[Megin] I grew up in rural New Mexico and one of the best things about my childhood was having the opportunity to be around animals. And one of the things that is important to remember anytime you’re around farm animals is that they can carry germs that make people sick and still appear healthy and clean. What many people might not realize is that it’s not only food that can make you sick with Salmonella. Animals, like cows and backyard chickens, can also carry Salmonella. And when people interact with the animals and don’t necessarily wash their hands as well as they should afterward, they can also get sick with this germ. In this outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg, what we started to see is that children who worked with cattle- and these were kids who participated in 4H events or other types of agricultural activities- were getting sick with this really severe strain of Salmonella. And when I say it was severe, I mean a lot of these kids were hospitalized.  And the reason for this was probably that the bacteria was resistant to many of the antibiotics that we normally use to treat severe Salmonella infections. When we see antibiotic resistance in an outbreak, it usually means three things. The first is that the infection can be more severe. The second is that the antibiotics we normally use to treat these infections might not work. And the third is that these people might be hospitalized for a longer amount of time. In this outbreak, one of the things we noticed is that the animals, specifically the dairy calves, were also getting sick and dying. And it was the exact same strain of Salmonella that was causing the people to get sick. The health of animals and the health of people are very closely related. Anytime you are working around animals, it’s really important to remember to wash your hands with soap and water. The next thing is you don’t want to bring germs from the outside into your house. So you want to make sure that you remove any shoes or clothing that you used around the animals. And the next piece is if you have young children, especially those that are under the age of 5, you want to supervise them very carefully around the animals, to make sure that they don’t put their hands into their mouth and that they also wash their hands and remove their shoes before going indoors.