8 ms·
Feral pig meat transmits rare bacteria
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoInterestingly, on the front page right now is a discussion titled "The Origin of the Pork Taboo" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410885
- fxtentacle 2y agoAnd 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.
- jajko 2y agoI presume you know nothing about islam, but pigs are off the table (and kitchen) without exception. I don't think there is a way to buy it there, same as beef in India for example (even pork I never saw on any menu some 15 years ago when spending 6 months backpacking there, and I saw literally 1 pig altogether in those 6 months).
- Hojojo 2y agoFrom how I understand it, pigs became taboo because they are a common disease vector. There's nothing fundamentally different between pigs, horses, and cows/bulls which would otherwise motivate banning one over the other. One could apply the same thing to cows in India, where the benefits of keeping cows (milk, dung, labor) outweigh the benefits of slaughtering them for food while also being more sustainable.
- frontfor 2y agoYes, since there’s nothing more powerful than religious belief, how do you teach a population to avoid doing a particular risky thing? By codifying it as an iron-clad zero-tolerance word-of-god holy decree, so much so that adherents aren’t even cognisant of the mechanism at play.
- hoseyor 2y agoYou’re being rather spiteful and conceited with your hindsight. For all intents and purposes, the risk to people in the past of losing anyone to some disease they didn’t even know existed, which was not only disabling but also drained resources and energy from the whole group, would have simply not allowed “non-iron-clad” rules that could have led to the total destruction of the tribe/group. Those religious iron-clad decrees could very well be the only reason any of us exist at all, because it allowed people to not just forget, e.g., that time when the tribe ate a big pig feast and 99% of the tribe died.
- ttyprintk 2y agoI would say that these kinds of religious edicts discourage investigation and development. The authority to elaborate on dietary taboos is then an expert on an ancient language, (trying to tell if an animal is “cloven hoof” by a murky description) rather than a scientist. Any God not spiteful nor conceited would want us to learn how to boil water; to learn by using thought.
- sorokod 2y ago> how do you teach a population to avoid doing a particular risky thing? Why should health risk vectors be framed as religious prohibitions? Shouldn't accumulated observations and common sense, developed since the early Iron Age, be sufficient? For example, in Judaism, the prohibition of pork consumption [1] is completely unrelated to health risks. Alternatively, are Christians immune to Brucellosis? [1] https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0311.htm https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0311.htm
- graemep 2y ago> For example, in Judaism, the prohibition of pork consumption [1] is completely unrelated to health risks. Alternatively, are Christians immune to Brucellosis? Possibly at much lower risk. It appears that this particular dangerous form of brucellosis is not even distributed across regions and this case seems to related to feral rather than farmed pork. The Greeks in the eastern Mediterranean at the time did eat pork, presumably without a high disease risk, so I would guess the risk was lower in the populations and places from which non-Jewish early Christians came.
- kragen 2y agoHorses and cows have much better-smelling poop than hogs do, and they generally won't eat human poop, rotting garbage, fallen soldiers on battlefields, or small children that happen to trip and fall. Hogs will eat all of these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet We don't really know the origin of the taboo, but there are more candidate explanations than just epidemiology.
- codr7 2y agoExcept pigs have a lot more in common with humans than the others. Pigs are super intelligent, we have the same blood groups, organ compatibility, piglets smell like newborn babies, their skin is very similar to human skin.
- m0llusk 2y agoActually, there are a number of ways in which pigs and humans share physiology which makes us susceptible to shared disease vectors. Perhaps most obvious is our skin. Pigs and humans are the only land mammals who have what amounts to sea mammal skin, leathery and thick with fat deposits right at the dermis.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hoseyor 2y agoIt’s crazy to think that a religious dictate of Islam and Judaism may have its origins in not cooking meat thoroughly or good practices during dressing and butchering.
- h0l0cube 2y agoThose religious dictates were well before germ theory.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoMany religious dictates of the two religions with a standing religious law and polity had a usefulness in the past and a second, slightly different usefulness in the modern era of loneliness, alienation, lack of identity, etc.
- prmoustache 2y agoNot at all. They had identified a global health issue and a potential source without necessarily knowing all the details. Banning pork seemed reasonnable if they couldn't make sure people don't get sick after eating it.
- usrusr 2y agoWhat's crazy about that? Religion used to be long term knowledge encoding (multigenerational). Evolved knowledge, the group that stumbled into a pig taboo just happened to be more successful than the group without. In an area where pigs are better not eaten, either the former would eventually replace the latter or the advantageous knowledge spreads. I'd consider it crazy to think of (the roots of) religion to be anything else.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- a3w 2y agoWas the 'a zombie outbreak game making-of-video' placed in the middle of this article on purpose, or by automatic CMS?
- xorcist 2y agoArs is perfectly usable without Javascript. Either use Noscript or click the uBo shield and deselect the script tag.
- dharmab 2y agoAt this point I have uBo disable JS by default and bound a hotkey to turn it on as needed.
- Nextgrid 2y agoArs 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-protocol.1505669/ 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?
- DrNosferatu 2y agoHow could he afford all this medical care?
- dharmab 2y agoPresumably, by buying health insurance.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoThe lifestyle description seems less affluent than Walter ‘Heisenberg’ White.
- hoseyor 2y agoMy guess is being retired military.
- cowfarts 2y agoIf old - medicare If veteran [1] - VA If indigent - medicaid [1] not unlikely for a Florida man born in 1945
- reaperducer 2y agoHow could he afford all this medical care? Why does it matter? Why introduce a completely off topic question?
- inetknght 2y agoThis isn't such an off topic discussion -- dealing with health issues certainly does lead to discussing health insurance.
- kragen 2y agoThe 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.
- ttyprintk 2y agoI 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!”
- dbcooper 2y ago♫ The cattle all have brucellosis, We'll get through somehow ♫
- pfdietz 2y agoThank you, Warren.
- wirrbel 2y agoah, thanks, that isn't extremely exotic.
- dillydogg 2y agoThere 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.
- donnachangstein 2y agoA lot of things that are rare in the US, e.g. trichinosis, are still endemic in Europe. Something like > 50% of pigs in Eastern Europe are infected while there are < 20 human cases per year in the US because of better agricultural standards. Part of the reason you can eat a medium rare pork chop in the US and not die. I love bacon.
- larusso 2y agoIt’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.
- hackyhacky 2y agoWhich antibiotic did they give you?
- petre 2y agoI 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-life-itself-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/health/phage-superbug-killer-...
- skellera 2y agoThat’s an amazing story. The wife really gathered together all the right people to create a phage treatment to save her husband’s life. Great job on all the doctors and scientists that figured out how to make it so quickly.
- taosx 2y agoI 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 2y agoYou 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.
- Loughla 2y agoEvery outbreak story that has ever been printed has that as a background fact. When eating meat, make sure it's cooked thoroughly. I love a good, high quality, rare steak when I know the origin of the animal. But literally everything else gets cooked very, very thoroughly.
- sim7c00 2y agoin a lot of places ppl will never ever touch rare meat. its disgusting to them, unsanitary. my wife loves sushi but refuses to eat rare fish. she says to her its like eating litteral sh/t. conditioning from where she was raised. (she eats the rice n cucumber rolls haha) we cook salmon so thoroughly it makes fried chicken look raw :'). God bless spices! Id never recommend eating raw meat. I worked at a distribution butchery for super markets in a country that arguably has one of the cleanest and strictest pipelines for such stuff and i'll tell u. its just people packing ur stuff.. its incredibly easy for a chain of events to happen to get properly sourced meat infected with pretty much anyhting. many opportunities along the route from slaughter to packaging etc. its not gross or badly managed, just how it is with humans handling things, heat needed during the process, many transports and different handoffs during production process. so yeah, cook it n cook it good is all i can say. dont trust some sticker on a package to tell u its safer than somethin else
- throwanem 2y agoI 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?
- jdthedisciple 2y agoThis 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410885
- swampthing 2y agoThat'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.
- teleforce 2y agoIf you care to read the comments for the mentioned article (318 comments) including mine, perhaps you'll get the different perspectives on eating pork [1]. Although the article is a good one but the conclusions can be misleading because it's biased toward archeological evidences that most probably did not tell the entire story. Just like the history of people migration you simply cannot rely on one aspect of archeological evidences alone by ignoring genetic and proto-languages, for examples. The same with dietary constraints and prohibitions you need to take into account other evidences for example religions together with the other archeological evidences. Although the article mentioned religions early on but it kind of dismissed them at the end. For me it's rather myopic view and incomplete methodology of doing research since you need to take every relevant aspects into account for your valid conclusions especially the other important factors in dietary constraints in this case the religious prohibitions. [1] The Origin of the Pork Taboo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418499
- kazinator 2y ago> 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.
- ekelsen 2y agoOr he was the hunter?
- Zuider 2y agoIn 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!
- kazinator 2y agoRight; I didn't think the friend did anything illegal by hunting feral pigs. Still; someone might call him asking questions, which is trouble enough, and who knows where that might lead. Our first instinct should be to protect everyone in our circle from even the slightest hassle.
- rvba 2y ago> 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...
- ajayasimha 2y ago[flagged]
- ethagknight 2y agoNot 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.