A recent statement from the World Health Organization is sure to ruffle a few feathers.
The international health group expressed “great concern” over the rising number of human bird flu cases. On Friday, the organization also announced that the virus had been found in raw milk.
Dr. Jeremy Farrar, WHO chief scientist, noted that the avian flu, also called H5N1, had an “extremely high” mortality rate among infected people worldwide.
The illness remains extremely rare in the US, with just two known cases, one earlier this month and one in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In both of those cases, the infected individuals worked in close proximity to livestock.
“The great concern, of course, is that … [the] virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission,” Farrar warned.
On Friday, the WHO further warned that the virus had been found in raw milk. Officials said that drinking pasteurized milk—the kind sold throughout the US in grocery stores—is still safe.
Dairy farmers in the US are also required to destroy milk from infected cows, so it should not enter the food supply chain.
According to the Daily Mail, Dr. Wenqing Zhang, who leads the WHO’s global flu program, said that the virus had been identified in a “very high virus concentration in raw milk” from infected cows. Researchers are still trying to determine how long the virus might be able to survive in milk.
In general, drinking raw milk is always a bad idea, as raw milk can carry other contaminants, like salmonella, listeria and E. coli — all of which can make you sick.
Zhang also reiterated that the cases identified in the US and Europe have been relatively mild.
The CDC tracks two types of avian flu: low pathogenic and highly pathogenic. The latter, as you can probably guess, is more serious because it has a higher mortality rate in poultry, 90%—100%, and often within 48 hours.
The person in Texas who contracted the illness earlier this month has the highly pathogenic form of the virus. Since January 2022, the CDC notes that over 90 million birds have been infected in 48 states. But the current outbreak isn’t just affecting birds; it’s also affecting cattle. Currently, eight states have avian flu cattle outbreaks.
The WHO urged US officials to monitor the situation closely because the virus could “evolve into transmitting in different ways.”
