Bearded Dragons and Salmonella: What the 2025 CDC Outbreak Means for Family Reptile Care

In late 2025, the CDC investigated a multistate Salmonella outbreak linked to pet bearded dragons that sickened at least 20 people across 14 states, hospitalized more than half of them, and was tied to one death. The direct answer for reptile-owning families: bearded dragons are wonderful beginner pets, but they can shed Salmonella bacteria even when they look perfectly healthy — so hand hygiene and a few handling rules matter far more than most new owners realize, especially in homes with young children.

Two domestic bearded dragons basking together on a log in their habitat
Two bearded dragons basking together. Photo by Tao54tao, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bearded_dragon_pile.jpg), released into the public domain.

Updated September 25, 2026. Every figure below was read on that date from the agency, regulatory and veterinary-reference pages listed at the end. Case counts and dates are stated as each source states them; nothing here is a price, a rating or an estimate of our own except the arithmetic that is labelled as such.

Two outbreaks, two records, and why the difference matters

Anyone searching this subject runs into a problem the agencies never resolve on one page: there are two recent CDC records about bearded dragons and the same rare serotype, and they describe different years.

RecordIllness datesCases / statesMedian ageDeaths
MMWR 74(31), published Aug 21, 2025Jan 8 – Oct 31, 202427 in 14 states (26 confirmed in 13)1 year (range ≤1–67)none reported
Outbreak page posted Dec 19, 2025 (closed)May 26 – Oct 22, 202520 in 14 states6 years1 (Kentucky)
Earlier wave described inside MMWR 74(31)2012–2014160 cases over 35 weeksnot publishednot published

So the phrase “the 2025 outbreak” can mean either the 2025 illnesses on the outbreak page, or the 2025-published report on 2024 illnesses. They are separate investigations of the same strain, and MMWR 74(31) says plainly that it describes illnesses appearing “10 years after” the strain was first tied to bearded dragon exposure. That decade-long persistence is the fact a buyer should weigh, not any single case count.

The age curve is the finding, across four separate investigations

Read one outbreak and the age pattern looks like coincidence. Read four and it stops looking like one. The comparison below puts each bearded-dragon or lizard outbreak against CDC’s own general-population benchmark: in FoodNet’s 2024 preliminary data, 2,769 of 9,219 laboratory-diagnosed Salmonella infections led to hospitalization — 30.0 percent. The multiples in the third column are this article’s arithmetic on the two published shares, not an agency statistic.

InvestigationHospitalizedvs 30.0% baselineAge concentration
S. Uganda, bearded dragons, 2022 (44 cases, 25 states)15 of 44 (34%)1.14×not published
S. Vitkin, lizards, EID 2024;30(2) (14 cases)5 of 13 (38%)1.28×78% under 1 year
S. Cotham, 2024 illnesses (MMWR 74(31))10 of 24 (42%)1.39×65% under 5; 50% under 1
S. Cotham, 2025 illnesses (outbreak pages)9 of 20 (45%) or 9 of 17 (53%)1.50× to 1.76×50% under 5; 40% under 1

Two things in that table deserve to be said out loud rather than smoothed over. First, every one of the four investigations sits above the general-population hospitalization share, and the two most recent sit farthest above it. Second, CDC gives two different hospitalization rates for the same 2025 outbreak on two of its own pages: the summary page reports 9 hospitalizations out of 20 cases, and the detailed investigation page reports “9 of 17 people” with hospitalization status known. Neither is wrong — they use different denominators — but a reader who quotes one and a reader who quotes the other will disagree by eight percentage points.

How much of the country’s salmonellosis actually comes from animals

Here the honest answer is smaller than the headlines and larger than pet owners assume. CDC puts the national total at about 1.35 million Salmonella infections a year. A CDC journal study using structured expert judgment splits nontyphoidal Salmonella by route: foodborne 66 percent (uncertainty interval 48–81), animal contact 11 percent (3–24), environmental 9 percent, person-to-person 7 percent, waterborne 6 percent.

