To read Waldman's article go here.
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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. You could say Oregonians love their milk and dairy products, and our supermarkets are always full of these cartons, tubs and containers, often from local dairies such as Umpqua and Tillamook. Most of us don't even think about it, but these dairy products are overwhelmingly safe to consume because of the age-old but time-tested process of pasteurization. But there's a growing trend, fed by some of the most powerful voices in health right now, that wants to stock those same refrigerated shelves with raw milk that could be teeming with pathogens. Today on the show, you'll hear from a ProPublica reporter who spent time with one of the nation's largest producers of raw milk and an evangelist for its health benefits, despite dubious science and a track record of sickening customers. Annie Waldman is a reporter at ProPublica covering health care. Annie, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Annie Waldman: Thanks so much for having me.
Dunne: Yeah, I enjoyed your article. Very enlightening. Let's start with this: Who is Mark McAfee?
Waldman: Mark McAfee is a third-generation California farmer. He was born into a family that charted an unconventional course. His father, whom Mark described as a humanitarian and a rebel, made national news in 1972 when he helped post bail for Angela Davis by putting his land up as collateral. McAfee did not initially go into farming; he worked as a paramedic for 16 years before taking over his family's farmland and eventually became the founder of the largest unpasteurized, or raw milk, dairy in the country.
Dunne: Wow. And as your article does a great job pointing out, he's sort of a raw milk zealot, and he makes a lot of money because of it. I don't think I have to remind very many folks, but just in case, what does science say about consuming unpasteurized milk?
Waldman: By definition, raw milk or unpasteurized milk is milk that hasn't been pasteurized, which is the process of heating up milk to kill off harmful bacteria. We do this because if you drink raw or unpasteurized milk, most scientists and health experts agree there's a large pathogenic risk. In fact, it subjects consumers to more than 100 times the risk of foodborne illness, which is especially dangerous for young children. And even though many people today, especially on social media, talk about the health benefits of raw milk, most scientists and health experts agree that raw milk has no significant proven nutritional benefits over its pasteurized counterpart.
Dunne: It's funny. I did a quick Google search before having you on, and if you search for the greatest scientific discoveries for mankind, pasteurization is really up there, because it's easy to see that when humans learned how to pasteurize, it saved lives.
Waldman: The technique was developed in the 1860s by the French scientist Louis Pasteur, and within a few years of its discovery, people began using it to sterilize milk. That's because before it was widely adopted, thousands of babies died each year from illnesses linked to contaminated dairy, whether it was typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever or tuberculosis. When pasteurization of milk became more widespread, infant mortality rates went down. As you said, today it's one of the most important innovations, because it gave humans the ability to make milk safe. It transformed a dangerous product into a kitchen staple.
Dunne: Let's get back to Mark McAfee. As you said, he's had some training in health care; he was a paramedic. What does he say about this bedrock science on the dangers of unpasteurized milk, and about the dubious nature of raw milk's health claims?
Waldman: Mark McAfee and his farm, Raw Farm, which used to be called Organic Pastures, have made a number of claims over the years about the health benefits of raw milk. They've linked it to things like helping with allergies or asthma. But again, most scientists agree that's not the case. They say it doesn't cure asthma or allergies. So McAfee and his farm's perspective on the health benefits of raw milk runs counter to a lot of bedrock science.
Dunne: Now he has a very strong ally right now who occupies an important position in the Trump administration. Talk a little about what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says about raw milk, and about the people in his periphery as well.
Waldman: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently the nation's health secretary, has in recent years been one of the most notable proponents of raw milk. When he ran for president a few years ago, before he was health secretary, he used his campaign platform to condemn what he considered the government's aggressive suppression of raw milk. In his new role as health secretary, he's continued advocating for it, and he even celebrated the release of a federal report on making America healthy again with a toast of raw milk shooters at the White House. Even though raw milk isn't officially on the MAHA agenda, it's widely viewed as a cornerstone issue of the MAHA movement. Kennedy has also had a close relationship with Raw Farm's Mark McAfee, even before he became health secretary; Kennedy was one of the farm's most notable customers. Mark McAfee told me that when Kennedy was going into the federal government, McAfee was asked to be an advisor on raw milk. That never came to be, but it shows the close relationship between these two camps.
Dunne: Talk about some of the impacts consumers have experienced from drinking his product. Talk about some of the people, the children, who've been made sick by consuming his products.
