The FDA wanted you to lie to your consumers.
They're a warpath to get rid of raw milk.
And you guys are the only raw cheese brand that's actually
raw. The FDA told us we're the last
ones. Damn right we're not changing
it. It's fraud to do otherwise.
Mark McAfee is back for another conversation on Grounded
Wellness. Today, Mark is the founder of
Raw Farm USA, the largest raw dairy farm in the world.
Today's conversation is different.
Raw Farm has found itself at the center of a major battle
involving the FDA. Well, you're asking us to
destroy thousands and thousands of dollars in product it.
Was $2,000,000. Mark takes us behind the scenes
of what actually happened. They refused to answer questions
that we proposed to them. And why raw milk is facing a
level of food scrutiny that most foods never receive.
We will not lie, we will not commit fraud, we will not be
misleading. And I don't serve the FDAI serve
people. Excuse me for being emotional,
but it's it's not deep. Let's dig in really quick before
we dive in. We love getting your feedback.
So please take a second to leave a comment and tell us that your
favorite topics that we've covered or guess that you want
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Also, by reviewing, liking and subscribing, you'll never miss a
single episode and we get to keep providing you with this ad
free podcast. OK, without further ado, let's
get back into it. Mark McAfee, welcome back to
Grounded Wellness. You've been here before.
You're one of our few repeat guests that we've had on the
show, and your first episode was a huge hit.
I definitely recommend that anyone listening go back and
listen to that one. If you haven't seen it yet, it
was episode 19. And in that one, we talked a lot
about what raw milk is, what the benefits of raw milk are, the
difference between raw and pasteurized covered a lot of
ground. And we'll talk about some of
that today. But what I really want to talk
to you about is this whole debacle going on right now with
the FDA and Raw Farm, specifically in relation to your
raw cheese products. So I first became aware of this
when I saw a video that your son Aaron posted on the Raw Farm
Instagram. Your son is the president of the
company. He said President, OK.
And he posted a video and shared that the FDA had alleged that
there was E coli in RAW Farm cheese that was associated with
a multi state outbreak. He stated that the allegations
were false and that Raw Farm would not be issuing A voluntary
recall as you guys have always done in the past.
And then two weeks later, Raw Farm issued a statement letting
people know that you guys would in fact be moving forward with
the recall. What happened in between that
initial video and the recall statement that later followed?
When we issued the voluntary recall, he said under protest.
I saw that. That really, really didn't land
well with the FDA. A lot of dialogue going on, a
lot of Zoom calls going back and forth.
By the way, they wouldn't turn on their Zoom video.
They didn't want to be seen who they were.
It's just they wanted their voices to be heard, but their
faces not to be recognized. They did not recognize and
realize that we had the data and they didn't have the data.
Now, what do I mean by data? Well, we have a pathogen lab on
farm. This didn't come out of the
news. It's coming out of your news
today. But we had 14,000 tests of our
cheese, butter, cream, milk, all of our products from September
through February, 14,000 tests, about 8090 tests a day on our
products and all of them were negative for E coli O157-HM.
So we had the data. We had the data that's called
called causation. When you can link somebody from
your product to their illness, that's called causation.
What they had was epidemiological evidence.
Now, what is that? Well, it's not admissible in
court. And #2 it comes from fecal
samples collected by Pulse Net across the United States.
And what they do is whole genome sequencing.
And they have questionnaires that they ask patients that they
came I'll from whatever source. What they consumed.
Well, what they consume is a broad range of things.
Raw cheese from our farm, raw cheese from somebody else's
farm, raw milk from unbranded sources.
And some people weren't even classified, Those two that
weren't even classified with whole genome sequence related,
but had consumed raw dairy. So what they do is they take
this massive amount of data. I mean, you think about this for
a second, 900 people every day have this data come through with
the whole genome sequencing and pull stent 900 every day.
So from all sources of E coli in America, it's a massive thing
that happens every day. Well, they wanted to look at
these 9 / 6 months and we said we've got the data showing we're
not connected to these people and we want to see the
questionnaires that these people fulfilled that were asked of
them to find out what the data was before we do any kind of
recall. They refused to give us their
questionnaires. They said you're asking too many
questions. I said we don't run any emotion.
We run on hard data. We want to see the information.
We're scientists here. We want to see the data.
We had the data. We had the test data and they
didn't have any because all the tests they'd performed were
negative and they hadn't done any tests on our products.
So they asked their state partners in Texas and Florida.
If they hadn't done any tests, what tests were negative?
If they hadn't done testing on your products.
The tests that had come through were all negative.
OK. So state of Texas did some
testing, State of Florida did testing, California did testing,
all of them completely negative and we still have 14,000.
We said we have 14,000 more tests, they're all negative.
Yes, because this is the testing that you guys are doing before
anything even leaves your facility.
Correct SO. And you have records of all of
that we. By batch so we know what's in
the food before it ever gets consumed.
It's on the farm test. And it's not like anything's
going to change, right? Like if it doesn't have E coli
when you test it, it's not going to like later develop.
It the secure cap on the label there on the, you can't take it
off and spin it, right? Yeah.
So we know what's in there and it's secured as an individual
unit. Well, the state of California
had no problem with our product. We're all good.
They've done the testing. We know the data.
It was all good. It was the FDA, not state of
California. You notice there was no
disruption in California. It was all pretty good.
It was Interstate commerce of raw cheese in other states,
Texas and Florida. And so we asked them to please
do testing on the cheese, and they did.
And all the tests came back completely negative.
