Contaminated rodents, and gov't regulation

There's a lengthy thread about contaminated rodents being sold by two vendors; the problem came to the attention of Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and health departments. At least one of the businesses was shut down for a while for decontamination: All its rats were reportedly destroyed.

The primary thrust, as I read it, is strong disapproval of the vendor's failure to notify customers. It occurred to me that the situation raises the provocative question of government regulation, good or bad?

I'd urge people to read the Rodent Pro/contaminated rodents thread. Then elaborate on whether you think government regulation is good--the intervention of government agencies may have prevented the spread of a zoonotic to people's own animals or to humans, and it was thru the agencies, and not the vendor, that customers learned of the circumstances. On the other hand, it's a common political thread in the US to argue that government shouldn't interfere with private business, that the marketplace should regulate the good and the bad.

What do you think?

From my own perspective, the CDC was not very forthcoming. I actually called for information and was transferred and messages taken and promises to get back, and then.....nothing.
Disappointing and scary that they dropped the ball in supplying any information even though they have my email address.

Government health is also extremely fund-dependent and funds are disappearing. I remember a wonderful program where the school nurse (that would have been me) cooperated with local health officials in an effort to give the necessary daily medication for tuberculosis exposed-but-not-active students.
After a few years the funds were depleted and the program stopped, even though it had been shown again and again that even if the medication was free, the children would not end up receiving daily: the parents would forget, the medication would get lost, etc. I have no doubt that the incidence of active tuberculosis will rise.

In theory, it might be a good idea to have a team that was instantly responsive, gave information to concerned people who requested it, and was funded.

So, that is my take on emergencies. As far as more regulation, rules for rat producers, it seems that response to the present system of rules is at times corrupt, ignored, easy to get around, and the funding for the bureaucrats who purportedly keep track of the voluminous required records, payments for licenses, and so on is dwindling, perhaps the only positive aspect of this recession.

I do not believe that the market can take care of these situations either. The extremely well funded pharma industry tends to, at times, hide problems, and I believe accelerate testing with an eye on profit rather than safety.
Look at all the problems with fracking and oil spills, if the marketplace controlled, the earth would eventually become a desolate wasteland.

I think the answer is that we need a good, solid, trustworthy responsive government, for the people and by the people. A group that is concerned not with politics and obscene profit, but rather concerned with people, family by family, person by person. A group of people that like neighbors, is there when disaster occurs, but unlike most neighbors has training and knowledge to handle health disasters. That is far cry from what we have now.

I think that if the "promise" of what government agencies were supposedly put in place for, we would all have no real problems with them and would support what they do with our tax dollars gladly. But when abusive bureaucracies crop up and mismanagement of funds (which is often the very small tip of a very large iceberg of corruption) makes the PURPOSE of the agency in question secondary in importance in the minds of the people responsible for it's operation, well then we, the people, tend to get skeptical of the value of government in general. The agencies become revenue generators and power brokers for the government, and the actual beneficial purposes to the general public be damned. Pay for your permits, your fees, your taxes, your fines, or the full weight of the government winds up pressing you to the ground. Those bricks of good intentions paving the road to hell are beating against your head right now.

Seriously, it has gotten to the point that aren't you actually SURPRISED to hear of any government agency actually doing what is RIGHT for us citizens and not actually self serving to themselves?

That in itself is rather disturbing.

Originally Posted by rtdunham

On the other hand, it's a common political thread in the US to argue that government shouldn't interfere with private business, that the marketplace should regulate the good and the bad.

What do you think?

Well, for instance let's take the minor outbreaks of contamination in the food supply the last couple of years. The peanut contamination and a couple of others from a couple of years ago. It was a government inspected, bureaucratic mess from big Ag that had the problems. It wasn't the small farmers with a nitch markets that had issues. The places that had the problems were supposedly having to jump through hoops and regulations.

So what was the response? The food modernization act and other regulations to target small farmers so "supposedly" it wouldn't happen again. The people they went after had nothing to do with the problems of the regulated big Ag. The problems came from them and the government regulators.

Instead you had cities, legislatures going after backyard gardens and small organic farmers with the mass hysteria that they needed to be regulated more when they had nothing to do with the problems.

So I say, less regulation. We are regulated to death. If you have shady business practices let the market dictate. If your business harms another then that is when the law a regulation should come into play.

One wonders what would happen if a devastating disease emerged on a large scale, and we needed a high quality fast response to save many lives.
Thanks to a doctor with snap, this little girl is still alive.




7-year-old Colo. girl recovers from bubonic plague
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By CATHERINE TSAI, AP
16 minutes ago

Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., smiles during...
DENVER — The parents of 7-year-old Sierra Jane Downing thought she had the flu when she felt sick days after camping in southwest Colorado.

It wasn't until she had a seizure that her father knew something was seriously wrong and rushed her to a hospital in their town of Pagosa Springs. She had a 107-degree fever, and doctors were baffled by the cause.

