FDA Petition Seeks Warning Label on Raw Milk Cheese
News related to:Marler Clark, Inc., PS · 2 min read
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash., Sept. 29, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- The release of the Food Safety Law Firm Marler Clark, PS, has sparked a public comment period on a draft citizen petition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The petition seeks to require a warning label on cheese made from unpasteurized milk, specifically in response to the E. coli O26 outbreak linked to Graziers raw milk cheese, which has sickened 13 people in nine states, most of them children under five years old.
Marler Clark, PS, has posted the full 22-page draft of the petition and is now seeking public input. The firm's request follows the E. coli O26 outbreak, which has been linked to Graziers raw milk cheese. The petition, which includes 47 footnotes to public sources, is posted on the Marler Blog.
The release highlights the importance of this issue by stating that the petition is crucial now. On September 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and FDA announced a multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O26:H11 linked to Graziers grass-fed raw milk cheese made by Sierra Nevada Cheese Company of Willows, California. The outbreak has sickened 13 people in nine states, with eight hospitalized and three with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a form of acute kidney failure.
The petition, which Marler Clark, PS, is now seeking public input on, asks the FDA to amend 21 CFR 101.17, the regulation that has carried the unpasteurized juice warning since 1998 and the shell egg safe handling statement since 2000.
The petition also includes a counter placard for cut-to-order cheese, which would be covered by the retailer or the cheesemaker, depending on the point of sale. The petition asks FDA to complete within a year the reevaluation of the 60-day rule it announced in 2013, and to publish the sampling data it already holds, including the 2025 H5N1 results promised for the spring of 2026.
Marler Clark, PS, is not asking FDA to ban raw milk cheese, lengthen the aging period, or restrict who may buy it. Instead, the firm is asking for the sentence the government has put on unpasteurized juice for twenty-eight years, and for the people who know this product better than they do to help them get it right. The firm has already represented a claimant in the 2025 Twin Sisters Creamery raw milk cheese outbreak in Washington and Oregon, and the firm is now representing a family whose child developed hemolytic uremic syndrome after eating Graziers raw milk cheese.
The petition asks FDA to require a warning label on cheese made from unpasteurized milk, and to exempt cheese made from pasteurized milk or a validated equivalent process. The firm has also asked for specific criticism on five questions, and for any factual error, including the wording of the statement, the point-of-sale placard, the validated processes, the compliance period, and the count, date, or quotation in the draft.
The firm will read all of them and may quote from comments in a follow-up post without attribution unless the commenter agrees to be named. Once the petition is filed, FDA will assign it a docket number on regulations.gov, where anyone may comment formally, and the agency is required to respond within 180 days.