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Parents should not allow under-fives to touch animals at petting farms, a microbiologist has said amid E.coli fears involving four sites.
Prof Hugh Pennington said they were the most likely people to touch animals but the hardest to get to wash their hands.
The Department of Health (DoH) said it was not changing its guidance - contact was okay if good hand hygiene followed.
Two petting farms in Surrey, one in Nottinghamshire and one in Devon have shut attractions owing to E.coli fears.
Prof Pennington said that parents should not “abandon the idea of visiting” petting farms, but they should “think very hard” about letting children under five touch the animals.
Hand-washing was “absolutely crucial” to protect visitors to petting farms, and under-fives “haven’t learned how to do it yet”.
“These very young kids are the most likely part of the population to get complications if they get infected,” he added.
But the DoH said its advice remained the same - children could pet animals but should practice good hand hygiene.
“Direct contact is not what presents the risk, it’s what happens afterwards. If you use good hand hygiene and other measures, you hopefully shouldn’t get it,” a spokesperson said.
“Ill health following a visit to an open farm is unusual, even among children, and these risks need to be balanced against the benefits for a child’s education and development that arise from contact with animals.”
Current guidance was under review following the recent E.coli outbreaks, the spokesperson added.
And Miranda Stevenson, director of the British & Irish Association of Zoos & Aquariums, said there were strict licensing regulations for zoos and there were always either gels or washing facilities were animals could be handled.
“The message to parents is to make sure that children wash their hands or put gel on their hands, after they have handled animals,” she said.
“It’s so good for the children - one would hate to get to the stage where we had to stop them doing it.”

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