Beef tissue from a sick dairy cow has examined constructive for the chicken flu virus, federal officers mentioned on Friday.
The cow had been condemned to be culled as a result of it was sick, and the meat didn’t enter the meals provide, in accordance with the U.S. Division of Agriculture. The division continued to emphasize that the business meals provide remained protected.
However the constructive take a look at, which got here as a part of an ongoing federal examine of beef security, raises considerations about whether or not the virus would possibly make its manner into the business beef provide, posing a well being danger to people.
Thus far, the usD.A’s Meals Security and Inspection Service has examined tissue samples from 96 dairy cows that had been condemned due to indicators of illness. Only one cow examined constructive, the division mentioned. Meat from condemned cows isn’t allowed within the business meals provide.
The company is within the technique of testing extra muscle samples.
It has not discovered virus in floor beef samples collected from stores in states the place cows have examined constructive.
Earlier this month, the company launched outcomes from an experimental examine by which excessive concentrations of the virus had been put into very giant beef patties — 300 grams, in comparison with a typical burger dimension of 113 grams. The researchers discovered no virus current within the meat once they cooked the burger to 160 levels Fahrenheit, the interior temperature of a well-done burger, or 145 levels Fahrenheit, the temperature of a burger cooked to medium.
Nevertheless, there was virus current in uncommon burgers, cooked to 120 levels, though at significantly diminished ranges; the company mentioned cooking to that temperature “considerably inactivated the virus.”
“All indications are: You cook dinner your meals, even when there’s virus in there, it is going to kill it,” mentioned Stacey Schultz-Cherry, a virologist and influenza skilled at St. Jude Youngsters’s Analysis Hospital.
Meals security consultants have expressed specific concern concerning the danger of transmission via uncooked milk.
Meals security consultants advocate all the time totally cooking meat to stop an infection from different extra widespread pathogens similar to salmonella, listeria and E.coli. “These meals security suggestions had been in retailer lengthy earlier than H5N1 turned a problem, and they need to all the time be our fundamental commonplace,” mentioned Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory on the College of Wisconsin-Madison.
