April 17, 2008 - New Nerve Disorder Found in Pork Processing Plant Workers

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Twenty-five workers at three pork plants in Minnesota, Indiana, and Nebraska have come down with an unidentified neurological disorder doctors believe was most likely contracted while removing the brains from slaughtered pigs.

The condition causes symptoms such as inflammation of the spinal cord, mild feelings of weakness and fatigue, and numbness and tingling in the limbs.

The condition first appeared in November at Quality Pork Processors Inc in Austin, Minnesota, where pork processors used compressed air to remove pork brains from the skull cavity, a rarely-used method of processing pork brains. Only 3 of the 25 largest pork processors in the use this method.

Dr. Daniel Lachance of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has been following the 18 Minnesota plant workers who suffer from the disorder. Hospital tests revealed that patients had nerve damage near the spinal cord and where the motor nerves connect with muscle.

Lachance speculates that small pieces of pig brain were causing workers’ immune systems to attack their own nervous systems. Not a single patient with the mysterious illness has completely recovered.

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