Additional testing of retail dairy products across the country has found no signs of live avian flu virus, reinforcing the consensus that pasteurization protects consumers from this threat, federal health officials said Wednesday. health and agriculture during a press conference.
But the scale of the avian flu outbreak in cattle remains unclear because dairy herds are not routinely tested for infection, scientists and other experts have noted.
A single, mild human infection has been reported in a Texas dairy worker who had direct contact with sick cows. But scientists fear there could be many more undetected infections, particularly among farmworkers.
Barely two dozen people have been tested for bird flu, federal officials said at the news conference. There has been no unusual increase in flu cases across the country, even in areas with infected cows, they added.
But Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of Wisconsin’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, said farms are not required to test their employees, many of whom are migrant workers reluctant to work with state health authorities.
“How much do we ignore because of anxiety and fear of what happens if you don’t get an answer you like? » said Dr. Poulsen.
Until last week, potentially contaminated dairy products appeared to pose the most immediate threat to the public. Federal regulators last week announced the first results of testing of about 95 retail milk samples: About one in five samples contained genetic fragments of the virus, a fact that health officials said did not present threat to consumers.
More advanced testing later in the week found no live virus in the samples, a relief for federal regulators.
On Wednesday, Dr. Donald A. Prater, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said federal scientists examined 201 additional samples of commercial dairy products, including milk, cottage cheese and sour cream.
So far, scientists have found no evidence of a potentially infectious virus. “The findings of U.S. government partners, as well as those of university researchers, do not change our assessment of the safety of milk,” Dr. Prater said.
Dr. Prater said the FDA still strongly advises against consuming raw, unpasteurized dairy products. Federal scientists are still reviewing data to determine whether the virus in raw milk could be infectious, he added.
As of Wednesday, the outbreak had spread to 36 herds in nine states, according to the Department of Agriculture. Scientists have criticized the Biden administration for not doing more animal testing to determine the extent of the outbreak.
Some dairy farms are difficult to access, and owners are sometimes reluctant to grant officials access to production facilities, federal officials said.
“There are a lot of farms that don’t report,” said Dr. Poulsen, the Wisconsin expert. “They don’t report because…