The USDA says all the ground beef samples sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory for PCR testing were negative for the H5N1 virus, which had been known as bird flu or highly pathogenic avian influenza.
In April, the American Association of Bovine Practitioners began referring to the H5N1 virus in cattle as bovine influenza A virus, or BIAV.
Farm Policy News says USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service collected 30 samples of ground beef from retail outlets in the states with dairy cattle herds that tested positive for H5N1. The national laboratory reported that all samples tested negative for the virus.
“These results reaffirm that the meat supply is safe,” the USDA says.
The Food and Drug Administration says preliminary results of testing additional dairy products continue to show that pasteurization inactivates the bird flu virus. The FDA has tested 297 total retail samples of pasteurized dairy products, and the results released last week represent tests on 201 of those samples to date.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service recently added Colorado to the list of states with dairy herd infections.
Source: NAFB News Service
