At this weekend’s Lake County Fair, a scheduled petting zoo will be replaced by racing pigs, Local 6 News reports. AgVenture Farm Shows, the petting zoo who was supposed to be providing the animals, is currently under fire as the likely source of an outbreak that has sickened dozens of people throughout Central Florida.
The infections and resulting kidney failure have been linked to petting zoos run by the Plant City-based company at the Central Florida Fair, Tampa’s Florida State Fair and the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City.
“The whole fair industry just feels for all of the families who are going through this,” Fair manager C.E. “Happy” Norris said, who expects tens of thousands of people to attend this year’s event. Even without the petting zoo, the Lake County Fair has decided to add four new hand sanitizers since the outbreak. There will also be new signs reminding people to wash their hands while at the fair.