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Action over E. coli outbreak at Godstone Farm in Surrey defended by Tandridge District Council

September 18, 2009

A council has insisted it acted as quickly as it could to close a popular animal petting farm linked to an E. coli outbreak, which has hospitalised 13 children.

Godstone Farm in Surrey was first linked to the outbreak in August but it was not advised to close until September 12. The Health Protection Agency has identified 37 people, including 13 children, who have developed gastrointestinal illnesses after visiting the farm. Four of the children are seriously ill.

EHO Paul Barton, deputy director of community services at Tandridge District Council, told EHN the council acted on the best information available at the time and could not have closed the farm any sooner. ‘There has been much in the media about why the farm wasn’t closed earlier and colleagues will appreciate that there is a time lag from the date of exposure through to identification of the organism and the place where it is likely to have been contracted,’ he said.

Two weeks, he said, was a normal gap between exposure and identification.

 ‘From exposure through to symptoms appearing in the child during an incubation period, which can be up to eight to 10 days, then the presentation of the child at a GP and subsequent identification of the illness in the lab, then the identification of potential sources takes days rather than hours,’ he said.

The geographical spread of the outbreak, he added, slowed down the response. ‘The farm is widely known as a tourist attraction and cases were therefore occurring across the south east rather than as a cluster in one area,’ he said.

As soon as the first cases came to light, he said, the farm was asked to increasesignage and the high-risk petting barns, which house ruminant animals such as cattle and goats, were shut.

‘The HPA say these measures have worked elsewhere and were a proportionate response but by the time hey were put into place it would now appear that most of the cases had been exposed and were in the incubation period,’ he said.

The HPA announced an independent investigation this week after it emerged that it had wrongly claimed the first cases came to light on the 27 August. In fact it was told about two cases the week before.

Justin McCracken, HPA chief executive, said: ‘If this information had been taken into account on 27 August, then the advice given and the steps taken on 3 September would have been introduced earlier and the farm might have been closed earlier. ’

The investigation will be led by George Griffin, professor of infectious diseases and medicine at the University of London and chair of the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens.

Tanbridge Council said the source of the outbreak was most likely to be from animal faeces. ‘Other potential sources are also under investigation and nothing had been ruled out at this early stage. Water supplies, catering, animal management and environmental factors are all being examined,’ said Mr Barton.

Prof Hugh Pennington, who chaired the south Wales E. coli inquiry, said children should be banned from touching cows, sheep and goats at petting farms. ‘We know this bug commonly occurs in ruminants, and although the risk of it being passed on to humans is small, the effects can be catastrophic in young children,’ he said.

EHN

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