RodentPro- Zoonotic disease warning

I would have liked to have been told something like this:
we regret to have to tell you that this virus was found in some of our animals. We do/ do not think (whichever was true) that you received these animals as part of your order. Here is information about this disease- then a link to the CDC site, etc.- a note about pregnant women/ immunosupressed people. If we did get those rodents in may, I could have decided to cull then. Now I don't know if what I've been breeding here- a substantial increase due to rp stopping their shipments of live- has been exposed. I have some responsibility to our employees- I was uninformed and their actions make us look bad to our employees. I haveone who may need to be tested for exposure. I do not enjoy giving him stress- he is a great guy who is incredibly patient feeding baby snakes. If I had all the info at least I could have made decisions. I do not appreciate that they were made for me.

Originally Posted by jumpsnake

I would have liked to have been told something like this:
we regret to have to tell you that this virus was found in some of our animals. We do/ do not think (whichever was true) that you received these animals as part of your order. Here is information about this disease- then a link to the CDC site, etc.- a note about pregnant women/ immunosupressed people. If we did get those rodents in may, I could have decided to cull then. Now I don't know if what I've been breeding here- a substantial increase due to rp stopping their shipments of live- has been exposed. I have some responsibility to our employees- I was uninformed and their actions make us look bad to our employees. I haveone who may need to be tested for exposure. I do not enjoy giving him stress- he is a great guy who is incredibly patient feeding baby snakes. If I had all the info at least I could have made decisions. I do not appreciate that they were made for me.

I believe that is reasonable, especially as there are more people involved at you facility than most hobbyists.

I regularly order from RP, would I have like to have had a heads up? Yes. I am not going to freak out just yet though. I will reserve my right to freak out later.

If this affects reptiles, I will have issues.

I will be on the look out for a different supplier, in case I decide not to order from RP again.

Kristen, that is fair. I understand about the pregnant or immuno-suppressed individuals or household pets, and that is where I was going with, I respect people that want to go with their gut feeling about what is presented to them. My gut feeling is that this isnt an issue (as what I have been provided at this time), but of course as things develop and surface in this issue, that could very well and easily change. Again, I have absolutely no problem with you or anybody else coming forward, publically, but an info thread, in my opinion, would have been a better choice at this juncture. But, Im very harsh (even on myself, if/when I run into poor situations) and using bad guy threads

Those of us with immuno-compromised family members greatly appreciate this thread being posted.

Originally Posted by bren

Those of us with immuno-compromised family members greatly appreciate this thread being posted.

My wife is ill and has to take weekly shots and it suppresses her auto immune system. She has Severe Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.
The only good thing is i havent used RP in quite awhile.

What i would like to know is how do the rats get this? I breed my own and would
not like to be the cause for my wife to get sick from this.
Any help or references would be much appreciated ! What prevention to use. I clean out my cages every 3 days and wipe clean with Chlorhexidine 2%.
Thanks

Here is what I have dug up. Sorry if it has been posted all ready.

http://www.farmworldonline.com/news/...p?newsid=14991

this reads as follows.

By MEGGIE. I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Busy and nerve-racking could only be the words to describe the month of June for the foreign animal disease (FAD) diagnostic team with the Indiana Board of Animal Health.
Dr. Jodi Lovejoy, district 8 field veterinarian with BOAH, can attest since she heads up the FAD division for the agency and has been on the road for three different, quite serious cases, investigating, collecting tissue samples, consulting with livestock producers and protecting public and animal health.

Just another day on the job for Dr. Lovejoy.

The most interesting case and the one that had the Board of Animal Health in a bout of both shock and awe and the occasional burst of uncomfortable laughter was a Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis outbreak in southern Indiana.

Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis known as LCM or LCMV is a rodent-born viral disease that affects nearly five percent of the mice population. Humans exposed to fresh mice or rat urine, dropping and saliva can become quite ill, Lovejoy explained. While some humans do not show clinical symptoms, others show biphasic symptoms meaning that there are two phases of symptoms - the first is flu-like including chest pain and testicular pain. The second phase of symptoms includes meningitis, fever and severe headache. Lovejoy also added that pregnant women with LCM can spontaneously abort the fetus or the child will have birth defects and if the affected patient transplants an organ, the transplant recipient may become pass away, instantly.

The tip to an LCM case rang into BOAH’s office on May 2, when the agency was contacted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
“A very astute doctor noticed the symptoms for LCM, so he tested for it and sure enough … so he contacted the CDC right away,” she said.

After BOAH received the call, Dr. Lovejoy was on the road to southern Indiana the very same day the call came into the office. She found that the person affected with LCM worked at a commercial rodent production facility. The facility, which employed 52 works, was made up of four different buildings, housing a grand total of 156,000 adult mice and 13,500 adult rats, not including babies. The business produces, processes and packages live product and frozen product, much of which is contracted to exotic animal farms and zoos.

