County lab results obtained by Seattle food safety lawyer\u00a0Bill Marler\u00a0in January genetically linked 11 cases to the State Fair, meaning victims were sickened by the same strain and source. The results were primarily dated Nov. 13 \u2014 weeks before officials publicly confirmed the connection and closed the outbreak investigation.<\/p>\n
Marler, who represents two families whose kids were hospitalized in the outbreak, said genome sequencing is so advanced and accurate that health officials were almost certainly aware that the fair’s petting zoo was the source of the infection at the time.<\/p>\n
“What’s deadly for the state is that they apparently used to have hand-washing stations at the exhibit and they just decided to stop doing that,” he said in an earlier interview, adding officials, “shouldn’t be surprised if there was an outbreak.”<\/p>\n
No petting zoo, no feeding animals at State Fair in 2026<\/p>\n
The Arizona State Fair opted to do away with a petting zoo in 2026, and has contracted with a local vendor to showcase animals and farm life in Arizona. The public will not be able to feed or pet the animals.<\/p>\n
For the past 15 years, the fair’s petting zoo was\u00a0operated by a company called Great American Entertainment\u00a0in Stephenville, Texas. Owners and managers there have not responded to multiple interview requests about the outbreak.<\/p>\n
The company was founded in 1983 and bills itself online as “the number one educational and entertainment attraction company in the country.” It provides “hands-on” shows for the event, fair and rodeo industry, according to its website.<\/p>\n
Great American was\u00a0involved in a 2005 E. coli outbreak\u00a0at a fair in Fresno, Calif., that left six children hospitalized, including a 2-year-old who developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, records show. Her kidneys failed, and she had a series of strokes, which left her with damaged kidneys, blindness in one eye, and difficulty walking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"County lab results obtained by Seattle food safety lawyer\u00a0Bill Marler\u00a0in January genetically linked 11 cases to the State…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":768543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,64034,1587,4471,409431,26417,379,120925,1589,42318,35927,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1023274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-state-fair","tag-az","tag-child","tag-escherichia-coli","tag-kidney","tag-lawsuit","tag-petting-zoo","tag-phoenix","tag-pig","tag-state-fair","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117156694337188231","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}