Public health officials in California detected bird flu in a sample of raw milk this month. The virus first spread to dairy cattle in the US in March.
The discovery comes amid an increasingly heated public debate about the merits and drawbacks of raw milk. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine activist and Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services (HHS), is a proponent of raw milk and has claimed that as HHS secretary, he will support farmers who sell it. At the same time, public health experts have continued to advise against drinking raw milk, which is more likely to contain an array of harmful bacteria.
