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All Christina Hildebrand wanted was a reliable source of raw milk for her daughter. But the hard-to-find product would sell out at the store almost immediately. If she didn’t time her grocery shopping to coincide with delivery of the unpasteurized whole milk, she was out of luck.
So she struck up a conversation with the dairy’s deliveryman and got herself added to his route. When he wanted someone to take over, Real Food Bay Area was born.
Raw milk is milk that is neither homogenized nor pasteurized — a process of partial sterilization through irradiation or heat. The Palo Alto-based weekly service started by offering members raw milk and cream, and has since expanded to include organic products ranging from pastured eggs, sustainable seafood and whole-grain breads to beet kvass (a fermented beverage), sprouted nuts and pasture-raised meats. The most recent addition is fair-trade, organic chocolate.
“I started for selfish reasons,” Hildebrand said as she recounted launching her community supported agriculture (CSA) business in 2009. Raw milk turned out to be the only kind of milk her daughter could tolerate, Hildebrand explained. Nothing else worked.
“Even when she was being breastfed, if I ate dairy, she would throw up.”
After running through various alternatives — including pasteurized goat milk — with no success, Hildebrand did some research and bought raw milk.
“I tried her on it, and she did great,” she said.
The problem was getting it. While raw milk is legal to sell in California (it varies by state), it isn’t easy to find.
“It was expensive, and you had to be there the day it was delivered because it would fly off the shelves,” Hildebrand said.
Frustrated, she said she got the Claravale Farm deliveryman to sell her raw milk directly. When he decided to move to Florida, he needed someone to take over his customer base and relationship with the dairy. She jumped at the chance, starting with four distribution locations and soon expanding to seven. Real Food Bay Area now has 40 locations where members can pick up their orders, including places in Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos and Portola Valley.
Unlike the typical CSA that delivers weekly boxes of local produce, Real Food delivers food items that are harder to find on store shelves: soup bones and chicken heads for making broth; raw organic sauerkraut; French-style yogurt; raw goat milk; sprouted almond butter.
Hildebrand estimates that raw milk was the original draw for about 85 percent of her customer base, although many have expanded their orders as she has expanded her offerings. Everything she delivers through her CSA has to meet her standards for being organic, of the highest possibly quality and as local as possible, she said. Nothing is processed; not even genetically modified feeds for the animals.
“We do a pretty detailed investigation into practices,” Hildebrand said. “We do know all our vendors and farmers very well. We don’t just take anybody.”
Many of her customers are seeking a convenient way to access whole, unprocessed foods that can be hard to find, even as organic foods move into the mainstream. Hildebrand’s CSA is a natural match for followers of the Weston A. Price diet, which emphasizes unprocessed foods, sprouted grains and unpasteurized dairy and meats, she said. Real Food Bay Area also draws Indian families who have a culinary tradition of using raw milk, as well as people seeking pasture-raised meats and eggs from animals that haven’t been fed corn and soy products.
Jocelyn Saiki, whose home is the Mountain View pick-up location for Real Food Bay Area, said that Hildebrand’s CSA is a huge time-saver. Instead of driving all over — to one location for farm-raised eggs, another for meat from a cow-share and a third for raw milk — she now has everything right outside her door.
“She said she was starting Real Food Bay Area so people wouldn’t have to do what I was doing,” said Saiki, who met Hildebrand through a health and wellness group.
While Saiki said she makes many foods herself, even mayonnaise and ketchup, “I have my limits. I can’t keep a cow in the backyard. This is the closest I can get to being the consumer of a farmer.”
She’s enthusiastic about Three Stone Hearth, a Berkeley-based community kitchen that makes meals and soups that Real Food Bay Area distributes. On a recent week, its offerings included chicken liver pâté, meatloaf, pork mole with white beans and stock made from beef or chicken bones.
“It’s what I would do at home, or dream of doing at home, if I were a pioneer woman living on a ranch,” Saiki said. “But I can’t, because I live in the middle of Silicon Valley. This lets me eat as closely as I can to that (ideal) without food manufacturers getting in the way.”
