Media Warns Bird Flu Could Soon Mutate Into ‘Cow Flu.’ Introduces Potential Of Culling Cows To Stop Spread

Within the last 30 days or so, the government has claimed that a number of conventional store-shelf milks contain traces of bird flu in them, prompting worries that the reported virus is mutating. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced they would begin testing samples of beef sold at stores in states where bird flu in cattle has been reported. At this point, officials have claimed that the virus can now transfer from cow-to-cow.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also weighed in, urging the world to refrain from consuming raw milk and dairy products.

Since then more studies and articles have been published disparaging drinking raw milk.

Published on April 29th, a study published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases on the CDC’s website, purports that bird flu tested positive in raw colostrum, a nutrient dense form of mother’s milk after the baby has been born, which led to the death of some cats who drank the contaminated milk.

The abstract of the study says: “Infected cattle experienced nonspecific illness, reduced feed intake and rumination, and an abrupt drop in milk production, but fatal systemic influenza infection developed in domestic cats fed raw (unpasteurized) colostrum and milk from affected cows.

“Cow-to-cow transmission appears to have occurred because infections were observed in cattle on Michigan, Idaho, and Ohio farms where avian influenza virus–infected cows were transported.

“Although the US Food and Drug Administration has indicated the commercial milk supply remains safe, the detection of influenza virus in unpasteurized bovine milk is a concern because of potential cross-species transmission. Continued surveillance of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses in domestic production animals is needed to prevent cross-species and mammal-to-mammal transmission.”

Our findings suggest cross-species mammal-to-mammal transmission of HPAI H5N1 virus and raise new concerns regarding the potential for virus spread within mammal populations.

The authors wrote

In light of this study and other worry about transmission of the virus in cattle, Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and author of the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist, told Salon in a phone interview, in regards to recent developments, said, “I think we’re slowly inching towards getting some sort of answers for some of our questions…