After years on the periphery of American food options because of legal restrictions, raw (unpasteurized) milk has burst onto the national scene with the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services. HHS is one of the government’s largest agencies, and has responsibility for regulating dairy production.  Kennedy has advocated for easier access to raw dairy products, but  as Mark McAfee points out in this open letter to Kennedy, raw milk can pose safety issues if it isn’t produced according to strict standards.

Bobby,

I am your raw milk producer. You drink my raw milk in Los Angeles! You need me to be your raw milk guy in Washington.

Please don’t be misled into thinking that delicious clean tested raw milk just magically appears in that store near you in California. That is an uber huge mistake. Raw milk requires very special conditions to be produced safely: different standards from pasteurized milk,  serious farmer training and frequent testing. You may want clean safe raw milk for everyone in America, which is awesome, but if it is not done with a very smart and  strategic plan, it will give you a huge black eye and  will be the biggest mess you can ever imagine!!

Nicole Shanahan, your third-party running mate, visited my farm near Fresno California in June 2024 before you joined the Trump campaign and long before you were put in place as the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA. At Raw Farm, we are the largest raw milk brand and producer in the world.  Nicole and I talked in a podcast about how to make America healthy and raw milk is absolutely a great step toward gut microbiome strength and providing a better immune system for all.

However, there are no FDA standards for that kind of raw milk. The only FDA standards that exist for raw milk are under the PMO, or Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, and raw milk intended for pasteurization is filled with pathogens. If you open up the “freedom gates” to that kind of PMO raw milk, you will fill emergency rooms and  ICUs all over America with very upset and very sick citizens and kids. That’s not freedom and that is not “making America healthy again” at all.

I’ll be very forward here and assert that you need me to be your commissioner for the RMO, or Raw Milk Ordinance. I am the chairman of the Raw Milk Institute, a standards-setting organization; we have developed internationally recognized standards that have been used to train thousands of farmers in the U.S. and internationally (175 in the UK alone). We have trained farmers in the use of on-farm labs to allow for inexpensive and rapid testing of milk samples. The result has been a thriving and emerging raw milk market renaissance. Farmers are thriving and consumers are elated.

All of this because of very strategic long-term planning and well considered standards, driven by my career in health care. I was a paramedic for 16 years and taught paramedic medicine for the Fresno County Health Department. I know the medical and health crisis we are in better than anyone, since I lived it!  I did CPR and intubated and defibrillated it. I held it close as it tried to die on me at three in the morning.  I helped birth newborns on kitchen floors and in the back seats of cars.   I am premed trained and was valedictorian of my 2300-hour paramedic course. I was voted Fresno County Paramedic of the year in 1994 by my fellow medics.

When I founded Raw Farm in 1998, that same care, purpose, ethics and compassion for humanity followed me into my concern for food safety and pioneering development of special raw milk standards and protocols. After nearly 25 years of producing raw milk in California, I have learned a few things and some of them humbled me greatly. I have always been committed to life-long learning and I spend a great deal of my time with UC Davis Milk Genomics PhD researchers.  If you are going to lead a renaissance of clean safe raw milk and be able to explain to consumers what raw milk is….you better stay in school.  That’s me. I now serve, with our awesome team, hundreds of thousands of very happy consumers via 500 retail stores in California, and that includes both you and Nicole.

I want America to lead the world in the safe production of delicious, nutritionally dense, bioactive filled raw milk. We have a failed gut microbiome in America and we must heal it. The bioactives, functional proteins and good fats found in raw milk and consumption of whole foods that are unprocessed or less processed are critical to a strong gut and good health. I know the studies and teach this both here and around the world. I am your guy. I will serve “we the people” and leave a legacy of a strong foundation for an evolution to a healthier America.

Because the gut is at least 80% of the immune system, that is where you start to build a stronger and healthier America. Soils, cows, farmers connected to consumers. That is the path I know best and I am ready to serve our country. Taking out the preservatives in our highly processed foods is something you have right. Eating whole foods and raw milk is something else you get right. How to do raw milk right and develop that plan with a good team, that is something I get right. I want to make damn well sure we all get this right. The alternative is not what you want and will take us backwards. My raw milk brand is growing at 1% per week because we know raw milk and its technologies. I think you want that kind of raw milk for America and all of its future children and families. We all want this kind of raw milk for other farmers and their communities as well. This is a WE project.

I am filled with great purpose, and I am ready.

Mark McAfee

CEO Founder Raw Farm

Chairman Raw Milk Institute