RFK Jr.’s raw milk renaissance leads to a Fresno dairy farm

McAfee said he has a meeting with Kennedy and Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University and the new FDA commissioner, in early 2025 to discuss the advisory role. His priority is establishing what he calls a a "raw milk ordinance," a federal set of standards for raw milk processing and distribution that states can adopt. His proposal is similar to the 100-year-old Pasteurized Milk Ordinance.

“It will be a parallel department with its own chief, its own support staff, its own budget, its own research, its own standards, its own everything,” McAfee said.

In order to change opinions within the FDA, McAfee said “somewhat of a bulldozing” might need to take place.

In an X post last October, Kennedy said FDA workers should “preserve their records” and “pack their bags” if they support what he considers an “aggressive suppression” of raw milk, among other things.

Kennedy’s restructuring of HHS aims to reduce the workforce by 20,000 federal employees, including 20% of FDA workers. Jim Jones, the former head of the FDA’s food division, resigned after the first round of layoffs. In his resignation letter, he said fired workers had “highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response.”

Kennedy isn’t the only politician championing raw milk. In May 2024, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill that would permit interstate sales and in January 2025, an Arkansas House committee approved a bill allowing sales for human consumption.

McAfee said politicians like Kennedy and Massie enjoy the “benefits and flavor” of his products, but don’t comprehend the manufacturing hurdles of a large-scale expansion.

“You have a lot of standards created, a lot of farmers to train,” McAfee said. “There needs to be a lot of investment grants into on-farm technology for [bacterial] testing.”

Detwiler said the expenses, in terms of investment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would come from taxpayers. He also said McAfee’s proposed ordinance would likely help large, established companies.

“The cost to invest in the technology and the testing and the labeling and the manufacturing stuff to increase the sales of raw milk, that puts the small guys out of business,” Detwiler said.

Industry expansion is also hampered by the number of recalls of raw dairy products. There were 17 recalls of raw milk in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Center for Dairy Research. An October 2023 salmonella recall of Raw Farm milk and cheese caused 19 people to get sick, three of whom were children who required hospitalization.

During the December bird flu recall, Raw Farm was placed under quarantine for nearly eight weeks, which McAfee calls “unfair.”

There are no confirmed human cases of avian flu in the U.S. as a result of drinking raw milk, but the virus has swept through cattle herds, infecting over 700 dairies throughout California. Scientists warn of the virus’s ability to mutate to affect humans, with the first death from H5N1 recorded on Jan. 6.

The USDA updated their emergency assistance program to offset dairy losses caused by H5N1 in dairy cattle. McAfee said he lost $5 million in revenue, and had to borrow $2 million. During that time, he had to sell his milk to pasteurization for one seventh of his normal profit.

A gallon of raw milk at Sprouts has a price tag of $17.99, whereas the nationwide average for a gallon of pasteurized milk is $4.05 as of March 2025. McAfee says they charge whatever they need to stay profitable.

He agrees the industry would be expensive to scale, but sees it as a long-term investment in local communities.

Fresno resident Marianne Desatoff said she drives 25 miles to Raw Farm every week to buy milk and kefir, a fermented milk with a yogurt-like texture, from the on-farm shop. McAfee greeted Desatoff, and the pair talked about a special intimacy between local farms and residents.

Desatoff, who McAfee called “super grandma,” said her two 25-year-old grandsons with cerebral palsy drink raw milk because it helps cure their upset stomachs.

“My grandsons have been on a lot of antibiotics and stuff, and it kills the good bacteria in your stomach,” Desatoff said. “And their health is rebuilding itself.”

Nicola Twilley, a refrigeration expert and author of “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves,” said the U.S. dairy industry should actually be moving toward “ultra-pasteurization and shelf-stable milk” to avoid high energy costs and reduce carbon emissions.

“If you do a more intense pasteurization and reduce the number of microbes to zero, then you don't need to refrigerate, because there are no microbes left to grow,” Twilley said.

The technology of the cold chain — or the refrigerated supply chain for perishable goods — accounts for 15% of global electricity and 3.5% of the carbon footprint, per a study published by the American Chemical Society.

McAfee claims industry growth would manifest in the creation of more 100-200 cow dairies, not large operations, which would have a small carbon footprint and benefit local economies.

“When big dairy operations fold up, you lose a lot of money going to local schools and local taxes and local everything,” McAfee said. “So we need to have that rebuilding of America from the soil up.”

Smaller dairy operations have disappeared over the last two decades. From 2012-2022, about 40,000 dairies closed, per USDA census data, collected every five years. Put differently, 10 dairies closed every day.

Twilley said it would be “almost economically impossible” to make refrigeration costs profitable for smaller operations, which would heavily impact raw milk in particular.

“Refrigeration adds a cost to each pint of milk, and the only way to really offset that is to be a large-scale producer,” Twilley said.

Another hitch in McAfee’s plan to uplift local communities is the Trump administration’s termination of two food programs that provided $1 billion to local schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms.

Driving down a dirt driveway at Raw Farm in his white Ford truck, McAfee said he believes Kennedy’s firings could cause the FDA to reevaluate priorities. But he also expressed some uncertainty.

“It’s easy to fire 10,000 people,” McAfee said. “It’s a little harder to hire people to build something, right? And so, I want to build something.”