So why is raw milk such a big draw? Hildebrand said while many customers buy it for health reasons, they also like its taste.
“The taste is definitely different,” she said. “It’s a much richer taste.”
While pasteurization gets rid of harmful bacteria, it also destroys beneficial enzymes, she said.
“Many people come to raw milk because they are lactose intolerant, but they can tolerate raw milk because it has enzymes that allow you to digest it.”
Part of raw milk’s richness is because, as Hildebrand put it, consumers are getting exactly what the cow produces. Most pasteurized whole milk sold in stores has had the cream separated from the milk, and just enough added back in to meet the mandated percentage of fat to qualify as whole milk. The remaining cream gets sold separately at a higher price, she said.
Though the raw milk has been labeled as “dangerous” by many food safety groups including the FDA and the CDC, Hildebrand believes that’s a misconception. She said she is completely comfortable drinking milk from the four raw-milk dairies she distributes through Real Foods Bay Area.
“I wouldn’t drink raw milk from a non-raw milk dairy — they can get away with not having a really clean herd and really clean practices,” since they usually rely on pasteurization to kill bacteria, she said. “We’re lucky in California because (raw milk) is legal and it’s being tested on a regular basis. All raw milk dairies have a clean record. They can’t afford not to have clean milk.”
Any raw milk dairy that doesn’t pass muster with the California Department of Food and Agriculture gets shut down for several weeks, she said. Small raw milk producers can’t survive such long closures without going out of business.
While Real Food may fill a niche market, it’s a growing niche, said Hildebrand. She started it in the midst of the recession and for five years has been expanding on word-of-mouth, since she hasn’t done any marketing.
“One nice thing about our customers: If they choose to be our customers, they will be loyal,” she said. “If they’re looking specifically for raw milk, or chicken feet or grass-fed beef, once they’ve joined us, they most likely will stay for the long term.”
She said she keeps the overhead low, with a staff of four part-time drivers and one person for part-time administrative help. Hildebrand herself does the rest.
“We strive to have prices at farmers market (levels) or less,” she said. “If you’re looking for the same product, you won’t find it at lower prices. We don’t have middlemen.”
When customers ask if she’s going to improve her bare-bones website, she tells them that if she spends money on the site, their prices will go up. Most of them say they’re fine with the site the way it is, she said.
“We don’t make a lot of money on this,” she said. “It’s a true passion of mine. To me, it’s more about being able to get these foods to our customers.”
Information about Real Food Bay Area is at realfoodbayarea.com.
CDC information on raw milk :
http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html
Raw whole milk is great!
The CDC and FDA are full of —.
Soon cheap DNA profiling will identify pathogens.
The will have to back down.
Congratulations, Christina!
Love Real Food Bay Area as it gives me access to Grassfed beef and pastured pork without the inestment on a full steer and at reasonable prices. I also love the pastured eggs and raw milk. Thanks for all your work and dedication Chrisina!
“Part of raw milk’s richness is because, as Hildebrand put it, consumers are getting exactly what the cow produces. Most pasteurized whole milk sold in stores has had the cream separated from the milk, and just enough added back in to meet the mandated percentage of fat to qualify as whole milk.”
Both raw milk and whole milk must have at least 3.5% fat content. Both may have cream about 3.5% removed.
“We’re lucky in California because (raw milk) is legal and it’s being tested on a regular basis. All raw milk dairies have a clean record. They can’t afford not to have clean milk.”
Oops :
In mid-September 2006, the parent of one of the two children hospitalized with HUS notified CDFA that both children had consumed raw skim milk from dairy A in the days before illness onset. CDFA notified CDPH and the local health departments of the reports. Dairy A, a licensed raw milk dairy, sells raw milk, raw cream, raw butter, raw cheese, raw colostrum,* and kefir throughout California at retail stores and nationwide via Internet sales, all under a single brand (brand A).
Six cases were identified; four persons had culture-confirmed infections, one had a culture-confirmed infection and HUS, and one had HUS only. The median age of patients was 8 years (range: 6–18 years), and four of the patients (67%) were boys. The six cases identified during this investigation were geographically dispersed throughout California. All six patients reported bloody diarrhea; three (50%) were hospitalized.
