In the six months between September 2023 and March 2024, 171 people across five states fell ill with Salmonella Typhimurium infections traced to unpasteurized milk and raw milk cheese. Seventy percent of them were children. Before that outbreak had fully faded from federal case logs, a second cluster emerged: E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to raw cheddar cheese and raw milk from a single California producer, Raw Farm, LLC, with cases stretching from September 2025 into early 2026.
Yet even as federal investigators tracked those illnesses, state legislatures were moving in the opposite direction. As of spring 2026, lawmakers in Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, and other states have introduced or advanced bills to expand direct-to-consumer raw milk sales, reflecting a growing appetite for unpasteurized dairy that public health officials say carries serious and preventable risks.
Two outbreaks, one pattern
The Salmonella Typhimurium cluster is the more fully documented of the two. A CDC investigation published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report confirmed 171 infections across California and four other states. Whole-genome sequencing matched the outbreak strain to samples taken from raw milk and from raw milk cheese that had been aged 60 days, the minimum aging period that some regulators treat as a safety threshold for unpasteurized cheese. The heavy concentration of cases among minors underscored a vulnerability that standard pasteurization would almost certainly have prevented.
The second outbreak remains under active investigation. The CDC’s case tracking page lists a multistate E. coli O157:H7 cluster tied to Raw Farm raw cheese and raw milk, with illness onset dates running from September 1, 2025, through February 20, 2026. Every interviewed patient reported consuming raw dairy products. According to FDA records, Raw Farm initiated a voluntary recall of its raw cheddar cheese on April 2, 2026, but the recall was later rescinded. Neither the company nor the FDA has publicly explained the reversal, leaving open questions about enforcement and producer accountability.
States expand access as federal agencies urge caution
Colorado’s SB24-043 proposed allowing registered raw milk producers to sell directly to consumers at farm sites, private residences, farmers’ markets, and roadside stands, a significant expansion beyond the herd-share arrangements that have traditionally been the only legal path to raw milk in many states. The bill’s legislative record, housed on the Colorado General Assembly website, shows lawmakers debating access points that would put unpasteurized dairy within easy reach of casual buyers, not just committed herd-share members.
Colorado is not alone. Iowa advanced legislation in 2025 to permit retail raw milk sales, and Louisiana lawmakers have pushed to broaden direct farm sales of unpasteurized dairy. According to the National Agricultural Law Center, more than 30 states now allow some form of raw milk sale, though the rules vary widely, from on-farm-only purchases to retail store shelves. The patchwork means that a family crossing a state line may go from full legal access to a complete ban within a few miles.
Federal agencies have responded with increasingly direct language. The FDA, in a June 2024 letter to state and local partners, stated that the pasteurized commercial milk supply is safe and recommended against raw milk consumption during the H5N1 dairy cattle outbreak. The CDC has issued clinical guidance advising healthcare providers to ask patients about raw dairy consumption when evaluating symptoms consistent with foodborne illness or influenza-like infection.
Bird flu adds a new layer of risk
The 2024 spread of H5N1 avian influenza through U.S. dairy herds introduced a viral threat on top of the bacterial dangers already documented in raw milk. National Institutes of Health researchers confirmed that infectious H5N1 virus in raw milk drops sharply with heat treatment, reinforcing pasteurization’s role as a barrier against pathogens beyond bacteria.
No confirmed human H5N1 case has been publicly traced to raw milk consumption as of May 2026. But the CDC’s clinical guidance treats the risk as credible enough to warrant routine screening questions, and the NIH lab findings demonstrate that the virus can survive in unpasteurized milk under conditions that mimic real-world storage. The gap between laboratory evidence and confirmed human transmission leaves room for debate, but public health officials argue that waiting for a proven case before acting would be reckless given the severity of H5N1 infections.
What the data does not show
For all the specificity of the outbreak investigations, significant gaps remain. No federal agency has published a comprehensive count of raw milk legalization bills introduced or passed in the current legislative cycle. Consumer demand is similarly hard to pin down: no institutional economic analysis in the public record quantifies the size of the U.S. raw milk market or tracks how sales volumes shift after a state loosens restrictions.
That opacity matters. Without reliable sales data, it is impossible to say whether recent outbreaks reflect a larger customer base, changes in production practices, or simply better pathogen detection through whole-genome sequencing. And without a national legislative tracker, claims about a coordinated movement to deregulate raw milk rest partly on inference.
The Raw Farm E. coli investigation also leaves loose ends. The CDC has not published final case counts, and the rescinded recall has gone unexplained. Whether the reversal reflected new laboratory results, a procedural disagreement between the company and regulators, or something else entirely remains unclear.
Who bears the risk
The demographic pattern in the Salmonella outbreak offers a stark data point for the policy debate: children made up the overwhelming majority of confirmed cases. E. coli O157:H7, the pathogen in the Raw Farm cluster, can cause hemolytic uremic syndrome, a form of kidney failure that disproportionately strikes young children and can result in permanent organ damage or death.
Advocates for raw milk legalization frame the issue as one of consumer choice and agricultural freedom, arguing that informed adults should be able to buy a product that has been consumed for centuries. Many supporters are part of a broader movement toward locally sourced, minimally processed food and view state-level legalization as a way to bring an existing gray-market practice into the open, with the transparency and accountability that legal commerce can provide.
Federal health agencies counter with outbreak data, pediatric case counts, and virology research that collectively argue pasteurization is a low-cost safeguard against rare but severe outcomes. The CDC, FDA, and American Academy of Pediatrics have all recommended against raw milk consumption, particularly for children, pregnant women, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems.
How states resolve that tension will determine who absorbs the consequences. Expanding legal access without parallel investments in testing, labeling, consumer education, and outbreak surveillance could shift more of the burden onto families, especially those with young children drawn to flavored raw milk or artisanal cheese. For now, the federal record is unambiguous on one point: where raw milk is produced and sold, outbreaks follow, and the youngest consumers pay the highest price.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
