Exotic animals bringing health risks with them

updated 3:01 p.m. ET Nov. 27, 2006

Below is the first of a three-part series on the risks that come with the exotic animals imported into the United States. Parts two and three will look at the front line work of inspectors and disease hunters.

WASHINGTON - Exotic animals captured in the wild are streaming across the U.S. border by the millions with little or no screening for disease, leaving Americans vulnerable to a virulent outbreak that could rival a terrorist act.

Demand for such wildlife is booming as parents try to get their kids the latest pets fancied by Hollywood stars and zoos and research scientists seek to fill their cages.

More than 650 million critters — from kangaroos and kinkajous to iguanas and tropical fish — were imported legally into the United States in the past three years, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

That’s more than two for every American.

Countless more pets — along with animal parts and meats — are smuggled across the borders as part of a $10 billion-a-year international black market, second only to illegal drugs.

Most wildlife arrive in the United States with no quarantine and minimal screening for disease. The government employs just 120 full-time inspectors to record and inspect arriving wildlife. There is no requirement they be trained to detect diseases.

“A wild animal will be in the bush, and in less than a week it’s in a little girl’s bedroom,” said Darin Carroll, a disease hunter with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health concerns
While exotic pets from Africa, Asia and South America can be cute and fashionable, scientists fear that bacteria and viruses they carry can jump to humans and native animals. Recent statistics raise the alarm.

Zoonotic diseases — those that jump to humans — account for three quarters of all emerging infectious threats, the CDC says. Five of the six diseases the agency regards as top threats to national security are zoonotic, and the CDC recently opened a center to better prepare and monitor such diseases.

The Journal of Internal Medicine this month estimated that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases since 2000 and as many as 78,000 have died.

U.S. experts don’t have complete totals for Americans, but partial numbers paint a serious picture:

• Hantavirus, which is carried by rodents and can cause acute respiratory problems or death, has sickened at least 317 Americans and killed at least 93 since 1996.
• More than 770 people have been sickened since 2000 with tularemia, a virulent disease that can be contracted from rabbits, hamsters and other rodents. At least three people have died. The plague, another animal-born disease, has sickened at least 22 Americans and killed at least one.
• Three transplant patients in New England died last year after receiving organs from a human donor who had been infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus from a pet hamster. There have been 34 U.S. cases since 1993.
• More than 210,000 Americans were sickened between 2000 and 2004 with salmonella, and at least 89 died. Most infections come from contaminated food — but up to 5 percent have been linked to pets, especially such reptiles as iguanas and turtles. And last year, at least 30 people in 10 states were sickened with a drug-resistant form linked to hamsters and other rodent “pocket pets.”

Some of the scariest diseases to emerge since 2001 also have been tied to exotic animals: One of the first times the deadly Asian bird flu reached the West was in eagles smuggled aboard a plane to Europe. Likewise, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is believed to have jumped to people from caged civet cats in a Chinese market. The cats are believed to have gotten the virus from bats.

Paris Hilton's lesson
Carroll, the disease hunter, knows the dangers well. For the past three years, he has traveled the globe tracing the origins of a monkeypox outbreak in 2003 that sickened dozens of adults and children in the Midwest.

That disease, related to smallpox, is believed to have spread to people from rodents imported from Africa as pets. While no victims died, scientists are eager to understand the disease so they can stop a future outbreak.

Another newly discovered threat involves a current rage among exotic pet owners: a small carnivorous mammal with sharp teeth called a kinkajou. The nocturnal, tree-dwelling animals originally from Central and South America’s rain forests have a dangerous bite — as Paris Hilton recently learned.

The actress used to carry her pet kinkajou named “Baby Luv” on her shoulder as she partied. This summer, Hilton landed in an emergency room when Baby Luv bit her on the arm.

The concern about a bite is real.

In 2005, a kinkajou bit a zookeeper in England on the wrist. The keeper’s hand became infected, and she almost lost her fingers, said Dr. Paul Lawson, a University of Oklahoma microbiologist who first identified a new bacterium specific to kinkajous.

The first antibiotics doctors prescribed didn’t work, so a combination of several was used to stop the aggressive infection.

Scientists worry that most Americans are ignorant of the threats, and the government’s defenses are limited.

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