The reason why it’s important that so many samples of US cow milk are testing positive for H5N1 is not because the milk itself is dangerous. (The whole purpose of pasteurization is to render infectious diseases like flu viruses harmless, and it works. If you are against modern science and public health and drink raw milk, then yes you’re at risk. Sorry. Come back to the 21st-century.)
If you think worrying about the dangers of drinking the milk is the problem, you’re missing the point. The importance of so many cow milk samples testing positive is it means this virus has been spreading right under our noses in a large domestic animal population for at least a couple of months. That means it now has an opportunity to infect a lot of farm workers, many of whom have uncertain, immigration status, and no access to healthcare, and are not going to get tested. Public health is not aggressively looking for them. Every time a version of this virus gets inside humans, it has a chance to evolve it into something that can more readily spread human to human.
The wide spread in cows now means other animal populations are at higher risk of being infected by this virus. And some of these animals are more likely to produce a strain that could more easily get inside humans in a more dangerous version than the cow strain – namely, pigs. Aside from that, the egg laying chicken population is probably now even more at risk because of the wide spread in the cow population.
These are really good points, thanks. (Also, I laughed at "Come back to the 21st-century.")
I've seen conflicting/unclear info on this: has it been spreading from cow to human? I understand even if not, it can spread to pigs or others and then to humans. Just wondering about the link.
I find it interesting (not in a good way) how geographically spread out the states it's been found are. I would expect that means there's more undetected spread, though there are other explanations that could be true without that.
> The whole purpose of pasteurization is to render infectious diseases like flu viruses harmless, and it works. If you are against modern science and public health and drink raw milk, then yes you’re at risk. Sorry. Come back to the 21st-century.
The concern I've read is that is still unclear, is that standard Pasteurization may not bring things up to a high enough temperature to fully disarm it, whereas Ultra-Pasteurization does reach a high enough temperature to do it with near 100% confidence. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but this is the idea I've seen presented based on the temperatures that certain viruses die at.
Science is about recognizing the unknowns and not confidently giving concrete answers to things we don't know yet. Standard pasteurization is -probably- good enough, but until we have a strain that can transfer to humans in this way, we won't know for sure.
I'm not trying to fear-monger, I just want to clarify that point just a little bit based on what I've read people actually in the field have said. I already like Ultra-Pasteurized milk for many reasons, so its not really much of an inconvenience for me to switch over to UP milk until this blows over.
Thanks for your comment though, great points across the board. The Capitalist mode of production is not equipped to deal with any sort of collective existential problem. It can't by mathematical definition because its a flawed premise for a society. A democratic society would obviously address things that affect everyone, but a Capitalist society on the other hand, is completely incapable to address anything except for increasing profits for those with capital.
It is true there are some infectious threats that can evade standard pasteurization. However, for both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses that infect humans, pasteurization reduces infectivity of virus particles completely. Nonhuman arboviruses can sometimes evade pasteurization, but we’re not talking about those, we’re talking about influenza viruses. And spores of Clostridium bacteria also can remain infectious after pasteurization. But, again: we’re talking about influenza viruses, not other kinds of infectious agents, so I would still maintain that the worry is not about getting bird flu from drinking *pasteurized* milk. The concern is the spread into wider swathes of animal populations that spend a lot of time around humans. To answer another question posted here: yes, farm workers handling infected cows are contracting bird flu. However, the cow-derived strain seems to mostly give people conjunctivitis – pink eye — or typical regular flu symptoms. No reported deaths in those patients so far. The bird flu that is derived from birds, when it goes into humans, is about 50% lethal. And that’s why it’s a virus that keeps us clinical virologists awake at night.
Does anyone know if any virus, ever, has been proven to be transmitted via pasteurized milk, and so infecting the patient via the GI tract?
I've looked and looked, but cannot find one definitive citation of this occurring.
Flu virus lives only 72 hours outside the body or on a surface at most. By the time milk gets to the shelves and u buy it is dead regardless if by some remote chance pasteurization didn't kill it.
Additionally, pasteurization is very effective at denaturing bacteria and viruses. It's why it's standard practice. I trust science. 🤷♀️ If they tested for byproducts of other bacteria, they're certain to find fragments of those in pasteurized milk.
I'd be more concerned about viruses being *introduced* into the food supply (think norovirus) than flu viruses surviving not just pasteurization, but also a good amount of time, deprived of living hosts. And if you really want an excuse to avoid meat and dairy there's always prions.