Who said yeah, that's because we know what was in that cheese
before it ever left. This is a very unusual place the
FDA has never found themselves in.
Was it someplace that had a pioneering vision and actually
implemented an on farm pathogen testing program with PCR?
And PCR is extremely sensitive down to 50 logs. 50 logs is a
number with 50 zeros on it. OK.
It's so big, I don't think my, my grandkids call it Google
numbers that after 18 hours of, of culture, broth and culturing
and you do your, your, your quant 5 studio PCR, it's not
there. It's not there.
So we had that data and the FDA did not know what to do with it.
So when they came to you with saying that there was a a
possible link and they wanted you to do the recall, you then
said well, we have all of our data and then they did
additional testing. All of that was negative.
So. The first thing we said was, is
there anyone sick in the hospital?
How are they said no, there's nobody sick in the hospital?
Well, where were the illnesses four to six months ago?
Oh, the illnesses themselves were not even no.
There's nobody sick today. Like even even that, was it even
that serious? Do you know the the severity of
the illnesses? Only two people actually were
seen at a hospital, the rest recovered at home.
OK. That we are aware of.
So this was basic E coli, Got it.
Nobody wants to have that. But we asked them are there
anybody sick in the hospital? They said no.
This happened in September, October, November, 6 months ago.
So there's no acute illnesses today?
No. All right, then, can you take
two or three days and give us some data so we can actually
understand why we would need to do a recall?
Because here's all the evidence why we wouldn't 14,000 tests.
And we'd like to see the questionnaires that these
consumers filled out which they didn't want to give to us.
So it was very much a non transparent kind of thing where
they're just trying to bully us into doing a recall.
They didn't have any evidence. Yeah, I mean, there's just so
many flaws, like one, no evidence, 2 anything that even
if there was evidence of something, that milk would not
still be on shelves today. These are new batches of milk
now. Let's let's do this.
It was not milk. Oh, cheese, right?
Cheese, Yeah. It quickly became a discussion
about milk because that was convenient to talk about, but
milk was not implicated. Yeah.
What's interesting about this is the same milk that we had
consumed throughout state of California cause 0 illness, 0
illnesses in California have been tested extensively by us
and state of California was made into the cheese.
And the cheese is arguably more safe than milk because it's aged
60 days with salt and it's low moisture with a low pH.
So given the absurdity of all of this, your response when they
came to you was, no, we don't agree, we're not doing this.
What changed then two weeks later for you guys to issue the
voluntary recall under protest? Well, we said no, but
conditionally we said we need to see more information.
What is causing you to be considering this a crisis?
Can you tell us more? And they wouldn't.
They said we have epidemiological evidence.
Well, show us that evidence. And when they did, it was
incomplete. They wouldn't 'cause they
wouldn't give us any causation, which is show us a pathogen that
matches a consumer. They couldn't and they wouldn't.
They refused to do that. So what happened 2 weeks later?
Well, they said this could take months.
So what's the fastest way to get this behind us?
We'll do a voluntary recall and just recall those batches we're
concerned about. I said, you mean recall batches
that are pathogen free. They said yes, there were a lot
of pounds, 10s of thousands of pounds of cheese destroyed.
They were completely negative for E coli O 15787.
We did that because that was the fastest way for them to conclude
their investigation was to get rid of those batches they were
concerned about. Even though the state of Texas,
Florida, California had already done testing on batches of
cheese and all of them completely negative for
pathogens, just like we said they were because we had the
tests already. So that was the fastest way to
get through this FDA thing was to declare a recall, do it under
protest, because we had data saying shoot first, ask
questions later seems to be their policy at this point.
You don't do an investigation to figure out who's guilty first.
You just shoot first. Don't worry about the answers.
And you mentioned they were upset at that language that you
had added in there? I didn't care for their upset.
I wanted to tell the truth. Yeah.
What was their response to it? Where?
What did they say? They.
Didn't really have jurisdiction over how we were going to
conduct our voluntary recall because here's the interesting
thing, they couldn't conduct A mandatory recall.
Do you know why the Food Safety Modernization Act requires you
have causation and they didn't have causation, so you have to
have a cause to actually do a mandatory recall.
They didn't have cause so. Which makes sense.
It's what the Food Safety Modernization Act says.
It's like if you have a pathogen to the product, you find it,
yes, you should recall. And by the way, the FDA can make
you do it. I agree with that.
Bottom line was they had none of that, so they couldn't do a
mandatory recall. They relied on us to do a
voluntary recall, which was associated with all kinds of
brand condemning things like DPH here at California said thou
shalt not ever drink any raw dairy ever and have nothing with
raw dairy had to do with raw cheese.
So there was all kinds of really brand assassinating terrible
things that they did associated with their releases that came
out. I'm curious, do you feel like
any of that had an impact on customer base or sales or did
people just like rally around you guys even more when all of
this was going on? I mean, I'm sure obviously there
was an impact monetary impact of getting rid of all those batches
of cheese. But just in terms of customer
support, how did how did that land with people?
Our brand and the movement has evolved now over the many years
we've been working hard at this where it's become kind of an
interesting dynamic where if the FDA passionately says something,
run the other way and do the opposite.
And so I think. A lot of people are feeling like
that. Core consumer feel that way.
I'm sure probably some of the new people like I'm concerned
because they trust the FDA, which we should.
They should have integrity and and not be saying things that
are not true and they should have facts behind their
statements. If they have facts behind their
statements, I'd be the first one to agree they don't then I
won't. I am questioning, I'm wanting
data. So I think at this point the
consumers have consolidated around the fact that they trust
their farmer more than more than the FDA because we ethically
really, really take responsibility for our products
and we have the pathogen test and we're doing the right
things, the right conditions, the right all the things we do
with our cows. You can come see it.
