Man Dies, Daughter in Coma, from Diseased Pet Parrot
On September 30, 2006, Amanda De La Garza purchased a cockatiel from a PetSmart store in Corpus Christi, Texas. She took the little Australian parrot to the home she shared with her father, Joe De La Garza, 63, only to find out the bird was infected with psittacosis (also known as parrot fever), an avian bacterial infection that can be passed from birds to humans.
Sixteen days after bringing the bird home, Joe De La Garza became ill with flu-like symptoms and soon died. Amanda became so ill with similar symptoms that she was hospitalized for six weeks, spending some of that time in a coma. The De La Garza family thought Joe died from natural causes until an autopsy revealed he, like the bird, had contracted psittacosis, as had Amanda.
Amanda’s medical bills quickly topped the $300,000 mark but, even more important to her, she was too sick to attend her father’s funeral services. Antibiotics eventually won out over the bacterial infection and today Amanda shows no traces of the disease.
The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory confirmed in November of 2006 that the bird had died, too, from psittacosis.
The De La Garza family has recently filed suit against PetSmart in state district court for wrongful death. The family isn’t seeking any monetary gain from the lawsuit at this time. They just want PetSmart and Rainbow Exotics Inc. to stop selling exotic cockatiels and other exotic birds. Rainbow Exotics, based near Waco, Texas, is a supplier of pet animals believed to have sold the cockatiel in question to the Corpus Christi PetSmart store. The family also wants to spread awareness to the general public of the health risks associated with handling exotic birds and other animals.
A spokesperson for PetSmart says the company has plans to “vigorously fight” the lawsuit, saying the risk of contracting parrot fever from a bird is very low and that adequate hygiene in the home and in the bird’s cage minimize even the small risk associated with sharing a home with an exotic bird. She also said all vendors treat birds sold to PetSmart for psittacosis 15 days before delivery.
In February 2008, bird sales were suspended in 950 PetSmart stores in 47 states, including Texas, when a small number of cockatiels being sold in 44 stores tested positive for exposure to or infection with psittacosis. According to PetSmart, the birds were exposed to the bacteria before reaching their stores.
A similar PetSmart suspension of bird sales occurred in December 2007, again due to psittacosis.
The Corpus Christi PetSmart store where Amanda De La Garza bought her sick bird in 2006 is still selling cockatiels.
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While the chance of contracting disease from a captive bred bird is real, it is small. In terms of health risk according to the Centers for Disease Control “Man and woman’s best friend bites more than 4.7 million people a year,” with “800,000 Americans seek medical attention for dog bites; half of these are children. Of those injured, 386,000 require treatment in an emergency department and about a dozen die.” So while awareness of rare zoonoses (diseases from animals to people) does save lives, taking drastic measures to stop a few individuals from being ill is a backward use of resources when literally millions are injured by dogs.
Last summer I had a suspected case of Psittacosis (it can be hard to diagnose once antibiotic treatment has begun) which myself and my doctor think came from a dead owl carcass I was dissecting in a lab. 14 days after cutting up the owl I came down with a sudden high fever, developed right middle-lung pneumonia, and a host of other minor symptoms. When the fever sustained itself for three days and began climbing I went to the emergency room and got heavy antibiotic treatment with two different classes of drugs to make sure whatever was infecting me got killed. It was a slow, long recovery, but it was a fluke, a totally unpredicted fluke. But I certainly don’t want to ban pet birds–they don’t kill a billion songbirds a year in our country like cats do (Gill’s Ornithology, 2nd Edition) or send 800,000 people a year to the doctor like dogs do. And even when they do get loose and go feral, a flock of escaped pet parrots won’t exterminate native species, like the release of the mongoose and rat did in our very own American Virgin islands.
While the risk of contracting psittacosis may be small and compared to othe causes of death related to animals kept as pets, there are many reasons PETsMART should stop selling birds - the inhumane condidions under which these birds are mass produced for one… Not to mention that they dose these birds with antibiotics as a prophylactic - this is a practice that is known to lead to antibiotic resistance. This practice has been critizied in the poultry industry and other animal agriculture as a very dangerous practice that threatens the effectiveness of antiboitics to treat disease - the use of antibiotics in bird mills is no different.
There are plenty of birds available in rescue for those individuals who think they are prepared to care for a bird (which has a long life span and requires special care) and no locking them up in a cage 24-7 and feeding them seed is not proper care.
[...] another version of the story. MedHeadlines - Man Dies, Daughter in Coma, from Diseased Pet Parrot Apparently the woman fell into a coma and her medical bills are over $300,000. Yet they’re not [...]