11 slaughterhouse workers ill, inhaled pig-brain matter suspected
Inhaling aerosolized pig brains could be hazardous to your health.
In the slaughterhouse floor at Quality Pork Processors Inc. is an area known as the "head table," but not because it is the place of honor. It is where workers cut up pigs' heads and then shoot compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out.LinkBut now the grisly practice has come under suspicion from health authorities.
Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the plant in Austin, Minn. — all of them employed at the head table — developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.
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Great, just great. Now they'll make inhaling aerosol-ized pig brains illegal too. Way to ruin it for everybody else pig-brain farmers.
If you outlaw pig brains, only outlaw pigs will have brains!
well, it makes sense. If you inhale enough brain matter, your body is going to develop antibodies to it. Those antibodies start attacking your own brain cells, and you're screwed.
After seeing "No Country for Old Men," reading about "cattle guns" on wikipedia (because I'd never heard of such a thing), also reading about how cattle guns cause brain matter to go everywhere, and having nightmares about Chigurgh, I be came a pescetarianism.
weightedcompanioncube: how does that make any sense? Unless the persons involved all have some auto-immune problems, your body should not attack your brain cells just because it has detected foreign brain cells.
Um, would it be wrong to ask why they are blowing the brains out of the skull to begin with?
Should I be afraid to ask what they use the brains for? Or is this an extreme case of 'a mind is a terrible thing to waste'?
Ten times or more, yes, I've walked out that door
Get this into your head, there'll be no more
Didn't I blow your mind this time, didn't I, oh
Didn't I blow your mind this time, didn't I?
Jews were right again.
Calyth: As I understand it, once you have antibodies that target a certain kind of animal cell, it's fairly easy for them to mutate into antibodies for the equivalent cell in your own body — most of the cell-targeting design work has been done at that point. This happens when you eat rare meat: you develop antibodies that are good at recognizing raw cow muscle tissue. Eventually, a few of them may develop mutations that turn them against your own raw muscle tissue, and you end up with problems. This is (one reason) why eating rare meat is considered unhealthy.
Not to worry folks. They are just undocumented workers. We can always get more, plenty where they come from. It isn't like they have any rights anyway.
Pig Brains are a commidty.
http://www.slashfood.com/2006/07/06/a-food-i-dont-want-to-eat-pork-brains-in-milk-gravy/
"This happens when you eat rare meat: you develop antibodies that are good at recognizing raw cow muscle tissue."
That's pretty specious. I've looked for studies citing antibodies being formed in response to raw meats, but the only thing I find are responses to infected raw meats. I don't usually use blogs for education, but I am curious about your claim.
2 Girls 1 Pig Brain?
proof again that eating meat - esp. meat from factory farmed animals - is an inherently selfish act. it not only harms the animals and the environment, but the humans who are also involved in the industry. From my blog:
"Here are three examples of labor abuse at factory farms and slaughterhouses:
"In an article entitled Finger-Lickin’ Bad in the February 21, 2006 issue of the online environmental publication Grist, author Suzi Parker documents the exploitive and antiquated sharecropper-type business model used by poultry agribusinesses to dominate the small farmers who actually raise many of the birds sent to slaughter.
"In an article entitled The Chicken Hangers in the February 2, 2004 online publication In the Fray documents not only the horrific working conditions in the poultry industry but management’s hostile (and often unlawful) resistance to unionizing efforts or even basic workers’ rights.
"In a January 26, 2006, The New York Times article entitled Rights Group Condemns Meatpackers on Job Safety (paid subscribers only no link), begins, For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation’s meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights."
Paul McCartney famously said that if slaughterhouses had windows, everyone would be vegetarian. Well, there's a reason they don't have windows...
Hillary
Jere7my, I don't even know how to begin explaining what's wrong with that theory. I can't even search for proof that raw meat doesn't give you autoimmune diseases because it's so out there that nobody has BOTHERED to refute it.
So let's see some proof, please.
