mystery illness at meat processing plant - Mayo Clinic stumped

[donsu]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng


Mayo Clinic physicians hope to find a diagnosis for a mysterious illness discovered at an Austin meat processing plant. But their target might not exist in any medical text. They've begun to realize the condition they're treating in at least 11 employees of Quality Pork Processing Inc. could instead end up classified as a new illness. On Friday, for the first time, they gave the unexplained neurological symptoms a tentative new name: "Inflammatory peripheral neuropathy." The moniker, which describes symptoms like numbness, tingling and pain, isn't intended as permanent or even to suggest a classification of the illnesses. But a term must be found that's accurate because the state agency that oversees wellness in the workplace, the Minnesota Department of Health, as late as Thursday had continued calling the illnesses Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), with a mix of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) and undetermined sicknesses. But the Mayo physicians say none of the Austin workers actually have CIDP. "We want to back away a bit from that diagnosis," said Dr. P. James B. Dyck, a Mayo neurologist. The workers don't have classic CIDP symptoms, he said. But all 11 have unexplained neurological problems. One has spinal and one has muscular problems that seem a little different from the others.

Instead of CIDP or GBS, the illnesses together can probably be best classified as "inflammatory peripheral neuropathy," said Dr. Daniel Lachance, a consultant in Mayo's Department of Neurology and Neuroimmunology. Investigators remain uncertain what triggers the illness, how the trigger reaches the body or how the illness takes hold. Chief among potential causes would be exposure to something that causes the body's own immune system to attack itself, which Dyck and Lachance say is the most-likely scenario. Other possibilities include the unlikely random chance or an infection workers get from being near hogs during processing. But those two explanations are unlikely, although the second is worth considering. For now, there's only one certainty. "These people have peripheral neuropathy," Dyck said. The official number sickened may soon grow to 13 because two more workers are undergoing tests to see if they, too, have the symptoms, the doctors said. Everyone sickened worked with hog heads, Dyck said. No other commonality exists. "We're struggling for a name, and I think that's one of the problems in trying to communicate this to the public," Lachance said. For now, the doctors have settled on "inflammatory peripheral neuropathy." Eating pork is safe, Lachance emphasized. A large population eats the meat, with nobody exhibiting the symptoms experienced by the QPP workers, he said. At the plant, 13 of the 1,300 workers either have the symptoms or are being tested.)
-------------------------

[Horse with no Name]

1. Dealing with the brains of animals fed genetically altered food

It is quite possible that it is a new disease.

But I have a feeling it isn't the first or the last time we will see it.

[donsu]

2. agree

nt

[kestrel91316]

8. I don't think the pig feed has anything to do with it, personally.

I am thinking it's the newer (?) technique of power blasting (and aerosolizing) the brain tissue that's the problem.....

[undergroundpanther]

19. Umm

Pig feed is part of the problem I think. It contains meat that is a low grade from different animals.Industries like rendering and chemical companies do not have decent regulations. And protien meal comes from rendering plants,that is one way that pig brain mist can be made more toxic or have prions,That along with the horrific chemical and biological toxic stew that rendering is,and the contamination is a consequence of being inside a factory hog farm.


From Smithfield's point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken
together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. Industrial pig waste also contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.
Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.

Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as"overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow
mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:EGBUZt3HH8cJ:regionalworkbench.org/USP2/pdf_files/pigs.pdf+pig+farm+pink+lake&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

[kestrel91316]

20. Lots of word soup there. I'm talking about the epidemiological evidence

that this involves brain tissue being aerosolized.

The only people at the factory who have this were involved in a specific part of the process.

Methinks you are just cutting and pasting rather than logically evaluating.

[Horse with no Name]

24. that may be true

I didn't know that that was the process.
Eweee.

[undergroundpanther]

28. There is alot of stuff

In the air at a hog farm.
I am not just cutting and pasting I have read these stories.
And I actually do look into this stuff.Why Because I hate what corporations do to this world.I hate the sickness that is industrialized civilization.And I am curious as to why things are as they are. I saw and read some things as a kid that impressed me made me wary, of industry and so I seek to learn rather than fear it or deny it.