Dr. Lovejoy found that 13 of the facility’s employees were positive for LCM, nine reported that there were ill and six sought medical care.

She sampled a total of 1,820 mice and rats - 399 rats tested all of which were negative and 1,491 mice, 296 of which tested positive. There was an infection rate in the mice of 21 percent, determined Lovejoy.
She quickly wrote a quarantine for each building, putting a halt on sales, production and packaging.
Lovejoy, who worked closely with the owner of the facility, said that 20,000 to 30,000 mice and rat products were shipped per day, five days a week.

“This isn’t a common disease, so we weren’t sure how to proceed,” said Dr. Lovejoy, adding that six state and federal agencies were involved in the quarantine including Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Indiana Department of Health, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the county health department, the CDC and BOAH. “The agencies quickly worked together to develop a game plan.”

Lovejoy said that if all mice and rats be were to be depopulated in all four barns, the buildings would be cleared and disinfected, then BOAH would lift the quarantine on the facility.

“Luckily, they did all their own depopulating and disinfecting, it worked out well, they were the experts,” she said, adding that OSHA required the employees to wear coveralls, foot wear, a mask and hoodie. “It was a huge nightmare they had to go through. We’re talking about thousands of rats, and aisle after aisle of boxes of mice. They ended up handling the trays (that housed the mice) three to four times during disinfection and depopulation for thousands of rats and mice.”

Lovejoy added that all the mice and rats were buried and they burned the litter.

“When we went back for an inspection, we found 12 mice running loose,” she said. “I remember the manager telling me that they couldn’t get every mouse. I said you have no other choice. The feces, the litter, they are contaminating the facility. We advised them to poison the water and that seemed to remedy the situation. We lifted the quarantine on July 11.”

In addition to the BOAH investigation, Lovejoy mentioned that the local county health department is requesting the shipping records from the facility.

“So we’ll continue to examine how this infection started,” she said.
Lovejoy, who worked in close contact with the facility’s owner, said that he estimated $750,000 worth of losses due to the quarantine and that it would cost $400,000 to repopulate.

“We can’t dream this stuff up,” said State Veterinarian Bret Marsh. “We’re just so fortunate to have such a great team here standing ready to deal with these kind of issues. And this is certainly a unique case – we’ve never seen anything like this.”
7/19/2012

Ted Adams @ RR

Originally Posted by Lucille

Like anything else on the BOI, people are free to read information here and form their own opinions. There is no 'we', it is not necessary that all of us have the same opinion about either business issues or health issues.
There are two separate issues here: How Rodent Pro handled this issue, and the level of risk people face on exposure to lymphocytic choriomeningitis in general.

The problem is people are just jumping to conclusions. No one but the op has actually fingered rp in this. Even the article me that's been linked doesn't name names. Also there is more than one commercial rodent breeder in southern Indiana. American rodent is from there also

Originally Posted by Rock Star Reptile

Here is what I have dug up. Sorry if it has been posted all ready.

http://www.farmworldonline.com/news/...p?newsid=14991

this reads as follows.

By MEGGIE. I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Busy and nerve-racking could only be the words to describe the month of June for the foreign animal disease (FAD) diagnostic team with the Indiana Board of Animal Health.
Dr. Jodi Lovejoy, district 8 field veterinarian with BOAH, can attest since she heads up the FAD division for the agency and has been on the road for three different, quite serious cases, investigating, collecting tissue samples, consulting with livestock producers and protecting public and animal health.

Just another day on the job for Dr. Lovejoy.

The most interesting case and the one that had the Board of Animal Health in a bout of both shock and awe and the occasional burst of uncomfortable laughter was a Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis outbreak in southern Indiana.

Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis known as LCM or LCMV is a rodent-born viral disease that affects nearly five percent of the mice population. Humans exposed to fresh mice or rat urine, dropping and saliva can become quite ill, Lovejoy explained. While some humans do not show clinical symptoms, others show biphasic symptoms meaning that there are two phases of symptoms - the first is flu-like including chest pain and testicular pain. The second phase of symptoms includes meningitis, fever and severe headache. Lovejoy also added that pregnant women with LCM can spontaneously abort the fetus or the child will have birth defects and if the affected patient transplants an organ, the transplant recipient may become pass away, instantly.

The tip to an LCM case rang into BOAH’s office on May 2, when the agency was contacted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
“A very astute doctor noticed the symptoms for LCM, so he tested for it and sure enough … so he contacted the CDC right away,” she said.

