Milk and nasal swab samples from sick cattle on at least two dairy farms in Texas and two in Kansas have tested positive for bird flu, according to federal and state officials.
Agencies are moving quickly to conduct more testing for the illness – known as highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI – the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a news release Monday.
Cattle are showing flu-like symptoms and lactating discolored milk, Texas state officials said. Wild migratory birds are probably the source of infection, federal officials added, pointing to reports that farms have found dead wild birds on their properties.
The announcement comes after Minnesota officials reported the first infection of avian flu among livestock in the United States last week, when a juvenile goat living on a farm with infected poultry tested positive.
The infections among cattle pose minimal risk to human food safety or milk supply and prices, officials said. Milk from sick cattle is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization – a heating treatment that kills pathogens – is required for milk involved in interstate commerce, greatly reducing the possibility that infected milk enters the food supply, they added.
The milk samples that tested positive for bird flu were unpasteurized, according to federal officials.
“There is no threat to the public and there will be no supply shortages,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a news release. “No contaminated milk is known to have entered the food chain; it has all been dumped. In the rare event that some affected milk enters the food chain, the pasteurization process will kill the virus.”
Officials have long cautioned consumers to avoid raw milk, or unpasteurized milk, which can be sold within some states, including Texas and Kansas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls raw milk “one of the riskiest foods” and says it is “linked to a variety of foodborne illnesses.”
Texas requires dairy farms selling raw milk to have it tested every three months. Kansas requires raw milk sales to “take place at the farm where it was produced,” while any advertising and any containers must plainly state that it is raw milk.
The loss of milk from symptomatic cows is too limited to have a major impact on milk supply, federal officials said, meaning “there should be no impact on the price of milk or other dairy products.”
Federal and state officials are investigating primarily older cows in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. Iowa officials are also “actively monitoring this evolving situation.”
Unlike outbreaks among poultry, bird flu infections among mammals are expected not to require massive culling efforts, officials said. In rare cases, avian flu has jumped from birds to humans, most notably during an avian influenza outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997, according to the World Health Organization.
Brian Hoefs, a veterinarian and the executive director of the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, said last week that the kid goat’s bird flu infection “highlights the possibility of the virus infecting other animals on farms with multiple species.”
“Thankfully, research to-date has shown mammals appear to be dead-end hosts, which means they’re unlikely to spread HPAI further,” he added at the time.
Miller said he does not expect a “need to depopulate dairy herds,” and that the affected cattle are “expected to fully recover.”
(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Andrew Jeong
The cows identified as birds.
The next phase of deliberate destruction of the food supply begins……
“Officials have long cautioned consumers to avoid raw milk, or unpasteurized milk . . . . . . The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls raw milk ‘one of the riskiest foods’ and says it is ‘linked to a variety of foodborne illnesses.'” These statements from the Holy, Holy CDC are vicious outright lies!! For the truth is the exact opposite; all the wonderful benefits of milk that were mentioned in the many advertisements telling children to drink plenty of it, occur when the milk is raw, but not when it is pasteurized.
These reshaim want people sick to help line the pockets of the CDC and Big Pharma.
Milk that is raw, in other words, it in its pure natural state the way Hashem makes it, is literally one of the most fantastic perfect foods that Hashem makes for us. At the “Real Milk” website, in the pages there: https://www.realmilk.com/vitamins-and-minerals/ and https://www.realmilk.com/safety/ and https://www.realmilk.com/protection-from-infection/, in very extensive detail, the site relates the numerous nutrients & minerals & enzymes & organisms in raw milk that provide its many excellent health benefits. Included in these benefits is that these raw milk organisms-enzymes-nutrients-minerals ACTUALLY KILL any harmful pathogens. So, yes, raw milk is really a “self-cleaning” food that DOES NOT NEED pasteurization to be rid of the bad germs.
However, when milk is pasteurized, the extreme heat of the process destroys most of the crucial organisms-enzymes-nutrients-minerals, thus very sharply reducing its benefits.
It is very important to qualify that when saying that raw-in-its-natural-state-milk is very good, it is self understood that the cows (that this milk is coming from) must likewise be raw-in-its-natural-state-cows. This means that they were raised up living in their natural setting of being free to freely roam around outside and free to eat their natural diet of in-its-natural-state-grass that was not sprayed with any pesticides of other chemicals. Im Yirtza Hashem, cows raised this way are vibrant healthy animals, and the milk that comes from them is vibrant & healthy with the ingredients for good health.
Unfortunately though, most modern cows and chickens and other fowl — in what is called modern “Industrialized” Farming — large numbers of them are massively crowded into gigantic barns. There, each one is tightly confined in a small pen (with chickens & fowl, each one is tightly confined in a tiny cage), in which he or she cannot move around but must constantly stand and crouch down in the same one position. He or she eliminates in that same one position and is often left standing and crouching in the sewage, which is not readily taken away.
As such hyper-filth conditions obviously bring horrific disease, the animals & fowl are massively injected with numerous strong anti-biotics and vaccines and also many growth hormones to make them fatter and “improve” their taste.
They are NOT fed (their natural diets of) grass or their mother’s milk, but rather GMO & pesticide treated corn and other heavy grains, which are NOT compatible with their intestines and thus cause them to have E.coli & Mad Cow & other terrible diseases.
So, this “modern” “conventional” “industrialized” way of raising our animals & fowl is a way that is obviously not conducive to producing animals & fowl that are healthful. And the milk that comes from such produced mammals is likewise not healthful; if it is not processed, it will not be “Raw Healthy Milk,” but will be “Raw UN-Healthy Milk.”
Regarding the Bird-Flu cattle discussed here, if they were raised in this modern, conventional way, it is no wonder at all that they are so sick and the milk that comes from them is also quite sick.