• California's biggest raw milk brand tested positive for bird flu.
• With a voluntary recall underway, the company has started sending out milk to be pasteurized.
• Raw cheese, kefir, and butter are still being sold.

One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s favorite raw milk producers is temporarily going pasteurized, as bird flu sweeps across California's dairyland.

Raw Farms is California's largest producer of raw milk products, and a huge name in West Coast wellness circles. This summer, the company partnered with carnivore diet influencer Paul Saladino and trendy LA grocery store Erewhon to produce a $19 raw kefir smoothie.

Now, the company is recalling all of its raw milk and raw cream on store shelves statewide, after initial retail tests of at least two batches of milk turned up positive for H5N1 bird flu.

In the meantime, raw milk produced at the Fresno-based dairy is being processed like regular milk.

"It's going from our dairies directly to a processing plant owned by somebody else to be pasteurized," Raw Farms founder Mark McAfee told Business Insider on Wednesday, adding that the move is a "horrible" one for his bottom line.

"We're getting about 20%" of normal sales revenue, he said.

Raw Farms isn't recalling its raw cheeses, butter, or kefir, and McAfee said that's because those products have been fermented, heated, cultured, or aged, and therefore are somewhat less of a concern to regulators.

Can you get bird flu from raw milk?

It's normal for raw milk to have viruses or bacteria floating around in it. Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk is not heated to kill pathogens.

That's why the US Food and Drug Administration advises against anyone drinking raw milk. There's a risk of contracting stomach bugs like Salmonella or E. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and in rare cases hospitalization or death. Kids are especially at risk.

It's not clear whether people can actually get bird flu by drinking milk from a sick cow. So far, there have been no reports of raw milk drinkers catching bird flu, but there have been several cases of cats drinking raw milk from cows sick with bird flu, and then dropping dead afterwards.

"Like many foodborne illnesses, illnesses from raw milk are often underreported because many people aren't tested by a doctor in time to identify a pathogen and link the illness to a specific food," the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, the agency that first identified bird flu virus in Raw Farms products in November, told BI in a statement.

The FDA declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing lawsuit against Raw Farms, which accuses the company of selling raw milk across state lines (that's forbidden under federal law).

A spokesperson for the agency pointed BI to a recent letter to dairy producers nationwide, which mentions that bird flu is a virus, like other viruses, that can't withstand pasteurization.

A bird flu outbreak will not stop the raw milk trend, McAfee says

McAfee is trying to set up some raw milk bottling and processing in another area of the state that isn't as affected by the current H5N1 outbreak as the Central Valley. He said he hopes to start selling raw milk again soon, after performing (and clearing) some additional tests.

"Hopefully, within the next 10 days, we'll have a dairy that's up and going, and products will be flowing from a different area of California," he said.

That would be welcome news to President-elect Trump's pick to head up Health and Human Services next year.

Kennedy has promised to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. McAfee said he's been tapped by Kennedy's transition team to apply for a position advising the FDA on standards and policy for raw milk production.

"People don't really appreciate the deep science of this," he said. "I do."

He pointed to the latest science that suggests the biggest hazard for bird flu transmission lies not in the milk itself, but in dairy cow udders.

So far, of the 32 human bird flu cases reported in California, 31 have been traced back to cattle exposure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been warning dairy workers to watch out for raw milk splashing into their eyeballs, and McAfee said his dairy workers wear eye protection.

• Two batches of raw milk from a trendy California brand have tested positive for bird flu this week.
• Bird flu has been spreading rapidly among cattle in the US.
• Experts say drinking raw milk is dangerous, and can cause food poisoning.

Another batch of raw milk just tested positive for bird flu in California.

Last Sunday, Fresno-based Raw Farm voluntarily recalled a first batch of cream top whole raw milk with a "best by" date of November 27. By Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced that a second batch of Raw Farm cream top, with a "best by" date of December 7 had also tested positive for bird flu, based on retail sampling.

"We're not making a big deal about it, because it's not a big deal," Kaleigh Stanziani, Raw Farm's vice president of marketing, said in a short video posted on YouTube after the farm's first voluntary recall was announced earlier this week.

She said there had only been an indication that there might be a "trace element of something possible," emphasizing that there had been no reported illnesses of Raw Farms cows or positive tests from the cattle.

Raw Farm owner Mark McAfee later told the LA Times that the California Department of Food and Agriculture had requested that his company "hold delivery of further products" until Friday, after conducting thorough testing of two Raw Farms and one creamery on Wednesday. (McAfee could not immediately be reached for comment by Business Insider during the Thanksgiving holiday.)

Raw milk may be helping bird flu spread — but not in the way you might think

Scientists suspect that cross-contamination of raw milk between animals may be one reason the H5N1 virus is spreading rapidly among cows in the US — and could even contribute to the human spread of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that dairy workers might be able to contract bird flu by infected raw milk splashed into their eyes.

There is no definitive evidence yet that humans can get bird flu from drinking contaminated raw milk. Instead, health authorities generally recommend avoiding raw milk because of other serious health risks, including food poisoning with bacteria like Salmonella, E.coli, or Listeria.

There are no known health benefits of drinking raw milk. Instead, all evidence suggests that pasteurized milk is just as nutritious, and is safer to consume.

Still, raw milk has become a trendy product among some influencers. Gwenyth Paltrow says she has it in her coffee in the morning.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, says he wants the US Food and Drug Administration to stop its "war" against raw milk.

Over the summer, "Carnivore MD" Paul Saladino released a raw milk smoothie in partnership with the elite Los Angeles health foods store Erewhon featuring unpasteurized (raw) kefir from Raw Farms, and powdered beef organs.

California has some of the loosest rules around raw milk in the country; it's generally fine for California retailers like health foods stores and grocers to sell it, raw milk products just can't be transported across state lines, per FDA rules.

Michael Payne, a researcher at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security, told The Guardian that people consuming Dr. Paul's $19 smoothie were "playing Russian roulette with their health," and ignoring pasteurization, "the single most important food safety firewall in history."

California dairy farms have been seeing an uptick in bird flu cases since August. The state has reported 29 confirmed human cases of bird flu, and all but one of those was sourced back to cows.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first confirmed case of bird flu in a California child from Alameda County. The child had no known contact with infected farm animals, but may have been exposed to wild birds, the California health department said in a statement.

The child had mild symptoms and is recovering well after receiving antiviral drugs.