Bio-Security, it's not just for farmers.

Matttoadman

Arachnoknight
Joined
Aug 11, 2016
Messages
216
Any one else practice cross contamination prevention in their collections? I have become very strict. No decorations get reused without sterilization. No uneaten feeders get returned to the stock tubs, only saved to try again later(Same predator). Any escapees or dropped feeders are frozen. I have two goals. First, I do not want to potentially contaminate feeders with pathogens from other colonies. Second, I do not want exchange parasites between my predators. Last thing I want is to create a zombie apocalypse by passing a tarantula Protozoa from Asia to an African frog lol. And Finally, I do not want to pick up an contaminants from the floor. If all else fails, freeze it. I'm also careful about going to other people's houses. I never mix colonies of the same species from different breeders. I guess I try to practice "Biosecurity" like the livestock breeders do. Any other ideas?
 

RTTB

Arachnoprince
Joined
Dec 4, 2016
Messages
1,771
No I don't practice it but I deal with scorpions.
 

WeightedAbyss75

Arachnoangel
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
921
I do not practice this. Seems much too excessive for me ;) Just being on the floor or in a different terrarium for a set time almost 99% of the time will not constitute them being frozen for me. Assuming we are talking about roaches, they are some of the toughest and most adaptable creatures on the planet. Being dropped on the floor won't affect them at all, with regard to their health or ability to be nutritional. No offense at all, but your keeping habit seems to be very "germaphobic" in nature :D Have you had problems with it before? Or have you just taken the precaution to take it? I've just started to breed rowches as pets recently, but feeding is very lax for me. I feed any escapees to the hungriest predator at that moment, and any not eaten are either given to another or put in the original colony to breed and save for later consumption.
 

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
Old Timer
Joined
Aug 8, 2005
Messages
11,044
OP. Speaking as someone who got the job overseeing infection control in a hospital I can't fault what you have mentioned. It seems you either are following a criteria of which you have mentioned various aspects or you have established your own. In either case, if you wish to go the route of strict infection control and isolation, it would be of benefit to get your hands on a manual of Lab/Hospital infection control standards and guidelines and maintain them.

In Lab or Hospital isolation scenarios all personnel are required to have studied the protocols which are posted, step by step in the various isolation stations. Nobody is permitted to simply work from memory as it is far too easy to miss a step.

This is actually a sub science and can be quite intricate. Knowing the potential sources of infection and how to isolate and eliminate them. For example, street shoes and handling money are a much greater source of pathogens than your animals will ordinarily ever be. There must be a hand wash station between each and every location which you must visit each time you go transit. And so on.

Anyway, it's worth reading up the literature about infection control if you haven't.
 

Matttoadman

Arachnoknight
Joined
Aug 11, 2016
Messages
216
I do the above for a few reasons. First I am an exterminator. So my carpet potentially could have pesticide residue. So if a feeder roach hits the floor it's out. Second, I have wild caught and captive bred lizards, amphibians and inverts. We know that wild caught animals have unpredictable parasite loads. And they tell us captive bred do not. So what good would it be to raise and sell captive bred animals if they acquire parasites from their wild caught neighbors? For example, sometimes I put an Elliptorhina javanica "Halloween hisser" in for my Aphonopelma seemani WC female and she doesn't eat it. If I remove that roach and put it back in the stock tub I could transfer mites (if she had them). Or I take out that uneaten roach and feed it to my bearded dragon there could be a chance the A. Seemani might have some benign pathogen that kills my bearded dragon? Also I use to raise pigeons. There are quite a few stories of chicken diseases (Newcastle disease to name one) that made the jump to pigeons (pmv) via poor bio security and it has ravaged the hobby. It's kind of like HIV met the flu. I didn't realize this wasn't practiced? Am I being a germiphobe? Perhaps. But remember, we don't feed wild caught organisms to our animals for a reason. So it's safe to say that a wild caught pet is just as problematic. Perhaps after a quarantine time this goes away?
 
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The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
Old Timer
Joined
Aug 8, 2005
Messages
11,044
Generally speaking you seem to be as meticulous as possible which is commendable. Would that all persons who breed animals were as meticulous. Unfortunately, most place expedience and profits first and foremost.
Quarantine is one of the stock tools of the infection control trade, which goes hand in hand with knowing what pathogens are likely to be present and each is dealt with on a case by case basis. You end up working with probabilities and likelihood scenarios quite often as 100% kill can be extremely difficult to achieve. Various pathogens have reduced transmission rates until you move far enough down a ladder to where successful transmission becomes below a level of probability.
One rule that always applies. While infections can spread from animal to animal, the major common denominator in transmission is very often a person inadvertently becoming a vector. Gloves and sterilizing solutions hand washing as standard procedure when moving from animal to animal and station to station is an important method of isolation. The sink and hand washing is always between any two locations. When I was working as B-MET moving throughout all departments of the hospital I easily ended up washing my hands 50 times a day.

It also helps to be as familiar as possible with potential transmission pathways of problematic pathogens. You can end up becoming a semi professional detective at times. As a typical example, at the hospital we had recurrent instances of secondary infections of a certain bacteria, seemingly occurring at random. Various members of the infection control committee helped analyze and contributed their knowledge then some book cracking and morbidity reports led us to the bacterium was common in burn patients. We had a burn patient that was an outpatient visiting periodically and some seriously sleuthing led us to a whirlpool bath in PT as the infection source. An oh so obvious logic train was finally established, infant incubator-> nurses moving equipment from Ob to the floor-> floor nurses in contact with ambulatory patient Z-> phlebotomists from the lab-> ER->ER using cleaned but non sterilized containments->central supply not subjecting the debridement pans to full sterilization surgical procedures -> PT using the pans when dressings were removed. Simple. Only took us a month to get it figured out.
 
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