Raw milk in California: what the law actually says

Raw milk generates more confident misinformation than anything else we sell, in both directions. Here is what the law actually says in California, written plainly, with no opinion attached about whether you should drink it.

It is legal to buy at retail in California

California is one of a minority of states where raw milk can be sold in ordinary retail stores rather than only at the farm gate or through a herd share. That is unusual, and it is why we can carry it and a store in most other states cannot.

The conditions are specific. The milk must come from a dairy holding a CDFA market milk permit, and it must be bottled and sealed at a licensed milk products plant. It reaches us finished. We put it in a cooler and we sell it exactly as it arrived.

What we are not allowed to do

Three things, and they’re absolute.

We cannot bottle or repackage it. Not into smaller containers, not into anything. The seal that goes on at the licensed plant is the seal you break.

We cannot let it above 45°F. Continuous cold holding, from the delivery truck to your hands, with a thermometer in the unit and a temperature log kept daily. This is the single thing a health inspector will look at first.

We cannot remove or obscure the state warning. California requires specific language on every container of retail raw milk. It stays on.

Interstate shipping is federally prohibited

This is the part people find hardest to believe, and it is not a California rule — it’s federal. Under 21 CFR 1240.61, raw milk for human consumption cannot be moved across state lines. Full stop.

Two consequences:

• Every raw dairy product we carry comes from a California dairy. Not because we prefer it — though we do — but because out-of-state raw milk cannot legally reach us.
• We cannot ship it to you. Not overnight, not on ice, not to the next state. Anyone offering to is either shipping something that isn’t raw milk or is breaking federal law.

This is why raw dairy is marked in-store only on this site, and always will be.

What we ask of the dairy

Before anything goes in our cooler, we collect and keep on file:

• The CDFA market milk permit
• Proof of bottling at a CDFA-licensed milk products plant
• Bacteria, coliform and somatic cell count records

Those last ones matter more than any of the marketing. Raw milk is not pasteurised, which means the standard of hygiene at the dairy is the safety standard. A dairy that runs tight numbers publishes them without being asked. Ours does.

On the argument itself

We’re not going to tell you raw milk cures anything, because we don’t know that and neither does anybody selling it to you. Public health authorities advise against it, particularly for young children, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immunocompromised, and you should know that clearly before you buy.

What we will tell you is what we do: we buy from a permitted dairy that tests every batch, we keep it cold, we keep the paperwork, and we don’t open the bottle. The decision after that is yours, made with the actual facts in front of you.

Available in store at 429 McHenry Ave. Never by mail.