And they feel that in their heart and in their gut
themselves and the experience they expense themselves.
The biggest damage was to our big store partners that said,
FDA said it, we're going to drop your products for a little while
until they say, OK, so drop, you know, drop cheese in 13 states
because of that. And that was a pretty big hit to
us. So there is a damage.
Unfortunately, we can't collect that back from the FDA when they
could find no evidence at all because of the sovereign
immunity that the government has.
Sovereign immunity prevents collection from the FDA because
they have immunity as a government entity and they are
supposed to work on our behalf. And I can, I can understand
that. But if they're working on behalf
and not using fax and now they're using appropriate
information, they're not, they're not working on our
behalf at that point. Remember this, the FDA
absolutely hates raw milk, cannot stand it.
They don't like raw cheese. They don't like anything raw
because their standards say it's filthy.
And I have to agree with their standards because their
standards excuse filth. Everything gets pasteurized and
they refused to meet with us to talk about clean standards.
Yeah, yeah. And we talked about this a lot
last time. Like the milk that is sold in
stores, it actually does need to be pasteurized because it is so
filthy, because the cows are raised in such filthy conditions
and the milk is extracted in such filthy conditions.
It is nasty milk with a lot of bad bacteria in it that requires
pasteurization, but what you're doing is so much different than
that. There's a series called Do Dairy
Different and Do Dairy Different is something that my my daughter
Kaylee's working on that's going to explain all the things around
doing dairy different for people versus a processor.
And there's a incredible amount of work that we do that the
other farmers wouldn't do, don't need to do.
Yeah. Can you share just a little bit
of that kind of give us a glimpse of the extra procedures
and measures that you guys take to make sure that your milk is
is super clean? It's a grass to glass
comprehensive approach to all the risks for production of raw
milk. The conditions when the cows lay
down sunshine grass. The water is tested, make sure
that they have good mineral supplementation to make sure
they're very healthy and energy levels nutritionist and what
they eat to make sure they have good a good ration.
How the Otter is cleaned. There's no manure on any of our
others. Completely impeccable otters.
How we put the machines on, how we collect the milk, how rapidly
we chill the milk. If you do milk for
pasteurization, they allow up to two hours or even longer to get
them up below 50°F. Now that milk comes out of the
cow at 99 to 100°. That's mammalian milk.
We get the milk to 36° in one minute.
Wow. So 2 1/2 hours below 5036° in
one minute. Massive change.
We store the milk in a bulk tank for 18 hours to collect a
sample, to take it to our pathogen lab to assure that it
has no pathogens. Listeria, E coli, Campylobacter,
Salmonella are 0, none. And then the the call from
counts are less than 10, which is the same number you achieve
by pasteurization. But we don't pasteurize, we do
it by being clean. But that tells you how
absolutely filthy milk that goes to be pasteurized will be before
it gets pasteurized, before it's deadened.
And by the way, pasteurization does not remove the bacteria for
the milk. It just kills it, leaves it in
place. It's one of the reasons why it's
so allogenic. Interesting.
Bacteria is not something your body wants in in its body.
So just an incredible amount of of different things we do,
including milk only from our dairy, going to our Creamery
into our bottles. That milk comes from the our
dairies, our two dairies, not 50 different dairies combined
together. OK.
And that's the norm in the dairy world.
Could be 100 dairies. Wow.
Yeah, it's it's everybody in the area that has a contract with
that Creamery gets dumped into what big tank to be pasteurized.
And it must be. It should be.
So that's where the FDA is, right.
But what they're wrong is they're failing to recognize the
consumer desire and demand for ramen, for human consumption and
understand the technology and the standards to produce that
which is done differently. They refuse to talk about it.
They absolutely refuse to talk about it.
So when you did the voluntary recall, it was kind of to get
them off your case and just it was like a way forward.
It was a way to get through the process.
Correct, Yeah. And so where do things stand
now? I know you mentioned that you
are no longer able to sell raw, all raw dairy or just raw cheese
across state lines. All products are approved across
state lines everywhere right now.
Oh, OK, we're back to normal. So everything's everything's
normal. The only thing that's not normal
is that we are going to take the FDA to federal court and make
them answer the questions they refuse to answer during the
recall. We asked them a bunch of
questions. They said you have too many
questions, said well, we have some answers we need.
Well, you're asking us to just destroy like a lot of, I'm sure
like thousands and thousands of dollars in product.
And so I. It was $2,000,000.
Wow. Yeah, wow.
I mean, that's very significant. And definitely I would think
that you would have the right to ask questions about that.
Correct. And they refused to answer
answer questions that we proposed to them.
So we have several questions we want from them.
Like why did you demand that we should pasteurize our cheese and
label it as raw like everybody else does?
Yeah, I really want to talk about.
This that came out of that came out of Jane Choi's mouth and
she's an inspector from the FDA on our premises, witnessed by
people, they demanded that we pasteurize our cheese and then
label it as raw. And that's what's happening with
most, quote, raw cheese in grocery stores today.
People may be confused because we've had this Organic Valley
quote raw cheese on on our little table here next to Raw
Farm Milk. Obviously different brand, but
there's a reason it's here. Can you tell everyone what the
deal is with Organic Valley Raw? Cheese, raw cheddar, which I
would think means has been processed or pasteurized or
heated and it still contains its bio actives which people want
like a French cheese, the French paradox, health building things.
