The County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health today updated its investigation into the outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) suspected to be linked to an exposure at Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch and corn maze on Los Osos Valley Road in San Luis Obispo.

The investigation now includes five laboratory-confirmed E. coli O157 cases and eight more cases under investigation – people with symptoms consistent with STEC infection who visited the farm between October 16 and October 26. Three people have developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). One additional person was hospitalized and released. That is up from the five confirmed cases the County announced earlier this week.

Brookshire Farms remains closed. The County says the farm has been cooperative and is working with Public Health, but the source of the infections on the farm is still under investigation.

“We encourage anyone who visited the farm during the exposure period and develops symptoms consistent with an E. coli infection to immediately contact their health care provider,” said Public Health Officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin.

Three HUS cases out of five confirmed is a terrible ratio, and the eight cases under investigation tell me this number is not done growing. We have been here before – pumpkin patches, corn mazes, petting zoos and fairs, where kids, animals, dirt and food all share the same space. This fall alone, Brookshire joins Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Illinois on the list of agritourism E. coli outbreaks, and we are still dealing with last year’s Arizona State Fair petting zoo cases. Handwashing signs are not a food safety plan.

What to watch for

Symptoms of STEC infection include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea that is often bloody, vomiting and sometimes fever. Symptoms usually start 3 to 5 days after exposure but can take up to 10 days to appear. Children under 10 are at the highest risk of complications, including HUS.

Anyone who visited Brookshire Farms between October 16 and October 26 and develops these symptoms should contact a health care provider immediately and mention the farm visit. Bloody diarrhea or signs of dehydration call for prompt medical attention. Parents of a child recovering from diarrhea should watch for the warning signs of HUS – decreased urination, unusual paleness, fatigue and irritability – and get the child seen right away if they appear. According to the California Department of Public Health, STEC spreads through contaminated food or water, contact with animals and their environments, contaminated surfaces, and person to person when handwashing falls short.

With Halloween here, the County also recommends washing pumpkins and any surfaces they touch, avoiding further handling once a pumpkin is carved, and washing hands with soap and water after handling pumpkins.

On Tuesday, October 27, the County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health confirmed five cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli and said it is investigating a possible link to Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch and corn maze at 4747 Los Osos Valley Road on the edge of San Luis Obispo. The suspected exposure window is October 16 through 26. Two of the sick are adults and three are children, and all five visited the farm, county spokesman Tom Cuddy told ABC News. The three children are in serious condition in a pediatric intensive care unit, according to the county. The farm closed voluntarily on Tuesday. No source has been identified.

This one does not look like a petting zoo outbreak, at least not yet.

Last week in Illinois, the first thing Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm closed was its petting zoo. Nothing San Luis Obispo County has said so far points at animals. Brookshire’s promotional listings, as compiled by Food Safety News, describe hayrides, grain-cart rides, pedal carts, a jumping pillow, duck races, a playground, a hay climb, a hay maze and the corn maze. A U-pick directory does list farm animals, and that deserves a straight answer, but neither of the county’s statements mentions animal contact, an animal area or animal sampling. What the county did add, at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, was advice about the pumpkins themselves: throw away carved pumpkins from Brookshire, scrub intact pumpkins that will be handled a lot with hot, soapy water, and wash your hands after handling them.

Why the pumpkin advice matters.

The county calls the guidance precautionary, and I take it at its word. But health departments do not tell people to throw things away for no reason, and this tells me investigators are at least considering that the pumpkins, or what was on them, carried the bacteria off the farm. A pumpkin sits on the ground for months. Its rind carries whatever the field put on it: soil, manure or compost if the field was amended, irrigation water, wildlife droppings, runoff from livestock on or near the property. Carving opens the pumpkin up, and children scoop out the seeds and pulp with their bare hands. That is a plausible route. It is not the only one. A hay bale, a dusty maze path, a pedal-cart handle, a hand-wash station that was out of soap, a concession stand: any of them can move Shiga toxin-producing E. coli from the environment to a child’s mouth. I do not know which it was. Neither does the county, yet.

Halloween is Saturday. Pumpkins from Brookshire are sitting on porches and kitchen tables across the Central Coast right now, and many of them were carved this week. That is why the guidance should have come out with the first announcement on Tuesday, not a day later, and why it should be pushed out through schools, pediatricians and the farm’s own social media, not just appended to a county web page.

The exposure window moved, and that tells you something.

