You really don’t want to know what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. That way, you’d never hear about toxic pig brain mist.
In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs’ heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull.
This is in the news right now because Minnesota slaughterhouse workers are coming down with an autoimmune disease, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), that is thought to be caused by the exposure to all the brain matter flying around in those environments. Exposure to the antigens in the pig nervous tissue is triggering the workers’ immune systems to attack their own nerves.
I’m swearing off pig brains forevermore, I promise.
(via Yet Another Web Site)
I recommend reading Eric Schlosser’s “Fast food nation” for a brief glimpse into what it’s like to work at the bottom of the meat industry.
Here’s a spoiler: it’s horrible in almost every way thinkable, even without the threat of autoimmune diseases.
When my Mom was growing up if her family could afford to slaughter a pig then it meant scrambled eggs and pig brains for breakfast. My Granny always considered it to be a particular treat but my Mom hated it. If only she’d known about this.
Why does the brain need to be blasted out of the skull? That sounds pretty wacky, but that may be my naivety to the slaughterhouse industry showing.
Just further proof that Mohammad was correct and that the pig is an impure animal!
Hey, I’m not above using a “holy” book to justify my dislike for pork. Anyone know of a passage I can use to justify my absolute loathing of venison? Claiming I can’t eat it for religious reasons my get those “you’ve never tried it this way” folks to back the f’ off.
Apparently there’s a market for the brains (or brain mush?) that gets blasted out. From the linked article:
OK, non-biologist here…just wondering if this sounds prion-related to anyone else?
Anyone know of a passage I can use to justify my absolute loathing of venison?
They have cloven hooves?
I live up here in hunting country. My favorite way to deal with all the deer meat enthusiasts is to point out that by the time you added in the cost of the rifle, hunting license, hunting clothes, gas, time spent hunting the deer, cleaning it, etc – you could probably afford a couple of really nice filet mignon dinners at a top notch steakhouse.
Deer meat enthusiasts always say stuff like “yeah, if you cook it in bacon for 75 hours and then add beans and cook it another 200 hours and add molasses – and then fish the deer meat out and give it to your dogs – it’s really excellent stuff! I love venison!” And then there’s the ‘venison chili’ crowd, who make the chili so spicy you could probably be eating boiled inner-tube and it’d taste chewy and nasty, like venison.
OK, non-biologist here…just wondering if this sounds prion-related to anyone else?
That’s what I was thinking, but I’m also not a biologist.
Hey, I’m not above using a “holy” book to justify my dislike for pork. Anyone know of a passage I can use to justify my absolute loathing of venison?
Leviticus 11 is the bible verse that says pigs shouldn’t be eaten.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2011
If it’s an autoimmune thing, that means that the pig-brain antigens have to enter the bloodstream intact. Presumably these are membrane-surface proteins (because the immune system is confusing them for Schwann-cell surface proteins in myelinated human neurons). Therefore a) it has nothing to do with prions, and b) cooking and eating ought to successfully denature and digest the antigens, so brains ‘n’ eggs for breakfast–no proplem.
These poor folks are essentially snorting aerosolized pig-brain proteins, which seems a bad idea under any circumstances.
Also no problem.
I need my Peter Singer collection about now.
…Therefore a) it has nothing to do with prions
Okey doke.
These poor folks are essentially snorting aerosolized pig-brain proteins, which seems a bad idea under any circumstances.
And just sounds icky, to boot.
The sad thing is that this has a very simple engineering solution: use vacuum to suck the brains out instead. Voila, mist problem eliminated, and the brains would probably be cleaner to boot.
Aerosolized anything has wide-ranging consequences… Latex allergies, for instance, are supposed to be (most often) the result of repeated exposure to inhaled latex particles that attach to the cornstarch used to lubricate exam gloves.
proof again that eating meat – esp. meat from factory farmed animals – is an inherently selfish act. I say that not without sympathy for meat eaters – of which I was one until 5 years ago – but it is the inescapable conclusion from stories such as this. Meat/dairy/egg consumption not only harms the animals and the environment, but the humans who are also involved in an industry that, far more than any other, depends on a willful blindness to the pain and suffering of others. Here are three examples, from my blog, of labor abuse at factory farms and slaughterhouses:
“In an article entitled Finger-Lickin’ Bad in the February 21, 2006 issue of the online environmental publication Grist, author Suzi Parker documents the exploitive and antiquated sharecropper-type business model used by poultry agribusinesses to dominate the small farmers who actually raise many of the birds sent to slaughter.