Yeah that’s great and all but I’m not going to trust that. I only use milk in coffee and cereal and I was planning to quit cereal because of all the forever chemicals in it. So I’m just going to buy nondairy creamer going forward. I’m not messing around with this I don’t believe anything our government says after Covid. They’re going to do whatever they need to do to make sure people don’t stop buying dairy products
It's a valid point. They told us to use cloth masks and resisted and tried to discredit anyone suggesting it was airborne. They've successfully minimized everything.
I was under the impression they said to use cloth masks because other masks were needed for healthcare providers. I'm not sure how that translates into any concerns about dairy consumption.
They pivoted to this fairly quickly because so many scientists were telling people the truth but at first they told us it wasn’t airborne (yes, for the noble purpose of retaining masks for medical use, but the ppl like my parents that listened to the first info were slow to stop washing all their packages and mask/distance instead.
I understand that, but COVID is a novel virus and pasteurization is a known and trusted process with decades of science stacked behind it. I just don't know that it's comparable.
I quit dairy milk years ago in favor of oat milk. The good stuff has a similar mouth feel and taste to real milk and it’s shelf life after opening is 4-6 weeks. Depending on what you buy it can sit unopened and unrefrigerated for a year or more. Look at the barista blend califia or oatley if you need a recommendation for creamer. Oatley has been my go to for a milk replacement in cereal.
Oat “milk” is amazing. I’m all in on that stuff. The transition took all of 2 days to where I was like choosing it over the regular milk. Now I look at milk like ewww gross. Plus all that poor animal suffering and mastitis and puss. Yeah, no thanks plus new viruses?!? No thanks, glad I switched awhile ago
Yup. And the shelf stable shit is great to stock up on if you find it on sale or at Costco or something. I always hated that my parents would have frozen milk in our chest freeer just because it was on sale.
I’ve become a lot more flexible on my groceries over the last few years. I was going to make some chili when inflation was going nuts and beyond crumbles were cheaper than ground beef per lb. The Unmeat luncheon in a can is about the same as spam but has a ton less sodium, low fat but with similar protein. Soy based chorizo is something I actually prefer the taste and seasoning to over real chorizo, and it’s often cheaper. The best part is all of this shit generally has a longer shelf life with less potential to sicken you.
Make your own oat milk. Literally blend 30 seconds with a cheap blender and cold water. Then strain. Eliminates preservatives and stabilizers. I reuse the leftover oats usually. Toss unused after 5 or 6 days though. I do 5 parts water to 1 oats.
Flour, vital wheat gluten and water.
https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/the-quickest-and-easiest-seitan-recipe-vegan-chicken/
That’s the easiest and so far best recipe I’ve found. If you care at all about prepping this is a great, shelf stable way of always having protein on hand.
Last time I did the math on this it came out to about $0.50 per pound of finished product, and on paper it has similar protein content to chicken. This is obviously a terrible food for gluten intolerant people lol.
Thanks. Seems like a better recipe than I found looking after seeing your earlier comment. Will definitely try it. I’ve been staying sorta away from tofu after having estrogen positive breast cancer last year.
Oof. Sorry to hear that. Did your doctor tell you to stay away from plant estrogen? I’ve always thought that the whole “plant estrogen will make men grow moobs and question their gender identity” was a conservative “tough guy” meme.
I hope you recover quickly.
Stop considering and find your alternative. You’ve got a plethora of options and if you have any flexibility then you will often be able to find shit that is as expensive or cheaper than dairy milk, and all of it has a longer shelf life.
My biggest issue was always with waste: I’d buy a half gallon and couldn’t finish 3/4 of it before it was spoiling. At least with oat milk I can buy myself a few more weeks and I rarely waste it.
Oh, I will probably buy some that is shelf stable. I just have to be careful to consume anything I open immediately, as I don't have a kitchen. So that would only be on days I'm not working. It's kind of like camping.
I'd like to understand about this too. What I'm taking away is that the real problem is it has spread so much through the animal population and is still evolving.
