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'MEAT'
THE CULPRIT
Medical
Mystery Solved In The Slaughterhouse
A. Chris Gajilan
AUSTIN,
Minnesota (Feb. 28) -- A mysterious nerve disorder that hit some
slaughterhouse employees with debilitating symptoms apparently was
caused by inhaling a fine mist of pig brain tissue.
While eating pig brains isn't dangerous, inhaling fumes from particles
of pig brain matter can be, scientists say.
A translator assisting Spanish-speaking patients helped to expose
the hidden risk, which prompted the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention to name a new disease and led to changes in how pig
brains are harvested.
Susan Kruse is one of the patients who suffered from the disease
that's called progressive inflammatory neuropathy, or PIN.
Her quest for health started with bizarre, unexplainable symptoms
and took her to nearly 20 doctors.
For more than 15 years, the 37-year-old mother worked a regular
shift at Quality Pork Processors, QPP, in Austin, Minnesota. In
her spare time, she renovated her home with her boyfriend, son and
stepdaughter.
In November 2006, the symptoms began. First, there were charley
horse cramps in her left calf that wouldn't go away. Within days,
the debilitating aches moved to her right leg. Within weeks, the
tips of her fingers began to go numb.
Soon, the pins and needles spread to her feet.
She couldn't figure out what was happening to her body. She wasn't
doing anything differently. She hadn't had any major health problems
in the past.
Kruse went to local doctors, but they had never seen anything quite
like it.
"I was very scared," she said.
She underwent countless tests and saw almost 20 doctors, but all
the diagnoses were hazy -- everything from depression to gallstones.
By February 2007, Kruse could no longer stand for long periods.
She had to give up her job at a pork processing plant.
"The doctors couldn't believe how fast it came on. In a four-month
period I went from being able to walk to not being able to walk,"
Kruse said. "I'm only in my middle 30s -- who needs to be in
a wheelchair in the middle 30s?"
While Kruse continued to struggle with her illness, something strange
was unfolding a few blocks from her home.
At Austin Medical Center, a language interpreter began to notice
a pattern.
Over the course of 2007, she found herself translating a similar
list of ailments from Spanish-speaking patients to doctors.
She heard the same complaints over and over: aching leg pain; an
odd numbness and tingling in the hands, legs and sometimes face;
weakness; tiredness.
"There was a group of patients seeing different doctors that
all seemed to have a similar set of complaints," said Dr. Daniel
Lachance, a neurologist.
At the time, Lachance worked at the Austin Medical Center and the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He asked Austin doctors to try to refer
all the similar cases to him.
By late 2007, his team tracked down 12 people, including Kruse,
with similar stories.
"These individuals, one, had a common pattern of illness, but
also they had something else in common," Lachance said. "They
all appeared to work in the same place, which is Quality Pork Processors
in Austin."
But the similarities didn't end there.
"When we looked a little further, it seemed that these workers
were clustered in a particular part of the plant," according
to Dr. Ruth Lynfield, a leading epidemiologist at the Minnesota
Department of Health.
Lynfield surveyed the plant with QPP President Kelly Wadding. They
focused on a section of the plant called the "head table,"
the area where brain tissue was harvested and packaged for export.
The market for pig brain tissue includes the American South, where
it's used in dishes such as brains and eggs. It's also sold in some
Asian countries, such as Cambodia and China, for various recipes,
including stir-fries and stews. The brain tissue processed at QPP
was used mainly for export to Asia.
State and federal health authorities have said eating pork brains
is safe. It's the harvesting method, called "blowing brains,"
that posed the health risk.
In the procedure, high blasts of compressed air were shot into the
head cavity to remove the brains. Sometimes the liquid combined
with brain tissue and turned into a mist.
Health investigators said droplets of the mist could have entered
a worker's system through the mucous membranes in the nose or mouth.
Once in the body, the foreign pig brain matter prompted the immune
system to produce antibodies to attack it, in a process similar
to an allergic reaction.
But the foreign matter seems to have also triggered an attack on
the body's nerve tissue, killing some of the nerves and causing
the mysterious numbness.
On January 31, the CDC gave a new name to the unique constellation
of ailments: progressive inflammatory neuropathy, or PIN.
"The pattern of abnormalities falls into a combination that
we really have not seen with other illnesses," Lachance said.
He is helping to investigate whether PIN cases went unreported or
undetected before late 2006.
The CDC also is tracking two other plants that used the procedure.
At one plant in Indiana, there have been three confirmed cases.
There have been no cases confirmed at a Nebraska plant.
Pig brains are no longer harvested with compressed air. Health authorities
have said swift action by QPP management were key to containing
the outbreak.