Five of six patients reported they had consumed brand A raw dairy products in the week before their illness onset; the sixth patient denied drinking brand A raw milk, although his family routinely purchased it.
Have been using RFBA for a couple of years now. I live in Saratoga and used to have to drive to Palo Alto once a week to try to get Raw Goat milk, the only milk I can eat. Usually, by the time I got there, it was gone off the shelves.
Now I can get my raw goat milk every week by just popping down to Los Gatos.
Thanks you again, Christina!!!!
In the 2006 incident, “Dairy A” is Organic Pastures. But Claravale has had issues too :
March 2012 – “Lab tests have confirmed the presence of Campylobacter bacteria in raw cream from Claravale Farm in California, according to state officials who have quarantined and issued a statewide recall notice for all the raw milk, raw nonfat milk and raw cream produced by the San Benito County dairy.”
“Most people who become ill with campylobacteriosis get diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever that typically lasts one week. Some infected persons do not have any symptoms.
About one in every 1,000 reported Campylobacter illnesses leads to Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), which can result in paralysis. According to CDC estimates, as many as 40 percent of GBS cases in the U.S. may be triggered by campylobacteriosis.”
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/03/california-orders-recall-of-claravale-farm-raw-milk/#.VDgijBCidpg
People can get sick from eating literally anything. Maybe we should put everything in a giant autoclave so that we will all be safe from germs.
RFBA has been my one stop shop for years. No need to look for raw dairy products and organ meats anywhere else. Excellent job Christina. Thanks for what you are doing.
I don’t know why the CDC is in the business of badmouthing specific types of products, but that is exactly what they have done with the study mentioned in the comments. Please make informed decisions. The FDA and CDC should hardly be the final word on products in the market as they are influenced by policy and pressures often made by people who don’t know science from fiction. Below are some alternate views on the CDC report:
http://chriskresser.com/raw-milk-reality-is-raw-milk-dangerous
http://www.westonaprice.org/action-alerts/cdc-cherry-picks-data-to-make-case-against-raw-milk/
Oh, and as a response to Jonah about how raw milk and pasteurized milk must meet the minimum 3.5% fat content; Yes, they both CAN have the cream removed from it, then added back in to reach the minimum fat content. Nevertheless, this process is standard in the pasteurized milk industry, while it is not typically done in the raw milk industry (as a matter of fact, I don’t know of a single raw milk dairy that does this, but I’m not an industry expert, so my experience is limited).
I love RFBA. I admit I was a little nervous about raw milk at first, but now I consume it everyday and LOVE it. My son who is lactose intolerant has NO problem with raw milk. I also only use raw milk cheese, and I LOVE the corn free, soy free eggs and meat, and the sprouted raw almond butter.
I haven’t eaten this well or been this healthy in a long time, which is NOT a coincidence!
For people who don’t want to consume raw dairy, then don’t. I don’t know why Jonah is trying to scare people. My family and I have used raw dairy for years without a single problem, and as I said, we’re healthier than ever! THANK YOU Christina!!
This is a great service and one that promotes health!
Happy customer since the very beginning. Thank you Christina for the great job!
I have been buying and consuming raw milk from Real foods bay area for the last 4 years (Claravale raw milk to be specific). The milk is rich, creamy and tasty and reminds me of good whole milk from India.
Thanks fo Christina for making raw milk so easily available.
We live in San Carlos and are sooo grateful to RFBA for giving us a direct connection with our amazing local farmers…the true healers of our time.
Christina, thank you for providing excellent milk and eggs to my family! My daughter since one was drinking raw goat milk from Claravale farm. We never had a problem! Now we regularly purchase soy free, corn free eggs! Thank you for making all these products available to us!
Thanks to Christina’s passion my community, Gilroy, has access to healthy, clean foods. These include raw milk, yogurt, grass fed beef, pastured no soy, no corn chicken, all of which we enjoy on a regular basis.
