031128 Pork Producers Successfully Fighting Trichinellosis

Atlanta - For the first time since the U.S. government has been collecting data on trichinellosis, pork no longer is the leading cause of infections.

The leading cause of the parasitic disease caused by tissue-dwelling roundworms now is linked to consumption of wild game.

Symptoms of Trichiniellosis are broad and initially can include vomiting, diarrhea and constipation and can develop into headaches, fever, conjunctivitis or myalgia as the larvae work through tissues and work themselves into the muscles.

These discoveries were released by Sharon Roy, Adriana Lopez and Peter Schantz, a team of scientists writing for the National Center for Infectious Diseases Division of Parasitic Diseases. The team focused on the most recent surveillance data, collected between 1997 and 2001, but placed it in the context of statistics gathered since 1947.

From 1947 to 1951, an average of 393 trichiniellosis cases were reported a year, resulting in 57 related deaths. Between '97 and 2001, there were an average of 12 cases per year and no reported deaths. The report's authors credited education and improvements made within the pork industry for the dramatic reduction in case numbers.

"Historically, the major sources of trichinella-infected pork were swine-fed garbage containing animal waste products," the authors wrote, noting other risk factors included swine consumption of trichinella-infected mammals and cannibalism within an infected herd.

"These risk factors are being addressed through industry-wide emphasis on maintaining effective rodent-control programs; controlling access of wildlife and pets to swine, facilities and feedstuff; maintaining good hygiene within facilities; and removing dead swine immediately when they are found." Of the 72 total cases reported between '97 and '01, 22 cases were associated with pork -- 12 from commercial pork and nine from home-raised swine or direct-from-farm swine, and one with a wild boar. A quarter of the commercial pork cases were linked to meat consumed in Egypt, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. Of the non-pork cases, 29 were linked to bear meat, one to cougar and 20 cases were undefined because a single type of meat could not be implicated.

"Because of the successful reduction in trichinella prevalence among swine in the U.S. commercial pork industry, the majority of cases of human trichnellosis are now associated with wild game meat, noncommercial pork and foreign pork," the authors concluded.

"Persons at risk need a greater understanding of the changing risks for trichnellosis, of the methods for safe meat preparation and of the limitations of those methods in certain circumstances, if further reduction in the incidence of this disease is to be achieved in the United States."

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