In March 2024, when the first cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza were identified in dairy cows in Texas, Cornell researchers – led by Diego Diel, associate professor of virology in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) – immediately began assessing how long the virus survived in the raw milk of infected cows.
At the same time, Nicole Martin, assistant research professor of food science and director of the Milk Quality Improvement Program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), started getting calls and messages from dairy industry manufacturers worried about food safety.
Martin and Diel teamed up to provide answers.
“Industry was looking for scientific information to make sure their processes were safe,” Martin said. “So, led by Diel’s lab, we started a series of studies driven by the fact that industry needed these answers.”