The first version of the county’s release gave an exposure window of October 16 through 18, and that is what KSBY and others first reported. At 4 p.m. the same day, the county widened it to October 16 through 26, and for a time the Spanish-language version of the release still carried the old three-day window. Going from three days to eleven can mean the county has cases with later visit dates, or that it could not rule out ongoing exposure. Either way, it suggests whatever made these people sick may have been on the farm until the day it closed. That also makes the Spanish translation more than a clerical point. Families who read the release in Spanish needed the same dates as everyone else.

Sources: County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health release and updates (October 27–28, 2026); ABC News; SFGATE and The San Luis Obispo Tribune as reported via Yahoo News; KSBY; Paso Robles Daily News. Read October 28.

Every pumpkin patch outbreak I can find ran through the animals.

I went back through OutbreakDatabase.com, Fair-Safety.com and the health department reports looking for E. coli outbreaks at pumpkin patches. The pattern is consistent. In October 2012, Cowlitz County reported at least ten people sick with E. coli after visiting the petting zoo at Willow Grove Gardens Pumpkin Patch in Longview, Washington; both O157:H7 and O121 were isolated from patients. In 2013, three children between 15 months and seven years old were infected with O157:H7 after contact with goats or cattle at Dehn’s Pumpkins in Dayton, Minnesota, and one developed hemolytic uremic syndrome. The Minnesota Department of Health’s annual summary adds that goats and cattle were on site and that multiple animal fecal and environmental samples there tested positive for Shiga toxin 2. The Compendium cites a British Columbia pumpkin patch outbreak where there was no running water and the sanitizer was mounted too high for some children to reach. And this month, the first thing Bengtson’s in Illinois closed was its petting zoo.

I have not found a U.S. outbreak where the pumpkins themselves were the vehicle. That does not mean it cannot happen. Produce picks up Shiga toxin-producing E. coli in the field all the time; in the 2006 spinach outbreak, investigators found the outbreak strain in cattle manure and water on a San Benito County ranch within a mile of the implicated fields, a couple of hours up the road from San Luis Obispo. A pumpkin is not eaten raw the way spinach is, but it is handled, carved and scooped out by children with their bare hands. If the Brookshire investigation lands on the pumpkins, it would be something new, and the county should say so plainly and publish how it got there.

In yesterday’s post I grouped Brookshire with Bengtson’s and the State Fair of Texas as investigations tied to animals at fall attractions, and in Tuesday’s I put the two pumpkin farms side by side. The county’s pumpkin guidance suggests Brookshire may not belong in that group, and I would rather say so now than wait. What the three share is the season: tens of thousands of small children in close contact with soil, hay, produce and sometimes animals at the tail end of the peak months for these infections.

What the county should tell the public now.

Is this E. coli O157:H7 or a non-O157 strain, and have the five patient isolates been sequenced and found to match? Has any patient developed hemolytic uremic syndrome? What has been sampled: pumpkins, soil, irrigation water, hay, compost, surfaces, and any animals on or next to the property? Were the pumpkins grown on the farm or brought in, and if brought in, from where? That last question matters, because if the pumpkins came from somewhere else, the problem may not stop at Brookshire’s gate. The county should also ask the farm to reach visitors through its ticketing and card records, post a weekly update with case counts, ages and hospitalizations, and, when the investigation is done, put the whole file online so the next farm operator can learn from it.

What parents should do.

If your family visited Brookshire Farms between October 16 and 26, or has been handling a pumpkin bought there, watch for diarrhea, especially bloody diarrhea, and severe stomach cramps. Symptoms usually appear three to five days after exposure but can take up to ten. Hemolytic uremic syndrome can follow a week or more after the diarrhea starts; decreased urination, unusual paleness and lethargy are the warning signs. Tell the doctor about the farm visit and ask for a stool culture. Do not give anti-diarrheal medicine, and ask before using antibiotics. The consumer version of this post is on Food Poison Journal; prevention material for families and farm operators is at Fair-Safety.com; and what HUS is, and why it follows E. coli in young children, is at about-hus.com.

How many people are sick in the Brookshire Farms E. coli outbreak? Five confirmed as of October 27, 2026: two adults and three children, all of whom visited the farm. The three children are in serious condition in pediatric intensive care.

Has the source been found? No. On October 28 the county issued precautionary guidance on Brookshire pumpkins, but it has not named a source.

