Do Children gain Beneficial Bacteria from Farm Animals?
Mike McDowall from Edinburgh comments: “What about the research (BBC news recently) showing evidence that children exposed to muck and glaur are more resistant to infection and less prone to allergy problems ? Are these not more common than E Coli 0157? Perhaps we should be taking our under 5s onto farms and encouraging them to suck their fingers. Coprophagy (eating faeces) is commonly an essential mechanism amongst animals for acquiring beneficial gut microflora. “On a personal note, I was the ‘clean’ one in our family. My brother was fed with milk from the house cow. My mother commented that there were a lot of ‘bits’ in it one morning. ‘Oh aye, wee Tom paddles in the milk bucket in his wellies every morning. You don’t give it to the bairn do you?’ Actually he seems to be the one resistant to everything! “My sister had a reputation for putting anything into her mouth: dirt, stones, bits of wood, dog and cat feces, cattle dung, broken glass – you just couldn’t stop her. She too seems
