H5N1 in the Media and a Positive Look Forward

High path avian influenza, or HPAI, continues to be a threat to birds and now cattle and even humans, in rare instances. North Carolina Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler is versed in the issue, having had the H5Na show up in dairy cattle in his state earlier this year. He says that when HPAI was first detected in milk cows this year, the early messaging to the public was not handled well.

"The first article that I read, the headline was, "High Path AI Found in Milk." Now that scares the devil out of you, but if you read the article down four or five paragraphs, it did say that, yes, it was found in the milk, but these were dead particles, and there was no wild virus in the milk. So pasteurization did what's pasteurization was supposed to do. It killed the virus."

There is concern among researchers that the HPAI virus could mutate into a variant that could cause more harm to cattle or even humans. So, what are the next steps?

"We've got to be testing. We've got to be doing research. We talked about, is there going to be maybe a vaccine in the future, but the key to it is to keep it from mutating.”

North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler.