E coli scandal at Tweddle Children's Animal Farm

This is the sort of thing that damages the reputation of all zoos.
We have had a local case of an animal shelter closing because the council decided it needed a zoo licence to display native birds that could not be released (see the Three Owls thread). Here DEFRA and another council can't get round to demanding a zoo licence for a commercial collection of exotics, which, if the report is accurate, has some very questionable practices.

Alan
 
Thanks for this Gentle lemur,

Makes me angry as well. Lets just hope the owners are punished and the dealer is banned from keeping animals all together.
 
dont believe everything you read!

I am new to the forum but came across it after a search on Google to see if any other publication had began to report this story. And felt that I had to share my views on what has being said. I read the article in the times today, and went down to tweddle farm to see for myself, I only live about twenty miles away. The operators were happy to discuss the story with me and showed me round. the farm is a children’s petting farm that has developed a collection of exotic animals over the past few years, the farm is very tidy, all the enclosures are a good size, kept clean, and all the animals I saw, - including those behind the scenes (they took me round the areas were public were not able to access) were well, or if unwell (one animal on the farm) - which let’s face it does happen, where being treated. I have kept exotic animals myself for a number of years and had no issues with the animals on the farm. I took my kids there 4 years ago, at the time the place was predominantly a farm experience, and had change a lot, - for the better, since I was last there. I asked them about the zoo licence, they were aware that they had developed in a way that they now required one, and had instigated talks with councils and defra to achieve this. - In my eyes I could not see why this should not be achieved - I have seen far worse licensed zoos. Regarding each of the individual allegations, they seemed to either have being misconstrued, blown out of proportion, - or they admitted that a genuine mistake had being made, - which does happen in the real world from time to time!! - and regarding ecoli at the farm, any place be it one of these petting farms or a zoo, if they keep ruminant animals will test positive for ecoli 157 at some point, and I would challenge any person who really knows what they are talking about to say otherwise. - The issue with ecoli, is how these type of organisations control the risk to people, - i.e. to put in bluntly - how the deal with all the crap. - This place was very clean on that front, - but then I am not a microbiologist. - If you don't believe me, go see it for yourself, they are still open, and so they should. - Please note I do not work for them, or have any connection with them, and they did not tidy the place up especially for little me. - The operators gave a very plausible explanation as to why they had this sting operation on them, but that would be for them to discuss not me.
 
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Bigbill The farm has known about this article in the times since before it came out so they have been cleaning like there was no tomorrow.

Conditions there where actually worse than described in the paper.
They have had a high turnover of staff over the years so hopefully more people will come forward to confirm the allegations.

In the summer you could smell the rotten animals before you got through the gate , I am amazed there where not complaints long before now
 
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mouse said:
Bigbill The farm has known about this article in the times since before it came out so they have been cleaning like there was no tomorrow.

Conditions there where actually worse than described in the paper.
They have had a high turnover of staff over the years so hopefully more people will come forward to confirm the allegations.

In the summer you could smell the rotten animals before you got through the gate , I am amazed there where not complaints long before now
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Like you said, according to CAPS report, a volunteer worked there in February and March 2010.

Amongst the findings of the investigation are:
- Sick animals left on display or not treated by a vet
- Dead animals left to rot
- Lack of post mortems
- Animals kept in inadequate enclosures and fed junk food
- E coli discovered in petting area
- Animal staff working in café
- Food stored in dirty areas
 
Gentle Giant said:
It makes me angry, because they have White-faced Saki Monkey, Red-handed Tarmarins and Bactrian Camel, even though they have no zoo licence. How did they get animals from? I suspect who the animal dealer is, so the dealer should be banned to sell animals!
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Do you know for a fact the primates, palm civets, capybara, ratites etc were from animal dealers or were some from other zoos?
 
"I asked them about the zoo licence, they were aware that they had developed in a way that they now required one, and had instigated talks with councils and defra to achieve this. "

in the article, the owners make a similar statement which suggests they still don't take responsibility for being unlicensed. You don't just drift into becoming a zoo; each new acquisition requires planning and expenditure. They obviously set out purposely to house primates, you don't get saki monkeys and red-handed tamarins appearing as rescue animals on your doorstep, so I think it is pretty pathetic for them to act like they were sitting and waiting for the council to get its act together. The correct course of action would have been to have applied before getting these species.

The website still shows some telling naivety - vacancies advertised for staff for the summer season indicate no boundaries between cafe work and animal care, exactly as the article describes.

And yes, you can't guarantee no E. coli, but you can at least have hot water and handwash near to areas where visitors might touch domestic animals.

The owners should feel lucky someone took the time to investigate them - who knows what charges they could have faced if there were fatalaties caused by an outbreak.
 