"I didn't know what was going on. I just reacted," Sean Downing said. "I thought she died."

The Downings eventually learned their daughter was ill with one of the last things they would've thought: bubonic plague, a disease that wiped out one-third of Europe in the 14th century but is now exceedingly rare — it hasn't been confirmed in Colorado since 2006 — and treatable if caught early.

Federal health officials say they are aware of two other confirmed and one probable case of plague in the U.S. so far this year — an average year. The other confirmed cases were in New Mexico and Oregon, and the probable case also was in Oregon. None were fatal.

Plague is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas but also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, rabbits and pets.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that a series of frightening illnesses linked to insects and pests have been surfacing lately across the country, including mosquito-borne West Nile virus outbreaks in Texas and other states, deadly hantavirus cases linked to Yosemite National Park, and some scattered plague cases.

But with some of the illnesses — like plague — this is not an unusually bad year; it's just getting attention. And the number of cases of each disease is driven by different factors.

"I don't think there's a confluence of any particular set of factors" driving the recent illness reports, said Kiersten Kugeler, a CDC epidemiologist in Colorado who tracks plague reports.

In Sierra Jane's case, a Pagosa Springs emergency room doctor who saw her late on Aug. 24 called other hospitals, some of whom thought she'd be fine the next day, before the girl was flown to Denver, Sean Downing said.

There, a pediatric doctor at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children racing to save Sierra Jane's life got the first inkling that she had bubonic plague. Dr. Jennifer Snow suspected the disease based on the girl's symptoms, a history of where she'd been, and an online journal's article on a teen with similar symptoms.

Dr. Wendi Drummond, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the hospital, agreed and ordered a specific antibiotic for Sierra Jane while tests were run, later confirming their rare diagnosis.

It was the first bubonic plague case Snow and her colleagues had seen.

"I credit them for thinking outside the box," said Dr. Tracy Butler, medical director of the hospital's pediatric intensive unit.

It's not clear why Colorado hasn't seen another human case until now, state public health veterinarian Elisabeth Lawaczeck said.

By the night of Aug. 25, Sierra Jane's heart rate was high, her blood pressure was low, and a swollen lymph node in her left groin was so painful it hurt to undergo the ultrasound that detected the enlarged node, Snow said.

Doctors say the girl could be discharged from the hospital within a week.

On Wednesday, Sierra Jane flashed a smile with two dimples as she faced reporters in a wheelchair, her pink-toed socks peeking out from the white blanket enveloping her as she held a brown teddy bear.

"She's just a fighter," said her mother, Darcy Downing.

Darcy Downing said her daughter may have been infected by insects near a dead squirrel she wanted to bury at their campground on U.S. Forest Service land, even though Darcy had warned her daughter to leave it alone. She remembered catching her daughter near the squirrel with her sweat shirt on the ground. Her daughter later had the shirt tied around her torso, where doctors spotted insect bites.

The bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the Middle Ages. Today, it can be treated with antibiotics, but it's important to catch it early.

"If she had stayed home, she could've easily died within 24 to 48 hours from the shock of infection," Snow said.

___

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report from New York.

Originally Posted by rtdunham

Then elaborate on whether you think government regulation is good--the intervention of government agencies may have prevented the spread of a zoonotic to people's own animals or to humans, and it was thru the agencies, and not the vendor, that customers learned of the circumstances.

As a victim of the latest salmonella outbreak, I can tell you that the CDC, via a lengthy interview with me, told me what they believed to be the source before the news got a hold of it. They also strongly advised me to let people with whom I'd had close contact know of the illness, and certainly not to prepare food for others. I know there has been discussion of whether the CDC advised RP to only tell certain buyers and keep things hush with the general public. This was definitely not my experience in dealing with the CDC.

As for regulation, I just don't know the answer. I guess I feel like the government needs to step in at a certain point (i.e. size of the business) if tens of thousands of people are exposed to their product. Mom and pop businesses, no. But just in the interest of being a decent human being, I think small businesses should ring the warning bell if there is a threat to any of their customers. Believe me, it makes all the difference if you happen to be one of the tiny percent to get sick! I can tell you, if I ever get cleared to eat raw veggies again, I'll absolutely be more trustful of local growers.

Noelle

What category is this thread in? I have heard about it via word of mouth but have not located the post. Could someone please link it or tell me what category it is in?

It is here, Billy.
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=334751

I'd actually be all for government regulation of certain things if they actually, y'know, regulated those things and left everything else alone. Then I take off the rose colored glasses. The problem is, they can't do that. As everyone else has pretty much said, they've gotta find a way to twist it into something ugly and abusive to people who have no business being touched by the hand of their brand of "regulation". Quite simply, I don't believe our government has our best interests at heart when they get involved in anything, and history shows us that if they were to step in to regulate rodent breeding, all those of us breeding our own rodents for our collections would be bent over the table.

Our own industry will never be able to get our crap together to regulate anything because let's face it, we can't agree to all stick together on anything.