Applied to the 1.35 million figure, that 11 percent central estimate is roughly 148,500 infections a year from animal contact of every kind — poultry, rodents, dogs, reptiles, farm visits. The interval is wide enough to matter: the low end is about 40,500 and the high end about 324,000. Those three numbers are this article’s multiplication, and the width is the point, not the midpoint.

Note also that the same paper’s 66 percent replaces an earlier published estimate of 94 percent foodborne. Two CDC-published figures, twenty-eight percentage points apart, for the same quantity. The older one was not careless and the newer one is not final; the methods differ. If you must err, err toward the estimate that treats animal contact as non-trivial, because the cost of over-washing your hands is nothing and the cost of under-washing them shows up in the table above.

Where the reptile-specific estimate went, and why nobody refreshed it

Search for a reptile-attributable number and you will land on 74,000 infections a year. It is real, and it is old. A December 12, 2003 MMWR states that reptile and amphibian contact accounts for 74,000 — 6 percent — of roughly 1.2 million sporadic annual Salmonella infections. An earlier MMWR, November 12, 1999, gives approximately 93,000 cases, 7 percent. Restated against CDC’s current 1.35 million denominator, 74,000 is about 5.5 percent.

The current CDC reptile page carries no such figure at all. So the widely repeated 74,000 is a 2003 estimate against a retired denominator, and the only competing agency number is four years older still. Anyone citing it — including this article — should say so.

A negative culture is not a clearance

The instinct of a careful new owner is to have the animal tested. Every relevant authority says that money is wasted, and they say it in unusually flat language.

  • CDC, on the veterinary route: a veterinarian “will not be able to prevent your reptile or amphibian from shedding Salmonella” because the bacteria are normally found in healthy animals.
  • CDC’s journal, on the diagnostic route: a negative cloacal or fecal specimen does not mean the reptile is free of Salmonella, and people should assume any reptile could be carrying it. The same paper notes that stress increases shedding frequency — which is exactly what a new home, a new enclosure and a vet visit supply.
  • AVMA, as policy: “Testing and treating reptiles, amphibians, hedgehogs, or poultry for Salmonella generally is not recommended.”
  • Merck Veterinary Manual, on eradication: attempts to eliminate the organisms from reptiles and their eggs “have been unsuccessful and are not recommended.”

A 2001 veterinary review hosted by the University of Illinois college of veterinary medicine puts a number on why: in an enrofloxacin trial, 100 percent of 20 animals cleared initially, but only 65 percent were still culture-negative at 70-day follow-up. Treatment that works for ten weeks and then does not is worse than no treatment, because it buys a false sense of a clean animal.

The claim to stop repeating

A single carriage percentage — “up to 90 percent of reptiles carry Salmonella” — circulates widely and appears in no primary source that could be located for this article. What the same 2001 veterinary review actually reports is taxon-specific and scattered: tortoises 70.2 percent, lizards 37.5 percent, snakes 29.6 percent, wild Panamanian lizards 29.4 percent, zoo chelonians in a 12.1–50.5 percent range. High to low across those groups is a 2.4-fold spread, and none of the figures is bearded-dragon-specific. Agencies describe shedding as intermittent and publish no duration for it in any species; do not accept a number of days or weeks from anyone, including this page.

The turtle ban is the only experiment anyone ran

There is exactly one place in the record where a household-composition rule was imposed nationally and its effect was estimated. Since 40 FR 5620, dated February 6, 1975, federal regulation at 21 CFR 1240.62 has barred commercial sale of viable turtle eggs and live turtles with a carapace length of less than four inches, with narrow exceptions for scientific, educational and exhibition use and for export. CDC credits that single rule with preventing an estimated 100,000 Salmonella infections among children each year.

Hold that against the reptile-attributable total in the section above and the arithmetic is uncomfortable: the prevention credited to one product rule, 100,000, is about 1.4 times the entire 74,000 estimated annual reptile-attributable burden that remains. Both numbers come from CDC. They cannot both be current and consistent, and the agency does not reconcile them anywhere findable. What survives the inconsistency is the direction: removing one small, handleable, child-attracting reptile from the retail channel moved the number a great deal.

Household by household, what the agencies actually recommend

The recommendations differ by source in a way that matters if you are citing them to a skeptical family member. CDC addresses households. AVMA addresses facilities. Conflating them overstates the veterinary position.

