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In May 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat in the White House and downed a shot of raw milk to celebrate the publication of the MAHA Report, a document full of AI slop and fake citations that was meant to present the Secretary of Health and Human Services’s solutions for chronic diseases and other ailments plaguing America. Kennedy had been a loud proponent of raw milk for years, promising in an October 2024 tweet that under his tenure the FDA, a key milk regulator, would stop “suppressing” the drink.

“Washington has become a three ring circus I don’t want to be associated with.”

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.)

For all the drastic and often disastrous things Kennedy has done as HHS Secretary—unilaterally overhauling the childhood vaccine schedule, personally overseeing the placement of false anti-vaccine rhetoric on the CDC’s website, refashioning the food pyramid after the typical diet of “traditional masculinity” obsessed podcasters—he has thus far taken no action to advance raw milk.

Instead, the Trump administration has trumpeted their emphasis on whole milk as a bold change, posting endless weird memes on the subject. But raw milk, or milk which has not been pasteurized, is simply not the same as full-fat whole, and its proponents have been left angry and disappointed. Kennedy was confirmed in February 2025; by June, NBC News was already reporting that raw milk advocates were confused that he had not actively taken up their cause. 

McAfee says he’s only had direct contact with Kennedy one time. “I received one text from him on my phone in March 2025,........

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