ProMED is an extremely important and singular source of information and analysis of such happenings (including how the news story fits with what is known of similar diseases. See the notes for this story). They do not receive governmental funding so *please contribute to them*.
i hereby declare this the most disgusting thing i've seen on boing boing since the 2 girls 1 cup nightmare -- from which i still haven't recovered, thank you very much.
inhaling vaporized pig brains? i'm with #4 -- javier bardem's character was scary enough without *this* image entering into the picture. there's no unicorn chaser sweet enough to fix this one, i'm afraid...
Eating rare meat doesn't cause autoimmune disease ... the other carnivores on the planet do without cooking entirely & they're none the worse for it.
They are becoming zombies.....
BRAINS!!!! BRAAAAAIIIINNNSSS!!
compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out.
Same thing happens to me if I accidentally tune in to American Idol or Deal or No Deal.
While I certainly agree that eating meat is an entirely selfish act, I wonder if such a sentiment doesn't go far enough? With every breath you breath, you're taking precious oxygen away from various adorable animals and peace-loving plants, not to mention your own loved ones. And what's more, when you're done with it, you spit it back out, but with a carbon atom attached to every oxygen molecule, rendering it useless to any other aerobic organisms who might have otherwise been perfectly content to make use of your post-consumer air!
And I'm sure I don't have to tell you what all this carbon dioxide is doing to the atmosphere and to the climate.
To live a truly selfless life means not only giving up eating meat, but giving up breathing as well. True, this may quickly lead to your own expiration, but no one said selflessness came without a price!
"This is your brain."
"This is your brain on 'brain'."
"Any questions?"
I side with the jokesters over the Peta-Sinceres around here. But it's time both groups got together in support of a general sentiment about hoping these ill workers are helped, and get well soon.
PSA-wise... Put the straw down, and walk away from the brains.
Maplecheese et al.:
I remember reading that undercooked meat, because it bears more of a resemblance to your body, brings with it a higher risk of autoimmune trouble, but I can't give you a citation; it's just something that was floating around in my brain, and I may have misremembered the details. Here's a related quote from Prevention magazine, though:
"They found that among 264 subjects, those who averaged 2 or more ounces of red meat every day had almost double the [rheumatoid arthritis] risk of those eating less than an ounce a day. Red meat contains a lot of collagen, which may activate antibodies in people susceptible to the disease. Those antibodies are thought to trigger RA--an autoimmune disorder in which your body attacks itself, breaking down collagen in joints."
[link]
Does cooking break down collagen? If so, that may have been what I was remembering, though it was later refuted in a larger study (http://www.mskreport.com/articles.cfm?ArticleID=1199). Googling [red meat autoimmune] will provide a number of other links, some better than others. I'm certainly happy to admit I misremembered, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "it's so out there that nobody has BOTHERED to refute it" — clearly, someone has spent a lot of money refuting that particular red meat-autoimmune link.
Danegeld said, "Eating rare meat doesn't cause autoimmune disease ... the other carnivores on the planet do without cooking entirely & they're none the worse for it." Actually, Danegeld, wild animals die from horrible diseases all the time. Leaving aside the contentious autoimmune issue, carnivores certainly ingest a lot of nasty bacteria and parasites when they eat raw meat, which we eliminate through cooking. It's not immediately or invariably fatal, obviously but raw meat does carry health risks, which are statistically reflected in carnivore lifespans.
Grizzly. Once again, glad I'm not a flesh eater.
This explains those kids down at the mall sneaking around with a pig's head in their pockets.
if humans were that sensitive to animal flesh products we'd be extinct. Undercooked meat? Probably for the bulk of our existance it was undercooked or maybe even uncooked.
We'd have become exitinct. 'nuff said. Your mileage may vary, but our survival record pretty much presents the fact that as a species we're pretty durable. Individuals may be weaker, susceptible to weird stuff, etc. but as a species we seem to do okay.
Just sayin'.
Prions, I bet it's prions. Ice Nine for biology. Wonderful, just friggen wonderful.
jere7my:
Prevention Magazine!? Are you kidding me? Was that "study" next to the copper bracelet arthritis cure (or is it magnets these days?) or the silver chelation therapy cure for cancer?
