Pig Brains

As if there weren't enough reasons to avoid the pork industry...

The New York Times has reported on a new neurological disease that's afflicting pork factory workers who handle the pig brains. Symptoms include fatigue and numbness in the legs.

What happens is that people working at the head table (that's the table where they strip the brains out of the pig heads and pack the brains up for shipment to China and the deep American south) these people were using a method that exposed them to large amounts of particulate brain matter, which then triggered an immune response in their bodies. Their bodies were recognizing the pig brain particulates as foreign bodies. The immune system destroys foreign bodies by creating antibodies. The problem is that pig brains have a lot in common with people brains, so the workers' antibodies started attacking their own brains, leading to neurological problems. Ugh.


My favorite paragraph from the article:

The person blowing brains was separated from the other workers by a plexiglass shield that had enough space under it to allow the heads to ride through on a conveyor belt. There was also enough space for brain tissue to splatter nearby employees.

Source: The New York Times, article is here.