The US Food and Drug Administration US FDA announced an additional set of testing results from their national commercial milk sampling study. The study done in coordination with the USDA includes the testing of 297 total retail dairy samples for HPAI . Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is a disease that is highly contagious and often deadly in poultry, caused by highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5) and A (H7) viruses. HPAI is also commonly known as bird or avian flu. HPAI viruses can be transmitted by wild birds to domestic poultry and other bird and animal species.
The new preliminary results of egg inoculation tests on a set of 201 quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-positive retail dairy samples, including cottage cheese, sour cream, and fluid milk, show that pasteurization is effective in inactivating HPAI. the FDA also tested samples of retail powdered infant formula and powdered milk products marketed as toddler formula. All qPCR results of formula testing were negative, indicating no detection of HPAI viral fragments or virus in powdered formula products so no further testing was required for these samples. This additional preliminary testing did not detect any live, infectious virus.
The FDA is also continuing to test samples of pooled raw milk that has been routed to pasteurization and processing for commercial use. This will be used as a basis to characterize potential virus levels that pasteurization may encounter – and will be used to inform studies to further validate pasteurization. These results reaffirm our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe.
