New experiments confirm milk from H5N1-infected cows can make other animals sick — and raise questions about flash pasteurization | CNN
www.cnn.com
New experiments confirm milk from H5N1-infected cows can make other animals sick — and raise questions about flash pasteurization
  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
    601·
    22 days ago

    Preheat and homogenization were not testing in these processes. Both are steps used in most US milk that would likely inactivate the virus. Moral of the story is still you are an idiot if you are drinking raw milk.

    Fragments of the virus that are being found in about 20% of all milk sampled. These fragments have not been shown to be enough to make anyone sick. The fact that we’re finding fragments and not intact viruses in store bought milk is a good indication that the various processes used for milk in most locations is doing the job it was intended to do.

    And most important of all: This is the current state of evidence gathered on this topic, that state could change with various factors at play and/or the addition of new evidence. Because apparently for some people they have forgotten that “things change as time progresses”.

    • usernamesAreTrickyOP
      81·
      22 days ago

      The raw milk increase is certainly baffling and definitely higher risk for all kinds of diseases.

      We are not testing enough at all, however. The disease was already in 1 in 5 dairy samples before any even basic tests of if the disease could survive pasturization were published. The disease could mutate to survive and we would hardly know it. We’re relying way more on assumptions than should be comfortable. And we’re way too slow to test those assumptions

      The way governing bodies are quickly dismissing concerns of spread via other animal product consumption is a little troubling. For instance, USDA data on virus survivability published in beef didn’t include that it was survivable in medium-rare rare cooked beef until journalists started asking why it was conspicuously absent

      EDIT: correction, rare not medium-rare EDIT2: On further look, it seems that the USDA’s definition of medium-rare is probably actually higher than most people assume medium-rare is, so it’s unclear about medium-rare either

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        22 days ago

        The disease was already in 1 in 5 dairy samples before any even basic tests of if the disease could survive pasturization were published. The disease could mutate to survive…

        Sure, in the same way volcanologists could mutate to survive being submerged in lava.

        • usernamesAreTrickyOP
          5·
          22 days ago

          Well considering it may survive the high heat used for flash pasteurization at 72C (181F) for brief periods per the originally linked study, it’s not as much of gap as that

          This disease spreads fast, and is rather deadly in most (though not all) species. It’s not the kind of thing you want to do little monitoring of. At present, there is comparatively little testing overall of cows and humans both. We’re not picking up much of what this virus is doing

        • usernamesAreTrickyOP
          5·
          22 days ago

          The initial study was presuming it was already had H5N1, but we recently did actually find a positive test in beef tissue. Considering how little we are testing in general, it’s highly unlikely to be the first actual one. The study was looking at if the virus was alive after cooking. If infectious is still unknown

          Beef tissue from a sick dairy cow has tested positive for the bird flu virus, federal officials said on Friday.

          […]

          However, there was virus present in rare burgers, cooked to 120 degrees, although at greatly reduced levels

          https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/health/bird-flu-beef.html

          During the briefing, the agency said that no virus was present in burgers cooked to 145 degrees (medium rare) or 160 degrees (well done) – but only mentioned that traces of virus were found in burgers cooked to 120 degrees when questioned by journalists.

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-can-survive-in-rare-cooked-meat-usda/

          • ryannathans@aussie.zone
            5·
            22 days ago

            Mince is a very different beast to steak due to surface area. Mince is not safe unless cooked through, whereas steak is generally safe even rare

  • Norgur@kbin.social
    15·
    22 days ago

    Well, that’s why raw or flash pasteurized milk is almost impossible to get into supermarkets here in Germany. The regulations are crazy, if it’s possible at all.

  • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.de
    185·
    22 days ago

    So as always with zoonotic diseases, I will continue to not consume dead animals or animal secretions to remove one threat vector. Got it.

  • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
    12·
    22 days ago

    Everyone I know who’s interested in raw milk probably has a few crates of ivermectin left over from the pandemic…should be plenty to keep them safe from the flu, too. /s

  • geography082@lemm.ee
    81·
    21 days ago

    Why we can’t just make synthetic milk and leave those creatures alone after so many centuries of hentai slavery

  • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    22 days ago

    The questions I had are:

    • Do we use flash pasteurisation in the UK?
    • How high is the residual risk for flash pasteurised milk?

    Yes we do use flash pasteurisation in the UK.

    https://www.dairycouncil.co.uk/who-we-are/ni-dairy/field-to-fridge/pasteurisation

    Residual risk for flash pasteurised milk is high enough to be concerning, but the study didn’t follow exactly the same process as industry does during pasteurisation, and those extra steps may also help to kill the virus. So we probably need another study to add in those other steps and see if the virus survives or not.

    Not ideal though.

    Heating the milk to 72 degrees Celsius, or 181 degrees Fahrenheit, for 15 or 20 seconds — conditions that approximated flash pasteurization — greatly reduced levels of the virus in the milk, but it didn’t inactivate it completely.

    Milk samples heated for 15 or 20 seconds were still able to infect incubated chicken eggs, a test the US Food and Drug Administration has called the gold-standard for determining whether viruses remain infectious in milk.

    “But, we emphasize that the conditions used in our laboratory study are not identical to the large-scale industrial treatment of raw milk,” senior study author Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist who specializes in the study of flu and Ebola, said in an email.

    That’s a good reason not to panic over the study findings, said Lakdawala.

    Lakdawala said that commercial flash pasteurization involves a preheating step, which wasn’t done here. It also involves homogenization, a process that emulsifies the fat globules in milk so the cream won’t separate. Both of those steps would probably make it harder for the virus to survive, but she adds that the results of this study suggest full process of commercial flash pasteurization should be done “with all the steps in place.”