California’s raw milk pet food exemption let an unlicensed Riverside County goat dairy resume selling after two children who drank its milk developed kidney failure, and the state closed its investigation without imposing a penalty. ProPublica reported the case on Sept. 30, and CNN picked it up on Oct. 1.
In 2025, 17-month-old Brooklyn Marris of Winchester and six-year-old Victoria Galindo of Murrieta both fell ill after drinking raw goat milk from Moonlight Ridge, owned by Courtney Baker. Both developed hemolytic uremic syndrome from the same strain of E. coli O157:H7. Brooklyn was treated at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture sent an undercover investigator in June 2025, made an unannounced visit on June 20 and issued a cease-and-desist order and a violation notice, neither carrying a penalty. A sample collected the next day tested negative for several pathogens, including E. coli. Regulators then helped Baker register her milk as pet food so she could resume sales, and closed the case on Aug. 1 having found that she sold unapproved milk products without a license.
California requires a license to sell raw milk for human consumption, but an unlicensed farm may sell it labeled as pet food, and officials said state law does not let investigators enter unlicensed properties. ProPublica reports that 13 other states have similar arrangements. Investigator Nancy Del Cid wrote that she “was unable to show that she sold milk intended for human consumption,” while supervisor Jill Soares wrote that Baker “clearly knew the milk was going to a child.” CDFA spokesperson Devon Keeler said a cease-and-desist “almost always results in a product being removed from the market more rapidly than a criminal referral.”
Baker disputes the families’ account, says “everything is sold as pet milk,” and calls their lawsuit a mischaracterization; that suit is ongoing. No legislative or regulatory response has been reported.
What a licensed California raw milk dairy actually has to do — the permit, the testing, and the warning the state writes for you — is in raw milk in California: what’s actually legal. A professional body’s call to ban raw milk sales outright, alongside a federal petition on raw-milk cheese labeling, was reported earlier this month. How much a label does and does not tell you is the subject of what meat labels actually mean. Producers listed on this site in the county are on the Riverside County page.
Why this matters for SoCal: Licensed raw milk is legal in California and this was not it — telling a permitted dairy from a pet-food-labeled one is the one check a Southern California buyer can actually make.
Sources: California Regulators Did Little to Punish a Raw Milk Farm After Two Girls Got Sick — ProPublica, Sept. 30, 2026 · A girl nearly died after drinking raw milk — CNN, Oct. 1, 2026 · California Closed Raw Goat Milk Probe Without Penalties — Medical Daily