A new study from Stanford University reveals that avian influenza can survive in raw milk for up to five days, raising concerns about potential transmission to consumers. Pasteurization effectively eliminates the virus, highlighting the importance of this process in ensuring public health.
New experiments at Stanford University have found that avian influenza, a subtype of the influenza A virus, may remain infectious in raw milk for days after leaving a warm body. Researchers found that at a standard domestic refrigeration temperature of 4°C (about 39°F), it took the pathogen 2.3 days to reach a 99 percent reduction in infectivity. Alarmingly, a small fraction of the virus particles remained in a transmissible state for up to five days.
This is concerning because the recommended shelf life of refrigerated raw milk is between five and seven days. Thankfully, pasteurization resolved the threat. When researchers heated infected milk to 63°C for 30 minutes, they successfully inactivated the infectious influenza A virus. 'This work highlights the potential risk of avian influenza transmission through consumption of raw milk and the importance of milk pasteurization,' say the researchers. They could find no other study that has investigated how long viruses can remain infective in raw milk. Theirs is the first, and it comes at a critical time. In a world first, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the US has officially made the jump from birds to cows, infecting dairy farm workers. The H1N1 virus is often used as a surrogate for the H5N1 virus in research, so these results from Stanford confirm the idea that pasteurization protects the public against flu-infected milk. While this particular strain of bird flu has yet to be observed spreading from human to human, it can jump from animal to human, and at this point, it seems the H5N1 virus can infiltrate a cow's mammary glands and infect dairy farm workers who handle raw milk or milking machines
Avian Influenza Raw Milk Pasteurization Food Safety Public Health
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