Parasite disease makes comeback after 37 years

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

When a Whangamata woman sat down to a "delicious" meal of bacon with her husband, she had no idea the home-kill meat from a neighbour's farm had been infected with a dangerous parasite.

So dangerous that it sent her to Thames Hospital for 12 days. Only now, more than a month after becoming infected, is she getting over the illness.

"I'm recovering well now," the woman, who asked not to be named, said yesterday, although she has not returned to work.

She is one of two victims of the first outbreak of trichinosis since 1964, though there have been imported cases.

The other victim, the farmer who gave her the meat, also had to be hospitalised and is understood to be recovering slowly.

The pig was slaughtered at his sheep and cattle farm and processed by a local butcher.

Health authorities are warning people to be careful when handling and cooking pig meat from wild animals or home-kills.

Trichinosis, caused by the parasite trichinella spiralis, is transmitted by eating infected pig meat that has not been cooked - or frozen - sufficiently to kill the cysts.

Symptoms can include diarrhoea, vomiting, fever and severe muscle pains.

Drugs are used to attack the parasite, although full recovery can take weeks. In rare cases, trichinosis can be fatal.

Authorities say that in both cases of trichinosis, the meat appears to have been well-cooked, which may indicate contamination from other foods or utensils.

The Ministry of Agriculture banned the movement of pigs or pig meat off the farm last month and ordered its 63 pigs killed.

Dr Matthew Stone, an exotic diseases specialist at MAF, said gifts of meat from the property had been traced. Some tested positive for the parasite and had been destroyed, and other test results were awaited.

A Paeroa property to which some pigs from the Whangamata farm had been moved was still under restrictions until proven clear, Dr Stone said.

"Because of the potential for false negatives early in the infection cycle, we wait a month [from the first tests] then test again."

He said the pigs on the Whangamata farm had roamed free and there was a problem with vermin and feral cats from a closed dump nearby. Pigs could pick up the parasite by eating infected animals.

Commercially reared pigs never tested positive for the parasite, said Dr Stone, because the industry took precautions such as carefully controlling what pigs ate.

MAF says it is illegal to sell or trade home-kill meat.