I’ve studied bird flu for 20 years and here’s why I stopped drinking milk..as FDA begin testing dairy cows for deadly virus

A top bird flu scientist has declared he is no longer drinking cow’s milk amid the alarming outbreak in cattle across American farms. 

Dr Rick Bright, a virologist and former director at the Department of Health and Human Services, revealed his decision on X, warning that the virus — which has infected two Americans so far — could still be active in milk.

‘Minor inconvenience to pause my milk consumption while waiting for data,’ he said. ‘Delayed transparency influenced my decision.

‘Having worked with this virus for nearly three decades, I’ve learnt to respect it and its surprises.’

The worrying comments come days after the FDA revealed traces of the virus have been detected in grocery store milk, with separate testing in Ohio suggesting nearly 40 percent of all milks in stores could be affected.

Scientists are demanding more evidence from officials to prove that milk is safe after pasteurization, when it is rapidly heated and then cooled to ‘kill off’ any viruses or bacteria. 

Experts are particularly weary of assurances from public health bosses — as the FDA previously said the virus could not enter the milk supply due to pasteurization.

Dr Bright said: ‘I’ve spent 27 years studying H5N1 viruses. So, I’m going to wait for data I hope is coming soon from both FDA (pasteurization) and USDA (genomic data and raw milk handling).’

He added: ‘When H5N1 [the strain of bird flu] news broke, [I said] “They would have to do a lot of testing before I would drink milk from one of these farms at this point”.

Some experts have suggested that the traces detected in milk represented dead virus, which means heating the liquid had effectively killed off the microbes. 

Jeanne Marrazzo, the new director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, revealed yesterday that scientists had found H5N1 found in milk samples bought from stores did not grow in petri dishes.

The work was, however, done on only a small number of samples — she admitted — and the study has not been released to the public.

‘While this is welcome news, the effort studied a small number of samples that is not necessarily representative of all retail milk,’ she said, reports STAT.

‘So to really understand the scope here, we need to wait for the FDA effort.’

There are also concerns over the potential for bird flu to enter the meat supply, but so far the virus has only been detected in dairy cattle. 

Readers of Dr Bright’s post have also expressed conern over drinking milk — including Karen Piper, from Seattle, who said: ‘I think I will pause on the milk until they figure this out.’

A second said, ‘if you’re not drinking milk, I’m not drinking milk,’ and a third added, ‘I told my husband last week, no milk. I’m not sounding alarms yet but I am watching closely.’

The concern among scientists is that people could be infected by virus lurking in milk they drink.

But there is no evidence that this has happened at present, with the one case in a dairy farm worker in Texas linked to direct exposure to the cattle.

Officials fear the outbreak in cattle is, ‘much more widespread’ than previously thought, however.

A total of 33 dairy farms across eight states have so far detected the virus, although officials fear it is also in other farms.

Some sick cows produce milk that is a different color, but others that have tested positive have no symptoms — with their milk likely still entering the human supply.

In the Ohio tests, 58 out of the 150 commercial milks swabbed were found to contain RNA from the virus.

Dr Richard Webby, an influenza virologist at St Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said: ‘The fact that you can go into a supermarket and 30 to 40 percent of those samples test positive, that suggest there’s more of the virus around than is currently being recognized.’

Dr Bright was the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) from 2016 to 2020, but was then moved to a role at the National Institutes of Health.

At the time, he had suggested that hydroxychloroquine was not an effective Covid treatment — contradicting the President. 

He filed a whistleblower complaint saying the administration had ignored his Covid warnings and illegally retaliated against him by ousting him from his role.

The complaint was settled in 2021 with back pay and compensation for ’emotional stress and reputational damage’.

He is now the president of the Pandemic Prevention and Response center at the Rockefeller Foundation, and based in Washington DC.