Wadding, who has been QPP president since 1997, said, "Since
we put in some precautionary measures and stopped harvesting brains,
we have not had any new cases."
To date, no one has died and most patients have recovered and returned
to work.
Kruse remains unable to work, but she said she has felt some relief
with immunotherapy treatments and medications.
While health authorities are convinced the outbreak is contained,
they said it will take months, perhaps years, to understand fully
what caused or triggered the illness in workers. --
The
Cutting Edge
Which
Cut Is Older?
(It's a Trick Question)
By
Marian Burros
If some of the meat in supermarkets is looking rosier than it
used to, the reason is that a growing number of markets are
selling it in airtight packages treated with a touch of carbon
monoxide to help the product stay red for weeks.
Both of these steaks were red when bought on Feb. 3. Kept
refrigerated, they were then photographed on Feb. 16. Why the
difference? The one at top was treated with a process that has
some consumer groups angered.
This form of "modified atmosphere packaging," a technique
in which other gases replace oxygen, has become more widely
used as supermarkets eliminate their butchers and buy precut,
"case-ready" meat from processing plants.
The reason for its popularity in the industry is clear. One
study, conducted at Oklahoma State University for the Cattlemen's
Beef Board in 2003, said retailers lost at least $1 billion
a year as meat turned brown from exposure to oxygen, because,
though it might still be fairly fresh and perfectly safe, consumers
simply judged meat's freshness by its color.
The
carbon monoxide is itself harmless at the levels being used
in the treated packaging. But opponents say that the process,
which is also used to keep tuna rosy, allows stores to sell
meat that is no longer fresh, and that consumers would not know
until they opened the package at home and smelled it. Labels
do not note whether meat has been laced with carbon monoxide.
The Food and Drug Administration approved use of the process
in 2004. The Washington Post reported in its Monday editions
that Kalsec, a Michigan producer of a natural food extract that
helps slow the discoloring of the meat but does not "fix"
it in the same way as carbon monoxide, had petitioned the agency
to reverse that decision.
The Consumer Federation of America and the advocacy group Safe
Tables Our Priority have written a letter to the agency in support
of the petition because, they say, the bright red color could
mask spoilage and dangerous bacteria in older meat or meat that
has not been kept at the proper temperature.
Supermarket chains including A.&P. and Pathmark do not carry
the treated meat, but it is showing up with increasing frequency
elsewhere. In New York City, it is sold at 30 Gristede's stores,
at D'Agostino markets under the labels Laura's Lean Beef and
Creekstone's, and at the Morton Williams stores in the Associated
chain. A spokeswoman for Safeway did not respond to phone calls
and e-mail messages about sale of the treated meat there, but
it was available at a Safeway market in Bethesda, Md., earlier
this month. SuperTarget stores are also selling it, and Wal-Mart
reports carrying it in 150 stores.
"This is what is going to happen in the meat business,"
said John A. Catsimatidis, chairman and chief executive of Gristede's.
"The meat looks great. It looks as red as the day it was
cut."
Processors say treated ground meat can be sold for 28 days after
leaving the plant, and solid cuts for 35 days. The agribusiness
company Cargill says it has sold 100 million packages in the
last year.
Randy Huffman of the American Meat Institute Foundation, an
industry group, said, "The primary benefit in providing
this product to consumers is the red color they have grown to
expect."
In a firsthand look at the treated meat, a package of a conventionally
wrapped rib steak and one with the carbon monoxide were both
red when bought on Feb. 3 near Washington. They were then kept
refrigerated. By Feb. 16, when they were photographed for the
pictures that appear with this article, the conventional meat
was brown, but the treated meat was still rosy. And as of yesterday,
other treated meat bought at the same time was still red despite
having been left unrefrigerated on a kitchen counter since Feb.
14.
Some food scientists who approve of other forms of modified
atmosphere packaging as a way of extending a product's life
say this form of it can be unsafe. Michael Doyle, director of
the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, says
one study found that when meat in modified packages that included
carbon monoxide was stored at 10 degrees above the proper temperature,
salmonella grew more easily.
Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat
on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has asked the F.D.A.
to explain its approval of the process.
"It's just common sense that when consumers buy meat, they
use color as an important indicator of its freshness,"
Mr. Dingell said in an e-mail message to a reporter. "For
F.D.A. to rely on a promise of some stamp on the package that
says 'use or freeze by' is just naïve." --
  
 *Consultation
with a health care professional should occur before applying
adjustments or treatments to the body, consuming medications
or nutritional supplements and before dieting, fasting or exercising.
None of these activities are herein presented as substitutes
for competent medical treatment.
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