Scientists who know about the types of pathogens — E. coli and Salmonella among them — that can be transmitted in raw milk generally think drinking unpasteurized milk is a bad idea. But right now, they believe, the danger associated with raw milk may have gone to a whole new level.
“If I were in charge, for the moment I would forbid the selling of raw milk,” said Thijs Kuiken, a pathologist in the department of viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who has done research on H5N1 and the damage it inflicts for about two decades.
H5N1 bird flu has been circulating in dairy cow herds in multiple parts of the country, likely for months now. Testing of milk from infected cows shows the virus is present in concentrations that have taken scientists by surprise. They worry that if a raw-milk consumer inadvertently drank milk from infected cows, the results could be bad — potentially really bad.