Pork and Flesh Eating virus??!??

[Erica L. Butler]

Hey there, I heard on the radio yesterday that there are warnings about a flesh-eating virus infecting pork? Uhmm, does anyone know about this-- I found a link to an article in the New York Times, The New York Times > Log In but I also found a link to PETA when I searched for the originating article. Anybody know if this is a hoax -- if it isn't a hoax, can it be dealt with by following safe handling protocols?

Thanks for any and all answers...

[Houston Heather]

Sounds like a load of crap without even clicking on the link.

Meat that isn't healthy doesn't get butchered, they burn it. It never reaches the distribution chain.

Yes, I am well aware of what goes on in the slaughterhouses and processing plants, but I buy humanely butchered meat when possible.

Halal meats (up to Islamic food laws) are humanely raised and butchered, I have heard. But obviously they wouldn't do pork.

[EzraDuncan]

I saw a guy whose face was eaten away from that. It started as a sinus infection.

[Erica L. Butler]

Originally Posted by EzraDuncan

I saw a guy whose face was eaten away from that. It started as a sinus infection.

Uhmmm.. not wanting any of that.

I just found this article as well-- I just wish I could count on most of my news sources to be unbiased-- so I wasn't always trying to figure out the "angle" of the news source! It's hard to figure out what to believe.

[Charski]

If it has PETA's mark on it - I would consider it with a VERY jaundiced eye.... They'll do or say ANYTHING to get the public to quit eating ANY meat!

[wifey]

Well even if it's bull crap just hearing that pushed me even further away from pork!!

[jezzie]

For whatever it's worth .....

Nicholas Kristof did an in-depth two article series about this.
He is a well respected two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

[Munchie1984]

Wow it's also known as necrotizing fasciitis. It's no joke. I'm a surgical tech and I've had to deal with many of these cases. Not anything great to look at, but many things cause this.

[iakaren]

Originally Posted by Erica L. Butler

Hey there, I heard on the radio yesterday that there are warnings about a flesh-eating virus infecting pork? Uhmm, does anyone know about this-- I found a link to an article in the New York Times, The New York Times > Log In but I also found a link to PETA when I searched for the originating article. Anybody know if this is a hoax -- if it isn't a hoax, can it be dealt with by following safe handling protocols?

Thanks for any and all answers...

I agree-sounds like hoax. Or PETA or HSUS propaganda.

[Charski]

Originally Posted by Munchie1984

Wow it's also known as necrotizing fasciitis. It's no joke. I'm a surgical tech and I've had to deal with many of these cases. Not anything great to look at, but many things cause this.

Oh I agree. I don't dismiss that the disease exists - I just really question that it's tied to eating pork.

I've seen cases of it on TV and it's NOT something I'd want to contract - but I'm not worried about catching it from pork at this point.

[Locarb4me]

FWIW I found this:
The PETA Files: Pig Farms and Flesh-Eating Bacteria

I believe it's a bacteria, not a virus at any rate. And anything PETA says is, IMO suspect on the face of it. Not to detract from MRSA and it's horrors. I just don't think pork has anything to do with it.

[Munchie1984]

Originally Posted by Charski

Oh I agree. I don't dismiss that the disease exists - I just really question that it's tied to eating pork.

I've seen cases of it on TV and it's NOT something I'd want to contract - but I'm not worried about catching it from pork at this point.

Yea I know that's why I said many other thingss can cause this

[Houston Heather]

They'll pry my bacon from my cold dead fingers.

I think I'll put that in my signature!

[Yellobrix]

Originally Posted by Houston Heather

They'll pry my bacon from my cold dead fingers.

I think I'll put that in my signature!

You mean, your cold dead greasy salty fingers... Mmm.

[Houston Heather]

Anyone else dig all the little crunchy bits out when they cook bacon? I use my skewer to fish them out of my baconwave microwave cooker.

In fact, I lamented the loss of the bacon wave (due to no electricity) more than the loss of the air conditioning after the hurricane!

[EzraDuncan]

It's a real disease but to say its more associated with pork than any other animal is a stretch. These viruses/bacteria are in and on everything.

[daisyHair]

I will tell you what gives you this disease..
the hospital.

[EzraDuncan]

Originally Posted by daisyHair

I will tell you what gives you this disease..
the hospital.

This is true. I was a nurse tech and MRSA a being spread to EVERYONE! You come in because the doctor wants your heart monitored you die from a blood infection.

[shapeup1]

Not a hoax, interesting article...........

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/op...20farms&st=cse

The late Tom Anderson, the family
doctor in this little farm town in northwestern Indiana, at first was puzzled, then frightened.