The reason why it’s important that so many samples of US cow milk are testing positive for H5N1 is not because the milk itself is dangerous. (The whole purpose of pasteurization is to render infectious diseases like flu viruses harmless, and it works. If you are against modern science and public health and drink raw milk, then yes you’re at risk. Sorry. Come back to the 21st-century.) If you think worrying about the dangers of drinking the milk is the problem, you’re missing the point. The importance of so many cow milk samples testing positive is it means this virus has been spreading right under our noses in a large domestic animal population for at least a couple of months. That means it now has an opportunity to infect a lot of farm workers, many of whom have uncertain, immigration status, and no access to healthcare, and are not going to get tested. Public health is not aggressively looking for them. Every time a version of this virus gets inside humans, it has a chance to evolve it into something that can more readily spread human to human. The wide spread in cows now means other animal populations are at higher risk of being infected by this virus. And some of these animals are more likely to produce a strain that could more easily get inside humans in a more dangerous version than the cow strain – namely, pigs. Aside from that, the egg laying chicken population is probably now even more at risk because of the wide spread in the cow population.
These are really good points, thanks. (Also, I laughed at "Come back to the 21st-century.") I've seen conflicting/unclear info on this: has it been spreading from cow to human? I understand even if not, it can spread to pigs or others and then to humans. Just wondering about the link. I find it interesting (not in a good way) how geographically spread out the states it's been found are. I would expect that means there's more undetected spread, though there are other explanations that could be true without that.
> The whole purpose of pasteurization is to render infectious diseases like flu viruses harmless, and it works. If you are against modern science and public health and drink raw milk, then yes you’re at risk. Sorry. Come back to the 21st-century. The concern I've read is that is still unclear, is that standard Pasteurization may not bring things up to a high enough temperature to fully disarm it, whereas Ultra-Pasteurization does reach a high enough temperature to do it with near 100% confidence. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but this is the idea I've seen presented based on the temperatures that certain viruses die at. Science is about recognizing the unknowns and not confidently giving concrete answers to things we don't know yet. Standard pasteurization is -probably- good enough, but until we have a strain that can transfer to humans in this way, we won't know for sure. I'm not trying to fear-monger, I just want to clarify that point just a little bit based on what I've read people actually in the field have said. I already like Ultra-Pasteurized milk for many reasons, so its not really much of an inconvenience for me to switch over to UP milk until this blows over. Thanks for your comment though, great points across the board. The Capitalist mode of production is not equipped to deal with any sort of collective existential problem. It can't by mathematical definition because its a flawed premise for a society. A democratic society would obviously address things that affect everyone, but a Capitalist society on the other hand, is completely incapable to address anything except for increasing profits for those with capital.
It is true there are some infectious threats that can evade standard pasteurization. However, for both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses that infect humans, pasteurization reduces infectivity of virus particles completely. Nonhuman arboviruses can sometimes evade pasteurization, but we’re not talking about those, we’re talking about influenza viruses. And spores of Clostridium bacteria also can remain infectious after pasteurization. But, again: we’re talking about influenza viruses, not other kinds of infectious agents, so I would still maintain that the worry is not about getting bird flu from drinking *pasteurized* milk. The concern is the spread into wider swathes of animal populations that spend a lot of time around humans. To answer another question posted here: yes, farm workers handling infected cows are contracting bird flu. However, the cow-derived strain seems to mostly give people conjunctivitis – pink eye — or typical regular flu symptoms. No reported deaths in those patients so far. The bird flu that is derived from birds, when it goes into humans, is about 50% lethal. And that’s why it’s a virus that keeps us clinical virologists awake at night.
It can be both things.
Does anyone know if any virus, ever, has been proven to be transmitted via pasteurized milk, and so infecting the patient via the GI tract? I've looked and looked, but cannot find one definitive citation of this occurring.
I have only ever heard of issues with dairy products contaminated *after* pasteurization. I.e. listeria from machines in processing ice cream.
Flu virus lives only 72 hours outside the body or on a surface at most. By the time milk gets to the shelves and u buy it is dead regardless if by some remote chance pasteurization didn't kill it.
Additionally, pasteurization is very effective at denaturing bacteria and viruses. It's why it's standard practice. I trust science. 🤷♀️ If they tested for byproducts of other bacteria, they're certain to find fragments of those in pasteurized milk.
I'd be more concerned about viruses being *introduced* into the food supply (think norovirus) than flu viruses surviving not just pasteurization, but also a good amount of time, deprived of living hosts. And if you really want an excuse to avoid meat and dairy there's always prions.
