The nation’s largest producer of uncooked milk has seen its gross sales develop exponentially to greater than $30 million, regardless of the well being dangers of forgoing pasteurization. With RFK Jr. nominated to guide HHS below Trump, it hopes to promote much more.
By Amy Feldman, Forbes Staff
Mark McAfee hopes to change into the chief advisor on uncooked milk within the subsequent Trump Administration. The cofounder and CEO of Raw Farm, the nation’s largest producer that’s been on the heart of uncooked milk recollects in California, mentioned he’s in dialogue concerning the position and hoped to assist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a uncooked milk proponent who’s been nominated as the subsequent Secretary of Health and Human Services, set requirements on uncooked milk that will guarantee secure manufacturing, whereas permitting extra distribution of it.
“I’m the uncooked milk man,” Mark McAfee, 63, mentioned in a phone interview, including, “I’m the one man that is aware of these items.”
It’s been a second for the uncooked milk trade and for Fresno, California-based Raw Farm. First, Raw Farm recalled a number of batches of its milk and cream after testing by the California Department of Public Health discovered fowl flu virus in samples of its milk. Then it shut its dairies whereas its herd is below quarantine. Over the previous few weeks, the drumbeat of stories about fowl flu went from dangerous to worse, because the virus unfold to cats and to folks, with a baby in California testing optimistic (from an unknown supply) and an individual in Louisiana being hospitalized with extreme sickness (seemingly uncovered from a yard flock). On December 18, with the California state agriculture division having discovered the virus in 645 dairy herds, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared an emergency.
Raw Farm’s household farmers aren’t backing down of their perception in the advantages of uncooked milk, which propelled the 100% family-owned enterprise to gross sales of greater than $30 million. With RFK Jr.’s nomination, they’re hoping to promote much more. Raw Farm’s president Aaron McAfee, Mark’s 40-year-old son, mentioned that he anticipated gross sales to achieve $100 million inside three years, and that he was already occupied with product expansions. “One of our biggest worth provides proper now could be that we specialise in making a product that everyone within the conventional trade says is inconceivable,” Aaron McAfee mentioned. “Nobody believes you are able to do uncooked milk at scale.”
The McAfee household at Raw Farm’s pasture: (left to proper) Mark McAfee, Adam McAfee, Aaron McAfee, Eric McAfee, Josh Stanziani and Kaleigh Stanziani, with Ruby the canine
Raw Farm
Federal well being regulators have warned repeatedly concerning the dangers of uncooked milk, which have caused 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations between 1998 and 2018, in line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s legal in some states, illegal in others – and all the time illegal to transport it across state lines for human consumption. (Selling uncooked milk for pets throughout state traces is a unique matter.) But California, the place Raw Farm is predicated, is one of 15 states where retail sales are legal and one thing of a floor zero for the uncooked milk motion, which has introduced collectively proponents of natural meals who consider in its well being advantages and conservatives who argue for his or her proper to make their very own selections with out authorities interference. “Food is drugs is ringing true to the purchasers,” mentioned Mark McAfee, who can also be founding father of the Raw Milk Institute and describes himself as a Bernie Sanders/Jill Stein Democrat. “Our customers are saying, ‘Screw you, FDA, we wish uncooked milk,’” he mentioned.
Raw milk has lengthy been controversial as a result of it might harbor numerous pathogens, together with micro organism and viruses, amongst them salmonella and campylobacter, each of which may trigger diarrhea and belly ache. Ever since French scientist Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization – which heats milk to at the very least 145 levels Fahrenheit to kill dangerous micro organism – again in 1862, that’s been the usual in America. “There’s a complete slew of bacterial infections that may come up from unpasteurized milk,” mentioned Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar on the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Pasteurization will even inactivate the H5N1 fowl flu virus, which is why the CDC considers pasteurized milk safe to drink regardless of the latest outbreak. Exactly how fowl flu spreads by way of milk isn’t recognized, however scientists see dangers as a result of repeated exposures would possibly trigger the virus to mutate in a approach that may trigger it to unfold from individual to individual. “A variety of that is hypothetical, however primarily based on actual organic rules that will apply on this scenario,” Adalja mentioned. “So that’s why we’re making an attempt to be very aggressive with this an infection in uncooked milk right now.”
The McAfee household discovered about uncooked milk by probability, however turned true believers over time, persisting within the face of regulatory strain and litigation. The firm has additionally constructed out its personal pathogen lab, which incorporates PCR machines to check for infections of their bulk milk tanks (each day) and their cows (as soon as per week).
Bird flu, for Mark McAfee, is only one thing more to take care of. While its herds are quarantined, the household arrange a partnership with a dairy farm in uninfected northern California and Aaron McAfee expects to have uncooked milk on the cabinets on Monday from that dairy. Meanwhile, they’re sending the milk from the cows on their two dairies off to be pasteurized till the quarantine is lifted. “Mother nature goes to take her course, and I respect mom nature,” Mark McAfee mentioned. “And once we emerge we’ll have two dairies stuffed with antibodies and our customers can’t get sufficient.”
Raw Farm’s industrial scale uncooked milk manufacturing: making cheese (left) and milking cows.
Raw Farm
The McAfees are a long-time farming household. Mark McAfee’s grandparents assembled some 2,100 acres of land. In the mid-Nineteen Seventies, Mark and his youthful brother Eric, who’s cofounder and chairman of Raw Farm, started to assist their grandparents handle the properties. They had been two of 5 brothers, the youngest of whom, David, was killed in an auto accident when he was seven, mentioned Eric McAfee. David’s ashes had been unfold on the 400 acres of land the place Raw Farm is now headquartered.
