Re: Biden administration going around the CDC on the Dairy influenza epidemic

On 10/24/2024 12:38 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/10/24/usda-hhs-fact-sheet-biden- harris-administration-new-action-halt-spread-bird-flu-california- washington.html
 Someone is finally doing what should have been done at the beginning of this dairy influenza fiasco, but they are not expanding their program nationally as it should be implemented.
 They are only going to assist the California contact tracing efforts and have sent a team of 5 USDA staff members to "aid in traceback efforts and epidemiological investigations".  Nine more case managers are supporting the effort to track and manage infected herds.  This type of program should be implemented in all states with known infected herds, and likely states that have H5N1 in their waste water and or have produced virus positive milk products in the FDA studies.
 Part of the new National response is to start the type if testing of the nations milk supply that the recent article by CDC researchers, where they found that the most common pasteurization method may not kill the virus, and they recommended that milk products should likely be tested for viable virus in a more stringent testing regime than the FDA had conducted.  The USDA is going to conduct such a testing survey of the nations milk supply.  They need to start testing milk fresh out of the processing plant within 4 days of pasteurization.  My take is that they should be sampling the milk as it comes out of pasteurization at all plants.
 I should note that the CDC did not act on their own research on survivability of the virus in milk, but someone has.  It should be noted that the first cats in Texas were infected by drinking raw milk, avian influenza is a gut and respiratory infection in birds and has infected the guts of the cattle causing decreased nutrient absorption of some of the dairy cattle (their gut seem to shut down).  The Missouri human patient exhibited gut infection symptoms, and had, had no contact with infected animals.  She could have been infected by the milk supply.  The Missouri milk supply was not tested by the FDA.  It was one of the states that was not tested in their last milk survey  (Samples collected June 18th to July 31st).  Missouri is just not testing their dairy herds.  They have never wanted to know if they had infected herds like their infected neighbors, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Iowa.  It is known that asymptomatic cows can shed high levels of the virus in their milk (only their mammary gland is infected), and that the infection can be limited to only one of the four lobes of mammary tissue in the udder.
 https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates- highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai#secondtesting
 Ron Okimoto
 

In the above report the USDA increased the number of positive herds in California to 137, but there are also 2 additional herds confirmed in Idaho in the latest USDA update.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock
Ron Okimoto