The ‘milk supply is safe’: Biden administration scrambles to reassure Americans as bird flu spreads

With news Thursday night that a fifth of the U.S. milk supply contains fragments of bird flu virus, the Biden administration and dairy industry are racing to convince the public not to worry about the spread of the disease among the nation’s cattle.

Despite the assurances, the Food and Drug Administration's announcement that 1 in 5 retail milk samples tested positive for viral fragments suggests that the virus may have spread beyond symptomatic dairy herds. The pathogen has now been found in at least 33 dairy herds across eight states since first being detected among Texas cattle in late March. Virologists say it could be much more widespread than that data suggests. To date, however, just one person has been confirmed to have contracted the virus — a dairy worker in Texas who developed a case of conjunctivitis, i.e. pink eye.

Federal officials and industry executives maintain the discovery of inactive fragments of the virus strain, known as H5N1, in milk sold to consumers is not, in and of itself, worrisome — rather, it’s evidence that the pasteurization process is working to neutralize the virus. But given that bird flu has never before spread to cattle, public health officials warn there are still many unknowns. And they and some farmers and lawmakers are now urging the government to rapidly expand its testing and research — and to make that data available ASAP.

"This has been and continues to be a rapidly evolving situation and we are treating it seriously and with urgency, which why this week we issued a Federal Order to further protect the U.S. livestock industry from the threat posed by this virus," said USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez in a statement.

What is the Biden administration telling consumers about drinking milk?

USDA, FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement Tuesday reiterating that “the commercial milk supply is safe.”

And the agencies emphasized this week that pasteurization is key to preventing milk from transmitting the bird flu virus to humans. The pasteurization process, they noted, “kills harmful bacteria and viruses by heating milk to a specific temperature for a set period of time to make milk safer. Even if the virus is detected in raw milk, pasteurization is generally expected to eliminate pathogens to a level that does not pose a risk to consumer health.”

That said, they did acknowledge that “the process is not expected to remove the presence of viral particles,” and said some of the milk samples the government has tested have contained these inactivated virus fragments.

What about raw milk?

Government officials have been pretty clear that drinking raw — or unpasteurized — milk is a bad idea. “The FDA has a long-standing recommendation to consumers not to consume raw milk,” the agencies said in their Tuesday statement, while noting that “the presence of the [H5N1] virus has been detected in raw milk.”

As POLITICO has reported, raw milk has been gaining in popularity in recent years, with a half-dozen states passing laws legalizing its sale. But it remains a very niche product — as the agencies noted in their Tuesday statement, 99 percent of the commercial milk supply "comes from farms that participate in the Grade 'A' milk program and follow the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance.”

Are there any other safety caveats?

Yes. The administration has been careful to say that pasteurization is “likely” to inactivate the avian flu virus in milk, but they also acknowledge that the detection of the virus in dairy cows “is a novel and evolving situation” and “no studies on the effects of pasteurization on HPAI viruses (such as H5N1) in bovine milk have previously been completed.”

The federal government is racing to complete such testing, using a variety of methods that include lab tests and sampling milk and other dairy products at various stages of processing and on store shelves.

USDA on Wednesday also issued a new federal order requiring all dairy cattle to be tested for bird flu before being moved across state lines. Laboratories and state veterinarians will also be required to report any positive virus findings in livestock to USDA. Testing and mandatory reporting will be enforced beginning Monday.

Some public health experts are concerned about how long that testing is taking — and the lack of transparency thus far about the government’s findings. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, questioned why the FDA did not immediately say it would test milk products and expeditiously culture any potential virus fragments found.

“Just from a government credibility standpoint, being transparent about what you're doing, it's important,” Nuzzo said.

In an April 24 letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) urged the USDA to “quickly deploy additional resources in states that have the opportunity to prevent the disease from entering herds within their borders by working directly with farmers on improving their biosecurity options.”

The World Health Organization has also noted that while the risk from the avian flu outbreak to the general public is “low,“ there is a “low-to-moderate” risk of infection for farmworkers and others regularly exposed to dairy cows. The one case in which a human has been infected by this latest outbreak of the virus was a dairy worker in Texas.

USDA and the CDC are working to alert farmworkers about the risks and necessary precautions through organizations like the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents meat processing workers, and the United Farm Workers union. CDC Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah met with two farmworker groups in two weeks, according to spokesperson Jason McDonald. The CDC has also released updated guidance for workers as well as fact sheets in English and Spanish.

Marc Perrone, UFCW president, confirmed his union is in contact with USDA, CDC and OSHA on “increased safety measures and access to testing for all our members in meatpacking and processing.”

But other farmworker groups say they are struggling to implement CDC recommendations without employer support or government-mandated changes to workplace safety policies.

“Lack of training and proper equipment is a very common complaint we hear from farmworkers already, so if this were to blow up into a bigger outbreak, it’s clear that many farms don’t have basic preventive measures in place,” said Jessica Maxwell, a spokesperson for the Workers Center of Central New York, which represent dairy farmworkers.

“It continues to frustrate me that we have an active threat to public health right now with these farmworkers being exposed and nobody’s talking about that,” Nuzzo said, adding that it is likely that additional human infections have been missed. “I fear that because we're putting all of our attention on the future threat and we're just completely ignoring the one right in front of us.”

Is there a vaccine for humans to protect against the bird flu?

The Biden administration says it has two vaccine candidates that appear to be good matches for the circulating avian flu virus. But officials don’t believe it’s necessary to ramp up a vaccination campaign right now.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O'Connell told reporters on Tuesday that if needed, hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccines that target the H5N1 avian flu virus in humans could be deployed within weeks, pending FDA action. Over 100 million doses could then be deployed within months. States can also request personal protective equipment from the national stockpile to help protect farmworkers and others in close contact with infected animals, officials said.

“I want to be clear, while we have these tools available, the risk to humans from the current avian flu outbreak remains low and there's not currently a need to ramp up,” O’Connell said. The health official previously told POLITICO the vaccine would be a two-dose regimen.

How is this affecting the dairy industry?

Industry groups say they are cooperating with the U.S. government’s testing efforts, as well as abiding by existing rules to segregate sick dairy cows on their farms so their milk doesn’t enter the food supply in the first place.

And they are reiterating the agencies’ assessments that pasteurized milk and dairy products sold in stores remain safe for consumers. “Viral fragments detected by lab tests following pasteurization are evidence that the pasteurization process has effectively destroyed HPAI; these fragments have no impact on human health,” the International Dairy Foods Association said in a fact sheet.

Is the outbreak driving up the price of milk at the grocery store?

There’s no indication of that happening yet. Alan Bjerga, a spokesperson for the National Milk Producers Federation, said he has not seen any milk price changes for farmers or consumers.

“Even with the recent FDA tests, which may suggest a wider prevalence of the illness than earlier thought, federal agencies are still noting that pasteurization is effective at making the virus inactive in milk and that consumers can be confident in the safety of the milk supply,” he wrote in an email. “Based on what we know, it seems that they are.”