Is it a petting zoo outbreak? Nothing the county has released points to animals. The farm’s listed attractions are hayrides, rides, play areas and the corn maze, though one directory lists farm animals.

Have pumpkins caused an E. coli outbreak before? Not that I can find. Past pumpkin patch outbreaks, including Willow Grove in Washington in 2012 and Dehn’s in Minnesota in 2013, were tied to petting zoo animals, not the pumpkins.

Is Brookshire Farms open? No. The farm closed voluntarily on October 27 while the investigation continues.

What should I do with a pumpkin from Brookshire Farms? The county says to throw away carved pumpkins, scrub intact pumpkins that will be handled often with hot, soapy water, and wash your hands after handling them.

In the space of five days this October, three health departments opened investigations into Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections tied to animals at fall attractions: five confirmed cases, four of them hospitalized, at Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois; five confirmed cases at Brookshire Farmsin San Luis Obispo, California, which has closed; and a cluster of sick children Dallas County is investigating in connection with the petting zoo at the State Fair of Texas. None of this is new. What follows is a short history of how we got here, and the prevention measures that have been written down, revised and re-published for twenty years.

This happens every year, and the numbers are not small.

The Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings has been published by the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians (NASPHV) since 2005. The 2023 revision is summarized in the December 2023 issue of JAVMA, and the full version counts 156 outbreaks involving animals in public settings in the ten years ending in 2020. Those outbreaks caused 6,388 illnesses, 1,233 hospitalizations and 10 deaths. The full version also notes that outbreaks are only part of it: in a Minnesota study of non-outbreak illnesses linked to animal agriculture, 28 percent of the STEC patients had visited a fair, petting zoo, agritourism farm or similar venue, and six developed HUS.

I started tracking these outbreaks on Fair-Safety.com years ago. The outbreak list there runs back to the early 1990s, but it stops in 2015 and still points readers to the 2017 Compendium. It is overdue for an update, and this post is the start of it. Here is a selection of the U.S. E. coli outbreaks, old and new:

A selection, not a complete list. Sources are linked in each row: Fair-Safety.com outbreak summaries, CDC MMWR, state and county health departments, OutbreakDatabase.com and news reports. Counts are as last reported by the investigating agency.

The list could be much longer. Fair-Safety.com also documents outbreaks of Cryptosporidium, Campylobacterand Salmonella at farms, fairs and zoos here and abroad, and Food Poison Journal has a longer history of petting zoo and fair outbreaks.

What the outbreaks have in common.

Read twenty-five years of these investigations and the same facts keep showing up. The Compendium pulls them together, and they explain this October as well as they explain 2004.

Healthy-looking animals carry it. Cattle, goats and sheep are the usual sources. They carry STEC without getting sick and shed it intermittently, and young animals – the calves, kids and lambs that draw children – shed more than adults. Stress from transport, crowding and handling increases shedding.

You do not have to touch an animal. Fur, saliva, railings, bedding, sawdust, hay bales, manure on a fence, dust, a stroller wheel, a shoe: all have carried the bacteria in past outbreaks. STEC can survive in soil for months. Minnesota’s 2019 State Fair cases included people who never touched an animal, and Connecticut’s 2016 goat farm outbreak spread to people who had only been near someone who visited.

Testing the animals afterward rarely settles it. Because shedding comes and goes, the Compendium warns that a negative test does not mean the animal was not shedding earlier. In San Diego in 2019, every petting zoo animal, every pony and 32 environmental samples tested negative – after a child had died. The Compendium does not recommend routine screening for this reason. Prevention has to assume the animals are positive.

Temporary exhibits are the riskiest. The Compendium says temporary and seasonal exhibits are particularly vulnerable to design flaws, and so are working farms that were never designed for public events. The full version gives examples that read like this month’s news – animal displays added to festivals, farm stands, pick-your-own farms and Christmas tree lots – and lists the usual problems: inadequate barriers, surfaces that cannot be cleaned, insufficient plumbing, missing signs and too few handwashing stations. The traveling vendor that sets up for a weekend is exactly the operation least likely to have running water at the exit.

Hand sanitizer is not handwashing. In outbreak after outbreak, the Compendium says, handwashing has been protective: lathering with soap and water lowered the risk, while feeding animals without washing afterward and drying hands on clothing raised it. The full version adds that soap and water is still preferred over sanitizer, which does not work equally well on all pathogens or on dirty hands. The 2005 Fresno petting zoo had alcohol sanitizer. So, twenty years later, did the 2025 Arizona State Fair.

