2 food items you should skip during the bird flu outbreak and 4 that are safe to eat, according to experts
As bird flu continues to impact egg availability, you might be wondering which other everyday products could be affected by the recent outbreaks.
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- The current outbreak of bird flu has contributed to an egg shortage, driving up egg prices.
- Most consumer products are safe from contamination due to their production processes.
- Raw milk poses the biggest consumer threat.
As bird flu continues to impact egg availability and push up prices, you might be wondering which other everyday products could be affected by the recent outbreaks.
The H5N1 virus, which has affected 166 million birds since 2022 and infected 70 humans, has been detected in poultry, dairy cattle, and mammals like seals and cats.
It can spread through direct contact with contaminated animals, water sources, or surfaces, putting poultry industry workers at greatest risk of infection.
Most recently, a raw chicken cat food recall notice was issued for suspected contamination with the virus.
Experts told Business Insider that most consumer products won't present dangers due to the close inspection required for mass production for consumers, and guidance for farmers — such as culling flocks of birds when an infection is identified — aims to prevent contaminated products from entering the market.
Another factor contributing to safety in the food supply is the processing of dairy products, like milk and cheese, as pasteurization effectively kills viruses and other harmful bacteria.
Here's how to stay safe from the bird flu while grocery shopping.
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As long as you're cooking your chicken, bird-flu contamination should not be a concern.
"We had chicken in our house last night," Dr. William Schaffner, a medical doctor and former director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told Business Insider. "We don't eat it raw — we cook it first. So we didn't have to be concerned about that."
The cooking process typically kills harmful bacteria in raw foods, making bird-flu infection highly unlikely.
The USDA recommends always cooking chicken to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit to kill harmful bacteria like the salmonella virus. The salmonella virus can be found as commonly as in one of every 25 packets of raw chicken, according to the CDC.
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While chicken isn't as much of a concern for human infection since it's mostly eaten cooked, raw chicken in pet products could be exposed to the virus.
On March 1, Wild Coast Raw recalled its frozen raw chicken cat food due to potential bird-flu contamination.
While the FDA said no human infections had been reported from handling the raw food, the agency advised people who'd bought the cat food to take caution when handling it by washing their hands and avoiding contact with their eyes, nose, or mouth.
The FDA also instructed pet owners to watch out for bird-flu symptoms in their pets and themselves.
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Andrew Pekotz, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Business Insider that the virus' quick effects on infected birds, which die soon after contagion, means infections very rarely go unnoticed.
"The eggs or the chickens never really get a chance to even leave the farm before the farmers know that there's an infection going on," Pekotz said.
If sick birds even get a chance to lay eggs before they die, close oversight of poultry farms means those eggs don't make it to the food supply. In the cases where sick birds lay eggs on commercial farms, their eggs get destroyed as soon as the virus is detected in the flock.
Ultimately this means the eggs you buy in the store are highly unlikely to be affected.
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The FDA doesn't recommend consuming raw eggs due to their increased risk of carrying foodborne illness-causing bacteria like salmonella. Instead it advises to "cook eggs until both the yolk and the white are firm."
However, undercooked eggs don't carry any additional risks for carrying bird flu.
"Even the consumption of raw eggs," Schaffner said. "There have been no risks associated with eating that" during this current outbreak, he said.
Currently, there is no public health warning against consuming raw eggs because of bird flu.
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The CDC reported that bird flu has been detected in dairy cows, but the nature of their infections suggests that beef cattle might not be at such risk.
Still, since 2024 the USDA has started randomly testing beef cows for the virus to monitor any changes to contagion trends and strain mutations.
Currently, the virus has not been detected in beef cattle, making raw beef safe from bird flu contamination, although experts say it is risky in its own right because of its potential to carry harmful bacteria and parasites.
Food safety standards recommend cooking beef to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent foodborne illnesses.
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Despite its growing popularity in pockets of the US, raw milk can be very dangerous, even when there's not a bird flu outbreak.
While some studies have indicated children who grew up on farms — where they have consumed raw milk and have been exposed to other environmental factors — have a lower incidence of allergies in what is known as the "farm effect," experts say the considerable dangers of consuming raw milk outweigh any purported benefits.
Unpasteurized milk exposes consumers to harmful bacteria like salmonella, E. coli, and listeria. The FDA reported the consumption of raw milk was linked to 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations from 1998 to 2018.
In light of the bird flu outbreak, experts strongly recommend against its consumption.
"That's the only product with which we're concerned at the moment," Schaffner said.
Unpasteurized milk has the potential to carry the bird flu virus as a pathogen since it can be present in dairy cattle. This has led to multiple recalls of raw milk products in California after the virus was detected in them.
In dairy farms where cattle have been infected, improper cleaning of milking machinery has often been considered the contagion point.
The pasteurization process effectively kills the virus, even prompting leading raw milk brands to process their products as a cautionary measure during the current virus outbreak.
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While raw milk is the biggest consumer threat for infection, experts say the pasteurization process effectively kills the bird flu virus and many other harmful bacteria.
In dairy farms, cattle detected to have the virus are immediately taken out of production, decreasing the chance of virus contamination entering the food supply in the first place.
"Those products, at the moment, offer no risk," Schaffner said.
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After shopping at farmers' markets, properly clean and cook your food according to food safety standards.
Local and small vendors can lack the structured oversight that major farms and grocery stores enforce for their providers, but most animal products — other than raw, unpasteurized milk — remain safe from contamination from the bird flu.
