Thread by @ChiaraEisner

Last week I went to Texas — ground 0 for the bird flu spreading across the U.S. — to buy raw milk and test it for the flu.

Why?

Feds have advised against drinking raw milk amidst this outbreak but the milk is still for sale. What’s the risk to consumers? We could find out…

I picked four farms around San Antonio and Houston. Paid for milk from each. Stuck it in a cooler. Drove it up to 1 of 4 labs authorized by the USDA to test for bird flu. Left the samples in a freezer:

But the lab wouldn’t perform the tests! They called me the next day to say the lab had called all 4 farms to *ask for permission* and all 4 said no. They knew what a nonnegative result would do for their business, the lab said, so they declined the test…

At first they said this was a USDA policy, to obtain permission. We asked the USDA whether that was true, the Sec of Ag said no. When I told the lab that, they said, well, we’re still not going to do it.

This shows that farms that sell raw milk to people are declining testing…

It also shows it’s difficult for journalists & anyone other than the farms, vets, or the gov to test their own milk for the virus to understand what the risk is.

What could the risk be?

The big risk is that someone with the (human) flu catches bird flu, and the flu mutates…

If the flu mutates and becomes a new flu that is more contagious amongst people — right now bird flu is not very contagious from person to person — that could be the start of a pandemic.

More here from @Pien_Huang and I — and more coming soon: npr.org/2024/05/15/125…