Food and animals do not mix. Contamination of food and drinks by people who have just touched animals has caused outbreaks, and the full Compendium adds that buying food at a farm visit and eating sticky foods like ice cream and cotton candy have been associated with STEC illness. Feeding animals and then eating without washing raises the risk. Some petting zoos still sell feed in ice cream cones, which the Compendium specifically says not to do.

Young children are the most at risk. Children under five put their hands in their mouths, sit on the ground and get close to the animals, and they are the most likely to develop HUS. The 2023 Compendium says preweaned calves, lambs, goat kids, reptiles and live poultry are not appropriate where groups at high risk are expected – and on a fall weekend at a pumpkin patch, or a school field-trip day at a fair, that is a lot of the crowd. Add that young animals shed STEC more than adults, and it is no surprise that so many of the rows in that table end with a toddler on dialysis. More on HUS is at about-hus.com.

How to prevent them – the Compendium’s playbook.

None of this is a secret. The Compendium is free, it has been around in some form since 2005, and the 2023 edition is posted by CDC and published by the AVMA. Washington’s Department of Health has turned it into a practical guide for fairs. The core recommendations for operators:

• Tell visitors the risk before they go in. The Compendium calls educating visitors “of utmost importance”: awareness of the risk was protective in the 2004 North Carolina State Fair outbreak. That means signs, staff at the entrance, and information sent home before school field trips.
• Divide the venue into three zones. Animal areas, transition areas at every entrance and exit, and non-animal areas where food is sold and eaten. No animals except service animals in non-animal areas.
• Put soap, running water and paper towels at every exit. Enough sinks for peak crowds, at a height children can reach, and as close to the exit as possible – not across the midway.
• Staff the exit. A staff member at the exit reminding visitors to wash is one of the interventions the Compendium cites as improving handwashing.
• Keep food, drinks, bottles, pacifiers, sippy cups and toys out of animal areas. Provide stroller parking at the entrance.
• Control feeding. Allow it only where contact is controlled, never sell feed in edible containers, and keep feed and water bins away from the public.
• Keep the youngest children away from the riskiest animals. Children under five should not have direct contact with preweaned calves and similar high-risk animals, and should be supervised at all times around the rest.
• Design for one-way traffic and avoid overcrowding. Use double barriers where contact is not intended, remove manure promptly and keep manure tools and piles out of public reach.
• Use a veterinarian and keep records. Exhibit only healthy animals, keep sick animals and herds with recent diarrhea out, and keep records of where animals came from and where they have been, so investigators can trace them.
• Do not sell raw milk or unpasteurized cider. The full Compendium says their sale or distribution should be prohibited.

For parents and visitors, the short version: wash with soap and water as soon as you leave the animal area and before eating, even if you think you did not touch anything; do not eat, drink or let children use pacifiers or bottles in animal areas; do not let small children sit or play on the ground there; wash after handling strollers and shoes that went into the pens; and if a child develops bloody diarrhea within ten days of a farm or fair visit, see a doctor and tell them about the visit. Antibiotics and anti-diarrheal drugs are generally not recommended for suspected STEC in children.

Recommendations are not requirements.

Here is the uncomfortable part. As the full Compendium acknowledges, no U.S. federal law addresses the risk of disease transmission where animals and the public mix, and only some states regulate things like handwashing stations. The Compendium tells agencies to work to ensure compliance and to build its recommendations into regulations, and the full version notes that studies keep finding the recommendations are not fully followed. After Arizona’s outbreak, a bill requiring handwashing, signage and supervision at petting zoos died in the legislature; the Arizona State Fair and the Maricopa County Fair dropped direct animal contact on their own. Voluntary decisions by a few fairs are not a standard.

Every state should turn the Compendium into a rule: soap and running water at every animal-area exit, staff at the exit, no food in animal areas, no feed in cones, records of animal sources, and a public notice requirement when a cluster is identified. Every health department that opens one of these investigations should publish the case count, ages, hospitalizations and HUS cases on a schedule, sequence every isolate, and put the final report online, so the next operator can learn from it. Twenty-five years of outbreaks is enough data.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get E. coli at a petting zoo without touching an animal? Yes. Outbreaks have been traced to railings, bedding, sawdust, hay bales, dust and contaminated shoes and strollers, and STEC can survive in soil for months.

