Early tests of H5N1 prevalence in milk suggest U.S. bird flu outbreak in cows is widespread
Andrew Bowman, a veterinary epidemiologist at Ohio State University had a hunch. He had been struck by the huge amounts of H5N1 virus he’d seen in milk from cows infected with the bird flu and thought that at least some virus was getting off of farms and going downstream — onto store shelves.
He knew the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was working on its own national survey of the milk supply. But he was impatient. So he and a graduate student went on a road trip: they collected 150 commercial milk products from around the Midwest, representing dairy processing plants in 10 different states, including some where herds have tested positive for H5N1. Genetic testing found viral RNA in 58 samples.