This is an abstract,the full article is worth looking at.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4979/is_200409/ai_n18176806
more on pig dust
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-111200672.html

Here is more about farm dust.
http://www.goveg.com/ffAndEnviro_respiratory.asp

The feed dust contains meat and bone meal, that from rendering plants. Rendering plants that do not have the time or workforce to sit there and segregate out cow spines or infected pig brains, flea collars or plastic from the staggering amounts of dead carcasses and meat they process..
http://www.answers.com/topic/meat-and-bone-meal

Rendering has a host of contaminants and hazards and it isn't wild speculation I'm pointing at here.It's an industry that is overwhelmed and doing a form of recycling, that if not done would be a horrid situation yet because of this industry and what humans produce,in this consumer culture we have, which is too much period..Of course with lifestyles of excess there is excess waste. So what to do with it? Some try to get people to think it's ok to feed rendering plant meat and bone meal to the animals on farms because protein is protein regardless of where it comes from.And that shortsightedness of the rendering industry,a deliberate selective blindness and an unwillingness of people to look at things that are gross upsetting or downright horrific ,because it makes them feel bad ,is a real problem for us all.

From the ugly reality to finished "products" Each link below shows how a rendering plant is presented depending on what side is being shown to whom.

http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=499&journalID=58
http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/cats_bse_rend.html
http://www.themanufacturer.com/us/energybusiness/article.html?article_id=31
http://www.americancapital.com/news/newsreleases/2004/pr20040624a.html
http://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/company.cfm?company=485777

[flashl]

3. rosebud57 reply in similar thread: google Scrapie & sheep

Scrapie is a transmissible degenerative disease of the
nervous system of sheep characterized by a long
incubation period and a protracted, debilitating
degeneration of the central nervous system. Changes
produced in the brain are microscopic. There is no
inflammatory response and no immunity produced by
the disease.

[originalpckelly]

4. Hogheads, eh?

Sounds like some type of prion based disease.

[kestrel91316]

9. Nope. These people are eventually recovering, not progressing to death.

I guarantee you the pathologists have looked at LOTS of pig brains now and not found a prion to blame.

This is PERIPHERAL neuropathy, not CENTRAL nervous system disease. Whole different can of worms.

I find myself wondering about a new strain of the pseudorabies virus, however........one that would cause peripheral neuropathy rather than "mad itch".

[undergroundpanther]

12. And chemicals used in hog farming can cause symptoms in workers .

And so can a shit load of bacteria, viruses,gases,dusts, fumes, and who knows what else.

[theHandpuppet]

32. Very interesting post

Thanks for the post. Could you tell us more about the basic differences between peripheral neuropathy and central nervous system disease? And what is "mad itch"??

[undergroundpanther]

36. Here ya go.

Peripheral neuropathy is caused by alot of things.Stuff like infections, toxic substance exposures,a stroke,some of this sort of neuropathy might be caused by spinal injuries or nerve injuries. It involves how the brain and spinal cord send and interpret the signals coming from and to the body through the nerves.When this process is messed up or interfered with some way the body feels a signal or sensation that is wrong,or won't shut itself off unlike a normal stimulus response would do where the offending cause of the sensation stops. So you could feel a burning pain on the skin without there being an outside cause for the burning sensations because it's caused by the spine and/or brain not being able to process or regulate the signals coming to and from the nerves in certain areas of the body....because they are damaged or diseased or whatever.


Central nervous system disease is something caused by an infection that impacts the whole nervous system itself in a generalized way. Like Alzheimer's,brain cancer or meningitis.It's effects can be temporary or permanent,depending on how much damage the infection does to the brain and spine.Some diseases that effect the central nervous system if caught early enough can be treated and may leave a person's brain and nervous system undamaged. Others are debilitating,permanant and cannot be cured like Parkinsons. Some the symptoms can be managed if the diseasde cannot be cured,some damage done can be managed after the infection is cured..Central nervous system diseases can effect the functioning of the whole nervous system itself,the brain,spine, motor control, or conscious processing profoundly.

