20% Of Retail Milk Samples Positive For Bird Flu: FDA

One in five samples of milk from grocery store shelves tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced late April 25.

In a brief 237-word update, the FDA said that initial results from a national commercial milk sampling study “show about 1 in 5 of the retail samples tested are quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-positive for HPAI viral fragments, with a greater proportion of positive results coming from milk in areas with infected herds.”

The FDA has refused to disclose how many samples it tested and from which stores the samples came, and a Freedom of Information Act request for the information has not yet yielded results.

Thirty-three cattle herds across eight states—Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas—have tested positive for avian influenza, commonly known as the bird flu, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Poultry in Minnesota and a person in Texas have also become infected with the same genotype of the H5N1 avian influenza strain found in cattle.