California health officials on Sunday announced a warning and a recall on a batch of raw milk that tested positive for avian flu. Luckily, the tainted batch—produced and packaged by Raw Farm—does not seem to have caused any illnesses in humans yet.
However, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claims to “only drink raw milk,” could soon head up the Department of Health and Human Services under Donald Trump’s incoming administration. And he’s promising to hobble the Food and Drug Administration.
“FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy said on Oct. 25. “This includes its aggressive suppression of … raw milk.”
Since March, the country has been experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of H5N1 avian flu in U.S. dairy cows, with the USDA recording at least 650 cases in cattle across 15 states as of Tuesday. California is the largest milk producer in the country.
If avian flu comes to contaminate raw milk more broadly, a Kennedy-run HHS could quickly jeopardize public health.
In June, after a second herd of cattle in Iowa came down with H5N1, the FDA issued a warning for those in the state to avoid drinking raw milk. Raw milk is dairy that has not been pasteurized, or heated a federally regulated threshold as a way to eliminate harmful pathogens.
As of Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded 55 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the U.S. More than half of those cases have been in California. And almost all of the cases have been tied to exposure to infected cattle and poultry livestock.
Regardless, the FDA’s warning prompted right-wing charlatans like Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk, joined by QAnon conspiracy influencers, to begin promoting raw milk and accuse the federal government of “fearmongering.”
Many raw-milk advocates say it has much higher nutritional value. But those claims are largely outside of the scientific mainstream.
“[F]ood scientists who study the safety of dairy products said there’s no meaningful difference in the nutritional value of pasteurized milk,” The Washington Post reported last Thursday.
Drinking raw milk is “a risk that is not necessary,” according to Dennis D’Amico, an associate professor of animal science at the University of Connecticut.
Meghan Davis, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies infectious diseases, told The New York Times that the rise in raw-milk consumption could make it easier for the avian flu to adapt, possibly becoming more transmissible or more dangerous for humans.
“This is a virus that has pandemic potential,” Davis said.
A CDC study released in early November showed that at least some farmworkers who did not report any illness had H5N1 antibodies from a recent infection.
Raw-milk advocacy is just one part of Kennedy’s suite of science-adverse beliefs. Perhaps most infamous is his promotion of the false link between childhood vaccines and autism. And the problem with his health plans is that they are those of an ideologue. We can all agree that no one should have a diet of mostly processed foods, but as the old maxim goes, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