Is hand sanitizer enough after a petting zoo? No. The full 2023 Compendium says soap and running water is preferred, because sanitizers do not work well on dirty hands or equally well against all pathogens.

Who is most at risk? Children under five, adults over 65, pregnant people and people with weakened immune systems. Young children are the most likely to develop hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Are petting zoos regulated? There is no federal law addressing disease risk at animal exhibits. Some states require handwashing stations; most rely on voluntary guidance like the Compendium.

On Tuesday afternoon, October 27, the County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health announcedfive confirmed cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and an investigation into a possible link to Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch, corn maze and Christmas tree farm on Los Osos Valley Road. The farm has closed voluntarily. Tuesday night, FOX 4 in Dallas reported that Dallas County Health and Human Services is lab-testing a cluster of STEC infections in children and investigating whether they came from the petting zoo at the State Fair of Texas. Add the five confirmed cases at Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois, four of them hospitalized, and that is three investigations, in three states, tied to animal attractions at fall events – all made public in the five days since October 23. Every October I write some version of this post. This year I am writing it three times over.

What San Luis Obispo County has said.

Five confirmed STEC infections. A suspected exposure period at Brookshire Farms that was first announced as October 16 through 18 and then, in a 4:00 p.m. update, widened to October 16 through 26 – the entire last ten days the farm was open. The source of the infections is under investigation. The county is telling anyone who visited during that window and develops cramping and bloody diarrhea, typically three to ten days after the visit, to call their doctor, and it notes that children under 10 face the greatest risk of complications. County Health Officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin urged anyone exposed and symptomatic to seek medical attention immediately. The farm is cooperating, and, according to KSBY, its owner has said a direct link to the farm has not been confirmed.

One housekeeping note for the county: the updated release widens the window to October 26, but the subheadline and the Spanish-language version still say October 16 through 18. A family that reads the Spanish release, visited on October 22 and has a child with bloody diarrhea today may conclude they are outside the window. Fix it.

What the county has not said.

Ages. Hospitalizations. Whether anyone has hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). The serotype – O157 or a non-O157 STEC. Whether the five isolates have been sequenced and match. Most importantly, what at the farm is suspected. A pumpkin patch is not a single exposure. According to the farm’s promotional listings, Brookshire offers hayrides, grain-cart rides, pedal carts, a jumping pillow, duck races, a playground, a hay climb, a hay maze and a corn maze, and a U-pick directory lists farm animals, school tours, birthday parties, fresh eggs and a picnic area where families can eat their own food. Was there animal contact? Where were the handwashing stations relative to the animals and the kettle corn? Were school groups on the property between October 16 and 26? Those answers tell parents and physicians where to look, and they cost the county nothing to release.

The State Fair of Texas: a “cluster,” children in the hospital, and a fair that says it has not been notified.

According to FOX 4, Dallas County Health and Human Services confirmed it is lab-testing a cluster of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli cases affecting children of a range of ages, is still interviewing families, and is investigating whether the State Fair petting zoo is the source. The county is not yet calling it an outbreak. At least two families told the station their children are hospitalized in Dallas, and Children’s Medical Center Dallas says it has seen an uptick in cases. The county has not released a case count, ages, hospitalizations, whether any child has HUS, or the serotype.

The fair’s own website describes the petting zoo in Little Lone Stars Land as a place to get close to emus, zebras, pigs and goats, with a nursery of sows, ewes, nanny goats and their young – and it advertises that fairgoers can feed the animals. The fair’s statement to FOX 4 says it has not received official notification, that it follows CDC-recommended precautions at its animal exhibits, and that no precaution can eliminate every risk. That last line is true. It is also why the precautions have to be the right ones – soap and running water at the exit, no food or bottles in the pen, someone watching the children – and why the fair should be asked now, in writing, what exactly was in place.

This is not the State Fair of Texas’s first brush with this. In the mid-2000s, after a run of petting zoo outbreaks around the country, the fair scrapped its Children’s Barnyard petting zoo when insurers raised rates; at the time, that petting zoo relied on hand-sanitizing gel and signs. Two decades later, the Arizona State Fair’s petting zoo outbreak taught the same lesson about sanitizer, and the Arizona State Fair has dropped direct animal contact for 2026. The State Fair of Texas did not.

