The government is testing ground beef sold in retail stores for bird flu in the nine states where outbreaks of bird flu have occurred in dairy cows. As AP Correspondent Shelley Adler reports, that includes the 12 herds in Texas. The Department of Agriculture will test ground beef for bird flu particles, although officials say they’re confident the nation’s meat supply is safe, Bird flu has been found in nearly three dozen dairy herds across nine states. The new testing is the latest effort by the government to track and understand how the virus is spreading among the livestock.
A week ago, the USDA confirmed it found nine infectious remnants of the bird flu virus in pasteurized milk. Scientists say there’s no evidence to suggest people can get bird flu by consuming food that’s been pasteurized or properly cooked. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the agency is further assessing products from 38 states. In a written statement the FDA explained “Epidemiological signals from our CDC partners continue to show no uptick of human cases of flu and no cases of H5N1, specifically, beyond the one known case related to direct contact with infected cattle.
