Following continued concerns about bird flu, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed via testing that the commercial milk supply in the United States is safe. The new tests, which were done on milk samples across the country, confirmed that pasteurization effectively kills the bird flu virus, as no live virus was found in the samples. Additionally, tests on powdered infant formula and milk products for toddlers also came back negative for any viral fragments.
The FDA is also further testing retail samples from its study of 297 samples of dairy products from 38 states. “All samples with a PCR positive result are going through egg inoculation tests, a gold-standard for determining if infectious virus is present,” the FDA said in a statement.
Traces of bird flu have been found in 1 in 5 samples of pasteurized milk, sparking worry that the virus — also known as avian influenza — could be transmitted to humans. So far, only one person in the U.S. has caught bird flu, the second-ever case in the nation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked states to prepare for more bird flu cases by gearing up to test at-risk people for the virus but insists that the risk to the general public remains low, Reuters reports.
The one infected person is a dairy worker who contracted bird flu in Texas, where the virus has been spreading among cattle, as well as in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and South Dakota. Bird flu hasn’t spread to any other people so far, but it has been detected in wild birds, including several geese, in New York City parks and green spaces, according to a new study, and there are renewed fears about other mammals being infected.
Bird flu — clinically known as influenza A (H5N1) — is a variation of flu virus that spreads primarily among birds and poultry and can be highly contagious and even fatal among birds, according to the CDC. Occasionally, the virus will jump to other animals if they eat infected birds or drink water contaminated by the feces of infected birds, the CDC says. That has become more common in recent years. Viruses are constantly mutating, and the more they spread, the more they mutate. A recent family of variants may be particularly adept at infecting other animals, including cattle, according to the World Health Organization.
It’s rare for the virus to infect humans, and when it does happen, it’s usually confined to one person who was in close contact with an infected animal and doesn’t spread to others. Bird flu may cause mild to severe sickness in humans, and it has the potential to cause pneumonia and severe, sometimes fatal lung inflammation. Since 2020, there have been 26 cases in humans confirmed by the WHO, seven of which have been fatal.
Read full story at Yahoo News.
