Screengrab and headline: New Atlas, 11/3/2025
Pranjal Malewar reports:
In states where bird flu has been found in dairy cows, raw milk products are still sold. That means people could unknowingly be exposed to the virus through these products. Recently, people have gotten infected with bird flu (H5N1) after coming into contact with or drinking raw milk from sick cows. That's a serious warning sign. 5
So researchers at Cornell University wanted to see if the virus could survive in raw-milk cheese. They used two methods: making small batches of cheese with raw milk mixed with the virus to test how long the virus remained active during cheese-making and aging. They studied real cheeses made by companies that unknowingly used milk from infected cows.
"In this study, we were specifically looking at the stability or persistence of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 in raw milk cheese products," said Diego Diel from the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences. \
To make raw-milk cheese safer, US rules say it must be aged for at least 60 days at a cool temperature (above 35 °F/1.6 °C). This process helps kill harmful bacteria.
The study found that the bird flu virus (H5N1) can still survive in cheese, even after 120 days of aging at 39 °F (3.8 °C). That means the usual aging process might not be enough to destroy this virus.
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