Feral pig meat transmits rare bacteria

[larusso]

It’s somewhat scary that it still can take years to find the route cause for these kinds of infections. Two years back I had a month stretch in stomach pains. The worst I ever had. I had this on and off for 2-4 years. Happened once a year and was gone. I went to multiple doctors and did bloodtests etc. I then had a Colonoscopy and Gastroscopy. They want some scared tissue in my duodenum. Reason was some bacteria or fungi which they where then able to test for. Wich is funny because they did all kinds of bloodtests before … Long story short, I received a special antibiotic and everything was fine. My theory was that I eat something problematic while being in Egypt around 2018.

[Tade0]

Sometimes it's "just" helicobacter pylori.

I had a particularly widespread infection a while ago, so my GP prescribed Amoxicillin.

Suddenly the stomach pains, which used to be a regular thing for me whenever I ate something hard to digest, disappeared altogether.

Turns out this antibiotic is part of the concoction they have you take to deal with stomach ulcers, as it deals with the bacteria responsible for them.

I have no confirmation that was indeed the case here aside from a previously diagnosed chronic doudendum inflammation, but the difference was night and day, so this is my working theory.

[petre]

I read about a guy getting iraquibacter from desert dust in Egypt and getting treated with phage therapy by his wife. Needless to say I'll avoid Egypt.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/health/phage-superbug-killer-...

[hackyhacky]

Which antibiotic did they give you?

[mertleee]

After having a seemingly "random" bout of cdiff after receiving a highly potent antibiotic for a "random" salivary gland infection - colonoscopies and antibiotics really scare me.

I believe the salivary gland infection was a result of some non-covid illness I had that may have been linked to some odd vaccine side effect or my tanked immune system.

Gut stuff is so important.

[kragen]

The clickbait headline should be replaced by one that somewhere mentions the word "brucellosis", because that's what he had. We aren't talking about exotica like meningococcemia, ehrlichiosis, or meloidosis here.

[dillydogg]

There are between 100-200 cases of brucellosis in the US each year, so I would call that rare. It's common worldwide, but not where this patient lives. Also, the species of Brucella is a less common one in the US. Erlichiosis is closer to 1000 per year.

[ttyprintk]

I feel like in the case of bacterial meningitis, they would have. Would you rather see, “Brucellosis hits goat farmer, but not from where you expect!”

[bigstrat2003]

The headline would be far less meaningful for most people if it said that. The vast majority of people would have no idea what "brucellosis" even is.

[wirrbel]

ah, thanks, that isn't extremely exotic.

[dbcooper]

♫ The cattle all have brucellosis, We'll get through somehow ♫

[kazinator]

> Though he couldn’t recall the specific hunter who gave him the biohazardous bounty, he remembered handling the raw meat and blood with his bare hands—a clear transmission risk—before cooking and eating it.

Well, of course he could perfectly recall, but he's not going to rat out his friend.

[Zuider]

In the USA, it is open season on feral swine all year around, no permit required, as they are a very noxious pest. In Texas, you can even go heli-hogging!

[ekelsen]

Or he was the hunter?

[a3w]

Was the 'a zombie outbreak game making-of-video' placed in the middle of this article on purpose, or by automatic CMS?

[Nextgrid]

Ars seems to have succumbed to this dumbass US trend of putting a random video 3 lines into any news article, since clearly 3 lines is too much for today's attention spans.

Edit: it may be a fallback for an ad, according to this forum thread? https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/ars-video-callisto-pro... Still stupid though - so the user is already costing you money by blocking ads, so how about we waste 10x the money in bandwidth serving up a pointless video?

[xorcist]

Ars is perfectly usable without Javascript. Either use Noscript or click the uBo shield and deselect the script tag.

[jdthedisciple]

This should help everyone understand a little better the origins - or perhaps wisdoms - of the pork taboo which was discussed here recently [0]:

Pigs are simply a potpourri of all sorts of bacteria that you don't want in you.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410885

[swampthing]

That's not at all the conclusion of the article you linked to. In fact, that theory is discounted by it.

> Price points out, however, that none of these theories fully accounts for the taboo. Pig-rearing, after all, had existed for thousands of years in the region, even in times of drought, and many types of meat can harbor the larvae that cause trichinosis.

