US authority reassures:
Pasteurization reliably kills bird flu viruses
According to the US health authority CDC, there are now more than 130 recorded H5N1 infections in a dozen US states. Data on transmissions is still thin on the ground and countermeasures are slow in coming. However, four transmissions to humans have already been recorded. However, the US Food and Drug Administration is reassuring consumers.
The avian flu virus is reliably inactivated by pasteurizing cow's milk. This was established in the course of tests with highly contaminated milk, the FDA stated on Tuesday.
It has been known for around 15 years that type A (H5N1) influenza viruses can be dangerous for the poultry industry and also for humans. However, for a long time it was assumed that transmission was literally from "bird to bird" via feces, in rare cases through intensive contact between poultry and humans.
Sudden infestation of cows
However, this changed in March of this year when H5N1 infections were suddenly detected in cows in several US states. In addition, there have so far been three cases of illness in humans, people who were involved in milking cows etc. on farms. "The US authorities have not yet succeeded in stopping the H5N1 epidemic in cow herds. According to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 56 cases have still been found in seven states in the past 30 days," wrote the German medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt on Monday.
The spread of the A(H5N1) virus strains, which also affect cattle, would of course be a problem internationally. However, the all-clear should now be given, at least for milk from the refrigerated shelves of food retailers. Initially, Erica Spackman from the US Department of Agriculture and her co-authors were able to detect virus genome parts of the pathogens in 60 of almost 300 milk samples using PCR testing. However, this says nothing about infectivity, because the entire live virus is always necessary for an infection.
Raw milk tested before and after treatment
Spackman and her colleagues therefore carried out further tests on behalf of the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture. First, they tested raw milk from 275 samples for intact pathogens. This was the case in just under a quarter of the samples.
The scientists therefore recreated a pasteurization plant in the laboratory, as used in the commercial dairy industry. Milk samples were then artificially contaminated with five million viruses and passed through the pasteurization process. According to the Ärztezeitung, the milk was then free of infectious viruses.
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