A Catapult of California Dairy HPAI Numbers

As of Monday, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed several new H5N1 avian flu instances in California dairy cattle, bringing the state up dramatically as far as total occurrences over a very short period of time.

California, the nation’s largest dairy producer, now ranks second with 34 confirmed outbreaks, trailing only Colorado. Most cases have been concentrated in the Central Valley, where enhanced surveillance efforts are helping state agriculture officials track additional farms connected to earlier cases.

From the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California's supply of milk and dairy foods is safe and has not been impacted by these events. They say that healthy cows have been cleared to continue shipping milk for pasteurization and that pasteurization of milk is fully effective at inactivating the virus, so there is no cause for concern for consumers of milk or dairy products that have undergone this process.