A pasteurization approach widely used in the dairy industry proved to be effective at killing bird flu in milk after all, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday, after an earlier federal lab study raised questions about the approach. 

The FDA says its new results are the latest to show that drinking pasteurized grocery store milk remains safe, despite an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1, on dairy farms across at least eight states. 

“We had a lot of anecdotal evidence. But we wanted to have direct evidence about HPAI and bovine milk. So we began to build this custom instrument that replicates, on a pilot scale, commercial processing,” Prater said.

It comes weeks after researchers at the National Institutes of Health found some infectious bird flu virus was able to survive pasteurization in lab tests.

Both the FDA and the earlier NIH researchers looked at an approach called “flash pasteurization” or high temperature short time processing, which heats milk for at least 15 seconds at 161°F. 

Unlike the NIH study, Prater said the study with the U.S. Department of Agriculture took longer to complete because it was designed to more accurately simulate all the steps that go into processing milk in the commercial dairy industry. 

The FDA said the tests show the pasteurization process was killing the virus even before it reached the final stages when milk is held at the right temperature, offering a “large margin of safety.”

“What we found in this study actually is that the virus is completely inactivated even before it gets into the holding tube,” Prater said. 

Virus in raw milk

Virus is likely being spread from infected cows to other animals and to humans that have worked on dairy farms through droplets of raw milk teeming with the virus, the USDA has said.

Eric Deeble, acting senior adviser for USDA’s H5N1 response, told reporters on Tuesday that none of the confirmed infected herds so far had been supplying raw milk. 

Hundreds of pasteurized milk and other dairy product samples tested by the FDA so far from grocery stores have also so far not found any infectious virus, but fragments of dead virus have turned up — suggesting missed infections.

Prater said a second round of testing is underway, which will also look at cheese made from raw milk.

The CDK Global cyberattack is expected to cut auto dealerships’ vehicle sales in June down by about 100,000, or more than 7%, compared with the same period in 2023. 

The projected decrease is not reflective of weak demand, but rather the anticipated consequence of some dealerships’ reliance on CDK sales software for transactions. Many dealers have been without full access to their systems for more than a week, with no promise from CDK that they’ll be back up and running by the end of the month. 

“An auto dealership is basically run by its dealer management system, or DMS — it’s the financial backbone of these dealerships,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data & analytics at J.D. Power, told CBS MoneyWatch. “It connects all the pieces of a dealership together, including new and used vehicle sales and the financing. It’s a very important operations system.” 

The outage, which CDK has said was caused by a “ransom event,” came at an inopportune time for car buyers and sellers. 

“June is one of the most important selling months for the auto industry, and we were expecting sales to be fairly strong,” Jominy said. “It’s part of the summer selling season, when families get out of school and want a new car to take a road trip.”

Fewer cars to be sold in June

J.D. Power estimates that total new vehicle sales for June will reach 1,273,600 on the low end, reflecting a 7.2% decrease from June 2023. That includes car sales to regular consumers, as well as fleet sales to businesses or rental car companies. 

On an annualized basis, that would reflect a selling rate of about 15 million units for the full year, when the industry should be at 16 million, according to Jominy. 

The average transaction price for new vehicles is $45,000, meaning the hit to dealerships could be substantial in dollar terms. Some car sales lost in June could occur in July, if CDK systems are restored by then. 

“Because of the disruption to dealer software systems, June sales will not be reflective of actual consumer demand for new vehicles,” Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “Instead, a significant number of sales that would have occurred in June are now likely to occur in July.”

He added that there is still considerable variability to what the official sales tally will be for the month, given the ongoing uncertainty around when CDK systems will be fully restored. 

“Sales will be delayed, but the majority will likely occur in July shortly after the situation is rectified and sales are being made despite system outages,” King added.

Can I even buy a car now?

CDK powers business operations for 15,000, or more than half, of all the auto dealerships across the U.S. Dealerships that don’t rely on CDK’s DMS are able to conduct business as usual, and could even be experiencing an uptick in business, according to Jominy. 

“If you really need car, you could still get one, but you’d need to find a dealer that uses one of CDK’s competitors’ products,” Jominy said. 

Those dealers that are CDK customers have had to find workarounds to transact with customers, including recording sales manually with pen and paper. 

“If you’re a consumer and you go to a dealership, the cars are still there and you could potentially maybe take one home, but dealerships are precluded from in some cases getting consumers approved for a loan, or being able to finalize transaction,” Jominy said. “A dealership without DMS system is a bit like playing hockey without skates. You can still play, but it’s going to be a lot slower and harder to do.”