I have been studying bird flu for twenty years and this is why I stopped drinking milk. Now the FDA is starting to test dairy cows for a deadly virus

A leading bird flu scientist has declared he will no longer drink cow’s milk due to the alarming outbreak among livestock on US farms.

Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and former director of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced his decision on X, warning that the virus — which has infected two Americans so far — could still be active in milk.

“Minor inconvenience to pause my milk consumption while waiting for data,” he said. ‘Delayed transparency influenced my decision.

“After nearly thirty years of working with this virus, I have learned to respect it and its surprises.”

The worrying comments come days after the FDA revealed traces of the virus have been found in supermarket milk – of which almost 40 percent were sold in stores Ohio.

Scientists are demanding more evidence from officials to show that milk is safe after pasteurization, when it is quickly heated and then cooled to “kill” any viruses or bacteria.

Experts are particularly weary of assurances from public health bosses – as the FDA previously said the virus could not enter milk production due to pasteurization.

But Dr Bright said: ‘I have studied H5N1 viruses for 27 years. So I’m going to wait for data that I hope will come soon from both the FDA (pasteurization) and the USDA (genomic data and raw milk processing).”

He added: ‘When the news about H5N1 (the bird flu) broke, (I said) ‘They would have to do a lot of testing before I would drink milk from one of these farms right now.’

Some experts have suggested that the spores found in milk represented a dead virus, meaning that heating the liquid had effectively killed the microbes.

To date, a total of 33 companies have reported cases of bird flu in cattle

Milk is a popular drink in the US, with the average person drinking about 15.75 liters per year

Jeanne Marrazzo, the new director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said scientists proved this by showing that H5N1 from milk samples purchased in stores did not grow in petri dishes.

However, the work was carried out on only a small number of samples and the research has not been made public.

“While this is welcome news, the effort studied a small number of samples that are not necessarily representative of all retail milk,” she said, STAT reports.

“So to really understand the scope here, we have to wait for the FDA’s efforts.”

There are also concerns about the possibility of bird flu entering the meat supply, but so far the virus has only been found in dairy cattle.

Readers of Dr.’s message Bright have also expressed concerns about drinking milk — including Seattle’s Karen Piper, who said, “I think I’m going to take a break from the milk until they figure it out.”

A second said: ‘If you don’t drink milk, I won’t drink milk,’ and a third added: ‘I told my husband last week: no milk. I’m not sounding the alarm yet, but I’ll keep a close eye on it.’

The concern among scientists is that people could become infected by viruses lurking in the milk they drink.

But there is currently no evidence this has happened, with the only case in a Texas dairy farmer linked to direct exposure to livestock.

However, officials fear the outbreak among livestock is “much more widespread” than previously thought.

A total of 33 dairy farms in eight states have detected the virus so far, although officials fear it may be occurring on other farms as well.

Some sick cows produce milk of a different color, but others that tested positive have no symptoms – and their milk is likely to still end up in the human supply.

In the tests in Ohio, 58 of 150 commercial milks collected were found to contain RNA from the virus.

Dr. Richard Webby, a flu virologist at St Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said: ‘The fact that you can go to a supermarket and 30 to 40 percent of those samples test positive suggests that there is more of the virus circulating than there is is present. is currently being recognised.’

Dr. Bright served as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) from 2016 to 2020, but was subsequently transferred to a position at the National Institutes of Health.

At the time, he publicly suggested that hydroxychloroquine was not an effective Covid treatment – ​​contradicting the president.

He filed a whistleblower complaint saying the government had ignored his Covid warnings and illegally retaliated against him by removing him from his role.

The complaint was settled in 2021 with overdue settlement and compensation for ’emotional stress and reputational damage’.

He is now chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention and Response Center, based in Washington DC.