Nate Howard for The New York Times
Quality Pork Processors, right, adjacent to Hormel, left, employs 1,300 in Austin, Minn.
Posted on 02/06/2008 9:11:20 PM PST by neverdem
AUSTIN, Minn. — If you have to come down with a strange disease, this town of 23,000 on the wide-open prairie in southeastern Minnesota is a pretty good place to be. The Mayo Clinic, famous for diagnosing exotic ailments, owns the local medical center and shares some staff with it. Mayo itself is just 40 miles east in Rochester. And when it comes to investigating mysterious outbreaks, Minnesota has one of the strongest health departments and best-equipped laboratories in the country.
And the disease that confronted doctors at the Austin Medical Center here last fall was strange indeed. Three patients had the same highly unusual set of symptoms: fatigue, pain, weakness, numbness and tingling in the legs and feet.
The patients had something else in common, too: all worked at Quality Pork Processors, a local meatpacking plant.
The disorder seemed to involve nerve damage, but doctors had no idea what was causing it.
At the plant, nurses in the medical department had also begun to notice the same ominous pattern. The three workers had complained to them of “heavy legs,” and the nurses had urged them to see doctors. The nurses knew of a fourth case, too, and they feared that more workers would get sick, that a serious disease might be spreading through the plant.
“We put our heads together and said, ‘Something is out of sorts,’ ” said Carole Bower, the department head.
Austin’s biggest employer is Hormel Foods, maker of Spam, bacon and other processed meats (Austin even has a Spam museum). Quality Pork Processors, which backs onto the Hormel property, kills and butchers 19,000 hogs a day and sends most of them to Hormel. The complex, emitting clouds of steam and a distinctive scent, is easy to find from just about anywhere in town...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Spam and Vienna Sausages! Now that is some real food!
hog brain mystery
Cat Scratch Fever.
Hmmm, I love Hormel’s breakfast sausage. No, I don’t want to know how it is made, thank you.
i’ve never tasted the spam. vienna sausages (camping trip protein ONCE) are horrid. but, the bacon -yum yum good.
I love spam sandwiches..mmmmmm..
Well, if you haven’t had a fried SPAM sandwich you are deprived!
The aerosolized brain matter might have been inhaled or swallowed, or might have entered through the eyes, the mucous membranes of the nose or mouth, or breaks in the skin.
“It’s something no one would have anticipated or thought about,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who is working as a consultant for Hormel and Quality Pork.
But somebody did think about it:
Deu 14:8 And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcass.
Also see the following links to see how pork may be related to multiple sclerosis, another neurological disease:
Pork, the suggested cause of Multiple Sclerosis
Bizarre medical theories: Eating Pork Causes Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis, latitude and dietary fat: is pork the missing link?
Darn, I read all the way to the end and unlike a good book it had no happy ending.
I hope there is more news in the future.
taste like chicken? or ham? (i’m guessing ham)
I guess that these “brain” jobs are not ones that Americans refuse to do! $12 per hour...
Spam singles - what a great idea!
Get rid of the high pressure air hose.
Find another way to flush the brains out, if it's that important to do so. Or find a way to deal with the skull, without messing with the brains at all.
Myself, I can't stand sweetbreads.
The internal details of this story have pinned my gross-out meter on “overload.”
Good night!
Yes, more like Ham ... taste all its own though. Place a slab of cheddar cheese on top and slip it between two thick layers of lettuce and tomato and you’ve got a ‘diet’ burger. No bread, just wrap it in lettuce with tomato and onion inside. Best to cut your slabs from the wide side after extracting the mass in a chunk from the can.
Cubes are great for Wok stir-fry.
Interesting article, thanks for posting.
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