Mad itch
The official cause of mad itch is an infection.Like you might get from being around animals. Certain bacterias and viruses can cause it .Toxiplasmosis is an infectious disease that can hurt human fetuses ,it is acquired if pregnant women are handling the litter box for example.Cat scratch fever can be caused by a cat scratch.Herpes can cause mad itch.It can be called pseudo-rabies too.It's nasty.


Itches can be symptom of neuropathy, too,but it is not officially "THE mad itch".

I have neuropathy, caused by an injury I had 11 years ago from being hit by a car going 45 mph in a 20 mph zone with it's headlights off I didn't see the car in the dark when I was walking across the road. My spine was messed up and my neck was fractured by this incident and when you have traumatic injuries like that sometimes the damage you have cause symptoms years later.. The itch I get is a sensation that is not relieved by scratching or any skin soothing creams, because it is caused by my nervous system fucking up because it's been injured and it is not caused by a skin irritant infection or injury to the skin itself. neuropathy is something I have to to cope with and I just hope it never gets worse, but I know it will, my doc is telling me it will,and after all the first part of "degenerative disc disease" is degenerative. My peripheral neuropathy was set in motion by an injury..I have grilled my doctors and researched into this myself so I will know what it is and what can be done or not done.I am terrified of ever becoming addicted to pain killers,so I don't take them unless I am unable to move. For me certain areas of my back,go numb,hurts (bad) and it tingles, feels like pricks,it aches,sometimes it goes into my arms or to my side. The itching happens in one area under my left shoulder,sometimes it itches like crazy.If I scratch it, that sorta relieves it for a second, than it BURNS and itches worse.I hate it. But my itch is not officially mad itch even though it is maddening enough to me.

[theHandpuppet]

47. Thanks for the explanation

I'm very sorry to hear of your own neuropathy and for all those suffering from these conditions I can only hope there's a cure out there that will soon be found. I think neuropathy is probably a lot more common than most people even realize. Too bad all that money now spent on war couldn't go towards medical research.

[Faryn Balyncd]

49. It sounds like this is an "autoimmune" inflamatory disese - - an immune system gone wild with .....

..... the inhalation of massive amounts of aerosolized brain proteins stimulating the creation of antibodies - - which then cross-react with similar nerve sheath tissue (specifically myelin) in the workers. The workers hyperactive immune systems then destroy their own nerve sheaths.

While this is not the same as prion disease, it demonstrates that significant amount of pig nerve tissue is being inhaled (or otherwise ingested or contacted) by workers.

In an era of poorly understood prion diseases, such exposure certainly seems unwise, as prion disease has been present in numerous species (not only mad cow disease, but scrapie in sheep, Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk, and kuru in human cannibals, and and may be responsible for other yet-to-be-discovered neurologic or other ailments in an unknown number of other species).

[postulater]

5. Spamtown USA

We stop at the Spam museum when we go by there.

[eib1]

6. Perhaps the prions

are loose again.

[undergroundpanther]

7. Fuck

When will people realize factory farming has ruined our food supply.And GM has destroyed it further.
Everything is contaminated.

When Wal mart is claiming to sell organic food realize the label organic has a very different definition than it had before the bush administration mangled it.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2006/nf20060329_6971.htm
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200406/NAT20040614a.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/politics?bbPostId=Cz5Ev0JdU2gZtB5hCCYBscaP5CzBlD4aiSObI9CzA459cXT723g

To me buying organic means paying more for the same shit in non organic food just put in a nicer package with less food in it.
Pooh pooh me all you want but there is no way out of this mess that has been made by each of us more or less. Organic food is an oxymoron when it exists on the contaminated earth ,it is watered with the same polluted water, soil and toxic air we all share..