The brothers discovered as youngsters that their father had borrowed cash by way of a federal program to drill for wells, and wound up $4 million in debt, together with curiosity, when the wells failed, with the land pledged as collateral. They fought again. “Our brother’s ashes and our household’s legacy is on this land and we [were] going to make this work irrespective of how lengthy it takes. At the time we didn’t understand it was going to take 40 years,” Eric McAfee mentioned. In 1988, after a decade of litigation, the household settled for $500,000, he mentioned. “It taught us crucial factor you want in entrepreneurship is persistence,” mentioned Eric, who subsequently went on to a profession as an investor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
They farmed apples and alfalfa, and arrange an natural dairy within the late-Nineteen Nineties. Then, round 1999, after an enormous uncooked milk producer in Los Angeles closed, Mark McAfee began getting calls from prospects who’d seen their easy web site for his or her natural dairy and needed uncooked milk. (Another brother, Adam, had labored for Apple, and so they had been one of many few dairy farmers with a web site then.) “People began calling me saying, ‘We need uncooked,’ and I listened to them,” Mark McAfee mentioned. “They mentioned it tasted higher, didn’t trigger lactose intolerance, was nice for bronchial asthma.” (Research has found no proof of lowered lactose intolerence, however has famous potential safety from allergies and asthma.)
So Mark McAfee and his spouse Blaine loaded up their white Suburban SUV with jugs of unprocessed milk and a few ice chests to maintain it cool, and drove the 250 miles to the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles. As quickly as they arrived, a mob of 75 to 100 folks surrounded the SUV, all clamoring for the stuff, Mark McAfee recalled. “They had been cheering,” he mentioned. “They opened the again of the Suburban and began grabbing half-gallons of milk and simply threw cash within the automotive.”
Seeing the demand, the McAfees constructed out a creamery, and moved into not simply uncooked milk, however uncooked butter, uncooked cheese and uncooked kefir. “Dad is the pioneering, envisioning, evangelical chief of uncooked milk,” Aaron McAfee mentioned. It’s a superb enterprise, too: Today a gallon of normal milk goes for $4.50 on Amazon Fresh, whereas a gallon of uncooked milk, in line with Aaron McAfee, sells for round $18 a gallon in California. The firm is “constantly” worthwhile with “robust [profit] margins,” he mentioned, although he declined to be extra particular.
But this has all the time been a enterprise that performs cat-and-mouse with regulators, and the McAfees have battled each prison and civil litigation over greater than 15 years. They initially resolved a criminal case in December 2008 for violating federal meals legal guidelines by distributing uncooked milk to out-of-state prospects in 2007. The McAfees acknowledged making two shipments to prospects in Washington state and Nevada labeled as pet meals to keep away from detection. A 2010 memorandum in a related civil case seeking a permanent injunction noted, “On the federal government’s account, Defendants have ‘flouted the regulation for years.’” The firm most not too long ago signed a consent decree in July 2023. “We have been in a relentless battle with the FDA and DoJ since 2009. As a peace treaty and never go to jail, now we have agreed to not make any medical claims on our meals,” Aaron McAfee mentioned.
State and federal regulators have shut them down just a few instances a yr since they began, in line with Eric McAfee, who figures he’s invested round $10 million of his personal money to maintain the enterprise going. “Every time that occurred, it was, ‘We’re going to lose one third of $1 million within the subsequent few weeks as a result of we will’t ship product,’” he mentioned.
In 2018, when the enterprise had round $10 million in income, the youthful technology led by Aaron McAfee talked with the household board of administrators a few five-year imaginative and prescient for development. Since then, Raw Farm purchased a second dairy and bought livestock to organize to meet that development plan. The Covid-19 pandemic, the place some folks sought out alternative routes to spice up their immune programs, turned out to be good for Raw Farm. “Our message of constructing a powerful immunity, and constructing an immune system that’s strong to stop getting a virus, was obtained very properly by many individuals,” Aaron McAfee mentioned. (The FDA says that uncooked milk does not build immunity.)
Mark McAfee known as the present shutdown “the FDA’s try at killing off our model,” and Newsom’s declaration of an emergency in California a ploy to get federal funds. His brother Eric known as the eye from fowl flu a optimistic for Raw Farm. “Every time this occurs, revenues increase,” he mentioned. “Good information, dangerous information, it’s all good if you’re within the information, and particularly if it’s controversial,” added Aaron McAfee.
Raw Farm’s uncooked milk
Raw Farm
The household is looking forward to not simply having its cows emerge from quarantine, but in addition future growth – for each the model and the enterprise, led by the youthful technology of McAfees. Aaron McAfee mentioned that the corporate now views itself as “a wholesome life-style model,” and is creating new merchandise that, like uncooked milk, would have one or only a few substances and no sugar added, akin to uncooked, unprocessed orange juice.
Despite being within the crosshairs, Aaron McAfee mentioned that the 100% family-owned enterprise was “preventing off enterprise capital with a stick,” and would take into account promoting a minority stake below the best circumstances.
“I believe one of many key issues to acknowledge is that we’re not regular dairymen,” mentioned Mark McAfee. “We are consumer-connected dairymen, and we’re pushed by various things than the conventional dairymen….It’s only a totally different sort of DNA we’ve bought.”
Alex Knapp contributed reporting.
