Alberta Health Services is reporting a cluster of Salmonella infections linked to pet reptiles. In many ways, this isn’t really remarkable (unless you’re one of the people who’s infected). Reptile contact is a very well-known risk factor for acquiring Salmonella, especially in kids.
So far, 12 infections have been reported. Reported cases are always
People can get pretty fired up when I talk about raw diets for pets. I’ll start off with my personal bias: I’d rather not see pets fed raw meat and raw animal-based products (e.g. pig ears and various bits-o-cow you can find in pet stores). There are clear risks to pets and owners from raw
I got a question about an old post on this topic, so I decided to add a bit of information and re-post it. Not much has changed since it was written in 2018, apart from more reports of people and pets getting sick from raw pet food and raw treats.
It was surprising to see what things sold out early in the pandemic: toilet paper, yeast, exercise equipment…. and chicken coops.
Yes, there was a run on chicken coops.
It seems like a lot of people decided to get backyard chickens in response to all the COVID-19 restrictions.
Any human-to-animal contact has a mixture of
We all know that backyard chickens are becoming increasingly popular – despite some of their associated infectious disease hazards, which we’ve discussed many times before. The latest “pandemic pastime” takes the trend to a whole new level, with scores of people fostering chicks or ducklings as a family activity, aka something
I was at our local farm supply store the other day and saw a sign indicating they were out of chicken coops and trying to find more from different sources. I wonder if there’s a run on backyard chickens as people spend more time at home. There are some positive aspects to that – and
COVID-19 derailed our plans for some backyard chicken work (e.g. research and education) this spring, but the emergence of COVID-19 doesn’t mean all other infectious disease issues have disappeared. Some problems will be reduced by the precautions put in place to control COVID-19, but other problems may actually get worse. Backyard chickens continue to be
This is one of these “I’m not sure it’s really news” stories, but I guess is should be because it’s still a problem. We know there is a clear link between reptiles and Salmonella in people. Reptiles are common carriers of this bacterium, and human infections from handling reptiles or having contact with their environment
A recent study looked at human illness associated with raw pet food and has led to headlines such as “It is safe to feed raw pet foods.”
Did the study say that? No, it did not.
If you asked 100 people if they had a foodborne disease in the past year, I assume
A recently published University of Guelph study evaluating pet poultry flocks found (unsurprisingly) high rates of shedding of certain concerning bacteria (Brochu et al, J Vet Diagn Invest 2019).