Waldman: Regulators have linked Raw Farm, again originally called Organic Pastures, to multiple outbreaks over the years. It goes back to 2006, the year of the farm's first outbreak, when six people contracted E. coli. According to federal regulators, their median age was 8. McAfee told me that this first outbreak opened his eyes to the risks of the product and was part of why he began developing standards for raw dairies. But what I found in my reporting is that this increased awareness and better practices didn't necessarily stop the farm's customers from getting sick. Again in 2007, 2011, 2012 and 2016, the farm was linked to outbreaks by federal regulators, and it has had to issue recalls more than half a dozen times after pathogens were found in its products.
Dunne: I'm going to read a quote from your story, from McAfee. He said: "I've put a couple kids in the hospital and they've been sick, but they recovered. But here's the thing: I'm a pioneer. I'm going against the grain here. I'm climbing a mountain they said I can't climb." Given that quote, but also having spent so much time with him, is he a denialist about these potential problems from unpasteurized raw milk? Does he truly believe that, or is he trying to build himself something of an escape route from blame? I guess I'm asking your opinion.
Waldman: Those are great questions. I'm not sure I can answer them directly, but I can say that Mark McAfee does truly believe in raw milk as a product, and he seems to really believe in its benefits, including for children. What's interesting is that I spoke with people who'd been affected by some of the outbreaks linked to his farm, and they had a very different relationship with raw milk than Mark does. I spoke with one parent, Mary McGonigle Martin, whose son was connected to the first outbreak linked to Mark's farm in 2006. She originally bought milk at a grocery store and saw advertisements McAfee put up saying it could help with allergies. Her own son, who was 7 years old at the time, had a dairy sensitivity, so she went to the website, saw that the farm tested its milk and never found a pathogen, and started buying it and giving it to her son. One month later, he fell gravely ill with a dangerous strain of E. coli called O157:H7. He ultimately survived but suffered permanent kidney damage, and now, at 27, he can't drink alcohol and will spend the rest of his life under a nephrologist's care because of his elevated risk of chronic kidney disease. So when you read that quote back to me, what I think about is that there are people who have very long-term effects from these outbreaks. It's not a matter of people healing quickly in the hospital and going on with their normal lives. They live with the experience, and its effects, for the long term.
Dunne: OK, so a lot of people listening might be thinking: What do the regulations say about selling raw milk to the public? What do the guidelines say? Is this skirting around some laws, or can you just sell raw milk and bad things might happen?
Waldman: There's a federal regulation that restricts the sale of raw milk from one state to another. That ban was instituted in 1987 because of concerns about the pathogenic risk of raw milk, and it's had the effect of keeping outbreaks contained and making it easier for local officials to address them. But states can make their own laws and decide how their consumers can access raw milk, and those laws have been expanding access in recent years. Around the time McAfee got into raw milk about 25 years ago, only 27 states allowed its sale. Today, in one way or another, nearly all of them do.
Dunne: I want to shift a little to the proposed health benefits that McAfee and others talk about. In your reporting, talking with scientists, what do proponents like McAfee say is great about raw milk, and what do actual scientists say about those claims?
Waldman: A lot of raw milk proponents will frequently say it reduces allergies and asthma, particularly in children, and they point to a few European studies that cite a correlation between drinking raw milk and lower rates of asthma and allergies. However, when I looked at these studies and spoke with experts about them, they did not prove that raw milk directly led to reduced illness. These studies show correlations, not causation, and many of them explicitly do not recommend raw milk's consumption because of the pathogenic risk. Experts have suggested this association could likely be explained by something called the "farm effect," an effect in which children who grow up around animals and agriculture have been shown to have stronger immune systems and lower rates of asthma or allergies overall. When I spoke with experts about raw milk, what became clear to me is that many people just don't understand the risk. They often turn to raw milk to have a deeper connection to farms and to the land, and a lot of people believe that by knowing a farmer personally, they can assume their food will be safer. Maybe they even see or meet the cow their milk comes from. But what many raw milk consumers don't realize is that dairy farmers are in a relentless battle to produce clean milk. I spoke with John Lucey, a professor of food science who directs the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He grew up on a farm and has studied dairy products for three decades. He was explicit: Cows poop all the time, and farms are a reservoir of bacteria. You can find it in the soil, in the walls; the cows carry bacteria. When you think about that, and about the lack of pasteurization, it removes the important safety step that keeps that bacteria out of something we eat.
