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Fears outbreak could end farm tours for young
An investigation into the implications of illness spread by a Surrey farm was launched this week. There were fears it could end up excluding the under-fives from tours which allow the touching of animals.
Illness in nearly 90 children in Surrey has been blamed on an E Coli bug from Godstone Farm, near Reigate, where 2,000 children a day pass through at peak times. Three are still in hospital, but recovering.
On Wednesday, the Health Protection Agency agreed on broad terms of reference for an inquiry to be led by George Griffin, Professor of Infectious Diseases at St. George's, University of London.
Several similar cases have been revealed including one in Yorkshire where an investigation is underway at the Big Sheep and Little Cow Farm at Bedale, North Yorkshire where three children may have contracted the bug – but experts say small E Coli incidents are happening all the time and have only been noticed because of the Surrey scare.
Yorkshire farmers say they have not had visits cancelled but parents and teachers are ringing to ask if children will be allowed to touch animals – which, in most cases, is up to the supervisors in charge of them.
Sally Jackson, a pioneer of the school visits business at the Pink Pig Farm, near Scunthorpe, said: "It's hard to see a way of eliminating the risk.
"Where you get animals you get excrement and where you get that you get E Coli. An animal can be carrying it one day and not the next and we cannot test them all the time."
She said she was following guidelines from her various licensing authorities and had already had to cancel a plan to give 300 children local food to sample when they visited in the run-up to a North Lincolnshire food fair last weekend.
E Coli is shorthand for a range of bacteria which live in the guts of many animals, including humans, and can cause upsets when they get into a new one, plus occasional complications, although most carriers of most strains are unaffected.
The strain involved in the Surrey case is common in cattle but humans can carry it without knowing.
John Henderson, of Coniston Cold, chairman of the Country Trust, which subsidises school visits to farms, summed up: "If a child puts his hand on a bit of muck and then runs his hand down a handrail or gate and another child touches the same thing and puts its fingers in its mouth, that is how the chain gets started.
"We insist on good washing facilities. Apparently, disinfectant gels are no substitute for soap and plenty of fresh water."
Ron Cutler, an expert in infectious diseases at the Queen Mary, University of London, said it was hard to get very young children to wash their hands properly and the under-fives and the elderly were most likely to be made seriously ill by E Coli.
He did not want to see toddlers stopped from petting animals but the alternative was screening all the animals and that would probably be expensive.
He agreed that a particular bacterium might be in one animal one day and another the next.
Sweden has dealt with the problem by banning farm tours for the under-fives and that solution had been suggested.
He said: "The public reaction to this one is going to require some controls and I am afraid that petting experiences for the under-fives may disappear just because of the costs."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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