State agriculture officials on Thursday banned Fresno-based Raw Farm from distributing its raw dairy products to retailers amid ongoing concerns about possible bird flu infections among its cattle.

However, with the exception of two limited recalls announced in the last few days, products from the farm that are already on store shelves can remain available for sale.

The ban comes after several days of contradictory test results conducted by different state and local health agencies, in which county public health departments found presumptive positive samples in bottled raw milk on store shelves, while state agriculture officials did not detect the virus in bulk milk tests.

On Thursday, California’s agriculture department reached out to the owner of Raw Farm LLC, Mark McAfee, and instructed him to suspend all sales to retailers.

“When raw milk disappears from the stores, that will be it,” he said.

According to McAfee, neither the agriculture or health department have recalled any products other than those involved in two limited recalls made in the past week involving quarter-gallon “cream top” whole milk products.

McAfee confirmed to The Times that his cows have H5N1 bird flu virus. He said he was not aware the cows had the disease until this week because they “are so healthy that they do not show the classic signs or symptoms. They are mostly all asymptomatic.”

He said two or three of his 1,800 cows had spiked a virus on Oct. 10, but he said they were not positive for the virus. He said he removed those cows from the herd.

It is unclear how long the cows were separated, or if a veterinarian or other professional tested the animals for H5N1.

He said regular bulk milk testing by the state’s agriculture department has consistently been negative.

“Obviously, we have some asymptomatic shedders at very low levels,” said McAfee.

He said he had a previous fever spike among his cows in August. Again, he said, the virus was not confirmed in the herd at that time.

He said he monitors each cow at his farms with a device that sits in a cow’s udder and sends real-time information about the animal’s body temperature, milk acidity, etc.

Last week, public health investigators from Santa Clara County tested a retail sample of raw milk they acquired at a store. That sample tested positive for presumptive H5N1 bird flu. The state’s public health department soon confirmed that finding and Raw Farm recalled a specific batch that was already off the shelves.

Meanwhile, the state’s agriculture department, which had been routinely testing Raw Farm milk products kept getting negative results — leaving infectious disease experts confused.

Then on Wednesday, Santa Clara County Public Health officials announced a second batch of presumptive H5N1-positive milk from Raw Farm. They made the announcement only hours after state agriculture investigators swept Raw Farm’s two herds, creamery, trucks and milk tank for samples.

According to McAfee, some of the samples collected by state officials also tested positive.

Questions to the state’s agriculture and public health departments, which were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, went unanswered Friday.

On Wednesday, health officials from the L.A. County’s public health department expanded its list of retail stores that may have carried recalled raw milk products.

Untroubled by the positive tests and the possibility of selling raw milk products tainted with the bird flu virus, McAfee told The Times that he is urging consumers to “get to the store. Immediately!”

The magnitude of the risk to raw milk consumers is unclear. So far, 55 Americans have contracted H5N1 bird flu this year; these were predominantly dairy and poultry workers who were likely infected through their close proximity to animals and not by consuming contaminated products.

In two of those cases the source has not been identified, including a child in Alameda County who tested positive earlier this month.

In addition, a teenager in British Columbia was infected more than two weeks ago and has been in critical care since.

McAfee said herd immunity among his cows is his goal, and that when he’s clear to restock store shelves, “all of our raw milk will have antibodies to influenza HPAI H5N1. That’s awesome!”

Just two decades ago, China had little capacity to make cars, and owning one was considered novel. Today, China produces and exports more cars than any other country in the world.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to impose new tariffs on China. Many countries, including the United States, already levy extra tariffs on China’s electric vehicles. But with all of the advantages China wields in automaking, this pushback is unlikely to undercut China’s dominance.

China’s home market for car sales is the world’s largest — almost as big as the American and European markets combined.

As China’s domestic market grew, so did its production capacity, propelled by massive government investment and world-beating advances in automation. Yet in recent years, the pace of sales has fallen behind as consumer spending slows in China’s economic downturn. The result is that China today has the capacity to make nearly twice as many cars as its consumers need.

To deal with the excess, China has increasingly looked overseas to sell cars.

China is a leader in the transition to electric vehicles and it exports more of them than any other country. Chinese brands like BYD are becoming known worldwide for offering advanced electric cars at the most competitive prices. And as Chinese drivers have shifted rapidly to electric vehicles, demand for gasoline-powered cars in China has plunged and many are being exported instead.

But China’s trading partners say that China’s exports of both electric and gasoline-powered cars imperil millions of jobs and threaten major companies. Earlier this year, the United States and the European Union put significant new tariffs on electric cars from China. Governments are concerned because the auto industry plays a big role in national security, producing tanks, armored personnel carriers, freight trucks and other vehicles.

What’s more, China has used steep tariffs and other taxes as a barrier to car imports, so that practically all of the cars sold in China are made in China.

Here’s how China took the lead in the global car market.

Decades of investment in electric cars pays off

China has invested heavily for more than 15 years in developing electric cars, to limit its dependence on imported oil. Wen Jiabao, China’s premier from 2003 to 2013, made electric cars one of his highest priorities. In 2007, he reached outside the Communist Party to choose Wan Gang, a Shanghai-born former Audi engineer in Germany, as the country’s minister of science and technology. Mr. Wen gave him essentially a blank check to make China the world’s leader in electric cars.

