During the outbreak of E. coli, the owner of Raw Farm rejects the FDA’s weak claims
Mark McAfee is standing next to his cheese.
The US Food and Drug Administration has asked Fresno-based McAfee’s Raw Farm to voluntarily withdraw its raw cheese products from the market as the agency investigates an outbreak of E. coli that sickened nine people in three states – seven of them in California.
The US Centers for Disease Control has warned the public not to buy, sell or serve the company’s uncooked cheddar cheese, which five of those infected with E. coli they said they ate before they got sick.
But McAfee is holding firm. The FDA has not confirmed that E. coli has been found in any Raw Farm products, he said. The agency has not issued an official recall, although it did send a warning letter telling customers to avoid Raw Farm products purchased on Jan. 4 or later, especially dairy cheddar cheese.
McAfee said he tests every batch of milk that comes out of his dairies, and none of it has been E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, listeria and any other contamination that causes human illness. He shared those results with both the FDA and state regulators, he said.
“There are no pathogenic bacteria that we associate with anyone,” said McAfee. What they did was to walk behind. They said, ‘We’re just going to let everyone know we’re concerned,’ and that’s enough to get the stores to fire you.”
The FDA has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Last month, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced an investigation into the outbreak of E. coli that since September has sickened nine people in California, Florida and Texas, three of whom were hospitalized. More than half of the figures are children aged 5 or under. One patient required treatment for hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious kidney problem.
The genome sequence of E. coli isolated from each patient found that the strains were closely related genetically, suggesting that all sick individuals were exposed to the same source of infection.
State and local health officials were able to interview eight patients or their caregivers. They all said they were eating raw dairy products before they got sick. Two who became ill in late 2025 said they drank raw Raw Farm milk, and five who became ill in 2026 ate the company’s raw cheddar. (The eighth could not remember the kind of raw milk they drank.)
When testing samples of Raw Farm cheese sold in March they found no E. coli, California did not release the farm as the source of the outbreak was given the number of patients who consumed its products before becoming infected, said a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health.
“The retail cheese samples collected are not representative of all raw cheese products sold by Raw Farm and may have come from different products than those consumed by the sick people,” the statement said in a statement. “CDPH considers Raw Farm raw as the source of this severe disease outbreak, despite negative laboratory test results from a limited sample of retail products.”
Raw, or unpasteurized, milk has not been subjected to a heating process that kills harmful bacteria while leaving the nutrients intact. Raw Farm products alone have been linked to at least 239 reported cases of food poisoning since 2006, including a salmonella outbreak in October 2024 that sickened 171 people, according to Bill Marler, a food safety attorney at Seattle-based MarlerClark.
He said the FDA’s decision to issue a warning letter instead of a recall is “normal,” and the agency is very careful when it comes to food safety.
“It makes sense, under the circumstances, to pull the product off the shelves,” he said of grocery stores. “Hell, if I was a retailer, I’d pull it, because the last thing you’d want to do is have a product on the shelf, test for some E. coli, then poison some kid and get kidney failure.”
Proponents of raw milk have long emphasized that it prevents allergies and promotes beneficial bacteria, not supported by research. They include US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime supporter who celebrated the release of 2025 “MAHA Report” with raw milk shot.
McAfee was among those who hoped that the Kennedy administration would bring positive control environment for raw milk producers. But despite being contacted by Kennedy’s lawyers before Trump’s second inauguration, he has not heard from them since.
He said the administration has done little to promote raw milk as part of it improved food policy that emphasizes meat and fatty milk as essential to a healthy diet.
The FDA’s web page about raw milk it was last updated during the Biden administration, and it warns people to avoid raw dairy products and dismisses research that says it’s healthy.
“They fired their best people at the FDA and hired good people and weird people and whatever,” McAfee said. “It’s a sign of a three-ring circus. All the surprise managers show that because of their inconsistency, lack of policy adherence, they just do what they want to do.”
What has changed under the new administration is the FDA’s ability to conduct investigations like the one it says it started at Raw Farm. Testing, lab work and outbreak investigations are among the agency’s jobs most hampered by staff cuts that have taken place since Trump took office, industry experts warned.
The Department of Health and Human Services has lost 18,200 employees since Trump took office, according to the Department of Personnel Management. Federal Workforce Data Tool. More than 3,000 of those losses were at the CDC, and about 4,500 were at the FDA.
