2024-05-12 11:42:01
Following an investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the nation’s ground beef supply has so far tested negative for the presence of H5N1 bird flu.
In a statement, the agency said its Food Safety and Inspection Service tested 30 samples of ground beef from retail outlets in “states with dairy cattle herds that had tested positive for the H5N1 influenza virus at the time.” of sample collection” and “all samples tested negative for H5N1.”
“These results reaffirm that the meat supply is safe,” the USDA concluded.
The nine states where bird flu has been detected in dairy cows are Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas.
The USDA emphasized that it has long had a “rigorous meat inspection process” to ensure the safety of the meat supply.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Dr. José Emilio Esteban, USDA undersecretary for food safety, said, “I want to emphasize that we are fairly confident that the meat supply is safe. “We’re doing this just to improve our scientific knowledge, to make sure we have additional data points to make that statement.”
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it is also injecting a “virus substitute” into ground beef and then cooking it at different temperatures, to see how much virus is killed under each heat setting.
Additionally, “we recommend consumers properly handle raw meats and cook them to a safe internal temperature,” which kills germs in the meat, the agency added.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also announced Wednesday that it had found no signs of the live H5N1 virus in a wide variety of dairy products, such as cottage cheese and sour cream. A total of 297 retail pasteurized dairy products were analyzed.
U.S. health officials have already been testing retail milk samples for the live bird flu virus, and none have been found in any of the first batches of samples tested, federal health officials said Friday. .
Those early findings should reassure the public that milk sold in stores remains safe, officials added.
In the online update, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said initial testing findings likely mean the pasteurization process is killing the virus.
“These results reaffirm our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the agency wrote, but testing efforts continue.
“The FDA is also evaluating retail samples from its study of 297 retail dairy product samples from 38 states,” the agency added. “All samples with a positive PCR result undergo egg inoculation testing, a gold standard for determining whether infectious virus is present.”
“These important efforts are ongoing, and we are committed to sharing the results of additional testing as soon as possible,” the FDA added.
FDA officials also tested infant and toddler formulas, which used powdered milk, and found no evidence of the virus, the agency noted.
difficult to control
The story is different when it comes to bird flu viral fragments: Genetic fragments of the virus have been discovered in about 20 percent of retail milk samples analyzed in a national survey, the Food Administration said last week. and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA).
That earlier finding suggests that bird flu has spread much more widely among dairy cows than authorities first thought.
Samples from parts of the country that have infected dairy herds were more likely to test positive, the agency noted, and regulators emphasized that there is still no evidence that cow’s milk poses a danger to consumers.
Still, 36 flocks in nine states have been confirmed to have been infected with bird flu, also known as H5N1.
“It suggests that there is a lot of this virus out there,” Richard Webby, a virologist and influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told the New York Times.
Although it is still possible to eradicate bird flu from the country’s dairy farms, Webby noted that it is difficult to control the outbreak without knowing its full extent.
To that end, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it is now requiring mandatory testing of dairy cows moving across state lines. Before that, cow testing had been voluntary and focused on cows with obvious symptoms of illness.
As of Wednesday, 23 people had been tested for the virus, while 44 people were being monitored after exposure to H5N1, the Times reported. So far only one human infection has been reported, in a dairy worker in Texas who had direct contact with sick cows. The case was mild.
Still, sustained spread among cows would give the virus a better chance of being more transmissible among humans.
Experts believe pasteurization, in which milk is briefly heated, should kill the virus.
“And when the virus is destroyed, it is going to release genetic material,” Samuel Alcaine, a microbiologist and food scientist at Cornell University in New York, told the Times.
“It’s not surprising” to find them in milk, he added. “It doesn’t mean milk isn’t safe.”
More information: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has more information about bird flu.
SOURCES: US Food and Drug Administration, updates, May 1, April 25 and 26, 2024; CNN; New York Times