He began seeing strange rashes on his patients, starting more than a year ago. They began as innocuous bumps — “pimples from hell,” he called them — and quickly became lesions as big as saucers, fiery red and agonizing to touch.

They could be anywhere, but were most common on the face, armpits, knees and buttocks. Dr. Anderson took cultures and sent them off to a lab, which reported that they were MRSA, or staph infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) sometimes arouses terrifying headlines as a “superbug” or “flesh-eating bacteria.” The best-known strain is found in hospitals, where it has been seen regularly since the 1990s, but more recently different strains also have been passed among high school and college athletes. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that by 2005, MRSA was killing more than 18,000 Americans a year, more than AIDS.

Dr. Anderson at first couldn’t figure out why he was seeing patient after patient with MRSA in a small Indiana town. And then he began to wonder about all the hog farms outside of town. Could the pigs be incubating and spreading the disease?

“Tom was very concerned with what he was seeing,” recalls his widow, Cindi Anderson. “Tom said he felt the MRSA was at phenomenal levels.”

By last fall, Dr. Anderson was ready to be a whistle-blower, and he agreed to welcome me on a reporting visit and go on the record with his suspicions. That was a bold move, for any insinuation that the hog industry harms public health was sure to outrage many neighbors.

So I made plans to come here and visit Dr. Anderson in his practice. And then, very abruptly, Dr. Anderson died at the age of 54.

There was no autopsy, but a blood test suggested a heart attack or aneurysm. Dr. Anderson had himself suffered at least three bouts of MRSA, and a Dutch journal has linked swine-carried MRSA to dangerous human heart inflammation.

The larger question is whether we as a nation have moved to a model of agriculture that produces cheap bacon but risks the health of all of us. And the evidence, while far from conclusive, is growing that the answer is yes.

A few caveats: The uncertainties are huge, partly because our surveillance system is wretched (the cases here in Camden were never reported to the health authorities). The vast majority of pork is safe, and there is no proven case of transmission of MRSA from eating pork. I’ll still offer my kids B.L.T.’s — but I’ll scrub my hands carefully after handling raw pork.

Let me also be very clear that I’m not against hog farmers. I grew up on a farm outside Yamhill, Ore., and was a state officer of the Future Farmers of America; we raised pigs for a time, including a sow named Brunhilda with such a strong personality that I remember her better than some of my high school dates.

One of the first clues that pigs could infect people with MRSA came in the Netherlands in 2004, when a young woman tested positive for a new strain of MRSA, called ST398. The family lived on a farm, so public health authorities swept in — and found that three family members, three co-workers and 8 of 10 pigs tested all carried MRSA.

Since then, that strain of MRSA has spread rapidly through the Netherlands — especially in swine-producing areas. A small Dutch study found pig farmers there were 760 times more likely than the general population to carry MRSA (without necessarily showing symptoms), and Scientific American reports that this strain of MRSA has turned up in 12 percent of Dutch retail pork samples.

Now this same strain of MRSA has also been found in the United States. A new study by Tara Smith, a University of Iowa epidemiologist, found that 45 percent of pig farmers she sampled carried MRSA, as did 49 percent of the hogs tested.

The study was small, and much more investigation is necessary. Yet it might shed light on the surge in rashes in the now vacant doctor’s office here in Camden. Linda Barnard, who was Dr. Anderson’s assistant, thinks that perhaps 50 people came in to be treated for MRSA, in a town with a population of a bit more than 500. Indeed, during my visit, Dr. Anderson’s 13-year-old daughter, Lily, showed me a MRSA rash inflaming her knee.

“I’ve had it many times,” she said.

So what’s going on here, and where do these antibiotic-resistant infections come from? Probably from the routine use — make that the insane overuse — of antibiotics in livestock feed. This is a system that may help breed virulent “superbugs” that pose a public health threat to us all. That’ll be the focus of my next column, on Sunday.

•

[EzraDuncan]

If you get MRSA and VRE at the same time, say goodbye.

[Munchie1984]

Well nothing can keep me from eating my chitterlings.

[Locarb4me]

Well, to heck with my plans to raise pigs in my backyard then! Harrrumph

[Magicsmom]

Originally Posted by EzraDuncan

If you get MRSA and VRE at the same time, say goodbye.

Ezra, what's VRE?

[EzraDuncan]

Originally Posted by Magicsmom

Ezra, what's VRE?

Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) is the name given to a group of bacterial species of the genus Enterococcus that is resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin.

You see ONLY vancomycin cures MRSA but it also kills off almost all other natural bacteria so the VRE takes over and if its not caught in time you die, BUT most good orgs. will ALSO test for VRE when testing for other bugs.