by Annie Waldman, ProPublica
I never thought I’d spend six months of my life investigating raw milk. But I did.
In early June, ProPublica published a story I reported that features Mark McAfee, who runs America’s largest raw-milk dairy.
The story came about after months of reporting on how the Trump administration’s policies were reshaping federal health agencies. My colleagues and I spoke with dozens of civil servants, many of whom described a climate of fear in which routine science had suddenly become politicized.
One notable example they shared with me was raw milk, which most scientists and health experts agree has no significant, proven nutritional benefits over its pasteurized counterpart and subjects its consumers to over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness.
But under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., current and former government workers told me, the federal approach to raw milk was shifting to align with his priorities. In his new role, Kennedy said he was advocating for it and celebrated the release of a federal report to Make America Healthy Again with a toast of raw-milk shooters in the White House.
McAfee, who counts Kennedy as a customer, has advocated for raw dairy for more than two decades. But only in recent years has raw milk, which once drew a fringe crowd, been thrust into the mainstream. More than 10 million Americans now drink it; national weekly sales rose by 65% from 2023 to 2024 alone.
McAfee’s farm is pulling in about $30 million a year. It has also attracted significant scrutiny: Federal and state regulators have linked his business to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that had left hundreds of people ill.
Today, 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.
At least 233 people have been sickened in eight outbreaks that federal and state regulators have connected to McAfee’s farm since 2006, and at least 40 of them have been hospitalized. In 2024, the Food and Drug Administration discovered his farm had a “standard practice” of producing cheese from milk suspected or known to contain pathogens, according to court documents.
In January, the government dropped its efforts to take action against the farm. A former federal employee with knowledge of the suit told me that cases involving raw milk were deprioritized in the new administration because of Kennedy’s stance on it. McAfee called the withdrawal a “big win.”
Just weeks after the visit to Raw Farm, federal regulators publicly linked its cheese to yet another E. coli outbreak. Nine people were infected across three states; more than half were younger than 5. On April 30, the FDA closed its investigation into the outbreak without taking any enforcement action.
This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive stories like this one in your inbox every Saturday.