Dunne: He also, McAfee claimed, if I have this right, that with certain milk that might test positive for pathogens, he doesn't sell it as raw milk but converts it into cheese, and he told you that removes the pathogens. Your research showed that's not true.
Waldman: Right. When I was on a tour of his farm in early February, one of the most interesting stops was his laboratory. There, he tests for multiple types of pathogens: salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria. All of these thrive in the intestines of cattle and can contaminate raw milk through microscopic bits of infected feces. He told me that when they catch these pathogens, they divert the milk immediately, and I assumed that meant the farm discarded those batches. But later that day on the tour, I learned otherwise. He told me they have a red-flag system: If something gets really out of whack, they tag the milk, and it doesn't go to waste, it goes into cheese, because cheese is resistant to pathogens, he said. That was surprising to me, because research I'd looked at has shown raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens. Aging can mitigate some of the risk, but harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day aging process. When I asked him again about this, he confirmed that milk with pathogens was used to make cheese, except for batches with salmonella, which they dumped or sent out for pasteurization. What was so surprising was that I later learned the Food and Drug Administration knew the farm was doing this, and had even tried to stop it. They'd told McAfee to stop the practice two years before, but no one had alerted the public. When I heard this on the farm, I wondered whether another outbreak was coming. A few weeks later, one was announced, connected to Raw Farm's cheese.
Dunne: Another quote I'll read back to you from your piece, and then we can talk about it. He said to you: "I'm begging you to say this is not anti-science. This is extremely pro-science. It's using science that is not conveniently accepted yet." I read that back because it seems to me, in reading your piece, that McAfee is tapping into an idea that's grown up through the internet and social media: this distrust of "big" whatever, big health, big government, I'm going to do my own research. It really seems like he's tapping into a lot of distrust out there, and saying, don't listen to science, listen to me, I'm telling you the truth. Did you get a similar feeling from him, and about what he's trying to do here?
Waldman: Yeah, and not just from him. I spoke with a number of raw milk consumers and other people in this space, and that really resonated with me too. We live in an era of "do your own research." I'm a journalist and a natural skeptic, and I love that idea in principle. But what that phrase has really come to mean, particularly in this movement, is: Don't trust the experts, find your own facts, find your own truth. That's really the antithesis of doing quality research, which involves trusting reputable sources and experts. With that ethos, many people look in the corners of the internet for their research, and that's where misinformation may be abundant. In speaking with a number of raw milk proponents, often families trying to make good decisions for their children or themselves, they read something on the internet, on Facebook, or see a TikTok video, and to them that seems more reputable or solid than, say, a website from the CDC or the FDA. They're not going to go there for their information first.
Dunne: My last question for you, Annie: There's an element of this that reminds me of big tobacco, how, before the surgeon general's warning, people smoked all the time, and then real science came out showing it was quite unhealthy. I'm almost wondering, in reverse, with raw milk elevated to this healthy status by dubious science: Where can this go? Is someone going to claim, say, that eating raw chicken is great, you should do that? Is the raw milk frontier something that could open the door to a lot of other unhealthy things that might trip consumers up and make people sick, or even die?
Waldman: That's a great question, and something I've been thinking a lot about. It's not just raw milk we're talking about. There's a lot of institutional distrust permeating so many sectors of our society, and what that's doing is eroding trust in bedrock science that's been around for decades, and pushing people to look for information elsewhere, whether it's about raw milk, vitamin K shots or any other health care issue. There's a lot of distrust out there, and I think there's a big question a lot of journalists have right now: How are these institutions, which have been stalwarts of good science and good medicine for a long time, going to regain people's trust? How are they going to bring people back into the fold? What's really important, at least for me as a journalist, is showing stories that reveal the repercussions of this, the consequences, and really unpacking what happens when people do their own research in this period we're living in, where a lot of institutional distrust means people are looking elsewhere for information instead of to institutions like the FDA and CDC that have upheld science and medicine for a long time. I think the most important thing we can do as journalists is show people the consequences of these decisions, show them what happens when people rely on misinformation to make critical health care decisions or personal choices, and hope that they can make better decisions for themselves.
Dunne: Well, I think your piece is very important, and I think people need to read it. She's Annie Waldman, a reporter with ProPublica covering health care. Annie, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.
Waldman: Thank you so much for having me on.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we talk with a member of the Lane County Sheriff's Office whose new role isn't about arresting people but about trying to save them when they're lost or missing in the backcountry. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
