How is it that the farmers, farm families, and farm workers that care for, feed, and handle the farm animals surviving since they are constantly being exposed to the same pathogens that may be causing illness with the general public? Is it at all possible that their immune systems are more advanced by constant exposure than the general public?

There is a simple and very portable solution described here:http://www.handwashingforlife.com/handsonsystem/sanitwice

Please help get this product-independent solution approved at the upcoming Conference for Food Protection.

(Jim, most of these venues have hand sanitizing stations. It is the poor hygiene habits and resistant strains that cause outbreaks in these situations)

The situation is unfortunately caused by individuals with poor hygiene habits. Each time I visit a zoo, a farm event or venue with petting zoos, I notice several adults, including parents, who do not wash their hands or assist their children after leaving existing a petting exhibit.

Some of these individuals immediately eat something they are carrying or walk directly to a food vendor and consume food, again, without washing their hands. These are generally the same individuals that do not wash their produce or rinse pre-packed salad mixes.

Another factor is the reluctance of the FDA to control the use of antibiotics used to speed growth and/or control disease (disease sparked by overcrowding animals on factory farms). Highly resistance strains are created in factory farms and often spread by migrating birds and the food products entering the stream of commerce.

As a future farmer, urban farm advocate, a food safety educator, it is extremely frustrating that a few individuals with poor hygiene and the governments reluctance to regulate antibiotic use and overcrowding of animals in factory farms may cause extreme measures to be taken that will limit the interaction between man and nature.

Such outbreaks also prompt the government to respond with unnecessary restrictions of keeping a small number of animals and crops within the same space. Animal related outbreaks on farms are generally due to factory farm effluent running onto a neighboring farm's crops, not on small, sustainable farms with biodiversity.

I hope the FDA and USDA will not propose more "knee-jerk" laws and overly extreme measures that will negatively affect everyone.

Such measures generally perpetuate the current factory farm and industrial farm situation and hinder the expansion of sustainable, biodiverse operations.

Hand sanitizers won't do the trick when hands are visually dirty. I imagine the same is true if you've got a lot of animal saliva on your hands (e.g., from feeding). Real handwashing (with soap and water) is what is needed, as much of hand hygine is a physical removal process. Of course, we need to make sure people use these handwashing stations!

The tendency to separate human from animals is concerning in a world where we are increasingly separated from where our food comes from and our natural world. There are great benefits from human-animal interactions, 4-H being a prime example. In a world full of electronics and screen time, kids need more of this type of interaction, not less.

I also wonder what is going on from an immunologic standpoint. Farm families and animal handlers are not typically part of the outbreaks.

Educating the public and the employees concerning the risk of Petting Farms as well as USDA certification that the animals are healthy and housed under sanitary conditions would be a good first step. The Petting Farm should be responsible for educating the customers, as many children and adults are unfamiliar with livestock animals. The Petting Farm should also be responsible to provide an environment as safe as possible with handwashing stations, separate eating areas, and advice on how to stay safe.

Certain types of animals such as young poultry and calves should not be made available for handling due to the risks. Having grown up around livestock on our family ranches, I can say that farmers & ranchers do not usually pet and hand feed their animals like at a Petting Farm. When farmers do handle their animals, it is because they are performing medical procedures such as vaccinating or assisting in births. They always wash their hands very thoroughly before having a sandwich as they are aware of the germs that could be present. In addition, the animals on most family farms & ranches are not under the stressful and sometimes confined conditions that can occur at Petting Farms, Livestock Shows & Fairs where the concentration of germs are much higher.

Danae in MD -- while I agree that the public needs to be educated -- and most farmers don't handle their livestock as pets -- there is still a lot of time-honored farmer livestock handling traditions that goes on in 4H groups, preparing animals and poultry for Fairs, etc.

The problem here, as Lynn ZB points out, is impacts on immune function from the lack of animal exposure and farmyard contact. So... why not standard school visits to approved farms (a Great experience for kids of all ages) as part of a Natural Immunization Policy -- no shots involved!

Mr Marler---I read your profile and some of the pieces here. One thing that concerns me in the continuing drama of increasingly toxic food borne illnesses is the link to our industrialized food model. Some 70% of the antibiotics used in America are prophylactic treatment for CAFO animals and scientists are gravely concerned with the number of organisms exhibiting resistance to drugs we have always relied on for treating human illness. Your litigation focuses on only the outcome of this ecologically devastating model of food production and as far as I can see, none of your education fields include study of the Agricultural systems that introduce these CAFO models as the height of achievement for animal husbandry. Animals raised under these conditions spread the resistant organisms far and wide, so banning the petting zoo or the fair animals is not going to solve any major issue, in my opinion. I grew up in constant contact with horses, chickens, steers, cows, calves and pigs. None were raised with antibiotic protocols. I have been a vegetarian for 30 years as a result of my biology major in college and learning the things I outline above. My brother, interestingly, has also worked for the USDA in Washington, DC for the last 32 years, in the Foreign Ag. Service-----basically, a promotion service arm for the CAFO model to be urged on any other country not currently practicing this animal husbandry model. It is a egregious, irresponsible, and reckless self-serving promotion of a highly flawed practice, and I have many heated conversations with him over the poor service it is and will render to the countries signing on to it. So my purpose in writing this is to point out, your diatribe on the problems of petting zoos, ag. fairs, etc. is missing the bigger and much more dangerous root---our arrogant challenging of scientific and environmental fact that we will out-wit microscopic infective organisms going the path we are traveling in industrial/corporate food production models.

The past CEO/President of Gooch Feeds was Merv Eighmy. He took me on calls when an animal was sick because the rancher thought the feed caused the illness.

Merv, and I watched him do this often, would take a piece of the animal's feces and eat it to tell about the digestion practice of the animal and if the feed had been properly formulated.

Mervyn lived into his nineties at his ranch in Nebraska.

Feces happens,knee-jerk reactions by the FDA/USDA are not appropriate. We cannot regulate our way out of accidents and this circumstance is a normal risk in life.