The only real way to wipe out H5N1, the bird flu that has been ruining egg prices since last year, is to kill off all the wild birds. That is not practical but what we can do is stop buying raw pet food. All of it. Now. And never start again. You will kill your cat if it is transmitted in that food. And stop buying raw milk. All of it. Now. And never start again.
Cats will die because have the same α2,3-linked (SAα2,3) sialic acid receptor as birds, which means their mortality from bird flu is 50%. Raw milk has such an alarmingly high risk of illness, 70,000% more, that wealthy progressives who buy that stuff for kids thinking it has more “nutrients” should have Child Protective Services called to their homes.
Now Natural Resources Defense Council donors have one of their lawyers, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., running a health organization(1) and that is cause for concern this problem may never end, but at least one raw milk product is as safe as it ever was. Cheese. Provided it has been aged at least 60 days. After that, even the cow feces in raw milk and the E. coli should be inert.
FDA is concerned enough about H5N1 lasting for years that they are retesting cheese made from raw milk to make sure aging 60 days is still enough. It seems to be, in 87% of samples the raw milk cheese aged 60 days was safe, which means it may all still be safe. That used to be the rule-of-thumb, though some raw milk cheese grifters can still find a way to give you listeria or E.coli.
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“Aged 60 days” is the only relevant part of this. All that other stuff – nearly all food in the US is grown on 2,200,000 family farms – just shows a lot of people with money are educated by advertising. It’s why they buy $19 smoothies.
NOTE:
(1) Fortunately, the administration is Republican and the Governor of California has declared himself their official opposition, so even though wealthy elites are his big donor base – he was formerly Mayor of San Francisco, which everyone knows because he secretly commissioned and paid for a bust of himself that is now in City Hall – he still closed Kennedy’s favorite raw milk farm last year because they refuse to enter the 20th century much less the 21st and their business was littered with the disease.