Everything on this planet more or less has been and is contaminated and is becoming more concentrated in the contamination of this ungodly toxic stew,what makes for mutated frogs and gender bent fish and mass die offs will keep concentrating as we keep shitting,keep consuming,keep using chemicals that keep on being manufactured so we can clean our house, bodies and clothes, keeping ourselves feeling 'safe' from contamination. All while the out of control military keeps testing more toxic weapons.As cars we drive keep on going because we all gotta get to work to feed our families, that feeds the machine of civilization that is killing us all off.. as it sustains our 'living today" it kills through the drive to "succeed" in our lives and get a JOB..By our participation and our willingness to work,because we think working for a company is somehow required this contamination that our 'way of life' creates works it's by product poisons right on up the species chain until it gets too much for us to carry in our body burdens and we begin to sicken and die,like the frogs, fish, birds and marine animals before us died, It's just a matter of time you won't see it with your nose to the grindstone and view blocked by the ass of the boss man and optimistic feel good experts alike you know...You cannot buy real safety from a contaminated world if you cannot really quarantine yourself from having to be part of it.

We are all gonna die one day sooner or later,so accept it,or fear it in futility.Everything is contaminated more or less..So to try to buy safety or the illusion of it, is a losing game. We can buy organic and pretend . Or deal with the fact that our dependence upon 'civilization' and fear of our own vulnerability and mortality created this requirement of Jobs created by toxic industries chemical factories,the military, factory farms etc.etc None of these systemic things we invented over the past 200 or so years were thought out with any real foresight and now we suffer for our lack of foresight in what our"wonderful inventions" caused both good and bad , years later.


Never trust a salesman,a forward looking,selective informing,over ambitious, ever optimistic person to even tell themselvers let alone you the truth about all the potential flaws of his wonderful over- valued ideas and inventions.Selective perception can hit all of us, even scientists who are convinced they are 'objective'.
http://www.waterwarning.com/contaminationfact.htm
http://tanadineen.com/writer/writings/abuse.htm

Remember a few years back the scandal when some GM crops(rice or corn it was I think) that Montsano was fucking around with growing outside in an open field, it pollinated and the wind blew that GM pollen right across our border into Canada, the contamination was not contained than,it cannot be contained once it is out in the air.That GM Gaffe, I think still infects the grain which in turn infects anything that eats it including us and honeybees.Make no mistake the agricultural scientists have gone mad and they want to control us by controlling the food supply..Remember these"scientists" damn well know pollen, tumbleweeds, bacteria and wild animals they could give a shit about our man made up borders and our EPA 'laws'..
http://amandlapublishers.org.za/Site/Challenging%20Monsanto.htm
http://www.gene.ch/genet/2001/Dec/msg00018.html
http://www.genewatch.org/article.shtml?als=396422&als=507874
This one is just Ghastly IMHO..
http://www.animalrights.net/archives/year/2002/000146.html
Why it is a potential problem?..
The process of putrefaction begins upon death,48 hours later it's a more systemic putrefaction .
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0122781/science/waysdie.htm
http://www.knowledgenews.net/issues2002/sample3.htm
http://www.enby.se/english/paper/5/the-putrefactive-process-as-the-cause-of-disease-and-death.htm
A speculation..What could eating a cloned from a corpse steak possibly cause as it mutates?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071129121146.htm
Yep denial might feel good but it helps no one,you'd think we'd be able to be honest about that.But, no humanity is not able to bear that kind of honesty about reality the anxiety gets to them and they turn away keep doing the same shit,by-stand and obey doing thier JOB ,until reality forces us to LOOK..

[kestrel91316]

10. Back away from the keyboard for a moment. Pork CONSUMERS

are not being affected by this. It is only the people involved in a particular step in the slaughter/butchering process.

It's a workplace safety issue right now.

