St. Paul, MN (KROC-AM News) – A surveillance program established by the State of Minnesota has detected the bird flu virus in milk from a central Minnesota dairy herd.
The Minnesota Board of Animal Health has been conducting testing of raw cow milk samples collected from the state’s approximately 1600 dairy farms on a monthly basis in response to the spread of the highly pathogenic avian flu in domestic and wild bird flocks. The US Agriculture Department’s national laboratory confirmed a positive test result from a dairy herd in Stearns County last Friday.
The herd has been placed in quarantine until continued testing shows that the cows are no longer infected by the H5N1. State officials also stress that there is no concern for the safety of the public milk supply because all milk sold in stores is required to be pasteurized to kill any bacteria or viruses…