Dallas County should do what I am asking of San Luis Obispo and Will counties: publish a case count, ages, hospitalizations and any HUS; issue a health alert to North Texas pediatricians and emergency departments; open a survey for fairgoers; sample the animals and the environment before the animals are gone; and sequence everything. The fair runs for weeks and draws enormous crowds, and once it closes the petting zoo and livestock animals scatter to their home farms. Every day of delay is a day of lost samples.

Brookshire closed the whole farm. Bengtson’s closed only the petting zoo. The State Fair has closed nothing.

The responses are worth comparing. In Illinois, Bengtson’s closed its petting zoo on October 23 and kept the rides, food stands and corn maze open with the health department’s blessing. Animal and environmental samples were taken on October 26, results are expected around November 5, and, as I wrote this morning, more than 200 visitors have filled out the county’s symptom survey. In California, Brookshire shut down entirely, in the last week of pumpkin season, while the county figures out what happened. That is a costly decision for a family farm, and it is the right one. It does not tell us whether the source is an animal, the environment or something sold on site. It does mean no one else is being exposed while the county finds out. In Texas, nothing has closed, and the fair says it has not even been officially notified.

Sources: SLO County Public Health release (October 27, 2026, as updated 4:00 p.m.); KSBY (October 27); FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth (October 27); Will County Health Department statements as reported by The Herald-News (October 26). Read October 27.

These are not food outbreaks, and food inspections will not solve them.

When STEC follows a farm visit, the vehicle is rarely a menu item. It is manure – on a goat’s coat, a pen rail, a hay bale, a stroller wheel, a shoe, the hand that then holds a cup of cider. Ruminants carry these bacteria without looking sick and shed them intermittently, which is why the Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings warns that a negative animal sample taken days after the fact does not clear the pen. The record goes back decades: the 2004 North Carolina State Fair, a Tennessee farming camp in 2022, the Willow Grove pumpkin patch in Longview, Washington, and last fall’s Arizona State Fair petting zoo outbreak, which sickened 18 people, hospitalized 11 and left six with HUS. The fixes have not changed either: soap and running water, not hand sanitizer, at every exit from an animal area; animal areas kept away from where people eat; no food, bottles or pacifiers near the animals; and someone watching to make sure small children actually wash.

Are the three connected?

Nothing released so far suggests they are. Three venues in California, Illinois and Texas, in the same few weeks of the busiest season of the year, is what the calendar looks like when hundreds of thousands of families with young children get close to livestock in October. Whole genome sequencing will answer the question, and all three counties should say whether their isolates have been uploaded to PulseNet.

What the counties should do now.

San Luis Obispo specifically: correct the exposure dates in every version of the release. Publish ages, hospitalizations and any HUS, and update them on a set schedule. Say whether the farm had animal contact and whether animals and surfaces have been sampled. Open a visitor survey the way Will County did, and push it to the schools that brought classes between October 16 and 26. Alert local pediatricians and emergency departments that bloody diarrhea in a child who visited the farm is STEC until proven otherwise – and that antibiotics and anti-diarrheals are a bad idea in that child. Sequence the isolates and publish the results, whatever they show.

For families: if your child visited Brookshire Farms between October 16 and 26, Bengtson’s on or after September 29, or the State Fair of Texas this fall, and develops bloody diarrhea, severe cramps, decreased urination, unusual paleness or lethargy, see a doctor and tell them about the farm visit. HUS can develop a week or more after the diarrhea starts. Background on E. coli, HUS and staying safe around farm animals is available.

Frequently asked questions

How many people are sick in the Brookshire Farms E. coli outbreak? Five confirmed STEC cases as of October 27, 2026. The county has not released ages, hospitalizations or HUS cases.

What is the exposure period? October 16 through 26, 2026, according to the county’s 4:00 p.m. update. Some versions of the release still show October 16 through 18.

Is Brookshire Farms open? No. The farm closed voluntarily while San Luis Obispo County Public Health investigates.

Has the source been found? No. The county says the source is under investigation and has not said what at the farm is suspected.

Is the State Fair of Texas petting zoo linked to E. coli? Dallas County Health and Human Services is investigating whether a cluster of STEC cases in children came from the petting zoo. No case count or confirmation of a source has been released, and the county is not yet calling it an outbreak.

Are the Brookshire, Bengtson’s and State Fair of Texas cases connected? There is no indication they are. Whole genome sequencing will show whether any of the isolates match.