The bio actives is the wonderful thing.
Do a chat to EBT and find out all the bio actives and
unprocessed milk. It's amazing.
There's fifty of them. Incredibly powerful health
bringing product elements. This says raw cheddar cheese on
the back. It says to achieve optimal
flavour we heat the milk to 158°, which is pastorization.
Yep. And by the way, let's not just
pick on Organic Valley. Everybody else is doing it too
in retail. And you guys are the only raw
cheese brand that's actually raw.
The FDA told us we're the last ones, and we told them damn
right we're not changing because it's fraud to do otherwise.
Our consumers understand. And would feel very betrayed and
misled if they were given a raw cheese that actually been
pasteurized. There's raw and there's
pasteurized and raw that's truly raw, has not been heated above
body temperature and retains all its bio actives which are so
health giving so. Yeah, I mean, looking at this,
it is so small. This.
On the back of the label. I would never read this.
I mean, I, I look at ingredients and sometimes nutrition facts
and that's kind of it. You would never, no one would
ever notice this. It's not.
Required that they actually say that statement on the back so
they could have that's actually ethical that they did that.
Thank you Organic Valley for saying that.
But it's the same it is a contrasting conflict within its
own label that in fact it's raw but pasteurized.
So it's it's very much a conflict.
There are other producers that don't say that on the back,
which obviously would be more more misleading.
But the bottom line is under the federal code, the word raw is
not defined. Pasteurized is, but not raw.
And if you're not holding a pasteurizer's license with a
permit and actually effectively pasteurizing, you can do
whatever you want with the milk, heat it up to whatever
temperature you want. And it's not pasteurized because
it's not gone through that specific thing.
So you can have raw meaning all kinds of things truly raw like
ours or. Fake RAW.
There's two kinds of raw milk here, one for humans, one for
people, one for the pasteurizer. You don't want to confuse the
two. And in the skin care industry,
it's kind of similar. There are these buzzwords like
natural or non-toxic. No one is regulating that.
No one's checking on that. You can have the most toxic
products ever being marketed as completely safe and non-toxic,
and it's completely legal. And we refuse to lie to our
consumers. We are ethical, moral people and
we know what's in cheese. We know the bio actors are so
important and they're all destroyed by pasteurization and
heat. Those people are looking for
unprocessed, whole natural foods that have their bio actives in
the raw dairy. That would not be a source of
it. And there's absolutely no
difference between this and regular cheese.
Not that I'm aware of. That is aged 60 days, which is
something you would do on the raw side, but the pasteurization
side, the 158° is definitely pasteurization.
Any time you hit 145° you started to pasteurize.
So what the FDA wanted, essentially, was for you to lie
to your consumers and pasteurize your cheese and label it as raw.
We will not do that. We will not lie.
We will not commit fraud. We will not be misleading to our
consumers that we care for dearly, dearly.
So clearly the FDA is not connected to consumers and I
don't serve the FDAI serve people not not the processor.
And how did they respond when you said that's not something
we're interested in doing? They kind of had to back off
because what we're doing is 100% legal and appropriate by code,
and their bullying wasn't going to work at raw farm.
What was that whole process like internally for, for you, for
both of your kids who work have important roles at Roth Farm and
just for for everyone in the company?
What was that? What was it like going through?
That you want the true back story.
I would love it. I was in Portugal.
I was in Portugal for three weeks with my wife.
We'd planned I wasn't going to cancel this time with my wife in
Europe and so. Because this isn't like the
first time something like this has happened to you guys.
You're not a stranger to dealing with the FDA and having the FDA
come after you. It's pretty rare that the state,
California does something. And when they do something, they
probably have something. And we've gotten kind of beyond
that because of our testing. But the FDA, they're on a
continuous warpath. They see us as a major threat
because instead of killing, we test and kill.
We have a live step, not a not a kill step.
And they absolutely cannot. They detest that concept.
And I think that it's a tribute to our team how well it was
handled because I was able to get an update every hour, every
day or so for my son, 8 hours off because I was in Portugal.
But the the credit goes to our team who handled it with extreme
professionalism because we knew who we served and we had the
data and we asked the hard questions of the FDA that could
not and would not respond to those questions, which really
exposed the level of concern they had for their own position.
They really, really aren't thin ice.
And so they were trying to bully us, trying to get us to do
something from fear versus staying calm and asking for the
data and they refused to respond to us.
So I think the professional response really saved the day
because they weren't able to bully us.
Yeah, because you guys brought it to the public.
We know how to speak their language.
We know the science probably better than some, but they're
pretty good at this stuff. We had the test data, we had the
evidence, and we weren't. We weren't willing to capitulate
to their demands because we knew the evidence very, very
strongly. I want to give people some
context on just some food safety information I have.
So in 2025 alone, over 20,000,000 lbs of blueberries
were recalled across multiple states due to E coli,
Salmonella, and listeria. Yet culturally, no one seems to
question blueberries in the same way people question raw dairy.
Why do you think that is? Today, CDI has uncounted
hundreds of thousands of pounds of dried powdered milk.
What's CDI? California Dairy Inc, it's a big
dairy processor in California. I have Dutch friends that are
part of that product. Co-op are recalling massive
amounts of dried powdered milk with salmonella in it.
Do you see that in the news? Nope, it doesn't make news when
it's pasteurized. So the bottom line is there's a
cultural sensitivity to raw milk that distinguishes it and
differentiates it from all other foods.
