Mark McAfee, the California raw milk producer who has been at the center of several bird flu-related product recalls, says a transition team for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has encouraged him to apply for a position at the Food and Drug Administration.
McAfee, CEO of Fresno-based Raw Farm, LLC, told The Times that he has complied with the request and applied for the position of “FDA advisor on raw milk policy and standards development.”
The recent raw milk recalls were the result of positive tests for H5N1 bird flu among McAfee’s cows. His farms have since been quarantined, and the state has suspended all sales of raw milk and cream. Raw Farm has voluntarily issued recalls for all remaining milk and cream products in stores.
McAfee’s farm is also involved in at least 11 lawsuits stemming from a salmonella outbreak that sickened 171 people in California, and which occurred between October of last year and May of this year, according to Bill Marler, a Seattle-area food safety lawyer.
When asked about McAfee potentially being tapped for a federal food advisory role, Marler wrote in an email: “Clown Car.”
Last month, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he had chosen Kennedy to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
Kennedy has been a vocal advocate for raw milk, and has criticized FDA policy forbidding interstate sales of the product. According to McAfee, Kennedy is also a consumer and customer of Raw Farm milk.
McAfee said he has not officially been selected for the advisory role. Indeed, Kennedy’s own nomination as HHS director still requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
The Times has reached out to the Trump transition team and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again teams for comment, but has not yet received a response.
McAfee is the largest producer of raw milk in the nation and maintains 1,800 dairy cows on two farms — one in Fresno, the other outside Hanford.
His raw milk products include whole milk, cream, kefir and cheese — all of which can be sold in stores in California, but not over state lines..
However, FDA regulations do not apply to his pet food product line, which can be sold outside California — albeit with warning labels noting that the products are not intended for human consumption.
McAfee is also president of the Raw Milk Institute, a raw milk educational and advocacy organization designed to aid dairy farmers interested in adopting standards and methods for raw milk production.
In an interview with The Times two weeks ago, McAfee said that as excited as he is for Kennedy to change the FDA’s policy on raw milk, such a move needs to be carried out with deliberate care.
“I’m dedicated to making sure that whatever happens, it is not chaotic, crazy, or just a free for all, but rather very constructive with farmer training and testing and high standards,” he said. “I’m very interested in committing myself to helping raw milk emerge as a constructive, high standards, healthy, wonderful, germinating, delicious food.”
He noted that in 2021, Montana lawmakers passed a “food freedom” law that legalized the unregulated sale of raw milk and raw milk products. Soon after, people started to get sick.
McAfee said he flew out to meet with raw milk dairy producers and helped them establish standards that incorporated training, testing and quality control.
For instance, he noted one dairy farmer was cleaning his milk buckets with chlorine, which McAfee said does not address fats and biofilms.
“It was filthy,” he said.
Instead, he showed the farmers how to clean their equipment with hot water and soap.
“You have to have standards,” he said.
McAfee’s milk is highly regulated by the state of California, which performs frequent testing for food-illness pests such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E. coli, listeria, brucella, and salmonella and other bacterial illnesses in his milk.
He said unlike conventional dairies where the milk is pasteurized after it’s been collected, he is required to test the cows for pathogens, and said he only milks disease-free cows.
He has an on-farm laboratory where he tests for listeria, campylobacter, E. coli 0157H7 and salmonella in his bulk tanks and cows.
He said his cows are meticulously cleaned before they are milked. And the milk is immediately shunted into a rapid chiller that drops the milk’s temperature from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in about two minutes, he said.
Then the milk stays at that temperature until delivered to stores.
Even so, experts say bacteria can still contaminate milk — even when procured from a sparkling-clean udder. The FDA, CDC and other health agencies say the public should drink only pasteurized milk.
Since 2006, Raw Farm — formerly known as Organic Pastures Dairy Company — has been involved in 13 recalls, including the three bird flu related ones from last month.
The other recalls were the result of bacterial contamination, including E. coli, listeria, campylobacteria and salmonella. In some cases, people became severely ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome — or kidney failure.
There was also a recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning from Raw Farm raw milk, which involved at least 171 people “the majority of which were children,” noted a report on the outbreak by the state’s Center for Infectious Diseases.
McAfee said if he were selected for an advisory role at the FDA, he’d consider creating a certification program, such as those in place for organic farming that involve farmer education and training, for raw milk production.
He also said he’d look into changing food liability laws, “where you can’t go get a million dollars for somebody that gets diarrhea for a week.”
McAfee said the government should consider raw milk and other whole food insurance programs, like the USDA’s crop insurance program which provides for farmers whose fields and crops have been impacted by drought, flooding or fire — or the more recent milk insurance program which provides money for dairy farmers whose herds have been infected with bird flu.
“I would recommend strongly that all whole foods — including maybe greens, eggs, carrots, by God, poor carrots — have food liability insurance… so people can get that food, because right now, insurance or companies saying, ‘Oh, you’re on the naughty list so no more insurance for you.’” he said. “And so you’re going to have stores with less and less of these whole foods that are critical to actually getting people healthy again.”
