A trail of tiny turtles

FDA Consumer, July-August, 1997 by Paula Kurtzweil

An anonymous tip led an FDA investigator into a Las Vegas pet store, where he witnessed and stopped the sale of illegal pet turtles to a woman with two young children.

FDA analysis later showed the store's turtles--about 30 of them, which the pet store owner voluntarily handed over--carried Salmonella bacteria. In humans, Salmonella can cause fever, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal problems; in severe infection, it can lead to other complications, even death.

The laboratory finding was not unusual because turtles are well-known carriers of Salmonella. The public health risk this presents was the reason FDA banned sales of baby turtles to consumers in 1975. Young children are especially vulnerable to Salmonella infection from turtles because they like to hold the animals and then will stick their fingers--sometimes even the turtles themselves--in their own or another child's mouth. Babies also are vulnerable, usually through indirect contact from parents or siblings.

Despite the dangers--and the ban--consumers continue to buy the baby turtles as pets, not only in pet stores but at flea markets and street fairs, as well, according to FDA's San Francisco district office. The turtles sell for as much as $15 each in the Las Vegas area, said Luis Chavarria, the investigator with FDA's Las Vegas resident post who intercepted the turtle sale at the pet store last October.

Their appeal is strong, as Chavarria and other FDA personnel discovered. "They're incredibly cute," Chavarria said. "They're the cutest things you ever saw."

FDA personnel were so taken with the turtles that they decided to videotape them for a news piece to warn consumers about the dangers of baby pet turtles. At press time in May, all but 10 of the turtles had died of natural causes, and the agency hadn't decided what to do with the others.

Congress authorized FDA to regulate baby turtles in the early 1970s. At that time, 15 million baby turtles were sold yearly in the United States. Almost 5 percent of U.S. households had them as pets. And the Centers for Disease Control (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) estimated that baby turtles accounted for 14 percent of Salmonella illnesses yearly in the United States.

FDA's ban applies only to turtles with a shell length of 4 inches (10 centimeters) or less that are sold--or given away--to consumers. FDA allows their use for scientific, educational and exhibition purposes and for export to other countries.

None of those purposes was evident when Chavarria, responding to an anonymous phone call, visited the Las Vegas pet store. He walked in to hear a pet store employee pitching the sale of turtle supplies--with the turtles thrown in as freebies--to a woman with young children. Chavarria interrupted to explain the ban on small turtles, and the woman left the store without taking any.

"The employee was very upset at my disrupting her business," Chavarria recalled. "She called the store's owner right away."

The owner arrived within 15 minutes, and Chavarria explained the turtle ban to him. Although he denied it initially, the owner eventually admitted that he knew the sale of baby turtles to consumers was illegal, Chavarria said. But when Chavarria told him he would have to destroy the illegal turtles, as required under federal law, the owner balked.

"He said his employees wouldn't allow him to destroy the turtles," Chavarria said. "He wanted me to take them away."

Without a warrant, Chavarria couldn't confiscate the turtles, so he arranged with the owner to take all the turtles for testing. The owner signed an affidavit admitting to the sale of illegal turtles and surrendered the turtles to Chavarria.

Chavarria took them to his office, and, as directed by FDA's San Francisco district laboratory, planned to destroy the turtles by placing them in the freezer overnight. Typically, live samples must be destroyed before testing, and freezing is considered a humane way of destroying turtles because the cold temperatures put them into a hibernating state. Eventually, they die in their sleep.

But, Chavarria recalled, when he went to put the turtles in the freezer, he couldn't do it. "They looked up at me with their little eyes. I remembered buying them at the five-and-ten store when I was a child. I couldn't put them in the freezer," he said.

So Chavarria shipped the turtles live by air to the San Francisco laboratory. There, employees decided to keep the turtles alive for use in a video.

To test the live turtles for Salmonella, Lorraine Humes, a microbiologist with FDA's San Francisco laboratory, put the turtles into lactose broth, a medium for testing food for Salmonella contamination. She allowed the turtles to swim in the broth for five minutes and then put them back in their aquarium. Tests of the broth showed the turtles were carrying Salmonella.

FDA is offering a video of the testing to area TV stations to show consumers how seemingly safe, cute turtles can actually be dangerous.

FDA is not aware of any illnesses stemming from turtles that may have been sold by the Las Vegas pet store.