Steakhouses are pushing back on claims that bird flu lurks in undercooked beef.
An ex-FDA official this week urged DailyMail.com readers to avoid rare or medium steaks due to a small risk of contamination with the virus spreading through US farms.
We visited several steakhouses in Manhattan on Wednesday to see if the concerns were shared by restaurant staff and customers.
All seven steak restaurants said their beef was ‘safe to eat’ – but several admitted they ‘hadn’t even heard’ of the H5N1 outbreak in cattle.
Chris Pratt pictured himself eating a steak last year because steakhouses say their steaks are safe to eat and there are no warnings from officials about bird flu in their meat
New York City restaurant owners told DailyMail.com they were not concerned about the bird flu outbreak in livestock and that their steaks were safe to eat
The map above shows the cattle herds where the virus has been reported. Data shows 20 herds spread across seven states, although most cases have been traced to Texas
“Our steaks are safe to eat,” said Brian Morrissey, director of operations at Bobby Van’s steakhouse in New York City.
“If we were concerned, we would have heard something by now,” he added, “I trust the FDA.”
“Our steaks are great,” said another manager at nearby Ted’s Montana Grill.
“Customers don’t even come in and say they’re worried about their steaks.”
He added: ‘We haven’t heard anything from industry about this and they are usually pretty good at telling us if there has been a package recall that we should be aware of.’
A third manager at Smith and Wollensky steakhouse, a famous restaurant near Grand Central, said his staff had not even heard of the bird flu outbreak in cattle.
He added that they were not concerned about the reports and said bird flu outbreaks are reported often.
The above shows how bird flu in the US is moving closer to human spillover
It comes after ex-FDA food official Dr Darin Detwiler warned that undercooked steaks could carry bird flu.
“I’m not yet convinced that simply searing the outside is enough to actually kill H5N1 in beef,” he said.
“I would 100 percent recommend cooking the whole thing to a minimum safe cooking temperature (to kill viruses and bacteria).”
Officials are also trying to allay concerns about possibly contaminated beef or milk, saying both are still safe to consume.
A spokesperson for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which represents cattle producers, said: ‘Importantly, the agency (USDA) has confirmed there is no threat to human health and that milk and meat remain safe to consume.
“USDA has confirmed that the affected dairy cows do not appear to transmit the virus to other cattle within the same herd. At this time, H5N1 has not been found in beef cattle.’
So far, bird flu outbreaks have been recorded among 20 herds of livestock in six states – though mostly in Texas.
But these are all in dairy herds, and no cases have been recorded in nearly 30 million cattle in the US.
There is also no evidence at this stage that infected cattle have the virus in their meat, with it only recorded in their milk – while blood and mucus smears came back negative.
Alarm has been raised about the virus as it spreads to 40 mammal species, raising concerns it could also reach humans.
So far this year, one case has been recorded in a farmer in Texas, the second ever in the US, where the patient had only mild symptoms of inflammation in the eye.
But doctors have been urged to be alert to more cases of the disease among farm workers.
Some experts have also warned that infections can be easy to miss because symptoms can be very mild.
Officials are unsure how the cattle became infected, although at this stage they have found no evidence to suggest the virus is spread through the air among herds.
Instead, they say the animals could have been infected through eating food called “poultry waste” – which consists of the ground-up remains of birds and their droppings.
Livestock may also have become infected through dirty milking machines.