Raw Farm does not sell your typical cheddar. A one-pound block of the aged, GMO-free cheese retails for $16. (Naturally, it's for sale at Erewhon, the high-end grocery chain.) Some people are willing to pay that kind of premium because the cheese is made exclusively from unpasteurized milk. So is almost everything else that's sold by Raw Farm, a 400-acre dairy farm in Fresno, California, that is commonly cited as the country's biggest purveyor of raw milk and cheese. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president in 2024, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, visited Raw Farm and filmed herself on a tour of the milking operations. Raw Farm has carved a very successful niche out of the unfounded belief that raw milk and cheese are more nutritious than the regular stuff. Pasteurization exists for a reason: It is a time-tested way to make sure that dairy products don't contain bacteria that can make you sick. And now Raw Farm has found itself in the middle of an E. coli outbreak. The FDA is...
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