I love RFBA! I was looking for raw milk for so long and I am so happy I found Christina! Not only that the milk is so good, and I also get wheat free bread that is delicious, but Christina is so personable and she is helping all of us like we would be her family. I am so grateful for what she is doing for our health. I am recommending to all clients to check Real Food Bay Area.
I use RFBA weekly for milk and occasionally for other things like bones for stock, eggs, raw honey, etc. It’s a wonderful resource for people wanting to eat actual food and avoid processed food-substitutes. Real raw milk has been a game changer for me – I’ve always loved dairy, but it wasn’t until I tried real milk (instead of the white processed stuff we’ve all started calling milk in the last few generations) that I understood both how good it can taste and how good it can be for the body. My skin has improved dramatically since switching to raw Jersey milk. It’s better for the cows too! Pasteurized milk often comes from unhealthy cows. For those worried that raw milk is “dangerous”, I ask you: should you and your family avoid raw vegetables? Because there have been a lot more spinach recalls than there have been raw milk recalls.
Here’s some corrective information about the alleged 2006 raw-milk problem. California officials were unable to find a single pathogen at Organic Pastures. It’s interesting that there are so many recalls of pasteurized milk products. Should we stop eating anything that’s been pasteurized out of health concerns? I’ll give a link for the text quoted below at the bottom of this post.
– – –
“The September 2006 E.coli spinach outbreak provides another example. Over the past eight years, Organic Pastures Dairy of Fresno, California has sold over 40 million servings of raw milk without one case of illness; during the same period the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued at least 19 recalls of pasteurized milk products in California. Frequent testing by Organic Pastures, the state of California, and the veterinary departments of local universities has failed to detect even a single human pathogen in the milk.”
“Yet in September 2006, after four children who had consumed raw milk and also raw spinach or sushi became ill, state officials ordered the dairy to shut down. All Organic Pastures products were recalled. Officials performed over 2,000 tests of the entire dairy operation, including swabs taken from the 300 cows, the farm, the manure and the equipment, without finding a single pathogen. The raw dairy products are now back on store shelves, yet many state health officials continue to report that Organic Pasture’s raw milk caused illness due to E. coli.”
– – –
Some other interesting statistics in the article:
“Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:
31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)
– – –
http://www.westonaprice.org/press/fda-and-cdc-bias-against-raw-milk/
Here’s some corrective information about the alleged 2006 raw-milk problem. California officials were unable to find a single pathogen at Organic Pastures. It’s interesting that there are so many recalls of pasteurized milk products. Should we stop eating anything that’s been pasteurized out of health concerns? I’ll give a link for the text quoted below at the bottom of this post.
– – –
“The September 2006 E.coli spinach outbreak provides another example. Over the past eight years, Organic Pastures Dairy of Fresno, California has sold over 40 million servings of raw milk without one case of illness; during the same period the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued at least 19 recalls of pasteurized milk products in California. Frequent testing by Organic Pastures, the state of California, and the veterinary departments of local universities has failed to detect even a single human pathogen in the milk.”
“Yet in September 2006, after four children who had consumed raw milk and also raw spinach or sushi became ill, state officials ordered the dairy to shut down. All Organic Pastures products were recalled. Officials performed over 2,000 tests of the entire dairy operation, including swabs taken from the 300 cows, the farm, the manure and the equipment, without finding a single pathogen. The raw dairy products are now back on store shelves, yet many state health officials continue to report that Organic Pasture’s raw milk caused illness due to E. coli.”
– – –
Some other interesting statistics in the article:
“Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:
31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)
– – –
http://www.westonaprice.org/press/fda-and-cdc-bias-against-raw-milk/
It is wonderful to find Christina bringing up her children with an attitude that is natural and is to most people in Europe to drink and eat products that are natural and not manipulated. Why would one want to buy milk that has Vitamin A&D added when it is a whole food, same with meat that is full of Antibiotics and growth hormones and worse, when you can get organic meat free of all that. I am lucky I grew up when chemical fertilizers did not exist and now live close to an organic farm and can get all the dairy produce raw, vegetables in Season and cheeses and meats and eggs in a community that is the third largest place for Hedge Funds in the world after New York and London.
