On a recent Wednesday in the Mission, raw milk was in short supply.
At Rainbow Grocery, which boasts arguably the most robust raw milk selection in the city, an “Out of Stock” sign of its most popular raw dairy products from the long-established Claravale Farm and Raw Farms was flanked by slim pickings of about a dozen bottles. (Rainbow Grocery did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but one worker told me that the sign has been on the shelf for at least a week.) Gus’s Community Market on 17th and Harrison had four two-quart bottles from Raw Milk. Bi-Rite’s flagship location was out of stock.
In San Francisco, where health food stores and artisanal grocery co-ops are plentiful (as are the gourmands and eco-conscious folks who shop at them), raw milk doesn’t really sit too far from the mainstream. Rainbow and Bi-Rite Market have sold it since the 2000s, as have Sprouts, Gus’s Community Market, Whole Foods, and, increasingly, smaller neighborhood organic markets.
Both Bi-Rite and Gus’s sell about 30 bottles of the stuff a week — a number that has, for the most part, remained steady in recent months. Juan Sanchez, the dairy buyer at Gus’s Community Market, told Gazetteer SF that some families buy gallons at a time. He insists that raw milk really does taste better — and that cheese made from raw milk is sublime.
Bi-Rite merchandising manager Eder Munguia said that some buyers call to reserve the stuff in advance. “It’s definitely an item that sells out pretty regularly,” Munguia said. Their dairy stock gets replenished on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and consistently, he’s seen raw milk supply dwindle or disappear between those shipments.
Valencia Whole Foods, the small legacy neighborhood market in the Mission, used to throw out gallons of raw milk when it first started carrying stock, a cashier named Jason tells me. (It goes bad quicker than its pasteurized counterpart.) But in recent months, it has experienced an uptick in raw milk sales, inspired in large part by influencers peddling dubious internet research.
Throngs of homestead and fitness influencers on TikTok and Instagram tout its incomparable taste and (incredibly unproven) benefits over standard pasteurized milk, which has been heated to eradicate any germs that may come from its production.
Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Goop brand peddles yoni eggs and $2,700 face lasers, is a longtime fan and once reportedly did an eight-day cleanse consisting of just raw goat’s milk. Erewhon, the health food haven beloved by the rich and famous (and their Gen Z acolytes), now has a $19 smoothie made of raw milk and beef organ powder developed by “animal-based diet” doctor influencer Paul Saladino.
Raw milk has also become a phenomenon within the world of self-styled conservative rebels. To wit: Thirty states now allow the sale of raw milk in some form, and its sales rose by more than 20% compared to last year according to one estimate.
Many traditionally red states have legalized raw milk sales in recent years, following the lead of coastal states like California, Washington, and New Hampshire, where it’s been legal for years. Turning Point USA, the neo-conservative activist org led by far-right celebrity Charlie Kirk, even started selling T-shirts promoting raw milk consumption as a middle finger to The Medical Establishment’s woke-scold precautions.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time.
A new bird flu strain, H5N1, is ripping through cattle and poultry farms across the United States. Three humans have been infected after coming into close contact with infected cattle.
It’s already made its way into San Francisco. At least two chickens in a Bayview farm tested positive for the virus, and it is present in city wastewater. One in five dairy samples, according to a Food and Drug Administration report from April, tested positive for H5N1 — a number that experts believe has likely gone up.
While the threat of H5N1 to the general public is low thus far, researchers have expressed concern that drinking raw milk could lead to human H5N1 infections in the near future. The virus can last in refrigerated raw milk for at least five weeks, according to one National Institutes for Health-sponsored study. That’s not to mention all the existing risks of consuming raw dairy: everything from diarrhea and stomach cramps from salmonella and listeria infections to kidney failure in children and paralysis. The federal Food and Drug Administration has gone so far as to advise against its consumption altogether.
None of this has stopped San Francisco residents from enjoying raw milk. When I ask Jason, the Valencia Whole Foods cashier, about all the health hullabaloo, he suggests that its most passionate proponents aren’t worried — or believe that the benefits (which, again, remain unproven) outweigh any danger of its consumption. Neither Munguia nor Sanchez have heard any customers at their shops express concern about the possibility of H5N1 infections from bird flu, or fret about the other health risks.
“If you’re a raw milk drinker, you just go for it,” Jason said. “You don’t care.”
Even Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UCSF who is perhaps the most prominent local talking head against raw milk consumption, admits that raw milk tastes pretty good.
“It has flavor,” said Chin-Hong, who first drank raw milk as a child. “It's like when you eat a tomato from a greenhouse hydroponic farm versus one where you grow it in the soil and the soil is rich.”
San Francisco, he adds, is in a weird position where its fondness for farm-to-table cuisine and health foods is at odds with guidance from health professionals. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time where the political left and right have converged over health products: Just about every health trend, from dietary supplements and homeopathic cures to non-GMO products and Erewhon, are seemingly beloved across the spectrum.
“People don’t think about milk as political,” he said. “I wonder, in the Bay Area, if it's just seen as a separate part of your brain where you could listen to science and public health recommendations in one part of your brain, but then the part of the brain that loves taste and food and farms and natural eating, is diametrically opposed to what’s happening.”
There’s a risk calculus to consuming raw milk, like with oysters or raw cookie dough: The elderly, the young, and the immunocompromised should not be drinking it, especially now, but Chin-Hong won’t begrudge anyone for drinking it as long as they are aware of the myriad repercussions. He likens it to not wearing a seat belt or jaywalking a busy street. “A lot of people do it all the time, but some people do get knocked down by a car that comes really quickly. You’re doing the same with raw milk,” he said.
Still, he admits that the risk is too high for him and his peers. “You ask any [infectious diseases] doc, and we all feel very squeamish about it apart from the salmonella and the listeria thing with the unknowns of H5N1.”
The likelihood of California banning raw milk outright seems slim — and none of the grocery store workers I spoke to seemed to think that it would be pulled off shelves anytime soon. In fact, as the craze catches on, it wouldn’t be much of a shocker if the Safeways and Trader Joe’s in the city picked them up.
But who knows? Perhaps farmers’ market liberals in the city will link arms with the Charlie Kirks of the world to protect their access to raw milk from the maws of Big Government.