“In an article entitled The Chicken Hangers in the February 2, 2004 online publication In the Fray documents not only the horrific working conditions in the poultry industry but management’s hostile (and often unlawful) resistance to unionizing efforts or even basic workers’ rights.
“In a January 26, 2006, The New York Times article entitled Rights Group Condemns Meatpackers on Job Safety (paid subscribers only no link), begins, For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation’s meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights.”
Just as you shouldn’t buy rugs made by enslaved children in South Asia, or blood diamonds that fund brutal war with machete amputations in Sierra Leone, you shouldn’t buy meat, eggs, dairy or fish.
btw, Americans alone slaughter 10 billion animals per year so if everyone just committed to two fewer meat/dairy/egg meals a week, that would save hundreds of millions of animals from suffering, and obviously also reduce the concommitant environmental and human suffering.
Hillary
“I’m swearing off pig brains forevermore, I promise.”
Awesome sacrifice PZ!
This does make me a bit queazy. I’ve helped prepare pork many a time as a kid before my nan died and it became too much work for mum alone.
I think I need to pester my sister into getting a coupla pigs when she gets her own place.
I guess North American venison is different from European (specifically Danish), for I have to say that it’s certainly one my absolute favourites.
Pig braaaaiiins…. PIG BRAAAAAIIINS…
the meat industries have a long history of refusing to spend even pennies to ensure safer working conditions, even when the ROI is dramatic. for them, both the animals and the humans (including the human consumers) are expendable.
Hillary
Marcus … are we related? You might as well have been quoting me regarding my loathing of venison and my relatives regarding their enthusiasm for the stuff. I once tried to give a piece to my cat, it looked at me as if I’d gone insane and went over to the bowl to eat the dry food. I can honestly say I considered myself the less intelligent of the two of us as I politely nibbled at the noxious “meal.”
Hillary, if you look at current afgricultureal practices in many countries I think as far as exploitation is concerned there is no difference between plants and anaimals. It was not so may years ago that United Fruit had striking workers in south America shot.
Have no fear people. The compressed air industry guy is certain that using compressed air to mist the brains out is perfectly safe. I don’t know what you all are going on about.
This is a technicality, but…if the immune system is creating antibodies against a foreign protein and these antibodies are secondarily affecting “self” proteins (i.e. myelin)wouldn’t we call it an immune-mediated disease rather than an autoimmune disease? I thought autoimmunity involved the immune system creating antibodies directly to self proteins due to malfunctions in self recognition. Just curious.
Gah. If I needed another reason to have sworn off commercially-processed meat, there it is :P
We stopped buying all but locally-produced and slaughtered meat (and then only rarely) a few months ago. We eat a lot less meat, and what we do eat (locally-farmed elk and buffalo) is 100 times tastier than the stuff at the grocery store. I like knowing there’s the meat of *one* well-treated buffalo (processed by well-treated employees) in my burger, instead of 3000 cows processed by hundreds of unhappy, underpaid people. Healthier for us and the workers.
dogmeatib,
Don’t go by what your cat will and won’t eat. One of my cats eats the vomit of the other one. I also had a cat once who wouldn’t eat fish or anything with fish in it. Just sayin.
I’ve worked in processing plants, and while there are differences, they all are pretty awful.
I was raised on a farm,and how our food was treated was so different, and since I’ve been able, I’ve bought organic from people I know or whose farms I’ve visited. Not only that, an antique variety of tomato…mmm. Those watery, tasteless hothouse varieties might do in a pinch, but they are not tomato-y.
And yeah, Sili, those Europeans must have funky venison. I love venison. My grandmother made a wonderful venison stew.
Also, give some of the misreporting on recent medical stories, I wonder if anything was left out of the story because of ignorance on the part of the reporter? This is definitely a story to watch.
