Senate appropriators question FDA commissioner on H5N1 virus prep

FDA Com­mis­sion­er Rob Califf told the Sen­ate Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee on Wednes­day that milk prod­ucts are safe from the H5N1 bird flu virus that’s cir­cu­lat­ing, and the FDA is work­ing with mR­NA vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers to try to scale up pro­duc­tion in case the virus “jumps in­to hu­mans on a larg­er lev­el.”

The FDA has been co­or­di­nat­ing close­ly with the CDC, NIH and US­DA to tack­le the spread of H5N1, which Califf not­ed was found in about 20% of a na­tion­al sam­ple of raw milk. But pas­teur­iza­tion con­tin­ues to keep the milk safe, and Califf said both the NIH and uni­ver­si­ty agri­cul­tur­al re­searchers found the same to be true. Califf tes­ti­fied be­fore the com­mit­tee on Wednes­day as part of the FDA’s 2025 bud­get re­quest.

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