[undergroundpanther]

11. Kestrel

Yes I know it is the WORKERS. And no, I won't"back away from the keyboard."Your sarcasm and assumption I cannot think is fucking obnoxious..I hope you don't feel this haughty to the animals in your care. Be assured I will NEVER bring my cats to your office.

Hmm, wasn't it you that tried to convince me awhile back that the pet food contamination issue that was killing alot of pets with kidney failure could NOT possibly be caused by melamine?

And I was convinced it WAS.You pooh poohed me then,while alot of Du people call me paranoid etc. And some of the so called"professional" types here just love pulling the mentally unstable card on me. Armchair shrinks are all over the net.I have been pooh poohed plenty and I don't care what anyone thinks,I say what I say, so get over it..

I tried to explain to you WHY I thought the pet food and melamine issue was the problem, by pointing out how the cooking part of the rendering process of dead animals and plastics ,both things are all tossed into the cooker together.Cooking plastic caused the sublimation of melamine into the broth .And when it is heated up to like 180 to 200 degrees, melamine becomes another chemical ,the one causing the kidney crystals,cyanuranamide,(sp?) that was leaching back into the cooked animals as the batch cools down.(sublimation). Melamine WAS the contaminant I thought was causing the kidney failures,from the cyanuranamide left in the "by products" found in the recalled pet foods... You know that protein meal that looks like brown sugar that pet food and livestock food makers use?..that is part of the end results of rendering, that's where it got in there.It was blamed on China but I think it is a problem inherent in the rendering process ,myself.And Others apparently somewhere,was looking at this in a similar way too.

http://www.petfoodrecallfacts.com/

I have no advanced degree, but I do try to understand things,while others just get rude or don't even bother or they get defensive. I can connect dots some professionals would rather deny exist because I have nothing to lose or gain by stating my own observations in the best way I can.Someone might see something in my clumsy dot connecting and test it, others call me paranoid.I don't care..It may be true or not.But at least I said my thoughts here. It might not be professional sounding or perfect 'science' but dammit I do see issues with this neuropathy..that go farther than the simplistic bullshit that gets shoveled out there as 'the causes'
Here is what I think might be worth investigating..

Neuropathy can be caused by PCB's
http://www.foxriverwatch.com/neuropathy_pcb_pcbs_1b.html

– in 1979, there was widespread distribution of chicken
and egg-based products and fat contaminated with
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) across the United States
of America (USA) and as far away as Canada and Japan.
The contamination was traced to an accidental leakage of
PCBs from a transformer stored in a pig-slaughtering plant
in Montana (35).

Coincidence?

...Twenty years later, a Belgian PCB incident
occurred when a mixture of PCBs contaminated with
dioxins was accidentally added to a stock of recycled fat
used in the production of animal feeds for more than
2,500 farms (poultry, pigs and cattle). This resulted in a
major food crisis, which rapidly extended to the whole
country and could be resolved only by the implementation
of a large PCB/dioxin food-monitoring programme
(14, 15). Several studies concluded that this incident
would probably not have caused adverse effects in the
general Belgian population (15, 121, 141). These episodes
illustrate the need for vigilance on fat recycling and for a
professional risk assessment as a basis for measures to be
taken
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:Ips_llyOXJ4J:www.oie.int/eng/publicat/rt/2502/review25-2BR/15-saegerman655-673.pdf+pigs+neuropathy+contamination+pcb+workers+meat+plant&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2003/09/25/something/index.html
Maybe the pig farm was on PCB land?
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2003/09/02/bad/index.html

Chemical companies LOATHE to even let the public even voice the notion the idea their products are toxic and they are so loosely regulated it is ludicrous.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were used heavily in electronics, plasticizers, and adhesives. They have been banned in the developed world since the 1970s. PCBs are extremely persistent in the environment; they accumulate in fish, and they persist in dairy products, pork, and beef

Dioxin and shit..Pig farms are notorious shit producers,and sometimes air pollutants from shit and shit treatment(chlorine and high temperatures among other things) can cause problems in people exposed to the shit ,symptoms that look like neuropathy..
http://www.besafenet.com/report.html
This spells it out, all the dangers pig farmers could be facing chemically. Including PCB's and Dioxin.
And there's neuropathy caused by exposure to methyl bromide (also called bromomethane).

