Items Tagged with 'avian flu'

In this opinion piece, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stresses that biosecurity is the key to limiting the spread of H5N1 and says USDA is developing a program to compensate producers with infected dairy herds.

There are a lot of new details now about the farm bill that Republicans plan to push through the House Agriculture Committee next week. Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., on Friday afternoon released a 38-page section-by-section summary on his draft and is expected to release more detail later this week.

The avian flu outbreak has been “all-consuming” for the Food and Drug Administration, which is concerned about the possibility that the virus could mutate and spread to humans, says Jim Jones, the agency's deputy commissioner for human foods.

More preliminary test results released today on samples of retail milk, cottage cheese and sour cream show that pasteurization is effective in inactivating highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has been found in 36 herds in nine states, FDA said today.