And it's they're on a warpath to get rid of raw milk, even though
the trend lines are down for illnesses on raw milk, even
though consumption is up. There's pub Med on that showing
that the data on that. So they are infuriated by the
fact that the public will not follow their commands and
directions and thinking for themselves that food is medicine
and that trust your farmer and become educated and everybody
you know. The FDA wants everybody to
follow them blindly. When people are saying Nope, not
so much, I want the evidence, please show it to me and they
won't give it to you. Do you think media coverage
plays a role in the mass panic over raw milk?
There's no question MSN has continuous scrolling every day
of anti raw milk stuff. Every day.
Every day thou shalt not drink raw milk.
Geez. Women's Health Magazine, This,
that, and the other thing, all the experts who've never called
me to talk about raw milk. Mm hmm.
Who've never contacted Raw Milk Institute to look at the common
standards we vetted 20 years ago with the city of California.
How did that CNN feature come out a few years ago?
Because they called me around the same time a little shortly
after they contacted you. They totally like twisted and
made me look really bad and uneducated.
Just took, you know, cherry picked what I was saying but I'm
curious how yours went. We are fringe people to them,
unfortunately, and even though we will tell them this is the
science we use to understand the gut microbiome, understand the
immune system, understand the milk globule, the butter fat
globule, which is such an incredible thing.
It carries all the bio, carries 60% of bio actors in the
butterfat globule, unpasteurized.
I have provided the science to them from their own databases,
their own archives at the National Institutes of Health,
the CDC, Pub Med. I've provided that to him. 50-60
studies you never hear about in the news.
You never hear about bio actives destroyed by pasteurization.
The Cornell study done in 2021, funded by the National Dairy
Council, they don't even want to look at that science, which was
not funded by by rawderry, it was funded by the pasteurized
people. So science doesn't seem to
matter. This is an issue about money,
politics and pressure to fall in line along with the rest of the
herd and do what everybody else does.
And that is not something we do as pioneers.
You try to find out what it is for people, consumers, humanity,
what's good for them and makes our product very, very unique.
And other producers of raw milk too, that are trying to do the
same thing, that are thriving, but under pressure from the FDA.
And I think a lot of people know about the influence that the
Pharmaceutical industry has on the FDA, but can you also talk
about the revolving door between the dairy industry and the FDA
and how these two are so closely intertwined?
Fundamentally, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the FDCA says
you can make no claims on any food as medicine.
If you do, you created a new drug and that's illegal.
You only can do approved claims with the FDA and it cost 10s of
millions of dollars in 10 or 15 years to get an approval from
the FDA. So you can't get an approval on
a non patented food. It just doesn't happen.
So food as medicine is a pretty radical thought because it
doesn't make more money for pharmaceuticals.
Now, on its face, it's like, oh, you're talking about corruption
and backdoor dealing. But there's a revolving door
between the FDA that regulates pharmaceuticals and those that
work in the FDA back and forth, back and forth, send the best
from pharmaceuticals over the FDA to regulate the
pharmaceuticals and keep the competition at Bay, the FDA.
Makes sense because ultimately what they care about is profits,
and so they want to influence regulations in a way that
benefits what what they're doing.
It's profits over people. Bottom line is as a retired
paramedic and seeing so many people that failing immune
systems and sickness and stuff, I'm dedicated people, not not
profits and and pharmaceuticals. Now we need good
pharmaceuticals. I'm not against that, but it
should not be the fundamental thing we're doing to make people
healthy in America. Yeah.
And so it makes sense to me that that revolving door would also
exist between the conventional dairy operations and the FDA.
It does. The processors very much are
very, very closely aligned with the FDA.
I know because I went to the NCIMS conference in 2007 in
Florida. And at that dairy conference is
the National Conference of Interstate Milk shipments.
The FDA sits in charge of the whole thing, but it's all the
processors there. You said Denone there and
Organic Valley and all the big processors are sitting there in
the room deciding what they're going to do going forward.
And that is the place where they decide policy for pasteurized
milk. And I, I actually made a speech
there. I made a speech.
How did that go? Raw milk.
You could have heard a pin drop. They didn't want to hear it.
I was told by one of the people attending and said it was like
being at the Vatican and screaming there is no God.
Wow. That's how profound what I was
saying impacted the people in the room.
I say this is exactly what God made.
And it's a very interesting thing how excuse for filth has
dominated our culture where in the 1890s, we all know there was
a lot of people who died from raw milk, the filthy raw milk in
the 1800s. And at the same time, there was
some high standards created by the American Association of
Medical Milk Commissions, Dr. Coyte, and that was the
certified raw milk, which Altadena was the last certified
raw milk in California in 1999 when I picked up after that.
But the pasteurization was the end all be all to take care of
filth. It's very clear that the culture
is so deeply entrenched in America and they're excusing of
filth as part of the standards that it's almost, well, it is
embarrassing for them to talk about the fact that you're
excusing filth. And by the way, the side effect
of that is losing 4 dairies a day in America because the
prices are so low that they can't pay their bills.
What's interesting is as a scientist, there are
technologies to do better than pasteurization called HPP.
Cold press actually saves about 60 to 70% of these bio actives
that are so important. And it's very effective if you
pay the farmer better to do a cleaner job because it'll get
rid of pathogens, but it won't get rid of dirt.
So pasteurization does does that.
So you actually have to pay the farmers more.
The processors know this. The California Milk Advisory
Board got milk. People know this.
We've had long talks about innovating to do better for
pasteurization and their farmers, they drag their feet.
They say they want to do it. God bless them for doing that,
but they're not doing it. There's other technologies come
out of Europe, UV, there's ultrasound.