Matt: my impression is that any disease involving self-attack is considered autoimmune, regardless of etiology. (However, IANAI)
Vicious, murderous union busting is an entirely different category of problem than an industry whose essential and core functions are harmful to its workers, its customers, its communities, etc. Although they can often go hand in hand – and so, a few years back, union activists joined forces with animal activists to protest conditions at a Hormel plant. As I pointed out, the meat industries are based on the systematic and willful blindness to the suffering of others. Anyone who thinks that such a mindset, once developed, can be turned on and off at will is naive. It makes sense that the executives who can arrange for the brutal and inhumane practices perpetrated on the animals in factory farms would be relatively innured to human suffering as well.
My favorite quote summarizing the situation comes from…Andy Rooney! Who said on 60 Mins last year that he thinks in 100 years meat eating is going to be as deeply uncool as smoking is today. And why is smoking deeply uncool? Because thinking people finally see it for what it is – pathological. People are coming to see meat the same way.
but it’s not just the meat industry, btw, or agriculture in general. many industries are pathological, especially these days. i recommend everyone watch the really good documentary The Corporation, for more on this point.
btw, among the many evils of “free trade” is that as our meat industry comes under scrutiny here in the U.S., the slaughterhouses and factory farms will be moved to Latin America, where there will be less (or no) regulation and protection for workers and animals and the environment and consumers all alike.
Hillary
…except that omnivory is not “pathological.”
Dog @4, Marcus @7:
>Anyone know of a passage I can use to justify
>my absolute loathing of venison?
They have cloven hooves?
Sorry, that won’t ground a prohibition, at least not in the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic tradition. On the contrary, cloven hooves are one of the two boxes that need to be ticked for meat to be kosher. Cloven-hooved beasts that chew the cud are what’s on the godly menu. (A redundant specification, of course: in real life the Ruminantia nest within Artiodactyla. But the ancient Hebrew sages lived before Hennig’s time and hence had but a weak grasp of cladistic principles.) Deer being ruminants, you can’t plead Leviticus in refusing venison.
Oddly, BTW, the Old Testament doesn’t think there’s anything specially demonic about swine (the New Testament does, but then Jesus was to blame for that). Pigs are merely cited as an example of a non-ruminant artiodactyl, just as bunnies are cited as an example of non-artiodactyl ruminants (well, they do re-chew something, but it ain’t cud). Hippos (or whales!) would have served as well as pigs. Yet for some reason pigs have become — for Jews and non-Jews alike — a sort of living symbol of unkosherness. Clearly the bunnies have a better press agent.
BTW, I don’t know too much about Islam. Though the rules of halal food clearly derive from kashrut, they do differ in some respects — shrimpses is OK, for instance. So 4AIK Islam might specifically prohibit pork. Judaism doesn’t, though; pigs simply aren’t within the fairly narrow category of animals whose meat is permitted.
Deer are, though. Sorry. Perhaps you might look into Buddhism or Hinduism. Both have strong vegetarian strains. Not much use if you only want to avoid the one sort of meat, though.
>…except that omnivory is not “pathological.”
We’re not talking about omnivory, We’re talking about killing something when you don’t need to, and simply to satisfy a gustatory craving. Most people except hunters – a rapidly dwindling demographic, btw – agree that it’s pathological to kill animals for no reason. Well, when you can have a good – even better! – diet by not killing them, then how can you justify it?
And, for the vast majority of people in this country, not even wanting to know the truth about what they’re doing, and the consequences of their actions. If that’s not pathological, it’s at least childish.
Hillary
dogmeatib writes:
Marcus … are we related? You might as well have been quoting me regarding my loathing of venison and my relatives regarding their enthusiasm for the stuff. I once tried to give a piece to my cat, it looked at me as if I’d gone insane and went over to the bowl to eat the dry food.
Well, my dogs love the stuff. Raw, preferably. Last year they cornered a small deer against the horse-pasture fence and destroyed it – tossing pieces all over the lawn. I came home to what appeared to be a reenactment of some old testament slaughter, and one of my dogs was sitting there (I kid you not!) trying to wear the deer’s ribcage like a hat…
Anyhow, now when someone offers me deer meat I tell ’em that I’ll enjoy it with my family (i.e.: Miles and Jake, the dogs) and I eat some nice machine-raised hormone-injected oil-byproduct-fed beef from the grocery store.
Wait… Do people really eat pig’s brains? Never eard of that.
That’s sick.
Can I just say “Ewww!” to aerosolised pig brains?
And yes, the meat industry can be pretty awful, but those of you flying the veggie flag of goodness obviously do not and never have lived in big farm country.
