Research provides further assurance that pasteurizing milk kills bird flu, officials say

NEW YORK — A new study that recreated commercial pasteurization in a government laboratory offers assurance that heat treatment kills the bird flu virus in cow’s milk, U.S. officials said Friday.

When the bird flu known as H5N1 was first detected in US dairy cows As of earlier this year, there were no studies on whether heat treatment killed the virus in cow’s milk. But officials were comforted by studies that showed that pasteurizing eggs — which involves heating them to a lower temperature for a shorter period of time — worked, said Donald Prater of the Food and Drug Administration.

A to study in April found that there was no evidence of live, infectious virus in store-bought samples of pasteurized milk, although they contained dead remains of it. Some later small studies that attempted to simulate pasteurization showed mixed results.

The new study was conducted at a federal research center in Athens, Georgia, using custom equipment that attempted to more completely recreate commercial pasteurization.

It also allowed sampling at different stages of the process. Milk goes through several heating steps before being rapidly heated, and the study found that the virus was inactivated before it even reached the “instant pasteurization” stage of 161 degrees and 15 seconds or more, which is considered the key step in manufacturing. safe milk.

“This information really fills an important gap in our understanding of how commercial pasteurization inactivates the virus,” Prater said.

The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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