There's all kinds of ultrasound plus electricity that actually
keep pathogens. They check pathogens, but they
keep these bio actives intact. So their failure to innovate is
also at their feet. The pasteurization is an 18th
century solution to an 18th century problem.
Doctor Bruce German. Not not.
That's not me saying that that's exactly what it is.
We could do better. We put men on the moon and we
know about clean water. We know about healthy cows.
We can have the technology to test and know that stuff.
So the bottom line is I put it to their feet, failure to
innovate for them. Talk to us about the epidemic of
pasteurization intolerance. A lot of people call it lactose
intolerance, but I know you've referred to it as pasteurization
intolerance. Can you explain what you mean by
that? We have a very interesting
survey we're doing and we even came up with AQR code, which is
pretty cool. And we had all of our raw milk
consumers take that survey and it's done by the Raw Milk
Institute. And what it's doing is it
actually is drawing data from people and their experience
consuming raw milk. What we found is raw milk is non
allergenic. Raw milk is generally very easy
to consume for most everybody, including black people and Asian
people, which are generally been the non lactase persistence gene
people, they have no problem. So raw milk is good for
everybody, just like breast milk is good for all babies.
Raw milk is good for all adults and teenagers in every part of
life. And that's because raw milk has
all the elements in it to digest itself.
If it gets warm, it falls apart. It creates its own lactase, the
presence of lactose, the the digestive enzymes are there.
Bacteria that make the digestive enzymes are there.
It's a whole food. And so we call it pasteurization
intolerance, not lactose intolerance.
Time and time and time again, pasteurization intolerance is
shown to be true. And this study is actually going
to draw that forward. And we think that maybe Rutgers
University is going to do the actual definitive investigation
with their pH DS there. Doctor Joe Heckman's leading
some of that work, but it's going to be a multi centre study
because our friends in Canada, they cannot study raw milk
because raw milk's illegal there.
They will not let them do any university research.
So we're doing this in collaboration with Canada and
Kata CADA, which is a Canadian alliance of dairy that are
trying to get raw milk legalized in Canada.
And they're basically saying so many of us cannot digest
pasteurized milk and are highly allergenic to it, that we need
raw milk. And here are the standards we
want to use. Bethany, here's something that
nobody's heard and I'll be the first one to say it.
Did you know that pasteurized milk is so allergenic that it
causes death? What do you mean by that?
The National Registry for Allergic Foods or National
Allergy Registry be 15 people in the last three to four years
have died from allergies to pasteurized milk.
Wow, it structurally has a problem.
Like drink it. Drink it.
It results in their death. Permix don't get there fast
enough. Epinephrine you die severely
allergic responses to pasteurized milk.
Which anaphylactic kind of reaction?
Yes, severe anaphylaxis and septic shock.
Wow. Allergic reactions which end up
in death. I actually didn't know that was
possible to have that severe over reaction.
Look it up yourself, ChatGPT it. Look at the national registry of
allergic reactions or allergic death. 15 people have died the
last couple years. Geez.
My whole point is it's not a secret at the FDA website.
The most allergenic food in America is pasteurized milk, not
raw milk. Raw milk is not allergenic.
Yeah, it's not even the same food.
Nope. When you don't have bioactives,
we don't have the raw whey protein which stabilizes mast
cells, which keeps the histamine responsible response.
It doesn't have the same kind of cytokine storing that happens
and people that have Cerealia, it's just a different food.
It's not allergenic. It tastes good and it's easy to
digest. So we're looking at some of
these first QR code responses were coming back.
A lot of people said I'm allergic to pasteurized milk.
A lot of people said I just can't drink pasteurized milk.
It's so hard gas producing cramping pain.
Although I'm not lactose intolerance, I have Mal
digestion from these pasteurized proteins.
Yeah, because it's not milk. It's not milk anymore, no.
So the science, we're trying to bring the science forward so
that data can speak for the consumers directly, not Mark
McAfee talking about how great raw milk is.
We're letting the science actually do that study and do
that testing and research is going to be very clear on that.
For anyone who is super curious about trying raw milk, but maybe
they still have some reservations, can you give us
your best sales pitch for why everybody should be drinking raw
milk? If you have a source of reliable
raw milk, you should be drinking it.
If you don't have a source, find a source or get your source
trained. But I would not suggest you go
drinking raw milk intended for pasteurization because you could
get sick. So know your source.
High standards, very, very important.
Why would you want to consume raw milk?
Well, it's the first food of life.
When you're born as a baby, you don't have a digestive tract
that's mature. You don't have a microbiome
that's 80% of your immune system that's been developed.
What does raw milk, colostrum and colostrum and raw milk do?
It seeds into the gut. It feeds the gut with lactose
and does all those wonderful things to create the gut
microbiome in the mucosal lining that lines your intestines,
which forms 80% of your immune system.
Think about COVID. Those that were immune
compromised got really sick or died.
Do you want to be immune compromised?
What's the one food that really builds back the immune system
more than any other food? The food that built it the at
the first place in life and that's been known for 12,000
years for mankind, but it's been suppressed for the last 100
years. So people will recognize the
ancient wisdom of raw milk and the bio actives and the whole
fats and those things that are literally immune cells carrying
the goodness from a cow to a human are there and present and
acting are wanting and demanding it.
And so post COVID, it's been kind of an enlightenment period.
People have said, wait a minute, wake up.
I want some facts. Not so fast.
Back off on all the shots and stuff.
Before I get a shot, I want to know more.
And by the way, I want to know what I can do without that shot,
right? And what can I do to prepare
myself for the next round of problems that are happening.