And... maybe The Nipah Virus...

Nipah virus is a previously unknown virus of the family Paramyxoviridae that has been identified primarily in humans and pigs in Malaysia. In humans, the virus causes fever, severe headache, myalgia, and signs of encephalitis or meningitis. The case fatality rate has been about 40%.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/taf/emergingdiseasenotice_files/nipah.htm

The United States is the world’s second-largest pork producer,942 and Strep. suis infection is also an emerging pathogen in North American pig production, especially in intensive confinement settings.943 According to the Journal of Swine Health and Production, human cases of meningitis in North America are likely under diagnosed and mis-identified944 due to the lack of adequate surveillance.945 The WHO encourages careful pork preparation,946 and North American agriculture officials urge Strep. suis disease awareness for people “who work in pig barns, processing plants, as well as in the home kitchen….”947

http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=49&t=p

About those euthanized pets from your practice.. Are you still sending them to the renderer's in plastic bags?

[DS1]

15. Do you cart your cats around on a regular basis?

I'm just trying to gauge how dismayed kestrel should be about them not arriving at her office one day.

[undergroundpanther]

16. No they stay home most of the time

However they just LOVE being taken on a car ride. They are not scared of riding in a car because I exposed them to alot of different situations when they were kittens. My cats are very sociable,they are leash trained, and love being adored whenever I take them out walking or riding.One, Vinny is by me here purring away.Rustle's conked out on the chair behind me,a furry cat ball with the tip of his tongue sticking out(it's so cute when cats do that) and Sparkle is perching on the stair doing winkyeyes at Vinny.
I already have a vet.I worked for him for 2 summers when I was younger.

[DS1]

17. My dude is well adjusted as well

He'd follow me into town if I let him. I will take him for walks without a leash at night, he just follows along or scoots ahead to check out the place ahead of us. Very quiet town, of course.

Maybe one day I'll get a leash system, and if he's cool with it, I'll take him a bit further.

[undergroundpanther]

22. get him used to wearing a harness first

If you never had your cat on a harness, you may want to let him wear a harness around the house a bit at first to see if he takes to wearing it,leash training will go much better if he is used to a harness. My cats see me pull out the harnesses and they all get happy because it means we are going somewhere.
I recommend using a harness with cats because clicking the leash to the collar is not helpful with leash training a cat. And if the cat gets spooked or gets himself carried away by anything while he's out the harness makes a handy dandy quick grab handle to help you more quickly scoop him up into your arms.

I use this harness type.


http://www.tugnhug.com/
My cats are three different sizes, these harnesses are sized to fit.I use three different colored harnesses and leashes,so nobody gets the wrong one. When they got bigger,they got bigger harnesses same colors.It's a good system for getting harnesses without thinking on 3 happy bouncy cats.

[kestrel91316]

21. Oh, now I remember you. And your viscious anti-vet screeds.

I'll consider the source.

I note you are very good at cutting and pasting other peoples' screeds, too.

I don't ALLOW nasty whackos at my practice, BTW.

[undergroundpanther]

23. I am angry at vets who are not good vets

If you are a good vet I have no complaints of your vet skills..

Some vets are not ethical.Some can be downright sick. But the majority are not. Vets like the rest of humanity can have a few psychopaths in their midst. Think of Frist and what he did to those shelter cats,He makes me sick. OK.
However I hope you don't send the euthanized animals to your pickup service in plastic bags. Because those bags end up being cooked in protein rending plants that make the 'animal by- products' part of what you read on animal feed labels.. These plants process so much dead flesh the workers do not have time to strip off all the plastic. If it is any consolation I am also pissed at supermarkets for leaving their old meat they ship to renderer's in styrofoam and shrink wrap too.