Like I said I can only comment on what I saw - which looked very clean and tidy to me, as I said there were no obviously sick animals on display, or behind the scenes except an animal under vets care - which is all a place can do. I would be interested to know judging by the comments since my post, if any of the threads were written by an unhappy neighbour - if you can smell it you must live close mouse. - gentlegiant the caps report said the ecoli was found on a pig in the petting area, when I was there the only animals in the petting area were rabbits and guinea pigs. The pigs were in a paddock down a long walk way, and in an animal barn. Can you confirm that no animals at Chester zoo excrete ecoli 157, or do you agree that ecoli 157 is bacteria harmless to most animals, found in a large range of species, and probably present at most farms, petting zoos, zoos and probably pet shops at some point throughout the world? I agree if there have been confirmed counts of neglect / cruelty - by professionals ie RSPCA / enviromental health etc, then they should be pulled up on it, but to call for the place to be closed down is over the top.

johnstoni, I agree with what you say, and hope that this is used as a positive for them to make any improvements to there facilities if required, but would it not have being better for CAPS to have contacted them first to discuss how they could improve - which without sounding like a stuck record they seem to have. then for CAPS to set a time frame for realistic improvement, rather than CAPS going straight to the press, and using the ecoli thing in the south to create media attention for themselves?
 
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Considering the agenda of the investigating body, I would take any of their 'findings' with a pich of salt. I am not suggesting that the Tweddle establishment is faultless, but CAPS, by its very nature will put its own spin on any story concerning animals in captivity.
 
bigbill said:
Can you confirm that no animals at Chester zoo excrete ecoli 157, or do you agree that ecoli 157 is bacteria harmless to most animals, found in a large range of species, and probably present at most farms, petting zoos, zoos and probably pet shops at some point throughout the world?
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Bactera such as E.coli 0157 are found commonly in many animals and it's containment and risk of transmission to the public in areas of animal interaction can happen. But risk reduction on a number of levels can help.

I can only comment on the protocols I used when I was a zoo manager when we developed a walk-through farm/children's zoo exhibit. We used to regularly take fecal samples* from the animals to check for E.coli 0157 and other 'nasties'. One one occasion we did find something suspect so the area was closed and animals treated and the area was not reopened until I got the all clear from the vets. This is pretty standard practice in any good collection and would also included hand cleaning faculties, staff supervision at all time the attraction is open and good clear signage.


The DEFRA rules for zoos do state in Appendix 6 - Animal Contact Areas:

Animals should be regularly and thoroughly screened for any zoonotic diseases, with particular reference to viruses in primates;​

http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pets/zoos/documents/zoo-standards/app6.pdf


Of course, the problem that is being debated here is that this attraction is not a licensed zoo. Although the HSE have produced guidelines for 'open farms' here:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/ais23.pdf

However, I do also agree that CAPS have a very clear anti-captive agenda and they should never been seen as been that objective in these matters.


* It should noted that even if your samples come back negative this doesn't mean that your animals may not be infected or reinfected by other wildlife carrying things like 0157 - wild rabbits are apparently good vectors of this bacteria so I understand. From a legal standpoint I would suspect that the position would be to take 'all reasonable steps' to prevent public welfare which seems not to have been the case in this attraction - if the reporting is factual ;)


Apparently some of the ill rabbits that were taken away had syphilis. Obviously they had been spending too much time on Facebook. Rabbit syphilis is not zoonotic. BTW
 
bigbill said:
Like I said I can only comment on what I saw - which looked very clean and tidy to me, as I said there were no obviously sick animals on display, or behind the scenes except an animal under vets care - which is all a place can do. I would be interested to know judging by the comments since my post, if any of the threads were written by an unhappy neighbour - if you can smell it you must live close mouse. - gentlegiant the caps report said the ecoli was found on a pig in the petting area, when I was there the only animals in the petting area were rabbits and guinea pigs. The pigs were in a paddock down a long walk way, and in an animal barn.
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The pigs in the main barn where at times allowed out for visitors to feed. that may have been what was meant by petting area

It would be interesting to see the vet bills for this place & just how little they have spent on their very large collection of animals over the years.

They should have taken last years outbreak as a warning & cleaned up their act, if they had their would have been nothing for the investigators to see by the time they got in there.
 
I think blaming CAPS is a bit of a cop-out.....the problem with undercover stuff is, once you have that information, if you hold on to it and just inform the owners of your findings, and then a child becomes ill from E coli for example, you are implicated in not having sounded the alarm properly. Of course no collection can eradicate disease, there is always a risk to visitors, and visitors accept a certain degree of very low risk when choosing to visit a collection and interact with animals. That's why you are given guidelines (well, when you're licensed), to follow. So that, if you are unlucky and something does go wrong, you can demonstrate and evidence that you have had reasonable and sufficient procedures in place to manage the risks which will always exist. Clearly the owners of this establishment are able to demonstrate none of this, but hopefully this will now change given the publicity.
 
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