FDA commercial pasteurization process kills H5N1 bird flu virus in milk

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), together with the U.

S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), recently announced that the FDA-approved commercial milk pasteurization process effectively inactivates the Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza (H5N1 HPAI) virus in cattle milk and milk products. Scientists at both the FDA and USDA have submitted their manuscript (PDF) to the Journal of Food Protection for peer review prior to publication in the journal.

Study: Inactivation of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus with high temperature short time continuous flow pasteurization and virus detection in bulk milk tanks . Image Credit: Terelyuk / Shutterstock This news article was a review of a preliminary scientific report that had not undergone peer-review at the time of publication. Since its initial publication, the scientific report has now been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in a Scientific Journal.

Links to the preliminary and peer-reviewed reports are available in the Sources section at the bottom of this article. View Sources In March 2024, the highly pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza (H5N1 HPAI) virus was detected in dairy cow herds and raw cow milk in the U.S.

The virus often causes deadly infections in poultry, commonly known as bird or avian flu. Wild birds primarily transmit the virus to domestic poultry and other birds and animals. Although this type of virus does not frequently infect humans, sporadic infections have been detected in humans.

Scientis.