A new study that recreated commercial pasteurization in a government lab provides reassurance that heat treatment kills bird flu virus in cow’s milk, U.S. officials said Friday.
When the bird flu known as H5N1 was first detected in U.S. dairy cows earlier this year, there were no studies of whether heat treatment killed the virus in cows milk. But officials were comforted by studies that showed the pasteurization of eggs — which involves heating at a lower temperatures and for a shorter amount of time – worked, said the Food and Drug Administration’s Donald Prater.
