Re: USDA announces a new Dairy Influenza testing strategy

On 12/7/24 8:53 AM, RonO wrote:

On 12/6/2024 1:22 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2024/12/06/usda-announces-new- federal-order-begins-national-milk-testing
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The USDA is finally going to do what needed to be done at the beginning of the dairy influenza epidemic.  They are still calling it avian influenza when it has been primarily a dairy infection since March. Things have just gotten to the point where stupidity and politics can't stop them from doing the right thing any longer.
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They are going to start a national milk testing program that will force the states with infected herds to admit that they have infected herds and start them doing something about it.  They need to protect dairy workers and poultry flocks from getting infected by the dairy virus.
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The CDC's own research in late October indicated that the dairy H5N1 genotype B3.13 could survive the most common pasteurization method and remain infective for at least 4 days in refrigerated whole milk.  The FDA went into denial, but claimed to start another milk testing program, but implemented the wrong testing protocol to determine if there was an issue with the milk supply.  Instead of going to plants accepting contaminated milk and testing the raw milk before pasteurization and then after pasteurization in order to determine what went in and what came out they asked for volunteer production facilities and volunteer dairies that wanted their milk tested.  This was obviously stupid, but they did it, and never have announced any results from the program. They haven't even claimed that they got enough volunteers to do an effective study.  They probably needed to test up to a hundred plants handling infected milk, using various procedures to pasteurize their milk, and they needed to test them multiple times during the days production, and on multiple different days of the week.  They needed to determine if there was any stage of production that could be compromized and let infective milk enter the food supply during stages like shift changes, maintenance, cleaning, and restart.
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The Missouri patient and the child that got infected by the dairy virus in California are possible cases of infection due to ingestion of dairy products.  The CDC claims that they do not know how the patients were infected, but their only contact with dairy cattle was the milk that they drank.  The milk supply might be 99% safe, but it is that 1% that could have been an issue in California and Missouri.
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It will be important to know if infective virus is surviving in the milk supply if the virus does mutate to better infect humans, but the FDA is not doing what they should be doing.  Why would any regulatory agency rely on volunteers when the ones that will not volunteer are the most likely to have the issues that they are looking for?
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Ron Okimoto

 https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/business/health-care/article296704124.html
 This Washington State news paper is asking why Washington with 11 infected poultry workers was left off the list for starting bulk milk tank testing.  They aren't the only affected left off the initial list. a month ago the USDA claimed that they were going to initiate bulk milk tank testing in states with known infected herds within 30 days, but that may not have happened. There have been no updates on that project. I think that they announced that project around Nov. 7.
 The USDA just announced a national program and are planning to start with Oregon, California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania.  Colorado has already done several rounds of bulk milk tank testing of their dairies since they were infected and identified the second most number of infected dairies, but are way behind California in the number of infected herds, mainly because it looks like they contained the infection by identifying their infected herds. Oregon, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania have not yet adimitted to having infected herds.  So why has the USDA left out Missouri and Washington that have had infected human patients?
 What happened to the program that was supposed to have started by now in the states with known infected herds?  What will happen with this current program?  Those are the questions that the USDA should be answering.
 Ron Okimoto

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It's good see USDA taking an interest in these infections. The CDC seemed like they weren't paying much attention to the infected birds, cattle, etc.