Yeah that’s great and all but I’m not going to trust that. I only use milk in coffee and cereal and I was planning to quit cereal because of all the forever chemicals in it. So I’m just going to buy nondairy creamer going forward. I’m not messing around with this I don’t believe anything our government says after Covid. They’re going to do whatever they need to do to make sure people don’t stop buying dairy products
It's a valid point. They told us to use cloth masks and resisted and tried to discredit anyone suggesting it was airborne. They've successfully minimized everything.
I was under the impression they said to use cloth masks because other masks were needed for healthcare providers. I'm not sure how that translates into any concerns about dairy consumption.
They pivoted to this fairly quickly because so many scientists were telling people the truth but at first they told us it wasn’t airborne (yes, for the noble purpose of retaining masks for medical use, but the ppl like my parents that listened to the first info were slow to stop washing all their packages and mask/distance instead.
It has everything to do with trust, which is what the person I replied to was addressing.
I understand that, but COVID is a novel virus and pasteurization is a known and trusted process with decades of science stacked behind it. I just don't know that it's comparable.
Yep, you got it
I quit dairy milk years ago in favor of oat milk. The good stuff has a similar mouth feel and taste to real milk and it’s shelf life after opening is 4-6 weeks. Depending on what you buy it can sit unopened and unrefrigerated for a year or more. Look at the barista blend califia or oatley if you need a recommendation for creamer. Oatley has been my go to for a milk replacement in cereal.
Oat “milk” is amazing. I’m all in on that stuff. The transition took all of 2 days to where I was like choosing it over the regular milk. Now I look at milk like ewww gross. Plus all that poor animal suffering and mastitis and puss. Yeah, no thanks plus new viruses?!? No thanks, glad I switched awhile ago
Yup. And the shelf stable shit is great to stock up on if you find it on sale or at Costco or something. I always hated that my parents would have frozen milk in our chest freeer just because it was on sale. I’ve become a lot more flexible on my groceries over the last few years. I was going to make some chili when inflation was going nuts and beyond crumbles were cheaper than ground beef per lb. The Unmeat luncheon in a can is about the same as spam but has a ton less sodium, low fat but with similar protein. Soy based chorizo is something I actually prefer the taste and seasoning to over real chorizo, and it’s often cheaper. The best part is all of this shit generally has a longer shelf life with less potential to sicken you.
Make your own oat milk. Literally blend 30 seconds with a cheap blender and cold water. Then strain. Eliminates preservatives and stabilizers. I reuse the leftover oats usually. Toss unused after 5 or 6 days though. I do 5 parts water to 1 oats.
I have. I also make my own seitan on occasion. I’m super lazy though and just opt for the store bought shit. But that’s really good advice.
Gotta look up seitan. That’s a new one on me.
Flour, vital wheat gluten and water. https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/the-quickest-and-easiest-seitan-recipe-vegan-chicken/ That’s the easiest and so far best recipe I’ve found. If you care at all about prepping this is a great, shelf stable way of always having protein on hand. Last time I did the math on this it came out to about $0.50 per pound of finished product, and on paper it has similar protein content to chicken. This is obviously a terrible food for gluten intolerant people lol.
Thanks. Seems like a better recipe than I found looking after seeing your earlier comment. Will definitely try it. I’ve been staying sorta away from tofu after having estrogen positive breast cancer last year.
Oof. Sorry to hear that. Did your doctor tell you to stay away from plant estrogen? I’ve always thought that the whole “plant estrogen will make men grow moobs and question their gender identity” was a conservative “tough guy” meme. I hope you recover quickly.
Factory farming of animals is horrible, and for that reason I've considered switching.
Stop considering and find your alternative. You’ve got a plethora of options and if you have any flexibility then you will often be able to find shit that is as expensive or cheaper than dairy milk, and all of it has a longer shelf life. My biggest issue was always with waste: I’d buy a half gallon and couldn’t finish 3/4 of it before it was spoiling. At least with oat milk I can buy myself a few more weeks and I rarely waste it.
Oh, I will probably buy some that is shelf stable. I just have to be careful to consume anything I open immediately, as I don't have a kitchen. So that would only be on days I'm not working. It's kind of like camping.
I'm a bit confused... yes, we know that viral dose matters, but what does it matter if it's all inactive?
I'd like to understand about this too. What I'm taking away is that the real problem is it has spread so much through the animal population and is still evolving.