bigger raw dairy brands represent a threat to the established milk market brands on store shelves. That’s real news!!
That really shows how absolutely dirty commingled Grade A raw milk for pasteurization is allowed to be. Milk that is intended to be pasteurized under the FDA PMO can have unlimited coliforms, pathogens are allowed at unlimited numbers and 100,000 SPC.
Raw Milk Institute “Common Standards” were based on and developed from the AAMMC standards plus CDFA Food & Ag Code standards except that RAWMI is stricter at less than 10 coliforms and less than 5,000 SPC and zero detected pathogens. Common Standards — Raw Milk Institute
At present there are 70 LISTED RAWMI Raw Milk dairies internationally and they are located in the USA, Canada and Lebanon. RAWMI has provided assistance and training to raw dairies all around the world including more than 100 in Great Britain in 2018. Each of these RAWMI LISTED operations have a specialized RAMP food safety plan for their dairy including GMPS, SSOPs, and CCPs. Each operation submits bacteria test results every month or more frequently depending on their RAMP plan. Most of these operations have an on-farm lab and do testing very frequently. Sometimes every day, to assure compliance with the Common Standards and to catch any variation from the plan or standards.
Here is a very long list of 16 reasons why most raw milk producers don’t sell their raw milk into retail stores:
Retail stores require insurance policies, and these policies are expensive and must also cover the store for any illness or liability claims.
Stores require guaranteed sales and that means management of the shelf stock to ensure that it is fresh and that shelves are never empty. Any losses are on the farmer and not the store.
Raw milk must be delivered in very cold trucks and all products are tested for temperature or they are rejected on delivery. Any products that do not sell are taken away by the farms own delivery team. That’s on the farmer. This involves data collection, demand prediction models and management.
Stores require intensive audits from third party inspectors. These ASI audits or NSF audits require intensive documentation and management certification by the FDA under the PCQI standard. HACCP plan development to meet these standards and training to manage the plan can cost $150,000 dollars and takes full time staff with experts on call.
Test results from pathogen tests, SWAB tests and deviation analysis plus Root Cause analysis are inspected.
Operate an on-farm lab ( Raw Farm operates the only PCR pathogen lab in the world on-farm )
Every piece of inventory is inspected, and all sources of supplies must pass COA audit.
It takes a team of dedicated people to operate a raw milk brand that serves retail stores. Some farmers want nothing to do with recruiting, training, paying for and managing a team. It’s an HR stress test! And you have to love it!
Own and operate a fleet of cold refrigerated trucks to service hundreds of stores. PAY FOR DIESEL AT $7.50 PER GALLON!
Paying your team well to assure excellent execution in everything!
A billing staff to collect payment from delivery to all those stores.
Logistics to manage store relations and delivery systems.
A social platform and brand manager must create content continuously.
Farm tours are expected by eager consumers that want to visit and meet you and the cows….some even want to milk a cow!
It takes social skills and the desire to connect to and serve people all the time.
Some farmers just don’t want to commit to this level of social, economic, team management, systems development, facility and equipment management or technical investment. Then secure it all with cameras against theft, arson and or abuse.
Its ok that we have small medium and larger operations serving our communities. As long as they use high standards and test their products.
It’s ok that there are small, medium and larger operations that produce raw milk and serve our communities. Raw milk does not have to always come from stores. What matters is that consumers have easy access to low-risk raw milk from well trained farmers with high standards and testing. It would be very bad for the planet and a waste of fuel if everyone that wanted raw milk had to drive (individually with cars filled with baby car seats) hundreds of miles every week or two to individually get their raw milk. That is one of the reasons that raw milk is thriving in California. We have 600 places to access raw milk including 500 retail locations in the middle of large population centers just down the street from peoples homes. California ranks as the 4th largest ( bigger than Japan and just behind Germany ) economy in the world with 40 million people. I am proud that we lead the world with access to delicious, high standards, tested raw milk.
I would like to see a story about how raw milk dairy operations and how they share consumers. Customers that buy RAWMI LISTED raw milk in Virginia Beach and move to San Deigo both have access to excellent raw milk. And when customers at Naval base San Diego move to Navy base Virginia Beach….they have access to raw milk from their local LISTED RAWMI producer. This is what I call building a market and a real community across our nation and world.
I now have the whole piece posted. It took some cut and paste….but that is the whole thing.