Part 2: National Milk Producers Federation on Raw Milk Testing

We hear once again, from Chris Galen, Senior Vice President of member services and Strategic initiatives with the Milk Producers Federation as he talks about raw milk and how testing has proven it be a transmitter of the H5N1 Bird Flu Virus even resulting in a few worker infections

“Right now, that situation is still trying to be controlled in California, California though number one dairy state. So it's different than California or Kansas or some of these other places where, yes, the dairy industry is important in some counties, like where you are in both County, but it's different California, where the entire Central Valley has hundreds of orange dairy farms.

In California, raw milk sales are legal, but recent reports from Fresno reveal raw milk products contaminated with the h5 in one virus are sparking health concerns.”

“This is why we have advocated for restricting the sales of raw milk, because it can contain pathogens. Usually the concern is something like e-coli or salmonella. In this case, now it's this highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza which maybe could infect people if they drank raw milk. Maybe not, but you don't know. And so that's one of the concerns we have where this is real-world example of the fact that pasteurization is very effective at killing this virus.”

Chris Galen with the National Milk Producers Federation.