Another Reason To Be Careful About The Meat You Eat

Paralysis Outbreak In Meat Workers Handling Pigs' Brains

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update last week to its investigation of an outbreak of a paralysing condition that is affecting certain meat processing plant workers who use compressed air to remove the brains from the heads of pig carcases.

The illness is called Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy (PIN) and its symptoms range from acute paralysis to gradual increase of weakness on both sides of the body, which in some cases happens over 8 days and in others over 213 days. The symptoms vary in severity from slight weakness and numbness to paralysis that affects mobility, mostly in the lower extremities.

The current thinking, which is yet to be proved, is that the meat workers are being exposed to splatter and aerosol droplets of pig brain tissue created by the compressed air blast, which liquefies the tissue before expelling it from the pig skull. Once inhaled, small particles of pig brain tissue are then is attacked by the worker's immune system which uses antibodies that also attack the body's own almost identical human nerve tissue.
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The MDH conducted a full and detailed investigation of the plant, which employs some 1,200 workers and processes 18,000 pigs a day. They interviewed workers and looked at health records, and found a total of 12 employees who have either been confirmed as having PIN (8 so far), probably have it (2), or possibly have it (2).
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All 12 affected workers said they either worked at or had contact with the area of the plant where pig heads were processed (called the "head table"). The head table was in an area of the plant known as the "warm room".
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A puzzling feature of this outbreak was raised by the plant owner at one of the affected plants, who started as a floor walker in 1970. He told the Washington Post that they had been "harvesting pig brains since 1998, using the same method and the same 70-pound pressure air hose." So why did the outbreak not take place ten years ago, when they started using the method? The plant owner said that was the "million-dollar question".

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Now, dear Messianics, I am going to have to strangle the first person to tell me that this can't happen to us because we only eat clean food. Industrial meat factories are all capable of this kind of disaster.