[Critters2]

45. The whole veterinary industry functions as a collective apologist

for the meat industry. If we all stopped eating meat, lots of vets would be looking for work. Vets never forget this. They're not particularly concerned about the animals whose lives are rendered nasty, brutish and short due to the factory farms.

[flashl]

14. Thanks for sharing info.

[siri2k]

13. K&R. n/t

[killbotfactory]

18. How many antibiotics are these pigs subjected to?

If it's not prion based, by second guess would be some kind of weird bacteria. This is strange.

[undergroundpanther]

25. A lot

In Europe, MRSA has been shown to be transmitted from pigs to farmers, their families, veterinarians, and hospital staff treating farm-infected patients. The same pig strain that was detected in Canada has been associated in Europe with serious human illness including skin, wound, breast, and heart infections, as well as pneumonia.

The heavy use of antibiotics in industrialized livestock operations can select for resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. A study in Europe documented that pig farms routinely using antibiotics were more likely to have MRSA than farms with limited antibiotics use.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2007/1106-08.htm
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?&pubmedid=14527837
http://www.thepigsite.com/articles/1/health-and-welfare/442/farm-antibiotics-and-bacterial-resistance-rates-in-food-animals

[opihimoimoi]

26. The Revenge of the Cloven Hooves???

[Mike03]

27. Why I doubt this is prionic disease

Prionic diseases take years and years--possibly more than a decade--to replicate to the point that they manifest as diseases of the brain. The symptoms are dementia-like because prions attack the brain physically, punching holes throughout it.

This new disease is something to take seriously, but whatever this organism is seems to move quickly and attack circulation or create inflammation in the small arteries. I'm not a doctor, but just in reading this info that would be my best guess. Maybe a parasite? Or a bacteria that excretes a toxin causing the neuropathy?

[undergroundpanther]

30. yeah

I am thinking it most likely is an infection, something inhaled in the farm dust, or a chemical contamination issue going on. Maybe all three..

[Mike03]

33. Interesting. Could it be fungal?

Like an aflotoxin (spelling?).

[undergroundpanther]

38. Anything you'd find in pig dust

and any combinations of the nasty things in pig dust could be the cause.What is causing the neuropathy is these workers might not be the exact same thing causing it in other workers that may develop similar problems.That overlapping of several different potential causes with similar symptoms is something to consider too.

[femrap]

48. I read a book a number of years ago

by a scientist from N.C. She taught at one of the schools in that state. All of pig shit was getting into the rivers of NC...the fish were going crazy. And humans who swam, waded or came into contact with the water got such strange diseases...memory loss for one thing. Terrible rashes...It was awful. And it was traced back to all of the factory pig farms and all of the their getting into the water.

Shouldn't it be called 'hog head disease' for us lay people? I haven't eaten factory farm pork in years. I hate Corporations.

[FloridaJudy]

31. Definitely sounds like a toxin

These symptoms are typical of heavy metal poisoning - among other things. I'd dearly love to see a complete tox screen on the affected workers. I'm pretty sure this isn't a prion: as others have noted, the patients seem to recover, which isn't true of any prionic disease discovered so far.

[Mike03]

34. That's interesting about heavy metal toxicity.

You are absolutely right; I'm not aware of anyone, ever recovering from any of the prionic diseases. Some posters were theorizing that the disease could be a result of blowback from brain or spinal material from the animals--that is really the only reason I raised the issue.

Thanks for this info.

[undergroundpanther]

40. The only blowback

I could think that would cause something like that would be from infectious diseases already on the pig or that the pigs were infected with before they were killed,when contamination in the pig , in the air of the slaughtering area or on the pigs skin or in it's hair infected the workers who got sprayed.

[kickysnana]

29. Mayo Clinic doesn't "believe" in chronic Lyme Disease...

Rochester is the most rabidly Conservative part of the state. They have the Federal prison. They got research money to develop the test post LymeRix and they had to have some quick new way to "prove" who had Lyme and who did not so they settled on blood tests that by definition only get 39% if previously positive blood tests, and cannot test for Lyme that is out of the blood stream which it is about 6 weeks in or if all the antibodies are used up fighting a massive infection. Duh!

