The cows are in a persistent crisis. Although, applying the human point of view to the cattle world, they are seen grazing calmly and happily, for example in the prairies of the American Midwest, a curse follows them.
More than two decades ago, a newspaper titled an article like this: “The cow fart kills.”
In this way, it was highlighted that the flatulence of these ruminants posed a danger by accelerating climate change given their high toxicity load.
Then came mad cow disease, a progressive neurological ailment in these key animals in the food chain. Fear caused a whole psychosis due to the possible harmful effect on people. The consumption of certain products was banned.
After a period of calm, these cattle are once again in the spotlight. And this time because of corral mates. The bird flu has impacted them, with cases detected in 33 farms in eight US states (Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio and Texas).
The matter has gone even further this week. Federal regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that they have discovered traces of that virus in at least 20% of pasteurized milk samples analyzed in a nationally representative study.
This result offers a much more detailed first picture of how much of the dairy supply has been affected. Most of the samples were taken in those parts of the country where there are known cows that have tested positive in controls, the FDA explained.
The administrative officials, who did not specify the number of samples taken, stressed that there is no decisive evidence that this milk poses a danger to consumers or that the virus is alive on the shelves of establishments. Public health experts showed their conformity with that statement. The traces detected were small remains of the virus, which were not alive and lacked infectious capacity, they insisted in their statement.
According to Andrew Bowman, a veterinary epidemiologist at Ohio University, everything indicates that pasteurization is effective today.
He reiterated that, to date, they have seen nothing to contradict their assessment that the commercial milk supply is completely safe.
The pasteurization process, in which milk is briefly heated, causes the virus to be deactivated. By destroying it, it releases genetic material that lacks the ability to infect.
But just in case, the Department of Agriculture issued an order requiring all dairy cows to be tested for bird flu before being transported interstate.
One of the conclusions of the study is that the affectation of dairy cows is much more widespread than the official count of those 33 infected herds. Experts deduced that there are much more viruses on farms.
They do not doubt that the scientifically called H5N1 can be eradicated from American farms. But to adopt effective control measures, it is essential to know the scope of the outbreak.
And there arises the question of how the virus escaped any detection control and spread silently. This is why there has been criticism of the federal animal testing strategy, which is too limited. Specialists demand that, in addition to going to obvious places, we also go to farms where there is still no evidence of avian flu.
The proliferation of this contagion in cows represents a serious risk for workers in the sector, the dairy industry and public health in general.
Since the alarm began last month and until this week, a total of 23 people had tested positive for this virus, while another 44 were placed under supervision, reported the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Although it can cause severe illness, only two mild cases have been recorded.
Regulators have undertaken deeper analysis, even though the virus does not spread easily from person to person. However, there are concerns that sustained spread among cattle will lead to a mutation of the virus that is easier to transmit to humans. This is the threat of the cow curse.