A MEDICAL MYSTERY UNFOLDS IN MINNESOTA

A survey of the workers at the Quality Pork Processors plant in Austin, Minnesota confirmed what the plant’s nurses had suspected all along: those who were suffering the same highly unusual set of symptoms: fatigue, pain, weakness, numbness and tingling in the legs and feet were employed at or near the “head table,” where workers cut the meat off severed hog heads in a procedure known as “blowing brains.” Apparently, inhalation by the workers of brain material from the pigs was eliciting an immunologic reaction. As the New York Times reports, it’s just an awful tale, and one with industry-wide ramifications.