NOEN:
I Second your prions theory.
Here's a thought, perhaps just inhaling pig brain vapor isn't causing this. After all, it's just 11 workers, not the entire staff of the "head table". (eewww)
What if particular pigs that were de-brained had some kind of species jumping neurological disorder in their brain matter. That would explain the limited exposure, and the neuro degenerative like symptoms.
Although that doesn't make me feel very good about the bacon I had yesterday...
It's just a guess, I mean it could be anything. A lot of diseases target he central nervous system and here you have a wonderful environment for transmission of just about anything. A high power spray that aerosolizes blood and tissue into the air, all in a non sterile room. It's just begging for opportunistic bugs and virii. "Hey you! Come over here! We've got an oxygen rich culture set up just for you and when you're done infecting everyone in sight, the nice hosts will take you home!"
I knew a gal who worked for the CDC and this would be in her territory. She worked the Dakotas and western Minnesota and boy was she busy during the chronic wasting disease scares a few years ago. I bet the gov didn't tell us the half of it either. And of course, CWD has nothing what-so-ever to do with scrappies, CJD, BSE... yeah, riiiight.
Oh and just because only a few are showing signs doesn't mean it isn't prions. Under normal conditions they take 30 years or so to do their thing. Perhaps the workers that are affected are just the ones who received an extra large infusion?
@ Jere7my, #22
What you're talking about may have been explained in this paper:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/21/12045
This article is a less technical discussion:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030930055440.htm
To summarize, a molecule known as Neu5Gc is present on the outer surface of most mammalian cells, but is absent from human cells (we've lost the ability to produce this molecule sometime in our evolutionary history.)
Consumption of Neu5Gc from red meat causes it to become incorporated into our bodies. This may trigger the immune system to target tissues that are presenting it on their surface.
This provides a plausible explanation for the the higher incidence of rheumatoid arthritis in meat eaters.
As for the inhaled pig brains, dunno.
As far as eating weird foods causing autoimmune problems - generally unlikely. The immune system has mechanisms to handle unfamiliar antigens in food, the name for this process is "oral tolerance".
My immunology is rusty but I think I got that mostly right...
-dcb
That story needed a unicorn chaser!!
One word: Prions.
Remember that word.
Pigs are uncomfortably close to to humans in their biology.
All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue, and all are currently untreatable and fatal. (Think "Mad Cow Disease.")
You saw it here first.
I just hope that this isn't some sort of prion-related disease, cuz kuru and mad-cow are really nasty...
But seriously, YTF are they vaporizing pigs brains in the first place? I know that brain tissue is a very rich and high-cholesterol food, but why demolish it into an inhalable cloud? Were they grinding up all the excess pig parts to use as feed?
This is why I avoid beef and pork at all costs.
Noen: Prevention was where I found the info; follow the links to see where the data came from. The sources (both of the earlier study and the larger one refuting it) seemed pretty reputable.
Dragonet2 said, "if humans were that sensitive to animal flesh products we'd be extinct." I don't think anyone here said that undercooked meat causes human heads to explode on contact. But there are, statistically speaking, health risks inherent in consuming undercooked meat. It's a great way to transmit E. coli, salmonella, trichinosis, and a host of other nasties.
Wastrel: Thanks very much for the links!
jere7my - I accept that there may be some validity to that. It's just that when I see "Prevention Mag" I think "bottom of the barrel health info."
"YTF are they vaporizing pigs brains in the first place?"
Well they aren't quite doing that. What they do is use a blast of compressed air to pop the pig brains out of the skull. Pig brains are valuable. I am sure it's quick and easy. The thing is that in the process a lot of blood and tissue is getting into the air. The workers are breathing that in and some are getting sick. No one knows why right now.
Mr. Armbruster, it is exactly this logic which causes me to eat a great deal of meat (to preserve my strength and virility) and also to carry a hatchet with me at all times when I am walking down the street. I use this to butcher mercilessly anyone who is standing in my path, so that I need not deviate from the most efficient route to my destination, wasting precious energy in the process.
