📛Huge Loop Hole! Dairy Cows to Hamburgers: How H5N1 Could Enter the Meat Market Without Testing

H5N1 Survives in Hamburgers Cooked Rare (120 degrees)

There are now 51 herds across 9 states identified with confirmed H5N1. We now know that both beef and dairy cows have human and bird receptors for H5N1. This means that cows can help facilitate the virus’s evolution to infect people more easily.

The USDA provided an update on May 16, 2024, that tells us that cooking hamburgers up to 120 degrees (rare) allowed for viable viral particles to survive. They said that cooking the burgers to at least 145 degrees (medium) and 160 degrees (well done) effectively killed all of the virus particles.

This news has even greater importance after understanding the huge loophole in how dairy cows are bypassing testing and being sold for meat described below.

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How H5N1 Could Enter the Meat Market Without Testing

The Federal Order to test lactating dairy cows to cross state borders has a huge loophole. The order that became effective April 29, 2024, doesn't cover moving a lactating dairy cow within a state to a sale barn, which is a place where animals are bought and sold. However, if the cow moves from a sale barn in one state to a slaughter facility in another state, it only needs a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (CVI) confirming it's healthy. No testing is required.

In other words, multiple dairy cows that aren't producing milk due to H5N1 infection could be sold for meat in groups at sale barns at cheaper prices. These cows can bypass the testing process if they are sent as a group to out-of-state slaughter facilities.

Reference from the USDA website below:

"This message is to clarify that the Federal Order does not apply to the intrastate movement of a lactating dairy cow to a sale barn. Subsequent interstate movement for a lactating dairy cow from a sale barn directly to a slaughter facility requires only a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (CVI) stating that the animal is clinically healthy;➡️no testing is necessary."

“This clarifies the requirements for states where direct-to-slaughter movements are limited but cattle movements flow through sale barns and auctions for consolidation and movement as a "lot" to slaughter out of state.”

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/livestock

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The CDC and state and local health departments monitor people exposed to infected cattle for 10 days after exposure. Between March 2024 and now, there have been

• At least 300 people monitored

• At least 37 persons tested for novel influenza A.

• One case of avian influenza A(H5N1) was identified

Why haven’t they tested more people?

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TACT’s Overview

We need to randomly test dairy and beef cow farm workers, as well as slaughterhouse workers, to catch and contain this virus when it inevitably mutates to transmit from person to person. It’s not a matter of if, but when this will happen. President Biden, the CDC, the FDA, and the USDA are failing to take this threat seriously. By attempting to hide the issue instead of taking aggressive action, they are allowing the virus to spread among cows far beyond the states listed at the top of this article.

All cows, not just lactating dairy cows, are likely capable of being infected and carrying this virus. Since cows have both human and bird influenza receptors, they could become a viral reservoir for H5N1 and a path for it to adapt to infect humans. The more cows that are infected, the higher the chances of this happening. The current policy to test only lactating dairy cows at state borders, instead of all cows, is probably allowing thousands of infected cows to cross state lines.

Allowing potentially infected dairy cows to be processed in slaughterhouses and enter the human food supply before the USDA has test results from dairy cow muscle samples is extremely negligent and could be a deadly mistake, especially after they confirmed that infected hamburgers can retain viable virus if not cooked up to at least 145 degrees. A very large number of people don’t think beef can be infected or that eating it rare (cooked to 120 degrees) allows for viable virus to survive. Moreover, there is virtually no testing of the thousands of likely exposed farm workers. This lack of action is exponentially increasing the risk of more humans getting infected, and thus the odds of H5N1 gaining the ability to transmit from person to person. This is predictable and it is preventable.

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