Raw Farm Tests Return 100% Negative as FDA’s E. Coli “Link” Remains Unproven
Raw Farm announced Thursday that both its own product testing and government-collected samples have come back entirely clear, reinforcing the company’s position that regulators acted without evidence when they called for a voluntary recall of its raw cheddar cheese.
Raw Farm president Aaron McAfee shared the news across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok: “It’s official. 100% of the results are negative. No positives at retail from our sampling or the government sampling.”
Speaking to KMPH in Fresno, McAfee added: “I’m very thankful for our hard-working food safety team that’s been making sure that everything’s going great. Great update, great week. 100% all negative.”
What Regulators Claimed
Health officials had urged Raw Farm to pull its raw cheddar cheese from shelves nationwide following an E. coli cluster that sickened seven people across three states. Of those seven, three reported having consumed Raw Farm’s raw cheddar cheese, a self-reported dietary association that agencies described as a possible link to the product.
No pathogen was ever isolated from Raw Farm’s products. When McAfee pressed regulators on whether they had any positive test results to support the recall request, he says the answer was unambiguous: “We said, ‘Do you have any pathogen tests showing positive?’ They said, ‘No, we have none.'”
Raw Farm declined the voluntary recall.
Testing Finds Nothing
Following the recall pressure, both Raw Farm’s internal food safety team and government agencies conducted product sampling. All results have now returned negative.
The outcome is consistent with what McAfee and the company maintained throughout: that a reported dietary association between three individuals and a widely consumed product is not evidence of contamination, and that demanding a recall without laboratory confirmation sets a troubling precedent for food producers.
The Pattern of “Linked” Outbreaks
Raw Farm’s situation is not unique in the raw dairy space. Investigations that begin with epidemiological associations (who ate what before getting sick) frequently fail to produce the confirmatory pathogen testing that would establish a product as the definitive source. Reported dietary history, particularly in small clusters, is subject to recall bias and confounding from other exposures.
When a recall is announced based solely on self-reported consumption data, the reputational damage to the producer occurs regardless of what laboratory results eventually show. Raw Farm’s decision to hold the line pending actual test results, and the subsequent all-negative outcome, illustrates why that threshold matters.
What Comes Next
Raw Farm has not indicated any product changes or operational modifications in response to the investigation. With both retail sampling streams returning no positive findings, the case for regulatory action against the company’s products remains, as it was when the recall was first requested, unsupported by laboratory evidence.
