On April 25, 2024, during a U.S. Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) virtual scientific symposium discussing the ongoing national outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1—also known as “bird flu”—Donald Prater, D.V.M., Acting Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (FDA’s CFSAN), revealed that one in five samples collected in a national survey of retail milk has tested positive for HPAI H5N1 genetic material. The samples with the highest concentrations of HPAI H5N1 particles were sourced from regions of the U.S. where cases of the virus have been confirmed in dairy cattle.
Additional testing is required to determine whether intact HPAI H5N1 is present in retail milk and if it remains infectious, which would reveal whether there is any risk of illness associated with consuming product containing virus particles, according to Dr. Prater.