New rule for kids at petting zoo: Look, don't touch

I've always liked animals, and one of the things I always liked as a kid was any kind of petting zoo. Even if it was hanging around a bunch of goats and sheep, it was really cool. Just a great part of being a kid.

Now, parents are advised to let their young ones look, but not touch. Something about disease.

From the BBC:

...under-fives should not be allowed to touch animals at petting farms, a diseases expert says amid E.coli fears over four sites ...

OK. We make sure our youngsters are protected. Don't play in the mud. Use your hand sanitizer (but don't huff it). Take this antibiotic if you have the sniffles.

Something's wrong here. As kids, we drank from the neighbor's garden hose. We shared a Coke several ways, passing the bottle from hand to mouth -- and those who worried about germs would wipe the mouth of the bottle with a bare hand. We'd play baseball games at the end of the street, scatter when a car pulled up, and sometimes kept score. The only real danger there was knocking the ball in one neighbor's front yard, because there was a rumor he cooked and ate children.

Good thing there's a statute of limitations on such things, or DSS would be after our moms and dads today.