May 9, 2024

 

Philippines not suspending milk imports from US as HPAI strikes US cows

 

The Philippines' Department of Agriculture (DA) said on May 6 there's no need to ban milk from the United States despite the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) among dairy cattle in the US.

 

"It's not a big issue, (the movement of) AI from birds to (cattle). At this point in time, we're working on it, studying it, but we're not going to ban it," DA Assistant Secretary Constante Palabrica said in an interview. "If you pasteurise the milk, AI has no more effect, and milk from infected cow cannot infect humans."

 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier reported additional results on the national commercial milk sampling study, which involved the testing of 297 dairy samples in the market.

 

"New preliminary results of egg inoculation tests on a second set of 201 quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-positive retail dairy samples, including cottage cheese and sour cream, in addition to fluid milk, show that pasteurisation is effective in inactivating HPAI," it said in a statement on May 1.

 

The FDA also reaffirmed the safety of commercial milk, considering the earlier test conducted using 96 retail milk samples.

 

Meanwhile, Palabrica said the incidence of AI infecting cattle may not happen in the Philippines.

 

"In our case, we have very few instances where we will have migratory birds and AI-infected chickens that will infect our cattle, especially since we don't have dairy cattle," he said.

 

The DA also vowed to further intensify programmes to combat zoonotic diseases including AI, rabies, foot and mouth disease (FMD) and anthrax, following its formal acceptance of the leadership for the Philippine Inter-Agency Committee on Zoonoses (PhilCZ) from the Department of Health (DOH).

 

Besides the DOH, the DA will also coordinate closely with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the said committee.

 

Although the Philippines remains FMD-free, Palabrica said the DA is ramping up efforts to either purchase or come up with vaccines against it.

- PNA