People saying raw milk and whole food nutrition are where it's at
in terms of building that gut microbiome.
And I'm sure that you have a lot of stories of customers over the
years, friends and family, people who have benefited from
raw milk. Can you share some of those?
I love the one that happened this morning at our local
Organic Roots. OK, what happened?
I was in there with Jamie and we were going over the dairy case
and we were looking for that cheese.
It wasn't really raw cheese, but they said it was.
And we were talking to the dairy case guy who didn't know.
And the gal walked up to me and introduced myself from Raw Farm
and she was wearing the organic roots.
She goes, Oh my gosh, your mark from I said, yeah, you don't
know what you've done for my son.
He had severe asthma and now he's fine.
Wow. Her son has completely
transformed himself by no longer suffering asthma, which kills 13
people every day. Most of them are children in a
day In America, that's every two hours a child dies in American.
That's not ER, that's dead. But yet the European studies are
so profound that raw milk consumption decreases asthma
dramatically, along with colds, flu, ear infections and fever.
That's all immune stuff. So if you got a kid in a
daycare, they better be on raw milk because they're the one
that going to come home and not be sick.
Or if they sick, they're really mildly sick and get over it
quick when everybody else is out for a week.
So raw milk changes the gut microbiome, which is 80% of the
immune system, profoundly because the bio actives are
there. That's a message I want
everybody to hear loud and clear.
That's incredible. That's, it's, it's powerful,
it's profound. It's it's a gift from another
nature, God himself, that this is an evolutionary thing, that
it created this food that we can thrive on that's being decimated
by pasteurization and industrialization.
So those of us in California are blessed that we can easily find
raw farm products in in most health stores.
What do you suggest for people who live in a state where raw
farm isn't available? What's a good way to try to find
a quality, trusted raw milk source and talk about which
states which other states you can find your products to?
Well, California's the only state you can find our raw dairy
products. The raw cheese can be found
through most of the southern states, Texas, Florida, New
Mexico, all the sprout stores. That's the raw cheese, but not
the fluid milk and stuff. What I would recommend is first
go to therawmilkinstitute.org. Look for a listed farmer who
uses practices much similar to ours.
They report their data. You can actually see their food
safety plan and see their bacteria counts from recent
testing right now. So you can look through the
pretty roses and white picket fences and know what's going
inside the cow and inside the milk because you see the
bacteria counts. Those farmers are trained and
they actually submit their, their, their CCPs or SSO PS
their whole food safety plan and their bacteria counts every
month and are certified by the Raw Milk Institute.
That'd be my first way to go. Then I'm going to go to
realmilk.com and look for the local raw milk producer that
specializes in human consumption, raw milk.
And most of those people have their act act together, but I
can't speak for them because I don't know them.
And after that, then it's going to be kind of Wild West.
It's kind of like you got to know your farmer and know a lot
about raw milk. And if you want to know a lot
about raw milk, I would say go to rawmilkinstitute.org and goes
to the Ramak Farmer training program.
Takes 4 hours. There's a whole PowerPoint that
talks about biofilms and, and tuberculosis and brucellosis.
It talks about E coli, it talks about pathogens, it talks about
pathogen load and hosts and all these kind of stuff.
That's the training that we provide farmers for free.
So become a trained consumer. If you if you don't have a
trained farmer, you're going to have to become well informed
yourself because the FDA is right when it comes to raw milk
intended for pasteurization. Their standards suck and they're
dirty and you got to watch your PS and QS because if you have a
compromised immune system you can very easily get very sick.
What would an ideal future look like for raw dairy in the US?
Then it was acknowledged and the standards were recognized and
that there will be a little bit of investment at the FDACDC and
NIH in raw milk and the research behind it.
And it's with safety systems. We could do phenomenal amount of
work for really cheap. But the NIH has blocked all
funding to anything raw, any raw dairy.
We've been back. We've asked them, they said
because the FDA does not acknowledge raw milk as a human
consumption, food has to be pasteurized.
So the NIH has blocked literally $100 million of access we could
have for food safety development and research.
And that is a crime, in my opinion, against our humanity
and a complete endorsement of pasteurization, which creates
very highly allergenic foods. It's hard to digest and also
pharmaceuticals. And that's pretty sad.
So we can do a whole lot better here in America.
We can really do a lot better. And we can start off by leading.
And I will say this, they may have the guns and the money, but
I got the truth And the moms, that's right.
And the bottom line is you build a huge market and at at some
point is a tilting and there's a there's a tipping point at which
our voices and our dollar voting is so much more powerful than
what they're trying to yap at us.
A cute little story may have told it earlier, but it's worth
telling again. Last year, one of our trucks is
going through a weigh station in Santa Barbara and going through
the weigh station, cleared the weigh station, kept on going,
delivering milk to stores. And ACHP officer came screaming
up behind with the lights and said stop, stop, stop.
And then our guy said, oh, I got a ticket.
There's something going on here, the officer said, is there any
way you could sell me some raw milk?
And they had a bunch of officers at that weigh station that
wanted a cheaper access. And now we have a weigh station
with with an ice chest there. And I think it's a store, a
little refrigeration area where there's a Visa card on for
delivery of that milk every week to this, the CHP office that
work for us in California. So that's the kind of cool thing
that's happening in terms of the evolution of the brand to where
our voices become so big and so loud and so profoundly true
based on hard science, based on ethical farming practices and
high standards, that the crying wolf from the FDA becomes a
crying wolf. And it's already a lot of
influencers are saying don't believe them, run the other way,
it's safer. And unfortunately, it's becoming
true. It's really true.