Who is in the homeCDC’s published positionAVMA’s published position
Child under 5Recommends children under 5 avoid contact; reptiles “aren’t recommended” for such households; consider another petClose supervision; not in the child’s bedroom; no household prohibition
Adult over 65Higher-risk group; reptiles not recommended for the householdExtra precautions; avoid cleaning habitats
Weakened immune systemHigher-risk group; reptiles not recommended for the householdExtra precautions; avoid cleaning habitats
Childcare centre, nursing home, palliative careCovered by the higher-risk guidanceExplicitly “not recommended” for these settings
Healthy adults and school-age children onlyNo recommendation against; hygiene guidance appliesNo recommendation against; hygiene guidance applies

One detail from the 2024 case notes cuts against the most common mental model. Nine of the children who fell ill had only indirect contact with a reptile. Telling a toddler not to touch the dragon therefore addresses the smaller half of the route; where the animal is allowed to walk, and what gets washed in which sink, addresses the larger half.

Tip: Keeping enclosure cleaning out of the kitchen is easier with dedicated equipment that never migrates — a separate tub, tongs and a reptile-safe cleaner kept with the habitat rather than under the sink. Searching reptile habitat cleaner and disinfectant turns up the category; choose by label directions and contact time rather than by claims. (These are Amazon Associate links — we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.)

Measurable thresholds for a first 60 days

New owners fail on judgement calls, not on knowledge, and the failures cluster in the first two months because that is when the animal is newest, most stressed and most likely to be shedding. These are the thresholds that are actually published as numbers, with the source behind each.

  • Under 5 and under 1. The two age lines that appear in every outbreak record: 65 percent under 5 in the 2024 cases and 50 percent under 1; 50 and 40 percent in the 2025 cases; 78 percent under 1 in the lizard outbreak.
  • Over 65. The upper age line CDC names alongside the under-5 line.
  • At least 60 percent alcohol in hand sanitizer where soap and running water are unavailable, with children supervised to prevent ingestion.
  • Four inches of carapace — irrelevant to a dragon, decisive if anyone in the family is also considering a small turtle. It is a federal sales prohibition, not advice.
  • Zero is the number of enclosure-cleaning operations that belong in a kitchen sink, and zero is the number that belong in a microwave used for food, including thawing frozen feeders. Waste water goes to a toilet, not a sink.
  • Change clothes, not just wash hands, before holding an infant after handling. This is a specific recommendation in the 2024 case notes, and it is the step most often skipped.
  • Three to six months of quarantine for a newly acquired animal, per Merck’s reptile management guidance — a window that happens to cover exactly the period when a household is still forming its habits.

What the record supports, if the decision is still open

Weighing only what is published: if the household contains an infant, the defensible reading of CDC’s own language is that this is not the right animal yet, and the reason is not squeamishness but the age distribution in four consecutive investigations plus a hospitalization share that ran 1.14 to 1.76 times the general-population rate. If the youngest person in the house is school-age and no one is immunocompromised or over 65, the published guidance does not argue against a bearded dragon at all — it argues for a fixed cleaning location, separate equipment, and a clothes change before handling anyone small who visits. And if a dragon is already in the house and a baby is on the way, nothing in the record supports rehoming the animal; the record supports moving the enclosure out of bedrooms and food areas and making the wash-and-change step non-negotiable before the baby arrives, which is the earlier and cheaper intervention either way.

The cost nobody quantifies is worth naming. The agencies publish no figure for how much any individual household practice reduces risk. The only intervention with a number attached is a federal product ban, and even that number sits awkwardly against the agency’s own burden estimate. So the practices above are defensible on mechanism and on outbreak case notes, not on measured effect size, and anyone who tells you they cut risk by a specific percentage is inventing it.

This article summarizes publicly available agency, regulatory and veterinary-reference material as of September 25, 2026. It is general information for the United States, not medical advice for a person or veterinary advice for an individual animal. The federal guidance and regulations cited here apply in the United States and may differ elsewhere. If anyone in the household develops symptoms, contact a clinician; for the animal, contact a veterinarian experienced with reptiles.

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