-Additional tests of milk showed that pasteurization killed the bird flu virus, federal health officials said on Friday, as Colorado became the ninth U.S. state to report an infected dairy herd.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed milking cows in Colorado tested positive, following earlier infections in Texas, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Idaho, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Dakota. Some lawmakers, including Romney, have made a bipartisan push to reauthorize legislation known as the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act that lapsed last year and is aimed at bolstering the nation's response to pandemics and other public health threats. The recent spread of bird flu and the detection of H5N1 genetic materials in milk have increased some calls for action.
"I think the sequences out there probably aren't representative of everything that's circulating," said Dr. Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. "I'm not worried about the milk itself," said Samuel Alcaine, associate professor, of food science at Cornell University. "It does indicate that the virus is more widespread among dairies than we had previously thought."