WORKERS at two pork-processing plants in the US have developed a mysterious nervous ailment after using compressed air to blast brain tissue from severed pig heads. The end product is a pink food paste that is canned and exported, but the process also generates an aerosol of brain matter that workers may inhale.
Since 2006, 12 workers at a Minnesota slaughterhouse have developed symptoms ranging from weakness, tingling and numbness to acute paralysis, US health authorities reported on 31 January . Other workers have developed similar symptoms at a slaughterhouse in Indiana.
鈥淚n some, the weakness has improved, but no one is completely better,鈥� says neurologist Daniel Lachance of the in Rochester, Minnesota. All those affected have similar patterns of inflammation in their spinal and peripheral nerves, and Lachance suspects that this is the result of autoimmune damage triggered by immune reactions to proteins from the pig brains.
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Only three US plants use the blasting process and they have all stopped as a result of the investigation.