RFBAwesome! Helps me have access to things I otherwise couldn’t find or purchase, such as duck eggs, pastured meats, broths. So glad there’s a service like this!
Sparty, you set up a straw man and knocked him down to puff yourself up in the eyes of the public. Pitiful just pitiful. You wrote “So….you’re saying the SAME amount of people who eat poultry, beef, eggs, produce and seafood also drink raw milk?” However, the person to whose comments you were reacting did not say or write what you alleged. You made yourself look like a fool with your weak straw-man ploy.
Raw milk is good for some but not needed by all. This is a good option for those who need raw milk. Nobody has to accept it as good for everyone, and nobody has to paint it as bad for everyone. It is an option for those who want it, so what’s the problem now? Everyone doesn’t believe what you do? Get used to it Martha. Live your life and let others live theirs.
I love living in the Bay Area because of our access to beautiful, high-end food and I’ve eaten many wonderful foods of excellent quality as a result. However, trekking everywhere to purchase all these foods takes time, so I tried RFBA to simplify my grocery shopping. I was skeptical because of my standards, but wow, was I ever blown away. Each and every product we tried stands as one of the best in their category we’ve ever eaten. I found myself on each supplier’s website looking at their practices and processes and looking for additional products to purchase. It appears RFBA has an excellent vetting process that saves you time and brings you products that are absolutely delicious. I recommend this organization highly and hope an organization like this will further the cause for real food.
We have been using RFBA for our raw milk for four years and I love it. We started out with an order of 4 quarts a week. We are now up to 14 because my kids love it so much. After much research, I had realized pasteurized milk was not only unhealthy but also detrimental to us. I have Crohn’s and dairy always upset my digestion. I have no such problems with raw milk. And it was a lifesaver when I had my daughter and wasn’t able to breastfeed. I hated giving her store bought formula and with the amount she was throwing up, she hated it too. Luckily, I found a recipe for a homemade raw milk formula and she has thrived on it. Even our pediatrician, skeptical at first, is amazed at how healthy and robust she is. Raw milk tastes amazing, has amazing health benefits and is better for the cow and the environment. Win Win Win! Thank you RFBA and Claravale for our raw milk. I love sharing what raw milk can do and am happy to have converted several people away from pasteurized and into our raw milk community.
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chicken heads for broth? yuck
“”Between 1990 and 2004, a CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) report shows a much greater risk from consuming the following foods:
31,496 illnesses, 639 outbreaks from produce (38%)
16,280 illnesses, 541 outbreaks from poultry (20%)
13,220 illnesses, 467 outbreaks from beef (16%)
11,027 illnesses, 341 outbreaks from eggs (13%)
9,969 illnesses, 984 outbreaks from seafood (12%)”
So….you’re saying the SAME amount of people who eat poultry, beef, eggs, produce and seafood also drink raw milk? I never knew that, this is indeed interesting information.
You’d think with the 24 Billion (24,000,000,000) pounds of beef processed in the US every year, and raw milk consumption being even MORE than that (factor in those other things people eat) Safeway or Costco or somebody would get in on that action.
USDA figures say 30,000,000,000+ lbs of produce are consumed in the US every year (2012,last year I could find stats for…)
Crazy. Not even half the list and were already over 50 BILLION lbs of raw milk consumed in the US. (figure 8lbs/gallon for milk, give or take to get a better measure, since it’s liquid)
That’s still billions and billions and billions of gallons of raw milk consumed by people in the US every year. I guess politics must be keeping grocery chains out of the raw milk business. Big Lacta probably has tons of lobbyists in DC as well.
So… unequal amounts of consumption make the food illness stats posted relevant in what way?
BTW that’s not “strawman” that’s “apples and oranges.”
At best listing those illnesses to compare the safety of raw milk to other foods is like saying commercial air safety was better in the 1920s than the 1970s because so many more people died in air crashes during the 1970s