After all, if I am going to be breathing anyway, I'd might as well engage in frivolous murder, contributing to the ten billion or so unnecessary animal deaths annually in the United States as well as to the deaths of hundreds of people who happened to be standing a little too close to the center of the sidewalk while waiting for the bus.
You must admit this is quite reasonable.
Prion diseases develop slowly (it takes years) and the disease is progressive and irreversible - whereas thankfully most of the sick workers are reported to be on the mend. They're responding to treatment that assumes it's an autoimmune disease rather than prions.
My random guess is, if you breathe in aerosolised nerve-cell splatter, some of the material can get right into the bloodstream across the alveolae without first being digested or stewed in stomach acid, and that foreign material is provoking an autoimmune disease similar acute MS.
Yet another amazingly disgusting reason to be a vegetarian.
Its a little known fact that G.W Bush worked on a head table.
Not prions. As #36 said, they takes 10s of years to develop (eg mad cow disease).
More likely bacterial or viral. Pigs are very similar immunologically to humans which is why:
1) they are excellent incubators for flu virus etc.
2) they are used for xenotransplantation (that's Xeno-, not Xeni-) which means transplantation of organs from other species to humans).
3) xenotransplantation is a stupid idea and will probably aid in the appearance of a new virus which will wipe out most of humanity.
4) pigs will take over the world and wreak their revenge.
5) four legs good. two legs bad.
Oh, for heaven's sake. The problem is not with eating meat, it's with unsafe healthy practices and labor laws. I'm not going to be a vegetarian, The Masaai and other meat eating cultures seem to be fine. Though they eat healthy meat with no antibiotics and god knows what like our ancestors thousands of years before us.
If I were a cow, I would have a functioning caecum, appendix and four stomachs. I don't and will eat meat happily and lots of vegetables. There's a reason we have vestigial organs.
I've noticed hard core vegans seem to be missing a few screws in general. I wouldn't be surprised that find out they are missing a few essential amino acids.
Yum, beef, lamb, chicken (though I don't eat pork).
I don't eat pig Red Zebra. Apparently cannibalistic cultures (like the Aztecs) commented on the very similar taste of pig to human flesh and were very enthusiastic.
ummmmm.. Pig brains.....
@ecobore:
Mmmmm.
As a Southerner, I can attest that I have never seen pig brains in a grocery store. I have seen whole pig head, because if they weren't there, how would we get our Christmas tamales?
(I eat beef ones, though. Jew here.)
Unless I am eating at a restaurant, I get all of my meat from organic sources.
That said, if I were looking for some way to be less "selfish", I wouldn't start by limiting or eliminating the intake of foods that my body very well may need.
Science can't seem to reach a clear consensus as to the safety or efficacy of even low-carb diets, but some vegans and vegetarians will have you believe that, despite our canine teeth, humans are somehow automagically better off with no meat at all.
Some of the biggest nutters will do such things as feed their cats vegetarian cat food, even though the animal is obviously a tiny carnivore.
Granted, avoiding the hormones and antibiotics seen in much modern farming is likely a very good idea, but the problem is with modern practices in that regard, not with meat eating in general.
People who feel most passionately about this (to the point that they eschew all meat) would do better to involve themselves in lobbying or politics such that they could effect real change in the industry practices.
Pig brains in vapour....
Wait a second, isn't this a new Heston Blumenthal recipe?
Hello Inox,
There is plenty of science that supports the idea that a diet very low in animal products is healthiest, and that humans don't need animal products at all to thrive. You can read Dr. Colin Campbell's well-respected China study and there are also lots of others (e.g., the Okinawa studies - Okinawans having the highest population of healthy centenarians on the planet).
More anecdotally, the Ornish diet, South Beach, Rice and other popular diets say to greatly limit meat and dairy intake. So, probably, does your non-radical doctor. These days, conventional wisdom is that you only eat a little bit of meat each day, and preferably not every day. Atkins remains the big exception, but a lot of experts find Atkins problematic on many levels.
