Officials Maintain Milk Supply Safe Despite Bird Flu Virus Found in Pasteurized Milk
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday that traces of the bird flu virus have been detected in certain samples of pasteurized milk in the United States. Despite this discovery, the agency assures consumers that the milk remains safe to drink, pending the results of ongoing studies to confirm its safety. The FDA, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is actively investigating the situation following the recent outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in dairy cow herds across several states, with subsequent detection in herds in eight states.
These findings emerged less than a month after the H5N1 bird flu outbreak was first detected in dairy cow herds, marking the first such occurrence. The FDA’s detection of the virus fragments in pasteurized milk samples was conducted using a testing method known as PCR testing, designed to identify bits of genetic material. The presence of viral particles, however, does not necessarily indicate the presence of live, infectious virus. In a release made public on Tuesday, the FDA stated, “Based on available information, pasteurization is likely to inactivate the virus, however the process is not expected to remove the presence of viral particles.” “To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe.” As part of its testing, the FDA is specifically evaluating whether pasteurization can inactivate bird flu in cow milk, with the findings expected to be available in the “next few days to weeks.”
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, expressed no surprise at the preliminary findings. “If you tested most milk, you’d find E. coli and listeria and other things in it, too, but they’d all be dead. Pasteurization doesn’t take them out, it just kills them,” he noted, adding that dead particles are unlikely to cause illness. As part of its testing, the FDA will employ egg inoculation tests, considered the gold standard for determining if a sample is infectious. In this test, a chicken egg is injected with a small amount of infected milk and monitored to observe if active virus replication occurs.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert, expressed confidence in the safety of drinking milk amidst the influenza outbreak. “I wouldn’t have any problem drinking milk tonight from an influenza standpoint at all,” he said. “My grandchildren could drink the milk tonight.” However, Osterholm noted a scarcity of information from the USDA on the matter, emphasizing the need for more data to fully understand the current situation with the bird flu virus in dairy cows. “We have a need for a lot of additional information that hasn’t been forthcoming,” he stated. “We don’t know the epidemiology on these farms. We don’t know how many farms, how many samples. We have been very concerned.”
The FDA has advised milk producers to take precautions when disposing of milk from sick cows to prevent the discarded milk from becoming a source of spread. So far, one person has been infected during the current outbreak. The infected individual, a dairy worker in Texas, experienced a mild case and only developed conjunctivitis, or pinkeye. A senior official at the CDC assured that the agency is closely monitoring the situation for signs of unusual illness in people and has not seen any beyond the Texas case. Despite this, the virus remains a cause for concern among health officials due to its high mortality rate of around 50%. While bird flu doesn’t easily spread from person to person, there’s concern that it could mutate as it spreads among cows into a version that is more transmissible among people. However, according to the CDC, there is no evidence yet to indicate that such a mutation has occurred.