And they need to open their minds.
They need to open their culture of belief and understand that
clean raw milk, this low risk is possible.
They just to learn that need to go back to school to understand
that. I totally agree and I have
really seen people rally around you guys, especially in these
last few months, which leads me to my last question.
I want to hear about camping with the cows.
You guys just had this incredible event with I think
you said 1400 people, 1400 people came out to your farm,
spent the night. I saw like a concert there.
Like, tell us about it, what happened?
The beauty of the bed head and the day after is awesome.
I love it. True beauty comes forward, 1400
people. It's the sixth time we've held
this. It's 12 years.
Every other year we had sixty, well, excuse me, 75 influencers,
which was before we had 6 or 7 two years ago.
And it was a celebration of a movement more than even a brand.
We had other people wanting to celebrate with us and affiliate
with us and be connected with us because of the goodness we're
we're doing. And it was all positive.
It was all human to human positive energy.
When you've got 100 people around a big bonfire and just
staring at the bonfire holding their children, it's powerful.
That's amazing, yeah. Moon above us and stars above
us. And it was really, really
beautiful. Excuse me for being emotional,
but it's it's not deep. Yeah, yeah.
And this just happened like like a week ago, I think.
I hope to go sometime in the future.
Well, you were always, you're our VIP.
But it was a movement. And people came from England,
Australia, Canada. Yeah, people from across the
United States. We had a band from Texas.
My my credit goes, the credit goes to my daughter Kaylee, who
coordinated it take her a year to put together my son Aaron,
who coordinated and the rest of the team that put it all
together. But it was basically the content
coming out of that was so powerful with all the human
stories being created. It it it just moves me.
You see my paramedic tears, but it's so true because.
Well, it looked really special. I mean just as a bystander
looking at photos and videos. Online you got me triggered on
the last call. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do
that. That's OK, because.
It's, but I I love that your passion came out because you are
a very passionate guy. You're the real deal.
You truly believe in what you're doing, and I think that's very
evident in the work that you do. See the impact and purpose on
people. And I think there's to be no
greater gift to a person's life and to see good impact and
purpose on people, just as you have with your pastor bird and
things you've done with your your chicken, which is eating
the right stuff and sunshine and bugs and all that stuff.
I mean, we're on the same path together here with real food for
people who want to be healthy. Mark, you've been doing this a
long time now. You've been in this fight for a
long time. And I think we're starting to
see the tides change a bit in our country with health.
And like you said, the voices that are wanting to go back to a
more ancestral way of living and eating are getting louder and
louder and becoming more and more difficult to ignore.
What has it felt like to be in this battle for so many years
and to kind of see these changes that you're working towards
start to come to fruition? So 27 years, that's a long time.
At first it was a niche, so we didn't threaten anybody because
it was just a small group of people that wanted their raw
milk at Altadena and you know, Westnet, Price and just the
basics, right? Well, now we're a threat.
When CHPCHP officers pull you over and want raw milk off your
truck, you know you've come someplace, right?
So my whole point is we're becoming mainstream, which means
you're measurable and you're a threat.
You're taking dollar votes. And you have an important voice.
You have an important voice that's being heard, and it's
grounded in some serious science.
The microbiome, which is really coming into its own now, they
got microbiomes really coming along in terms of its
understanding, its impact on health.
What's it feel like? It feels like when what you're
saying shakes your opposition, you're on the right path.
Very famous person said that, and I'll say it instead.
But the bottom line is that we're doing the right things for
the right people. And I don't really care what the
forces do because I've got the moms.
And the truth that sustains me more than anything is to have a
mom from organic roots tell me that her son's asthma has gone
away. That's very powerful to me.
That's the greatest payment I can receive.
And I think that's a payment missing in dairymen across
America because you're bankrupt and you don't know your
customers. It's one of the highest suicide
rates going. But raw dairy get paid well
because you set your own price and everybody's hugging and say
thank you, thank you for how great your raw milk is.
The opposite. So it will save the dairymen
that wants to embrace high standards and consumers
economically and socio economically.
So that's a beautiful thing for dairies, for the consumers, it's
clear they want more and more because it does such great
things for them. So my feeling is it's a mountain
to climb, it's a mountain to move, it's a mountain to die on
because of the purpose behind it.
And it's my passion comes from those paramedic calls and those
kids and the fact that this solves that question.
There's a major question about pasteurized milk in America as
seen by the decline in consumption across the board.
We provide a solution and we provide that solution
unselfishly to other farmers as well.
So we consider this a movement that's for humanity and people,
not a processor or pharmaceuticals.
They have a place. They have a place, but their
place is not in the preventative food sector that we are, where
food is medicine, preventing disease, that people really,
really thrive when consuming whole food nutrition.
Mic drop, that was awesome. So grateful for you Mark.
Where can people support Raw Farm and follow along with with
Raw Farm Online? Social platforms give us a big
heart. Come visit us, come do the tour.
I would say the greatest thing you can do for us and other raw
farms, people doing raw and in need to raw dairy, that's the
greatest thing you can do is you know somebody that's short of
breath. Do you know somebody that has
really bad eczema? Somebody's going through the
throes of Crohn's disease, celiac, They need to know about
kefir and whole food nutrition. Bring a friend to food, real
food. Bring a friend to real food.
I think that's the greatest thing you can do to support what
we're doing because that sends the message the food is medicine
and that's the place we need to go in the future.
Totally agree. Thanks so much, Mark.
You're welcome. Good job.