There have been nine confirmed cases of E. coli in Rice County, Minnesota, all of whom were in attendance at the Rice County Fair.

Tina Schlottman, an infection prevention nurse at District One Hospital, said they have seen four of the nine patients at their campus.

According to an email that was sent to the Rice County Agriculture Society board of directors and shared with the Daily News, the Minnesota Department of Health informed fair officials last week that a case of E. coli had been reported to the department. After further investigating, it was found to have come from the county fair.

Officials from the Minnesota Department of Health did not return a call for comment on Monday.

Rice County Fair Manager John Dvorak said he was made aware of the incident last Thursday.

“They determined it was coming from Rice County,” he said. “But (those infected) were at other fairs prior to ours.”

Uh-huh.

Best practices for planning events encouraging human-animal interactions

Zoonoses and Public Health

G. Erdozain , K. KuKanich , B. Chapman  and D. Powell

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zph.12117/abstract?deniedAccess

Educational events encouraging human–animal interaction include the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. It is estimated that 14% of all disease in the US caused by Campylobacter spp., Cryptosporidium spp., Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157, non-O157 STECs, Listeria monocytogenes, nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica and Yersinia enterocolitica were attributable to animal contact. This article reviews best practices for organizing events where human–animal interactions are encouraged, with the objective of lowering the risk of zoonotic disease transmission.

A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Petting-Zoo-Outbreaks-Table-4-8-14.xlsx.