Raw milk has become a culture-war food, and Annie Waldman of ProPublica zeroes in on a dairyman at the center of it. She reports that Mark McAfee’s Raw Farm in California has grown into the country’s largest raw-milk operation, generating roughly $30 million a year as more Americans embrace “natural” foods and grow skeptical of public health institutions. The downside? “Most scientists and health experts agree that raw milk has no significant, proven nutritional benefits over its sanitized counterpart, cannot treat or cure disease and subjects its consumers to over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness, which can be especially dangerous for young children,” writes Waldman. Advocates say otherwise, viewing raw milk as a remedy for everything from asthma to eczema.
The story notes that federal and state agencies have linked Raw Farm to at least eight outbreaks since 2006 that sickened 233 people, many of them children, and hospitalized at least 40. ProPublica reports that the farm repeatedly issued recalls after pathogens were found in its products and that McAfee acknowledged diverting some milk flagged for dangerous bacteria into raw cheese, despite FDA objections that the practice violated federal law. McAfee disputes many of the outbreak findings and insists the benefits outweigh the risks. “I call complete crap,” he says of regulators’ case counts.
The clash has increasingly moved from the dairy aisle into politics. ProPublica reports the Biden administration had been pursuing stronger action against Raw Farm before those efforts fizzled after the Trump administration took office and installed raw-milk advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. atop the nation’s health agencies. Congress is now considering legislation that would loosen interstate restrictions on raw dairy sales, even as new outbreaks continue to emerge. Meanwhile, Raw Farm’s influence appears only to be growing. “Our sales are highest they’ve ever been,” McAfee says. Read the full story.
