[roel_v]

"Foxes and other wild animals shit on every field, and they often carry parasites."

I've wondered about this. Fox tapeworm is very common (30% of all foxes in many areas in North-West Europe carry it last time I checked) and (the scary part) for humans, it can cause lethal liver failure 10 years after infection. Not 'lethal' is in 'flu lethal' - like 'might cause you to die in specific circumstances, when untreated, and when you were unhealthy already anyway' - but rather 'will certainly kill you in a painful way, very difficult to diagnose, no known effective treatment'.

So the advise is 'don't eat berries or mushrooms that grow in the wild below waist height'.

However, many/most fruit farms have fruit growing at that height, and the standard cleaning procedures don't remove worms (e.g. vaccinium isn't washed at all, too fragile). I know for a fact foxes (sometimes) enter these farms, I've seen some with my own eyes. How does this work from an epidemiological point of view? When devising health warnings, are there separate measurements for incidents caused by fruit picked in the wild, and from farms? Or is this just one of those things where everybody shrugs and says 'we don't have a better solution' and hope for the best?

On the off chance anyone doing epidemiology research is reading this, this sort of situation must be common; how is that dealt with?