It has taken 21 days, but Raw Farm LLC has finally issued a recall of its raw cheddar cheese that has been linked to a coast-to-coast outhreak of E. coli O157 H:7 infections. Until today, the California based dairy refused requests from the Food and Drug Administration to recall their products, claiming that their raw milk cheese could not be the source of the pathogen. In their recall announcement the owners of Raw Farm said that the recall is being made under protest because no pathogens have been found in their products. However, because of the timing of the illnesses the Raw Farm products implicated in the outbreak investigation would have been off the market by the time the infections were confirmed. The investigation by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that seven out of nine outbreak patients ate Raw Farm’s raw milk cheddar cheese before becoming ill. More than half of the nine patients are children younger than 5 years old. Patients live ...