Got Milk? FDA Says Pasteurized Milk is Safe and Vaccines for Humans Could Easily Be Deployed Against H5N1

One day in 1993, Jeff Goodby of Goodby Silverstein & Partners jotted down a tagline, namely “Got milk .” Then he added a question mark. And for the next two decades, the “Got Milk?” campaign by the milk industry – along with its catchy slogan – became as ubiquitous as Nike’s declaration that athletes “Just Do It.”
The headlines of recent days have caused many to think twice about milk given the presence of small amounts of the H5N1 virus in grocery store milk.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that new bird flu test results show that the milk supply in the country is safe. Tests of milk and other dairy products acquired from grocery stores show that pasteurization kills the highly pathogenic strain of bird flu that is spreading.
Now government officials are preparing for a potential scenario where H5N1 transfers zoonotically from cattle or poultry to a human being. Two vaccines are ready to be deployed should the strain of bird flu circulating in dairy cows begin spreading easily to people.
The virus has been found in at least 36 herds across nine states. This has raised concerns that the virus will mutate in order to make it easier to spill over into humans.
Federal officials said Wednesday that they could begin shipping vaccine doses widely within weeks if need be. Both vaccine candidates are already in the nation’s stockpile, albeit in limited quantities.
Studies “suggest that the vaccines will offer good cross-protection against cattle outbreak viruses,” Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on the call Wednesday.
Got questions?
(Photo: Accura Media Group)