After more than two weeks of fighting with the FDA, Fresno’s Raw Farm dairy issued a voluntary recall Thursday on its cheddar cheeses, which the agency says caused E. coli.

The FDA announced that the raw milk and cheese producer would voluntarily recall some of its cheese products. The order came after nine people got sick, with eight of them reporting they had eaten unpasteurized cheese products.

Seven of those people identified Raw Farm, a widely recognizable brand, as the culprit.

Mark McAfee, owner of Raw Farm, told GV Wire that his decision to do the recall was to stop FDA “harassment.” He said the recall was only on a few batches that stores had already pulled.

“In a battle, sometimes a win means getting back onto store shelves,” McAfee told GV Wire in an email. “The FDA refused to stop the onslaught unless we did something. So we did.”

Cheese Not Easy to Test for E. coli

The FDA on March 14 had urged McAfee to issue the voluntary recall. After the company refused, the FDA, the CDC, and other state agencies sent investigators to the Fresno facility to test for E. coli in preparation for what could have been a mandatory recall.

The FDA says no pathogens have yet been identified in the Raw Farm cheese. McAfee said the tests done at his own farm have not returned positive E. coli tests. He has complied with previous recalls.

While direct tests on the cheese have not yet conclusively returned positive E. coli samples, a California Department of Public Health spokesperson told GV Wire in an email that testing can be difficult with cheese.

“The pathogen may be present in low quantities and/or be unevenly distributed throughout the cheese, yet still cause human illnesses,” the spokesperson said. “CDPH considers Raw Farm raw dairy the source of the outbreak based on this strong epidemiologic data, despite the negative laboratory testing results from a limited sample of retail products.”

Raw Farm to Petition Federal Judge on FDA Actions

McAfee told GV Wire that the FDA has been pressing him to pasteurize his product and still market it as “raw,” something he said would be mislabeling. He said being under an FDA consent degree, he can report FDA misconduct to a supervising federal judge under the premise that they are trying to force him to commit fraud.

Questions sent to the FDA by GV Wire have not been returned.

“We refuse to commit consumer fraud. We refuse to destroy the bioactives found in raw cheese,” McAfee said. “The FDA is not our consumer. The FDA is demanding that we mislabel. … We refuse.”