Is It Safe to Eat Eggs and Chicken During the Bird Flu Outbreak?

The ongoing outbreak of bird flu has infected at least one person in the U.S. and has raised questions about how safe poultry and eggs are to eat right now. So far, there have been no reported cases of spread among people, or of a person contracting this strain of avian influenza (also known as H5N1) from contaminated egg or poultry products, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC says that the current public health risk is “low.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Here’s what scientists know right now about bird flu and food safety. Eggs The largest producer of eggs in the country, Cal-Maine Foods in Texas, temporarily stopped production at one of its facilities on Apr. 2 after H5N1 was identified there. The company also culled more than 3% of its flock in response to the outbreak. Eggs from infected chickens are unlikely to be on supermarket shelves, the FDA says. That’s because in the time that it takes to detect an avian flu virus in a flock of egg-laying chickens, 99.99% of eggs would not have reached store shelves yet, since they would still be in the process of being distributed. That prediction comes from a model for estimating the risk of human exposure from avian flu outbreaks that was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010. According to that assessment, even if an infection among chickens was discovered ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news