Investigators are still no closer to discovering how E. Coli bacteria infected 35 people at a tailgate pancake breakfast before the Indiana-Wisconsin Oct. 6 football game, even though the sawdust from the floor of the UW-Madison Stock Pavilion recently tested positive for the bacteria.

Regardless, UW will no longer allow people to serve, prepare or eat food at the Stock Pavilion and are considering banning food at all events where participants come into contact with animals.

“The risk has become too great,” UW environmental health program manager Rick Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We want to err on safety’s side.”

Donita Croft of the Centers for Disease Control said E. Coli is generally spread through food or water that has been contaminated with fecal material from cows.

A second, less likely way for E. Coli to be spread is from human-to-human contact. This is called fecal-oral spread and happens when people with unclean hands share or prepare food.

University Health Services epidemiologist Craig Roberts, said it is very unlikely, but not impossible, that one of the food handlers at the tailgate party was infected with E. Coli and spread it to others that way.

“We haven’t ruled that out,” Roberts said. “But there is no way to scientifically determine that.”

Roberts said it was unlikely because there was no pattern between what people ate and who got infected.

“Person-to-person [spreading of the bacteria] is not common,” Roberts said. “Environmental sources, contaminated food, livestock, particularly dairy cattle, are all more common [ways to be infected].”

It was more likely, Roberts said, that people who were waiting in line may have touched something that was contaminated and then eaten with unclean hands.

Roberts said there seemed to be a correlation between how long people waited in line and how many got sick, but he said he was absolutely certain this was not a result of airborne germs.

“E. Coli cannot be spread through the air,” Roberts said.

However, it was difficult to determine how people had come in contact with the bacteria.

“We haven’t figured that out,” Roberts said. “We probably never will.”

Although the university has made no firm decisions regarding upcoming use of the Stock Pavilion for events, university spokesperson John Lucas has said they will be more careful in the future.

“We are in the process of reviewing all events [scheduled to take place],” Lucas said. “For example, the haunted house that was scheduled was canceled because children are more susceptible to E. Coli.”

UHS also made a strong recommendation that food preparation and consumption not take place in the Stock Pavilion in the future.