Cryptosporidiosis and petting zoos: England and Wales
Petting zoos are very common in the UK (as in many other regions), where approximately 2 million people visit 1000 different petting zoos every year. While the vast majority of petting zoo visits are simply pleasant outings associated with no problems, some people leave with more than just memories... they leave with an infectious disease. A letter in the latest edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases (Gormley et al 2011) describes one of the diseases people can pick up at petting zoos: cryptosporidiosis.
From 1992-2009, 55 outbreaks of intestinal infections associated with petting zoos were reported in England and Wales. (There were presumably many more unidentified cases or even outbreaks.) Of these, 55% were caused by E. coli O157. The second most common cause was Cryptosporidium, a protozoal parasite that is commonly found in feces of calves and lambs, which was responsible for 42% of the outbreaks and affected 1078 people. (Again, this is probably an underestimation of the true numbers because typically there are many undiagnosed or unreported cases of illness for every case that is identified). The number of people involved ranged from 2-541 per outbreak. Twenty-nine people were hospitalized due to the infection.
Factors associated with outbreaks were things that we know are issues with petting zoos:
- Contact with young lambs, calves or kids
- Inadequate hand hygiene facilities
Cryptosporidium outbreaks were also more common in the spring, as opposed to E. coli outbreaks which were more common in the summer. This may be explained by the association of the pathogen with contact with young calves, lambs and kids, since these animals are mainly born in the spring.
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, while excellent for most bacteria, are ineffective against Cryptosporidium. This can also be a contributing factor to outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis, particularly if hand washing stations are replaced with hand sanitizers. While alcohol-based hand sanitizers are certainly better than nothing, their usefulness is limited when resistant pathogens (such as Cryptosporidium) may be present, and when peoples' hands might be contaminated with large amounts of dirt or other debris (e.g. feces).
Petting zoos can be great events, particularly for kids. However, kids, especially young kids (less than five years of age), are at high risk for certain infectious diseases they may encounter at such venues. While petting zoos seem to be improving and governments are paying more attention to making them safer, visitors need to look out for themselves.
- Make sure a hand hygiene station, preferably a hand washing station, is available. Do this before you touch animals.
- Always wash your hands after leaving the petting zoo, regardless of whether or not you touched an animal (since other surfaces you touched may have been contaminated).
- Do not have contact with young calves, lambs, kids (i.e. baby goats) or poultry.
- Do not have contact with diarrheic animals, or animals that appear to have any other health problems.
- Don't take food, drink or anything that might go into a child's mouth (e.g. baby bottles) into the petting zoo area.
- Closely supervise children.
- If you see a poorly equipped or run event, don't be afraid to contact your local public health office. While most petting zoos seem to be improving, some are still pretty bad and may need to be forced to do things right.
Rabid calf at educational centre
Rabies has been diagnosed in a 6-week-old Jersey calf at a Maryland educational centre, raising concerns about exposure of farm visitors, particularly groups of school children. At least 70 kids and an unstated number other visitors had recently visited the farm.
Fortunately, the farm in question is not open to the public, so they should have an easier time identifying people who have been there (e.g. school groups). Contact tracing is underway to try to identify people that had contact with the calf. Simply petting the calf or being in the general area does not pose a risk. The main risk would be from contact of open wounds with the calf's saliva, or a bite. We don't typically associate bites and calves, but it can happen when calves are allowed to suck on someone's fingers - if the person sticks their hand in too far he/she may get chomped by the calf's sharp molars. Public health personnel are trying to identify people who had contact with the calf, then they'll determine whether there was a chance of exposure to the virus. People that were potentially exposed to rabies will undergo post-exposure prophylaxis, consisting of a shot of anti-rabies antibodies and four doses of vaccine over the course of a month. Not fun, but much better than getting this almost invariably fatal disease. At least nine students have started treatment so far.
Petting zoos and similar events are a concern in terms of disease transmission because of the large number of people that can be exposed to animals and the high percentage of children that are involved. Rabies is uncommon in petting zoo animals, but it is periodically identified at such a facility/event, often resulting in the need for post-exposure treatment of large numbers of people. Vaccination of petting zoo animals against rabies should be a standard practice. This calf, being only six weeks old, was too young to vaccinate, but if the calf's mother was vaccinated the risk of rabies would be lower (because the calf would get antibodies from the mother). There's no information about the cow's vaccination status or much else about the calf, apart from it being a recent acquisition.
The fact that a recently acquired young calf was allowed to have contact with the public is questionable management, because young calves are a high risk group for certain infectious agents like Cryptosporidium and Salmonella. The CDC recommends that children less than five years of age not have contact with young calves. Since young kids are frequent visitors of places like this, having calves (or at least letting people have direct contact with them) is quite questionable as well. Hopefully there will be a good review of vaccination, animal acquisition and animal contact protocols for this facility to reduce the risk of future exposures to rabies or other infectious diseases.