Mayo is still excellent for surgery and conditions discovered before 1993 but don't expect any help with anything caused by germs including whatever this is. Probably too close to Mad cow for them to take the chance on "discovering" it and having to do something about it.

Up is down. Black is White and the Mayo brothers are spinning in their graves.

[flashl]

35. Mayo input on pig brain disease

From my DU post on same topic

The head of Mayo Clinic's Peripheral Nerve Section is Doctor P. James B. Dyck. He has been seeing workers from the Quality Pork Processing plant who have symptoms of a neurological illness.

Dyck says doctors aren't drawing any conclusions yet, but it's possible that contact with neural material could have led to an autoimmune response. That's when the body's immune system attacks itself.

"I think that's a very intriguing idea," he says. "That neural tissue could have perhaps set up some sort of immune response causing this type of neuritis."

Neuritis is the inflammation of the peripheral nervous system. That system controls much of voluntary and involuntary movement, like picking up a pencil or dilating pupils.

Dyck says researchers have been able to induce an allergic neuritis which eventually led to a nervous system disease. But Dyck says at this point there is no established link between contact with pig brains and an auto-immune response. Another potential cause could be a virus.

Dyck says two more workers are about to be tested at the Mayo Clinic. About half of the 11 workers who have already been tested showed signs of the disease Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (C.I.D.P.). The disease slowly weakens muscles and causes numbness.

However, after examining the workers, Dyck says it's unlikely these workers actually have the disease.

"These patients don't tend to have all the same symptoms and findings," he says. "There are some similarities on some testing, but there are also major differences."

Dyck says the difference is important because C.I.D.P. is a chronic disease. He says so far all they know is that this group of people have inflammatory nervous system diseases.

Mayo Clinic neurologist Doctor Daniel Lachance says it's too early to say whether these patients will recover.

"I can say that I've had one patient who I've followed without treatment who has improved enough to return to the same workplace, not to the same job. I made sure of that," he says.

Minnesota State Epidemiologist Ruth Lynfield says state health department officials are interviewing between 80 and 100 workers at Quality Pork Processing. Those include all of the people who worked at the table where pig heads were processed and a random sample of people from the production floor.

edit: LBN thread on same topic

[rockybelt]

37. But God forbid

that small producers are allowed to do their own testing for things like mad-cow disease. Big, I mean little, government will take care of that. You just go have a pork chop and shut up sonny boy.

[undergroundpanther]

39. Ever hear of Creekstone farms?

by Donald G. McNeil Jr, The New York Times

April 10, 2004
The Department of Agriculture on Friday refused to allow a Kansas beef producer to test all its cattle for mad cow disease, saying such sweeping tests were "not scientifically warranted."

The exporter, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to use newly approved rapid tests so it could resume selling its fat-marbled Black Angus beef to Japan, which banned American beef after a cow slaughtered in Washington state last December tested positive for mad cow disease.


http://www.unknownnews.net/040412madcow.html

[rockybelt]

41. Yes

That is what I was referring to

[Hoof Hearted]

42. Nothing to see here, move along - keep eating the poison, it's perfectly safe

Um. Yeah.

Pass.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

43. How much you wanna' bet it's a man-made chemical intended to kill germs.

It's amazing how much of that 'germicide' shit is sold on the market without ANY proof it helps or ANY proof it doesn't do more harm.

[flashl]

44. Or nanecology for organic gardening?

[knitter4democracy]

46. Okay, they all have a common factor in work and in symptoms and pain.

They're probably in pain, anyway. Not all neuropathy is painful, Hubby says, but still, not fun. Ugh.

So, they all work with hog heads. Is there a way they're having to process them that hurts them somehow? Is this something about doing the same heavy thing a million times a day? Is this from some cleaner they use on themselves? Some chemical around there?