> For Price, the key piece of evidence is the sole reason given for the taboo in the biblical text—the fact that the pig “has hooves and does not chew its cud.” In other words, it’s unlike ruminants. He argues that this harks back to an era when the Israelites were simple pastoralists. As their descendants settled down in towns and cities, raising pigs became a more viable option. “This detracted from the fantasy of living like their ancestors,” says Price, prompting Judean priests to ban eating pork.

> Rosenblum argues that the pig taboo only gained special status with the invasion of the Levant by the forces of the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. These European conquerors enjoyed their pork, and pig consumption in the Levant soared. So did tensions between Judeans and their Hellenistic rulers, including the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt and the leaders of the Seleucid Empire based in today’s Iraq.

[taosx]

I ate a lot of such boar meat last year in Greece, it instantly became my favorite due to the hardness and taste but based on this I may avoid it for the foreseeable future.

[hoseyor]

You have nothing to be concerned with if it is cooked thoroughly to safe temperatures. So anything that is slow cooked over time would be safe if cooked to 145° for whole and 160° for ground meat.

The subject person may have undercooked it or likely even come in contact with it while dressing a hog, i.e., touching an eye, scratching the nose, or even touching something that later caused cross contamination.

[nkrisc]

Based on the article it seems the infection likely occurred while he was handling the raw meat. Wear gloves and wash your hands and surfaces well and take precautions to avoid cross-contaminating ingredients that won’t be cooked to safe temperatures. Standard kitchen and food safety stuff.

If you’re not preparing it yourself, then it could be reasonable to avoid it if you’re aren’t confident in the preparation.

[gcheong]

In the article the person said they had been getting the feral hog meat from a hunter who had gifted him raw meat several times and that he handled it with his bare hands while preparing it and then cooking it an eating it. The doctors surmised it was most likely his handling it with bare hands that was the vector of transmission, not eating the cooked meat.

[jcd000]

You are safe as long as pig meat is cooked well done, which we always do in Greece. But it pays to be aware and careful.

[taosx]

Thank you for all the assurances and suggestions for the future. The meat was cooked very well but the problem I think it's that me and my friends (hunters) were unaware of such a possibility.

We were the ones that brought back, cleaned and prepared the boar with our bare hands with no precautions (we were in the mountains). The only thing that gives me a bit of piece of mind is that several months passed since then and we have no symptoms and I know many other people that have eaten wild boar from that area that have no symptoms.

[throwanem]

I knew this man the instant they said he's in his seventies and still taking boar. Who knew Uncle Bram was still kickin' around after all these years?

[rvba]

> an extremely infectious bacteria

> In the US, there are only about 80 to 140 brucellosis cases reported each year, and they're mostly caused by B. melitensis and B. abortus

The article doesnt seem to be consistent...

[ethagknight]

Not to be that guy, but the pork and beef industries are well known for fearmongering around any alternative source of product, be it from Mexico, Latin America, or in this case wild boar that are literally breeding like rabbits and running amok across Texas and other parts of the American south. Unregulated competition is a big problem for the industry.

When I read an article like this, I sort of roll my eyes, cook your meat properly, enough with the scare tactics!

Maybe to put it another way, why is this article being written? Just a nerdy interesting issue with targeted appeal that has arisen? Slow news day? More likely a campaign of some sort for some reason but someone wants to squash.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Interestingly, on the front page right now is a discussion titled "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410885

[fxtentacle]

And this article says "study from Saudi Arabia, where Brucella is endemic", which I'd say would be a pretty compelling reason not to eat pigs in Saudi Arabia.

[DrNosferatu]

How could he afford all this medical care?

[dharmab]

Presumably, by buying health insurance.

[cowfarts]

If old - medicare

If veteran [1] - VA

If indigent - medicaid

[1] not unlikely for a Florida man born in 1945

[reaperducer]

How could he afford all this medical care?

Why does it matter? Why introduce a completely off topic question?

[alistairSH]

Article stated he’s a pastor. It’s likely the church where he preaches provides insurance.

[hoseyor]

My guess is being retired military.