Achi news desk-
The US Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk have tested positive for remnants of a bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows.
The agency emphasized that the material is inactive and that the findings “do not represent an actual virus that could pose a risk to consumers.” Officials added that they are continuing to study the matter.
“To date, we have not seen anything that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement.
The announcement comes nearly a month after a bird flu virus that has sickened millions of wild and commercial birds in recent years was found in dairy cows in at least eight states. The Department of Agriculture says that 33 herds have been affected so far.
FDA officials did not say how many samples they tested or where they were obtained. The agency has been evaluating milk in processing and from grocery stores, officials said. Additional test results are expected in “the next few days to weeks.”
The PCR lab test the FDA used would have detected viral genetic material even after a live virus had been killed by pasteurization, or heat treatment, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University
“There is no evidence so far that this is an infectious virus and the FDA is following that,” Jaykus said.
Officials with the FDA and USDA had previously said milk from affected cows was not entering the commercial supply. Milk from sick animals is supposed to be diverted and destroyed. Federal regulations require that milk entering international commerce be pasteurized.
Because the detection of an avian influenza virus called Type A H5N1 in dairy cattle is new and the situation is evolving, no studies on the effects of pasteurization on the virus have been completed, FDA officials said. But past research shows that pasteurization is “highly likely” to inactivate heat-sensitive viruses such as H5N1, the agency added.
Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that time and temperature regulations for pasteurization ensure that the US commercial milk supply is safe. The remnants of the virus “have no effect on human health,” he wrote in an email.
Scientists confirmed the H5N1 virus in dairy cows in March after weeks of reports that cows in Texas were suffering from a mysterious malady. The cows were lethargic and there was a dramatic drop in milk production. Although the H5N1 virus is fatal to commercial poultry, most infected cattle appear to recover within two weeks, experts say.
So far, two people in the United States have been infected with bird flu. A Texas dairy worker in close contact with an infected cow recently developed a mild eye infection and has recovered. In 2022, an inmate in a work program caught him killing infected birds on a Colorado poultry farm. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is assisted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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