According to Mark McAfee, the founder and CEO of Raw Farm, the country’s biggest raw milk company, Kennedy is a longtime customer. But less than a year on from the White House event, he complains that the HHS secretary won’t return his calls or texts.
“I emailed him, texted him, contacted the people who knew him, including Nicole Shanahan,” McAfee told me last week, referencing Kennedy’s former running mate, who visited Raw Farm during their 2024 campaign. “Nobody could get ahold of him and there was no response.” (HHS also did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)
McAfee says he’s only had direct contact with Kennedy one time. “I received one text from him on my phone in March 2025, last year, and it basically said, ‘When Marty Makary is confirmed we’ll talk about raw milk,’ something like that,” McAfee says. (Makary, the U.S. Commissioner of Food and Drugs, leads the FDA.) “Marty was confirmed within two weeks of that text message and there was no further discussion.”
The FDA’s policies and public guidance on raw milk have not been updated since 2024, and most related text on its website has remained the same since 2011. For McAfee, that amounts to the Kennedy-supervised agency still “denying the science,” he told me.
One of his most dedicated opponents disagrees. “FDA’s longstanding policy is based on the historical fact that most public health officials everywhere think raw milk consumption is a bad idea,” says Bill Marler, a Seattle-based food safety attorney who has repeatedly sued Raw Farm. “That’s what created the ban on interstate sales of raw milk.” Legalizing such cross-border sales would be a boon for McAfee and other raw milk producers’ business, Marler says—and it would also likely increase the number of people who end up sick.
“You might as well call it the ‘Bill Marler Full Employment Act,’” he says dryly. That’s because shipping raw milk over many miles “even in refrigerated conditions, can allow for the increase in the bacterial load,” he explains. “E. coli and salmonella populate. The farther you are from the actual production, the more likely it is that the bacteria can reach a point where it overwhelms your body’s immune system, especially if you’re a kid. I would be really worried about producing raw milk in California and drinking it in New York.”
