As bird flu spreads in cows, here are 4 big questions scientists are trying to answer

Still, scientists don't view this as an immediate threat to human health.Genetic material is not the same as infectious virus and pasteurization is expected to inactivate the virus in milk, but the findings speak to the broader uncertainty about the extent of the spread.

Potentially complicating the picture: Some unknown number of cattle could be shedding the virus without showing obvious symptoms. Federal health officials have"We don't know how many animals have this," says Alexis Thompson, a veterinarian at Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory."There has been very little sampling done. We don't know how many animals we have. We don't know how many asymptomatic animals we have. That testing has not been done.

Pasteurizing milk can knock out bacteria and viruses; however, it doesn't erase every trace of those germs. Jaykus and other scientists agree that finding viral material doesn't necessarily suggest an immediate threat to human health.There is an important caveat though: There has been no direct research on how pasteurizing cow milk affects bird flu virus. Those studies are taking place right now.

He says the key question is how much virus is in the milk, and whether that changes if more cows get sick and more virus enters the milk supply. Federal health officials and scientists believe the virus has moved with lactating cattle from one herd to another. But how it's getting from one cow to another on a given farm"is a key missing piece of knowledge," says Webby.

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