Day 1: ruffled fur and lethargy

May 25, 2024 6:20 PM

Researchers found raw cow’s milk infected lab mice with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1). They demonstrated both mammal to mammal transmission and that the milk remained infectious for weeks when stored at refrigerator temperatures.

H5N1 was not historically considered a foodborne pathogen. However, since it was discovered in cows milk in the US there has been increased attention, especially as Americans are consuming more raw milk (mefi). Pasteurized milk remains safe and there is no evidence of any humans becoming infected but this follows the recent story about half the cats at a Texas dairy farm died of the disease.

posted by zenon (39 comments total)

And because humans are crazy, there's a continent who are now drinking raw milk on purpose, because of H5N1.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:32 PM on May 25 [15 favorites]

Dairy is Scary! (ALL the warnings)
posted by neonamber at 7:07 PM on May 25 [5 favorites]

I don't feel so bad about not liking to drink milk now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:31 PM on May 25 [4 favorites]

This is bad:

And, unlike other influenza viruses, H5N1 has the potential to infect organs beyond the lungs and respiratory tract, as seen in the cats.

Really bad — just one more interval of being deeply asleep (at the switch) before we are in one of the true nightmare scenarios.
posted by jamjam at 9:37 PM on May 25 [10 favorites]

I have a couple of conspiracy minded people in my friend circle and they're all like "they won't let you drink raw milk, but they'll let you eat twinkies" and I always shout at them "because raw milk can actually immediately kill you, you ding dongs. Milk is hysterically dangerous when not treated properly and transported all over the place.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:50 PM on May 25 [16 favorites]

Neonamber, holy $#@&, that video.

I didn't think anything could put me off cheese, but that absolutely has.

Freaking yikes.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 10:11 PM on May 25 [3 favorites]

Palmcorder_yajna, Sorry.

Perhaps more warnings were called for. That is admittedly not a gentle PSA. In fairness it doesn't accurately represent dairy farming practices everywhere.
posted by neonamber at 11:48 PM on May 25 [5 favorites]

I drank raw milk from childhood into my early twenties. I'd say "and it didn't hurt me a bit!", but who knows, maybe some of the times I got sick as a kid were from that.
posted by clawsoon at 3:31 AM on May 26 [3 favorites]

I just feel so relieved in Australia knowing that our richest billionaires are the ones mainly involved in the dairy industry whose main concern is how much money they make. They literally made a killing out of covid, so...who's for round 2?

EVERYTHING IS FINE.
posted by gusset at 5:27 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

and they're all like "they won't let you drink raw milk, but they'll let you eat twinkies" and I always shout at them "because raw milk can actually immediately kill you, you ding dongs.

If Twinkies could kill you as quickly as raw milk, they'd defend Twinkies too.

When conservatives say, "they ban A but allow B" they don't care about A or B, and if you waste time giving them the benefit of the doubt, they'll have already Gish galloped on to C, D, and E, which they also don't care about.

(Whew. I've watched antivaxx go from fringe nuttery to central Republican Party plank using the same bullshitting as early 2000s creationists, hence why I stress that this is not new but the DNA of the conservative mindset.)
posted by AlSweigart at 6:07 AM on May 26 [16 favorites]

However, the CDC has said it is “highly likely” that the 24 cats who contracted H5N1 at a farm in Texas in March did so by consuming raw milk.

Postmortem examinations revealed signs of “severe systemic infection” in the dead animals’ bodies – including lesions on their hearts, brains, eyes, and lungs. Those that did not die experienced blindness, neurological disorders, bloody diarrhoea, and difficulty breathing.

“Now is not the time to be drinking raw milk – out of 24 cats that consumed H5N1 infected milk, 12 died and the remaining 12 had blindness, difficulty breathing and other serious health problems,” said Prof Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University and former advisor to the Scottish government on Covid-19.

“Whatever government agencies tell us to do, we’re going to do the opposite,” said McAfee.

First part, super scary. Last line, much scarier. 10 out of 10 for scary.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:24 AM on May 26 [12 favorites]

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Surely, all cows in this nation are raised and maintained in health-positive, stable surroundings, are given room to wander, proper medical care and nutritious food, are tested regularly for a variety of diseases, and are absolutely never stuffed full of antibiotics and hormones to keep them upright just until their last moment of usefulness?

...No?

I'll get me coat.
posted by delfin at 8:05 AM on May 26 [6 favorites]

I grew up on a farm (not a farmer, but did help once in a while). Like clawsoon I drank raw milk, and like them perhaps I caught something from it unknowingly. That said, afaik there wasn't a giant fucking virus and pandemic. It's bad enough we did it, but to do it during a known infectious outbreak? Also - when I did it, "Factory Farming" wasn't nearly the dominating force it is now. I think their farm was about 40 cattle. Doesn't mean infections can't and don't spread, but at least it was a smaller herd and the sorts of massive incarceration (confinement?) that happens with factory farms (add in the horrible treatment that increases and stressors due to scale) means I think even if "your pa did it and nothing happened" isn't the same when we live in this modern age.

These people act like the only thing holding us back from being amazing and heroic ubermensch is pasteurization. Louis wept.
If people are drinking this shit because of H5N1 they're just like those idiot Chickenpox Lollipop parties Greenazis throw for their kids.

These reactionaries (they literally are reacting against whatever x says) without any actual thought into "resistance" besides "they said yes, so i say know" these are the dickheads who heard RATM and like Paul Ryan said - this is TOTALLY about being a reactionary.

Please guys, just whatever you do. don't jump off a bridge. DONT JUMP OFF BRIDGES AND ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DONT JUMP, DO IT WITH A PARACHUTE. It makes no sense, but they understand perfectly well.
posted by symbioid at 8:53 AM on May 26 [4 favorites]

I had a couple of sips of raw milk once…it tasted like cow butt. Never again.
posted by BostonTerrier at 8:54 AM on May 26 [3 favorites]

Boston Terriers should stick to dog butt.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:08 AM on May 26 [5 favorites]

I saw similar posts on FB the other day, suggesting that “raw milk is bad, but vaccines are not”. WTF?
posted by Windopaene at 12:13 PM on May 26

My grandparents had a dairy farm, so I was familiar with raw milk. Good grief I do not like it. Everyone told me what a treat it was. BLEH the hell it is. I'd love to try it as an adult again to see if my pallet changed (but not right now for obvious reasons).

What I do recall of it is it tasted distinctly different than pasteurized milk, and thus why I preferred milk "from the store". It does make me think that if I had a distinct preference for pasteurized milk, then people go the other way too. It must be difficult if you like raw milk to switch to a milk you dislike the taste of. I feel for people. I wonder how many health benefit types are really just defending a taste preference.

Even my grandparents though, eventually switched to store bought (pasteurized) milk. No one ever knew why, just one day it started showing up in the fridge instead of the direct-from-the-cow milk.

If my (at the time) 70+ year old grandparents could switch to pasteurized milk after nearly three-quarters of a century, then so can the rest of the holdouts. This virus is no joke and I'm really REALLY not keen on the idea of another pandemic tearing through humanity so soon after/while we're still enduring covid. Especially from EASILY PREVENTABLE sources.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 1:02 PM on May 26 [7 favorites]

First as tragedy, then as farce
posted by From Bklyn at 2:02 PM on May 26 [5 favorites]

The government would have a case for declaring those people drinking raw milk for an infection, to be domestic bioterrorists colluding to cause a pandemic. They probably won’t, but they absolutely have sufficient grounds to get warrants.
posted by Callisto Prime at 2:46 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]

clawsoon: the safety or unsafety of raw milk is also very tied to where you're getting it from. If you're raising the cows yourself (or have a relationship with the people raising them), safely and sanitarily, and you're drinking it pretty immediately (not storing or transporting the milk), your chances of getting ill are very low. I've had milk directly out of a cow, and i don't feel like i was taking a big risk. I'd do it again, if i still had friends who kept cows (or goats!).

The issue is, even most "small, local" dairies these days are doing basically factory-farming, keeping their dairy cattle in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. And storage and transport of unpasteurized milk are always tricky, because bacteria multiply over time.
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:27 PM on May 26 [7 favorites]

One of the early cow transmissions was traced to a bird that landed on the farm. I am not a rancher, but I don't understand how that's something good ranchers and farmers can control for.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:13 PM on May 26 [6 favorites]

hippybear: They did put it in a cup first! But yes, directly out of the cow, immediately after it was milked, before the cream had even separated. I certainly wouldn't do it in any area where there have been bird flu cases, or if the cow was visibly unwell! Under the circumstances where i'd be willing to drink it at all, though, i'd regard it as a low risk.

tofu_crouton: They definitely can't! But they can isolate sick herds and not milk them while they're sick, except that the way modern animal agriculture is set up, nobody bigger than "some hippie with six head of cattle" is willing or able to do that.

Please note: I'm not endorsing the sale or consumption of unpasteurized milk—i think the practice is fundamentally unsafe at scale, and pasteurization is one of the greatest discoveries in history! I'm just also making the point that some kid on a homestead drinking milk from a cow on the same day it was obtained (which is a lot closer to what clawsoon is talking about, i think) is a fundamentally different phenomenon from the commercial production of "raw milk" (god, just the label gives away that it's a branding exercise as much as anything!)
posted by adrienneleigh at 4:29 PM on May 26 [6 favorites]

We had a couple goats when I was a kid, so I grew up drinking raw goat milk. You can reeeeeallly taste and smell the goat when it is fresh from the animal. So goaty.

I don’t miss it at all.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:24 PM on May 26 [4 favorites]

fimbulvetr: oh yeah, "direct from the animal" is definitely a very different and more visceral experience. I enjoy it, very occasionally, but there's no way in hell i'd do it as a regular thing even if it weren't dangerous. Pasteurization is a great technology!
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:39 PM on May 26

I used to drink raw milk when I was posted in Germany; there was a small farm right next to the base. But I could see those cows, and I was drinking it the same day. I don’t think I would do it in modern circumstances.
posted by corb at 5:58 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]

> They definitely can't! But they can isolate sick herds and not milk them while they're sick, except that the way modern animal agriculture is set up, nobody bigger than "some hippie with six head of cattle" is willing or able to do that.

"not milk" them would torture the Cows.

Individual cows having their milk dumped is standard practice; about 2% of cows are getting antibiotic treaments at any one time, and their milk gets dumped (if it isn't dumped, the costs are very high, because the milk tanker is tested).

And seriously ill cows, I can't imagine them not giving the cow antibiotics; cows are valuable; dairy farmers do not want their cows getting sick and dying. Antibiotics and a few days of not producing milk is cheap in comparison. (And yes, I'm saying even when antibiotics isn't warranted)
posted by NotAYakk at 6:06 PM on May 26 [4 favorites]

>”And bird flu in cows? It's not like that was on anyone's bingo card”

Poorly regulated industrial agriculture leading to zoonotic pandemics should be the center square on the bingo cards. We’ve designed a society hellbent on creating disaster after disaster
posted by Skwirl at 6:32 PM on May 26 [8 favorites]

Another potential pandemic, you say? Just in time to install an orange-haired rapist murderer to let a second pandemic run rampant.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:52 PM on May 26 [5 favorites]

NotAYakk: Sorry, yes, i was imprecise. You have to milk the cows, but you can fail to package and sell that milk.
posted by adrienneleigh at 11:22 PM on May 26

According to James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman (Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman), Feynman's high school sweetheart and first wife Arline Greenbaum is thought to have contracted tuberculosis via unpasteurized milk, and eventually died of it.
posted by rochrobbb at 4:25 AM on May 27 [1 favorite]

It's not guaranteed to become infectious human to human, let alone airborne. There are 100,000 dairy workers many of whom lack healthcare, fear federal surveillance, and have little to no sick leave while interacting with a 10 million strong dairy cow population now acting as a viral reservoir so we are rolling a lot of dice.

But it is not a guarantee that the worst case erupts.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:24 AM on May 27 [3 favorites]

Watch for it moving to pigs, supposedly transmission from pigs to human is even easier than from cow to human.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:32 AM on May 27 [2 favorites]

This did induce me to start buying UHF milk. Other than that small change (and it is a bit of a pain in the pass, it's hard to find) I'm not going to worry about it.
posted by bq at 6:54 PM on May 27

I grew up in Europe where all milk is UHt so that doesn’t bother me. But apparently my local store only sells organic UHT milk, and only their store brand in half-gallons, not in whole gallons. So naturally I wait until it’s marked down and then buy a ton at once, because AHA! It’s UHT!

*can’t use it to make cheese, please note
posted by bq at 8:33 AM on May 28

“Whatever government agencies tell us to do, we’re going to do the opposite,” said McAfee.

First part, super scary. Last line, much scarier. 10 out of 10 for scary.
tiny frying pan

Why? Seems like a problem a government agency could very easily make go away.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:35 AM on May 28 [1 favorite]

I don't get your meaning?
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:37 AM on May 28

Right, all it would take is vigorous regulation and enforcement by a US government agency.



posted by bq at 8:38 AM on May 28

I don't get your meaning?

“Whatever government agencies tell us to do, we’re going to do the opposite.”

"Okay, the FDA says to not jump off the tallest building you can find."
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:59 PM on May 28

The risk to the public continues to be low, with only a third case in the United States reported in a Michigan farm hand as relatively mild. The second was also a mild eye infection of a farm hand, back in March in Texas. That discovery is considered the first known instance of a person catching Type A H5N1 virus from a mammal.

The first known transmission from a bird was in 2022 when a prison inmate was infected at a poultry farm in Colorado killing infected birds.
posted by zenon at 10:03 AM on May 30