Now, half of China’s car buyers choose battery electric or plug-in hybrid cars. Until recently, buyers of electric cars also received large subsidies from the government. Carmakers have received low-interest-rate loans from state-controlled banks to build dozens of factories, as well as government tax breaks and cheap land and electricity. By one estimate, Beijing’s assistance to China’s electric car and battery sectors has been worth more than $230 billion since 2009 — one reason that the European Union has imposed anti-subsidy tariffs.

China is projected to continue its heavy investment and retain its lead in electric vehicles.

Unloading excess gasoline cars at steep discounts

China has more than 100 factories with a combined capacity to build close to 40 million internal combustion engine cars a year. That is more than twice as many as people in China want to buy, and sales of these cars are dropping fast as electric vehicles become more popular.

As a result, some assembly plants have been mothballed or shuttered. But automakers, reluctant to close facilities, are selling many gasoline-burning cars overseas at steep discounts.

Will tariffs be able to slow China down?

The flood of Chinese cars into the global market has raised alarms around the world. In addition to the European Union, governments elsewhere have levied extra tariffs on electric cars from China, on top of baseline taxes already applied to all imported vehicles.

The countries’ tariffs come in different forms. The U.S. government levied a flat tax. The European Union calculated a rate for each automaker based on the estimated subsidies the company has received from Chinese government agencies and state-controlled banks. India and Brazil are also aiming to protect their local industries.

But tariffs may not fully offset Chinese carmakers’ competitive lead. Chinese companies offer cars with similar quality to their global rivals and at lower cost. Analysts at the bank UBS calculate that cars made by BYD cost 30 percent less to assemble than similar cars made by Western companies. Some of the biggest savings for Chinese companies are on batteries. China controls practically the entire supply chain for making electric car batteries.

With the advantages China wields in automaking, even the world’s intensifying pushback is unlikely to stop the country from dominating the industry for many years to come.

Irvine electric vehicle maker Rivian has received conditional approval for a federal loan of up to $6.6 billion that would help fund construction of a Georgia plant where it could manufacture smaller and more affordable SUVs.

The company said late Monday that the loan from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program would support construction of a plant outside Atlanta that Rivian halted work on this year after losing $5.4 billion in 2023.

“This loan will help create thousands of new American jobs and further strengthen U.S. leadership in EV manufacturing and technology,” Rivian founder and Chief Executive RJ Scaringe said in a prepared statement.

Rivian said it “must satisfy certain technical, legal, environmental, and financial conditions” before the department gives final approval and funds the loan.

Shares of Rivian were up 4% to $12.06 in early afternoon trading.

The funding comes just weeks after Rivian and Volkswagen Group entered into a joint venture that could deliver as much as $5.8 billion to the electric vehicle maker, which is supplying the German company electronic and computer components for its own electric vehicle program.

The venture significantly boosted the finances of Rivian, which went public in 2021 amid strong investor interest in EV makers, but the market has been slowed by higher interest rates and other challenges. Rivian also has struggled with supply issues and production.

The company cut 10% of its 16,700-plus workforce earlier this year and recorded a net loss of $1.1 billion, or $1.08 a share, in the third quarter. It employed about 2,200 locally in 2023, according to the Orange County Business Journal.

The loan was approved by the Energy Department in the waning days of the Biden administration, whose 2022 Inflation Reduction Act set aside some $500 billion to boost clean energy and make other investments in the economy. The administration’s announced goal has been to have half of all cars sold nationally be electric by 2030.

President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to pull back any unspent funds of the act, but the law has drawn bipartisan support as much of the funding has flowed to Republican-led states. The planned Rivian plant has the support of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican.

“Today’s announcement reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to strengthen the nation’s manufacturing competitiveness, helping ensure American businesses remain global leaders in the rapidly expanding EV industry,” the Department of Energy said.

Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, an automotive research website, said the loan reflects the Biden administration’s efforts to put “a wide range of things in place as quickly as possible.”

“They won’t control the agenda any longer,” he said, adding that the loan would give Rivian a “much longer runway and much needed financial help.”

This is not the first time the department has made a large loan to support the electric vehicle industry. In 2010, it gave a $465-million loan to Tesla Motors to help fund its vehicle development and to build its Fremont, Calif., factory.

At full capacity, the EVs manufactured at Rivian’s Georgia facility are expected to yield an annual fuel consumption savings of roughly 146 million gallons of petroleum, the energy department estimated.

Rivian sold about 50,100 vehicles last year, boasting that its full-size, three-row R1S is the top-selling SUV in California in the above-$70,000 price category. But it has yet to release cheaper models that appeal to a broader market. It also makes delivery vans for Amazon.

The company is already expanding its sole plant in Normal, Ill., where it makes the R1 and plans to start production in 2026 of the midsize R2 SUV, which would start at about $45,000 and be released in the latter half of that year.

Rivian said the loan also would provide “significant funding” for the development of the platforms of the R2, as well as even more affordable midsize crossover models called the R3 and R3X — all of which the company said are crucial for its long-term growth and profitability.

The company said it would build the new plant in two phases, each with an annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles.

If the loan receives final approval, it would be secured by all assets of the project and fixed assets and guarantees of Rivian and some of its subsidiaries, the company said.