Researchers at Cornell University isolated live, infectious H5N1 avian influenza virus from a commercial lot of fetal bovine serum, the growth supplement used in cell culture laboratories worldwide, in a report published in the August issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The finding matters to a specific audience, and it is worth stating plainly who that is. This is a laboratory biosafety and manufacturing quality-control story, not a consumer exposure story. No pasteurized dairy product, retail meat item, or medical treatment is implicated. The people whose practices may change are diagnosticians, cell culture technicians, biomanufacturing staff, and the institutional biosafety committees that write their protocols.
