US: Federal agencies continue to evaluate the safety of dairy and beef products against the H5N1 virus

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted its sampling study using 167 samples, which included products such as pasteurized milk, cream cheese, hard cheese, ice cream and raw milk aged cheese. About 17% of the product samples contained genetic material from the H5N1 virus, but no viable virus was detected. “It is clear that pasteurization is effective against the virus,” said Steve Grube, medical director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. However, the results on aging raw milk cheese were inconclusive, leading the FDA to maintain its assumption that consuming raw milk poses a risk to consumers. “In the case of the raw milk cheese we tested, none of the samples in the study contained viral genetic material, suggesting that the herd producing the milk used to make the cheeses came from cows that were not infected at the time of milking,” Grube explained. “Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn about whether production and aging of cheese made from ...