Dairy, beef cleared of flu virus after further testing

Bill Wilson

Further testing by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows there are no further traces of the bird flu in milk or ground beef products.

The FDA ran additional tests with the USDA that included almost 300 total retail dairy samples, and there was no detection of any live, infectious virus.

“In addition to preliminary results released late last week on an initial set of 96 retail milk samples, these results reaffirm our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said.

The agency also did additional testing on samples of retail powdered infant formula and powdered milk products for toddlers and all tests were negative.

Test samples of pooled raw milk that has been routed to pasteurization and processing for commercial use continue to be conducted.

The USDA also collected 30 samples of ground beef from retail outlets in the states where dairy cattle herds tested positive for the bird flu, which were sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories for further testing. All samples tested negative for the flu.

Muscle samples at slaughter facilities of cull dairy cattle that have been condemned for systemic pathologies will continue to be analyzed, and a beef cooking study using a virus surrogate in ground beef and cooking it at different temperatures to determine log-reduction of the virus is ongoing.