The ongoing H5N1 avian flu pandemic in wild birds (and all its various spillovers into domestic poultry, cattle, wildlife and sometime people) has led to a lot of questions about how we handle situations that increase human or domestic mammal contacts with wild birds. This includes a range of activities and animals, including:
I’ll hold back and just classify this as “not a great idea.”
How do that many people get exposed to a single raccoon?
Step 1: Take a wild raccoon and try to make it
I think petting zoos can be great. I’ve taken my kids to many and think they’re a great way for people to see and interact with animals they would not normally encounter.
However, there’s always some risk, and petting zoos range from exceptionally well run to horrible. It seems like there’s been steady improvement over
Agritourism is becoming a big industry. As our society gets more urbanized, there’s increasing interest in visiting farms and similar environments. Things like farm visits and petting zoos can be great, especially for kids. They’re also sometimes associated with infectious diseases, most often in kids.
Some agritourism events are well run and take a lot
Let’s put this one in the "smart people doing stupid things" file.
Some well-intentioned people at Washington University in St. Louis thought they’d help relieve stress during exam time by bringing in a petting zoo – that unfortunately included "Boo Boo" the biting bear. As you can likely guess, problems ensued.
18 students sustained
As fall fair season starts, concerns about petting zoo outbreaks rise. While deficiencies are still common, petting zoos seem to be getting better with their infection control measures. People too are starting to get better at doing what their asked to do – namely washing their hands after visiting these exhibits. However, as we’ve shown
Today, we went to the University of Guelph‘s annual open house, College Royal. As per usual, we only covered a fraction of the events, but had to do the traditional visits with the animals and get some of the Food Science milkshakes (even thought it was -2C outside). Animals are a big part
The 15 cm of snow that fell last night is as good of an indicator as any that agricultural fair season is over in this region. But, planning ahead is important (and often not done well with fair petting zoos), so it’s never to early to make a plan for next season. Petting zoos can
It’s perhaps a good sign for public health when I don’t tend to come home from a local fair and write a rant about the sorry state of the petting zoo. Around here, things seem to have improved at most events over the past few years, probably largely because of the efforts of local public
We’re fully into petting zoo season now, with these types of exhibits appearing at a variety of agricultural fairs and similar events. This also unfortunately means that we’re into petting zoo outbreak season, since there’s always some risk of disease associated with the type of animal contact people have at these displays. There are some
