Ah, yes, t’was on the tip of my tongue

CDC gives name to slaughterhouse illness (IndyStar): The mystery illness plaguing workers in pork processing plants in Indian and Minnesota is now called “progressive inflammatory neuropathy.”

Now investigators are going back to workers at the Minnesota plant over the last 10 years - the time frame when the compressed-air-brain-removal-machine was in use:

Investigators have been trying to determine whether pig brain tissue, sprayed into the air as droplets during removal by the compressed air system, was inhaled by workers and made them sick.

If further investigation proves their theories true, they will have identified a rare, new condition that could shed light on a whole family of poorly understood disorders in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves or the sheath that surrounds them, the Star Tribune reported.

The article notes that racking down former workers might be a challenge as there are 1,200 employed at the Minnesota plant, and many of them are identified as “immigrants.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under CAFO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.