Especially if you delete industry-inspired and funded FUD (for example, the FDA's faux food pyramid) from your thinking, the conclusions are quite clear. And that doesn't even count the hormones, pesticides, etc., industrial meat is laden with.
i find it quite possible that we evolved to eat a little meat when we could find it (probably carrion), rather than starve to death, but I could counter your canine example with the fact that humans can't handle cholesterol well. If we evolved to eat lots o' meat we would have surely evolved a mechanism to handle the cholesterol.
But you know what's a huge scam? MILK and dairy are huge scams. Think about it...
Hillary
11 people over 8 months?! Why couldn't this be any other known illness/disease? If the people at the 'head table' are working together, they are more likely to pass illnesses between themselves, right?
I think using this as a reason to not eat meat is absurd. I think more information is necessary.
Say what you will about some radical vegans trying to force their cat to eat carrots.. that's a lame argument, and you know it.
I live in a small town, shop at a fairly run-of-the-mill grocery, and eat out when my budget allows. Aside from giving up animal products, I haven't made any colossal or strange changes in my diet-- and unlike meat eaters, I'm not requiring animals to be killed in order to get through my day.
It's true that I can't account for the numerous bacteria, etc that I surely kill every minute of existence... but who can? Is this your best argument?
What this arguments boils down to is that if you can't do something perfectly, you'd rather not try at all. Why not throw up your hands at all the world's problems? Let Bush have his way, let copyright law go to hell, and tell the poor to get a job or shove off; right? You can't solve it all!
One could hardly find a better example of confirmation bias than the anti-meat "conclusions" being proclaimed by some of the proseltyzers here.
There is a curious attitude that infects nutritional purists of all kinds--not just vegans and vegetarians--which combines a broad-brush "just makes sense" sort of logic with an unquestioning acceptance that there is a single, narrowly defined optimum diet that is absolutely right for everyone and that results in unimaginable harm to anyone who deviates from it in the least little way.
To someone with a more scientific attitude toward the truth, who realizes that there is overwhelming data that the diet optimum for humans is enormously broad, it veers between pathetic and hilarious to watch diet purists attempting to argue their cases, seizing on every bit of potentially confirmatory evidence and making up just-so stories as to how this proves their own particular view of the world is the only true and correct one.
Yet the history of science tells us that when the facts are clear consensus is reached very quickly, regardless of how many people the Inquisition threatens to torture. Modern FUD machines have nothing on the opposition that science has faced from religion and government over the past few centuries, and nevertheless, consensus is reached.
But no consensus has ever been reached on the optimum diet, other than general things like "getting enough calories from diverse sources that include sufficient proteins and micronutrients is good." If the diet optimum is broad, this inability to reach a consensus on anything narrower "just makes sense", as food purists are all wandering around in the noise. But then, perhaps that is merely my own bias showing...
Sadly though DaveX, that's what passes for a lot of public discourse these days, esp. in the more public realm.
You use animal products in some way, so you're evil.
You had a joint at some point 40 years ago, so you're unfit to hold office.
Nuclear power in any form is evil, so we can't use that to cut down on carbon emissions. Anyone who argues otherwise is a money-grubbing corporatist bastard.
Wind turbines kill birds sometimes, so we can't use that either.
We beg and harass people and governments in far-off places to grow organic produce at "fair trade" prices using specific farming and harvesting techniques, but then demonize the purchasers here for being earth-destroying food elitists for buying stuff that only rich people can afford and had to be flown in on a 767.
We can't have discussions anymore because that might indicate that there is room to compromise and that would surely give The Other a wedge in which to stomp us into the ground and start a huge Domino Effect that will lead to Utter Ruin.
We ARE effectively throwing up our hands because we want it all with no cost, no effect and no having to make choices or set priorities and make compromises.
Tom,
Apart from the fact that the whole carnivore/vegetarian diatribe IMHO is slightly off topic here, currently the tendency is to a consensus that daily meat consumption does lead to an increased chance of developing bowel cancer.
Furthermore, the meat industry has a *huge* ecological footprint, which is something the world could well do without in this day and age.