After BOAH received the call, Dr. Lovejoy was on the road to southern Indiana the very same day the call came into the office. She found that the person affected with LCM worked at a commercial rodent production facility. The facility, which employed 52 works, was made up of four different buildings, housing a grand total of 156,000 adult mice and 13,500 adult rats, not including babies. The business produces, processes and packages live product and frozen product, much of which is contracted to exotic animal farms and zoos.

Dr. Lovejoy found that 13 of the facility’s employees were positive for LCM, nine reported that there were ill and six sought medical care.

She sampled a total of 1,820 mice and rats - 399 rats tested all of which were negative and 1,491 mice, 296 of which tested positive. There was an infection rate in the mice of 21 percent, determined Lovejoy.
She quickly wrote a quarantine for each building, putting a halt on sales, production and packaging.
Lovejoy, who worked closely with the owner of the facility, said that 20,000 to 30,000 mice and rat products were shipped per day, five days a week.

“This isn’t a common disease, so we weren’t sure how to proceed,” said Dr. Lovejoy, adding that six state and federal agencies were involved in the quarantine including Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Indiana Department of Health, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the county health department, the CDC and BOAH. “The agencies quickly worked together to develop a game plan.”

Lovejoy said that if all mice and rats be were to be depopulated in all four barns, the buildings would be cleared and disinfected, then BOAH would lift the quarantine on the facility.

“Luckily, they did all their own depopulating and disinfecting, it worked out well, they were the experts,” she said, adding that OSHA required the employees to wear coveralls, foot wear, a mask and hoodie. “It was a huge nightmare they had to go through. We’re talking about thousands of rats, and aisle after aisle of boxes of mice. They ended up handling the trays (that housed the mice) three to four times during disinfection and depopulation for thousands of rats and mice.”

Lovejoy added that all the mice and rats were buried and they burned the litter.

“When we went back for an inspection, we found 12 mice running loose,” she said. “I remember the manager telling me that they couldn’t get every mouse. I said you have no other choice. The feces, the litter, they are contaminating the facility. We advised them to poison the water and that seemed to remedy the situation. We lifted the quarantine on July 11.”

In addition to the BOAH investigation, Lovejoy mentioned that the local county health department is requesting the shipping records from the facility.

“So we’ll continue to examine how this infection started,” she said.
Lovejoy, who worked in close contact with the facility’s owner, said that he estimated $750,000 worth of losses due to the quarantine and that it would cost $400,000 to repopulate.

“We can’t dream this stuff up,” said State Veterinarian Bret Marsh. “We’re just so fortunate to have such a great team here standing ready to deal with these kind of issues. And this is certainly a unique case – we’ve never seen anything like this.”
7/19/2012

Ted Adams @ RR

There are two thing I want to point out about this article. First the bold helps explain how it is lmv is contracted.

Next the underlined italics would jus suck.

I don't post here very often, so when I do I really like to let you know that I am doing so because I see a trend that isn't very fair, and ussually take up for the guy who is getting kicked. I know this is all very shocking, but truthfully, we should all be very surprised that this doesn't happen all the time with alot more producers, and with the press that is going to be generated, you can bet that alot of other producers of Feeder animals will be under much closer scrutiny.

Basically what I am saying is, my only problem here with how they have handled it was the lack of any sort of a notification to their customers about the "posibilities" of an issue with using their feeders. Couple that with what seems to be a very quick response of their euthanizing and sterilizing their facilities, and I'd wager that the worst is past. You don't just GET an outbreak like this in the short terms. Their feeders have probably had them for months, maybe longer, and except for their workers, noone seems to have gotten ill, at least knowingly, so I'd be really, really careful about making this a bigger issue than it is. Anyone who breeds animals in the millions will at some point have disease outbreaks. It's normal, and part of doing business. IMHO Rodent Pro is good in my book. They could have been a little more forthcoming with information, but in the face of already over a million in restarting costs, I'd say they are trying to keep from losing more customers in some sort of unreasonalbe panic, which this thread is helping to start. Just calm down ya'll....the problems already been handled, and I'd rather have Rodent pro back, competing, and keeping feeders costs down for all of us, than a bunch of internet keyboard jockey's making it worse for us all because the are ringing a bell that doesn't need to be rung over and over again.

Peace!

Shawn

Basically what I am saying is, my only problem here with how they have handled it was the lack of any sort of a notification to their customers about the "posibilities" of an issue with using their feeders.

I agree with this and I also believe that immune compromised people should also take responsibility for their own health if they are going to keep and be around pets, and people! I say this as a person who has had to do this. This disease is only one potentially dangerous zoonic disease that is carried by animals that are common in the wild and in the pet trade. Anyone who keeps reptiles, birds or mammals should exercise caution when they clean, meaning wear gloves and minimize dust that might contain fecal matter.

Originally Posted by allreptiles1966

What i would like to know is how do the rats get this?

http://exoticpets.about.com/od/healt...lcmrodents.htm