Grains and vegetables and fruits are still huge users of fertiliser, water, herbicides, and pesticides. It’s worth your life to step outside in orchard country when the young fruit’s coming on, what with the clouds of fungicide and pesticide.
More and more of our North American veg food is derived from GM strains, to which I don’t object for their safety in eating, but which come with potential environmental and biodiversity side effects.
And meatless farming is not kind to wild critters, of the faunal or floral kind. It destroys habitat, is poisonous to those creatures that try to inhabit it, and often kills those that do successfully inhabit it – briefly.
Don’t get me started on the sheer magnitude of hectares of land used and poisoned for the production of cotton for an insatiable human demand for clothing from jeans to turbans.
These poor folks are essentially snorting aerosolized pig-brain proteins, which seems a bad idea under any circumstances.
And just sounds icky, to boot.
Jeff, do you know anything about aerosols from toilets flushing?
Do you want to know more?…
There might have been some observable and valid reasons why those ancient tribes deemed some animals fit for consumption but not others. Due to their diet, pigs, carnivores, etc. may have been more likely to carry parasites and pathogens that could infect humans. People were probably more likely to get sick from eating “unclean” types of animals (and shellfish harvested from those warmer waters) so they figured it was “God’s” doing.
Here’s a passage, from a source preferable to a “holy” book…
Makes me wonder if anyone has looking in to the military applications of weaponizing aerosolized pig brains… bio-weaponry for a new age. It would have added advantage in the Middle East due to the local religious attitudes. “No we can’t fight the American satans today they are using pigs against us, we’ll be soiled and unable to get our virgins.”
ok, so it’s bad to inhale aerosolized pig brain – but I bet it’s bad to inhale aerosolized plant material also – so just don’t inhale aerosolized anything (I’m writing that down so I wont forget)
Speaking of pigs, you want to see some delicious pork meals being prepared?
Venger said:
Makes me wonder if anyone has looking in to the military applications of weaponizing aerosolized pig brains… bio-weaponry for a new age. It would have added advantage in the Middle East due to the local religious attitudes. “No we can’t fight the American satans today they are using pigs against us, we’ll be soiled and unable to get our virgins.”
LOL! Good one!
That reminds me – why hasn’t anybody invented a more sanitary toilet yet?!
Also, how do you figure out whether *your* pig meat is being processed in a slaughterhouse like this?
I had the experience of watching someone die over the course of a couple years from CIDP. It is like an accelerated form of MS, acomplishing in years what MS does in decades. It is especially fun for the victim, because there are intermittent periods of remission, followed by accelerated periods of decline. Also, the victim does not experience cognitive impairment, except for the variety caused by the fact that his doctors stop returning his phone calls.
More and more of our North American veg food is derived from GM strains, to which I don’t object for their safety in eating, but which come with potential environmental and biodiversity side effects.
I agree. I suspect that the possible effects of eating it have been somewhat hyped because people will worry more about that than environmental effects. In the same way, is suspect that the timetable (as opposed to the magnitude and anthrogenesis) of climate change has been hyped up by some. If you tell people that sea levels are likely to go up 1 meter over the next 300 years, the response is ho hum rather than “holy shit!”
What are they doing blasting out the brain, anyway? Everyone knows you’re supposed to cut the head in half, throw in a few other scraps and boil it till all the soft tissue comes off, add some corn meal, pour it into a mold, and let it set to make scrapple. Then slice it, fry it, and add some syrup. No aerosolized brains to worry about.
After moving to Texas 5 years ago, as much as I like Shiner beer and the good tex mex food, it doesn’t make up for not being able to find scrapple anywhere. I could live without being able to order it in restaurants as long as I could buy it in the grocery store, but I can’t even find it there. Last time I had it was when I flew home for Christmas last year.
Regarding the environmental costs of growing veggie food: this is a specious argument because most of the effects listed are not inherent to plant farming, but are a product of current practices used by farmers to remain competitive. As consumers demand more organic and sustainably grown foods, these costs will decrease.
No one is suggesting that any method of agriculture is completely benign in its effects on the earth. The earth’s ecosystem was better off when we were hunter-gatherers with a limited population. But I don’t think any of us is keen on returning to that lifestyle. Short of that, we can chose to consume the most ethically produced foods possible.