Mind you: I'm not a vegetarian, much less vegan. But I do keep my meat consumption to a minimum, and avoid bio-industrial meat whenever possible.
Tom,
I only saw a couple of "food purist" statements here, and nobody saying anything about "unimaginable harm". If you were including me as a proselytizer, you should know that I eat plenty of meat myself — I just brought home some nice thin-sliced capicola and a string of linguiça, actually. There's a big gap between rabid veganism and accepting that red meat brings with it measurable risks.
If we want to talk about what's harming discourse in this country, I'd lay a lot of it at the feet of the false dichotomy, and there's a nice big one in your post: the world is divided into goofy "nutritional purists" and people "who realize that there is overwhelming data that the diet optimum for humans is enormously broad," with no room for people who hold reasonable opinions between the poles.
OMG, dairy is a scam! I'd never really thought about it, but now it's clear that just because humans have been eating products made with other species' milk since Biblical times at least and much of the Western, Middle Eastern, and Indian diets included or were built on preserved dairy like cheese and yogurt and butter, doesn't mean that it's not a total SCAM!!!
Clearly, what has happened here is Big Dairy, with their milk-sodden dollars, have created a time machine that they keep secret from the rest of us which allows them to go back in time and get early civilizations hooked on their creamy deliciousness, to make sure that they can live high on the brain-vapor hog in the present day because their product has since become a staple through much of Eurasia and North Africa!
Scheming bastards!!!
If you outlaw pig brains, only outlaw pigs and Rush Limbaugh will have brains!
But seriously, do we need a proven scientific reason not to inhale aerosolized pig brain? Say it to yourself out loud, slowly. No, thanks.
No employee shold have to inhale it, certainly. I don't care if it's thought to be harmless. It's. Just. Not. Right.
I'm with "flyingdutchman" on the false dichotomy business. It's just sloppy reasoning. IMO.
It's just like the ad absurdam-replacing-the-average arguments I hear all the time. I heard one tonight at a party. A mother got someone to accompany her child 24-7 to make sure he didn't eat any peanuts, to which he's allergic. At taxpayer expense, of course.
"Those crazy liberals are ruining the world!" Never mind that any liberal I know would think this is just completely insane, as this conservative did. But they just assume that the most absurd case that Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh just pitched to them applies to the whole tribe of liberals.
Again: it's just lazy, lazy, lazy.
Somewhere an unemployed robot sits and wipes an oily tear from his metal cheek, saddened that humans are still keeping the best jobs, such as using compressed air to blow hog brains out of skull casings, all to their meatselves.
But above the sad robot floats a cloud, onto which is chromakeyed a slow-motion film montage of happy robots, their shiny metal appendages gleaming in soft focus light through a pink porcinous mist, fulfilled in their duties and service to their other-white-meat-eating masters.
Please, help the Fuji Heavy Industries XK1000 Model PB realize his dream.
I haven't seen this many straw men since the annual North American Wizard of Oz reenactment convention.
Yeah, all right -- it was a stretch.
Isn't the vascular system for the nose especially vulnerable to infections?
Kyle, Bren, Perla, and Jimwich, good comments.
LifeLongActivist (13), I'll bet you say that in all the food-borne infection threads.
mpb (15), I took out your URLs. Anybody who wants to can find that organization on their own.
Igpajo (30), I'm sorry, but I'm out of chasers. You guys have used up my entire stash, so unless you're willing to have me repeat earlier ones, there'll be no more until I get in a new shipment.
Dillo (50), that's one of the reasons I believe in moderating conversations. I want more interesting things to get said.
All this talk about pig brains is starting to make me hungry.
There's a reason God didn't want Humans to eat Pigs.
Keepin' it ital...
If Paul McCartney says it, it must be right.
There is at least one new case of 'pig head virus' as I like to call it.
http://wcco.com/health/pork.workers.illness.2.609174.html and it's still a mystery as to the exact cause.
UPDATE: This mystery illness seems to be affecting Indiana and Nebraska as well.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MN_SLAUGHTERHOUSE_ILLNESS_MNOL-?SITE=SDSIO&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT