By Bayla Rothschild, Staff Writer
The H5N1 bird flu has been a problem for birds in the United States since 2021. Originating in wild birds, the virus eventually spread to poultry, and, more recently, an outbreak spread to dairy cows in March 2024. This led to the first human case of the virus in April 2024, when a dairy farm worker was infected. In February 2025, the outbreak of the bird flu spread and ended up infecting many chickens, which, in turn, contaminated their eggs and meant there was a limited amount available for human consumption. This drove up egg prices to the point where many Americans could no longer afford them.
Since then, there have been other cases of the virus in humans, but according to the current research, it does not seem possible for humans to be infected by other humans, only directly by animals. However, researchers are worried that the virus may mutate in a way that allows human-to-human infection to occur.
From high egg prices to the potential for human-to-human infection, the bird flu poses a problem for many. Since the very beginning of the outbreak, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made efforts to try to combat the virus by working on vaccines for the birds and biosecurity measures to stop the spread of the virus.
In the course of this research, a recent discovery about pasteurized dairy products has shown promise and abated some of the fears about the H5N1 bird flu.
Dairy pasteurization is a process that heats raw milk to the temperature of 161 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 15 seconds and then brings it back to its original temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit. The procedure is known to kill many types of harmful bacteria in the milk, making it safe for humans to consume. The nutritional value of milk remains the same throughout the pasteurization process.
The study, conducted at the Department of Host-Microbe Interactions at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, looked at what happened when mice consistently drank milk from cows infected with bird flu. Researchers first examined the chemical structure of the raw milk, finding it clearly contained the virus, but when the milk was pasteurized, only one of the proteins from the virus remained.
With this information, the researchers fed both the infected pasteurized and raw milk to mice. The mice that drank the raw milk got the flu and were sick because of it. On the other hand, the mice that drank from the pasteurized milk did not get sick, but they also did not develop any immunity to the flu. The researchers believe that these results can be applied to humans as well.
Even with this discovery, the researchers still maintain that it is very important to develop a true long-term solution for the H5N1 bird flu in cows and birds, rather than a quick fix like pasteurization. Still, this exciting discovery has the potential to change the game in regard to how the H5N1 bird flu can be handled and emphasizes the importance of continued research to find more solutions to a pressing problem.
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