March 9, 2025, By Evan Bush
Is it safe to buy and eat chicken? What about eggs? And milk?
Yes, it’s safe to buy and eat poultry products, which are tightly regulated and frequently tested. Moreover, the virus is eliminated through cooking.
“Between testing and safe food handling, any poultry being consumed from a grocery store would be safe in my mind,” Bowman said, adding that flu viruses are “very easy to inactivate via heat.”
Chickens at an egg farm in Mason, Mich., on March 3. Emily Elconin / Bloomberg / Getty Images
The Food and Drug Administration continues to recommend cooking eggs until both the yolk and white harden.
Eggs from backyard flocks that have direct contact with migrating waterfowl might be more concerning, but avian influenza generally hampers egg production and causes most birds to die.
“Birds that have avian influenza die and they’re sick and they don’t lay eggs,” said Amber Itle, the state veterinarian of Washington state.
In milk, meanwhile, pasteurization inactivates the virus, making commercially produced milk safe for consumption. However, raw milk is extremely risky because the virus replicates in cows’ mammary glands.
“That’s where the virus is in the dairy cows,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco who studies infectious diseases.