COVID Thread

arstechnica.com

Cats suffer H5N1 brain infections, blindness, death after drinking raw milk

Mammal-to-mammal transmission raises new concerns about the virus's ability to spread.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

On March 16, cows on a Texas dairy farm began showing symptoms of a mysterious illness now known to be H5N1 bird flu. Their symptoms were nondescript, but their milk production dramatically dropped and turned thick and creamy yellow. The next day, cats on the farm that had consumed some of the raw milk from the sick cows also became ill. While the cows would go on to largely recover, the cats weren't so lucky. They developed depressed mental states, stiff body movements, loss of coordination, circling, copious discharge from their eyes and noses, and blindness. By March 20, over half of the farm's 24 or so cats died from the flu.
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The contaminated milk was the most likely source of the cat's fatal infections, the study authors concluded. Although it can't be entirely ruled out that the cats got sick from eating infected wild birds, the milk they drank from the sick cows was brimming with virus particles, and genetic data shows almost exact matches between the cows, their milk, and the cats. "Therefore, our findings suggest cross-species mammal-to-mammal transmission of HPAI H5N1 virus and raise new concerns regarding the potential for virus spread within mammal populations," wrote the authors, who are veterinary researchers from Iowa, Texas, and Kansas.
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Oh there's a whole sub-culture (no pun intended) who think raw milk is the cat's meow. In fact I think even your own FDA allowed raw milk cheeses with a certain standard for the aging back about 20? years ago. They are most likely now re-visiting those guidelines.

Yes here: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/02/is-the-60-day-rule-still-valid-for-raw-milk-cheese/

When the FDA first enacted the 60-day rule in 1949, no known disease-causing pathogens could survive the acidifying process of aging for more than a portion of the two-month process, and the 60-day time frame was selected to include an additional margin of safety. Half a century later, however, modern studies and illness outbreaks have shown that some harmful pathogens survive in raw-milk cheese for longer than 60 days.
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And here's a 2017 article about the FDA's sofening stance on soft cheeses (my my this whole thread sounds cheesy)

time.com

The FDA Is Softening Its Stance on Cheese and Microbes

To the delight of cheesemakers
time.com time.com

At face value, blacklisting bacteria from cheese production sounds like a no-brainer. But as any turophile knows, microbes are the source of cheese’s vast diversity of flavors, textures, and smells. Other fermented foods like wine, beer, and bread rely on the same phenomenon. Like DNA, every cheese is unique, expressing different tastes depending on all sorts of variables—the microbes in the air, the breed of the cow, richness of the grass, even the altitude of the farm.

“Cheese is mold, and mold is cheese,” explains Thomas Amorim, a 32 year old certified cheesemonger based in Philadelphia, grinning at his own hyperbole.
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