Cow’s Milk Containing Avian Influenza A

The authors of this letter to the editor describe isolating eight high pathological avian influenza viruses from cow’s milk samples from an affected herd in New Mexico to determine stability of the virus in stored milk and symptoms and transmissibility in infected cows. Overall, untreated virus-positive milk is a public health risk that can be inactivated by heat under the laboratory conditions the researchers used.